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According to the letter, VanEck TRX ETN (VTRX) has been officially approved by Deutsche Börse Group and is available for trading on Xetra from September 21, 2021.

The approval from Germany will exempt VTRX from the approval of other EU regulatory authorities, and VTRX will be listed as compliant security in 14 countries including Germany, France, the Netherlands and Switzerland.

This marks TRX (VTRX) as the third mainstream cryptocurrency – after Bitcoin and Ether – that has been listed on the traditional financial market of Europe.

Justin Sun introduced blockchain as a ‘value network’ to China in 2012, which established him as an early evangelist and practitioner of blockchain. Later in 2017, he founded TRON.

Today, TRON has built a comprehensive ecosystem spanning from underlying protocols and smart contracts, to NFT and metadata storage, boasting over 54 million users and $50 billion worth of crypto assets across the globe.

Moreover, the TRON-based USDT (TRC20-USDT), with a circulating supply as high as $36 billion, is now the world’s largest stablecoin in circulation, accounting for more than 50% of the global market.

Not long ago, TRON also inked a strategic partnership with Valkyrie Investments to launch Valkyrie TRON Trust. As the first institutional fund targeting TRON’s crypto ecosystem in the US, the initial size of this trust is over $50 million, and it plans to file to go public in 2022.

Justin Sun also announced in his latest open letter to the community that BTTC, a layer 2 scaling and cross-chain solution, is scheduled for launch on October 30, 2021.

By then, a closed loop of both layer 1 and 2 networks with sound cross-chain connectivity will take shape, delivering both a robust underlying network of global settlement layer and a heterogeneous, scalable cross-chain network – BitTorrent Chain – that features high throughput and full compatibility with EVM. This solution will usher in a new era of connecting all chains.

According to available resources, the listing of VTRX has been stringently reviewed and approved by Deutsche Börse Xetra, fully complying with the financial regulatory requirements in Europe.

Further, with the support of Clearstream under Deutsche Börse Group, TRX ETN is expected to be available for trading in the pan-European market on major European exchanges in London, Paris, Amsterdam and more.

This marks another milestone of TRON – the forerunner in the global public chain sphere – in pursuing globalization and compliance under Justin Sun’s leadership.

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Stocks represent a percentage of a business. They stand as a company’s value and change their price range based on the organization’s performance in the market. On the other hand, cryptocurrency is a digital asset that has made its debut in 2009 through the famous bitcoin. It can be stored and traded digitally. The value of a cryptocurrency varies based on its market demand, supply, and adoption. For many years, people were confined to the stock market investment models. But the recent emergence of cryptocurrency and bitcoin’s price has attracted or moreover, redirected many investors to try their hand on the digital currency market. Unfortunately, that doesn’t hide the fact that the cryptocurrency sphere is very volatile and carries potential risks. While bitcoin has been in the headlines in May for reaching the record US$60,000, within a month, it almost touched the death cross. The stock market is no different. During the early days of the pandemic, S&P 500 has lost over one-third of its value. Therefore, to investors who want to pick the right investment model, the confusion between cryptocurrency vs stocks remains unsolved. Analytics Insight has aimed to decrypt some of the hidden similarities and differences between cryptocurrency vs stocks to make it easier for investors.

The cryptocurrency market has opted for a digital model of functioning since the very beginning. But the story is completely different for the stock market. Initially, financial guides or brokers used to take money from investors and add them to the stock market. Fortunately, the scenario has changed when the stock market also through a complete transformation. Today, both cryptocurrency and stocks can be accessed through the digital exchange, brokerage account, mobile application, or other online platforms. Besides, they also offer a similar kind of user experience in terms of layout, trading options, and order-book-based liquidity mechanism.

Retail trading options open the door to general trading orders like a market order, limit order, and stop (or stop-loss) order. Even though both cryptocurrencies vs stocks might look similar from the buying and selling point of view, they have underlying differences that need to be addressed.

While cryptocurrency and stocks are both types of investments, they individually carry certain functionalities that make them different from the other. When you buy a stock, you are directly investing in a particular company that you believe will bring growth. On the other hand, you just buy tokens of a certain cryptocurrency to either use them as a digital investment portal or even trade them as payment.

Cryptocurrency maker and stock distributor: One of the reasons for cryptocurrency’s undying popularity is its independent and decentralized nature. Owing to its leniency, anybody can become a miner and try getting their hands on bitcoin. Besides, other cryptocurrencies like Dogecoin were literally born out of bored programmers who wanted to mock the meme. It is completely different for the stock market. Stocks need to be created. They have to be cleared by government agencies and should also be audited.

Stocks are encrypted from hacks while cryptos are not: As mentioned above, the stock market is widely regulated by government agencies and goes through complete yearly auditing. Due to its heavy scrutiny, there is little chance that stocks could be rigged or fraudulent. On the other hand, it is completely different for cryptocurrencies. Because of their decentralized nature, digital currencies are unregulated and prone to fraud. A simple cryptocurrency scam could make you lose all your digital assets.

The void in ownership rights: Stocks are seen as an ownership right. Similar to voting and citizenship card, stock ownership doesn’t change until the owner prefers to sell the stock. When he or she invests in stocks, they are allocated with a percentage of ownership in the company. In the digital currency market, you are allocated with tokens like Ethereum, bitcoin, etc. when you invest in it. They do not represent a legal stake in the organization that issued them.

The difference in transaction fees: Whenever you buy a new stock, even for a very less amount, you are bound to pay a transaction fee. While it is convincingly okay for large investments, transaction fees on small investments will eat up your profits from the stock. But trading cryptocurrency could be remarkably rewarding as it comes with low exchange fees. However, the transaction and gas fees vary based on the crypto exchange you opt for.

With the volume of newly launched tokens growing by the day, Coinfluence has introduced a revolutionary platform to offer a holistic influencer-driven exposure to tokens that deserve and need it.

15th July, 2021, Talinn, Estonia: The crypto industry has a unique marketing environment – being a cutting-edge industry, traditional (even digital-traditional) marketing strategies have proven to be ineffective at capturing the attention and interest of today’s crypto consumers. Heavy users of social media, the younger crowd relies more on word of mouth than ads or news. According to recent research, the influencer market will reach nearly $14 billion this year, and it is no wonder that this shift in paradigm will be felt in the crypto sphere.

Take the example of Elon’s Musk’s infamous support for Dogecoin. The latest tweet recovered the 10% drop it witnessed a day earlier. One tweet can be the difference between the life and death of the next breakthrough in the digital asset space. Such is the power of influencers in crypto.

Coinfluence: The Crypto Influencer Platform of the Future

Coinfluence solves the crypto influencer marketing problem by connecting upcoming projects with a wealth of high-level influencers. The outcome is an environment where projects get access to high-quality social media influencers that can attract the right crowd and increase the chances of a successful launch while the influencers get to be a part of the next breakthrough in crypto, creating fantastic win-win situations. And of course, a good project doesn’t necessarily translate into a successful one if it remains under the radar. Access to a wide range of influencers means that it will get the right exposure, putting it on the map where it truly belongs.

Coinfluence achieves this with a tight-knit set of strategies. First, any project that wishes to be listed must go through a stringent quality check that is based on a multitude of factors, allowing only thoroughly vetted projects to be listed. This creates a cleaner and better option for investors, whilst protecting the market from scams, rug pulls, and bad actors.

At the centre of this whole ecosystem is the CFLU token, designed to assist projects and influencers to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes. Approved projects get to hold their token sales through the launchpad, where the community can acquire their tokens using CFLU. Each transaction gets taxed, with the amount being distributed for liquidity, staking rewards and marketing. At the same time, the deflationary token model should push the CFLU price upwards.

CFLU Token Sale Event

Driving the economics behind Confluence’s ecosystem is the Binance Smart Chain-based BEP-20 compliant CFLU token. Based on the principles of deflation, there  are a total of 1 billion CFLU, of which 650 million are already available in the currently ongoing token sale. The event is phase-based, with each of the 100 successful phases making the CFLU progressively more expensive (currently phase 1 has a price of 0.0056 USD per 1 CFLU).

Out of the 650 million CFLU, 100 million have been set aside for financing the platform developers. To give confidence to projects, influencers and users of CFLU, a vesting schedule will allow the team access to 20% of the funds, with the rest being released periodically. This ensures that rugpulls are guaranteed against.

An innovative tax system is also a unique approach, by which 10% of all transactions are deducted, with 4% going to the liquidity pools, 4% to token holders and 2% for marketing and expansion. Along with this, every 10th transaction in the first 1000 transactions will receive 5000 bonus tokens as a reward. Visit the Coinfluence ICO platform to get your CFLU tokens today.

The Present and the Future

The Coinfluence concept materialized at the start of 2021.. Alongside this, the Coinfluence team has achieved onboarding a large number of influencers and it has set a target of 100,000 top influencers under its Enrolment Program. Coinfluence is also building towards global collaborations and getting CFLU listed on major exchanges, to provide increased liquidity and access for the everyday user to the CFLU ecosystem. Confluence is also looking to list CFLU on major coin monitoring platforms such as CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko, plus portfolio tracker Blockfolio, to raise awareness and increase information transparency.

Further down the road, Coinfluence will be launching its mobile app for access on the go. Confluence will be also roll out their own launchpad, giving projects a one-stop solution to top influencers and the many intricacies involved in project setup and launch, all at the same time. Finally, Coinfluence will create its own news platform, the Coinfluence News Network to inform its users and the public on the latest happenings in the industry.

Visit the Coinfluence ICO platform to get your CFLU tokens today.

Connect via Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheCoinfluence Join the official Telegram group: https://t.me/coinfluence Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thecoinfluence/ Catch Coinfluence on Reddit: a Contact

Contact Email: Harshita@coinfluence.org

The cryptocurrency market is filled with over ten thousand cryptocurrencies. However, Indian crypto investors still have a soft corner for bitcoin. They constantly rely on bitcoin with the hope to ride the price wave. Fortunately, bitcoin never fails to live up to its expectations. Although price plummets are also very common, in many cases, bitcoin has gained more profits than those plunges. Besides, its price, market capitalization, and volume have kept it at the top for a long time. Bitcoin still represents over 40% of the cryptocurrency market capitalization.

According to experts, ethereum has every potential to overtake bitcoin in the coming years. So far, ethereum has kept a low-key in the market. But after bitcoin’s price challenged the digital currency sphere, ethereum emerged as a hope for many crypto investors. At the beginning of 2021, ethereum was trading at INR1.40 lakh and has breached the INR2 lakh barrier by August end. After its recent London upgrade, the digital token is confidently heading to breach INR3 lakh in the coming days.

Many believe that Dogecoin is the most promising cryptocurrency of 2021. After becoming Elon Musk’s favorite cryptocurrency, Dogecoin has stolen many other top crypto investors’ attention. Experts believe that Dogecoin’s value will produce nearly 50% returns by 2021 end if it keeps up the good pace. Elon Musk’s constant boosting also helps Dogecoin’s price goes up. However, that doesn’t always work since Musk has varied opinions on all cryptocurrencies.

Launched in 2017, Cardono became one of the few cryptocurrencies that made it to the top 10 digital currency list in a very short span. Cardano functions on the famous blockchain network that powers bitcoin and ethereum. The digital token has given enormous growth to the investors in the past months with a rise of 150%. However, Cardano is also facing a volatile situation now with its price going down drastically. Fortunately, crypto enthusiasts suggest that this could be a brief plummet and Cardano will be back on the track soon.

Binance Coin was one of the few cryptocurrencies that reached its peak in 2017 during the bull market. Unfortunately, it later plateaued and decreased in value. In 2021, Binance Coin is being rallied at a moderate price. Although the pierce growth is comparatively low, Binance Coin still manages to keep its upward graph going. Many Indians see Binance Coin as a stable form of investment.

Whether you believe it or not, Ripple has a large investment base in India. Many Indian local investors and agents suggest their customers invest in XRP to maintain stable growth over their potential investment. Ripple gained its popularity in 2017 and was also chosen by global baking corporations as their preferred cryptocurrency. It became a silent method for the bank to send and receive payments.

Although pegged to the US dollar, Tether has many people in India who are interested in cryptocurrency. Tether is famous in the digital currency circle for its unique functioning. Unlike bitcoin that is valued based on its market capitalization and investments, Tether is backed by a fiat currency that is admired across the globe. Besides, it maintains a stable and consistent value for the digital token.

After breaking from ethereum, a few people in the leadership team created Polkadot with a better network. Polkadot works on several lanes of the transaction to make it fast and easy. The digital token rewards genuine investors and picks out others who trade just to make money fast. Unfortunately, Polkadot’s short history makes it critical for comparison. Therefore, even Indians give a second thought when they plan to invest in Polkadot.

With an increasing number of new businesses embracing blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies, the idea of creating a crypto token has also gained appeal, especially since many blockchain platforms are open-source and free.

In this article, we look at crypto tokens and what you need to know as a business to develop and launch them successfully.

If you are considering developing a crypto token, then it is best to get in touch with a professional crypto token development company such as XValley Technologies who can help you establish your presence in the crypto space and generate revenue for your business.

What are crypto tokens?

Crypto tokens are units of value developed on top of existing blockchains by various crypto organisations and projects. The most common blockchain platforms used to create a crypto token are Ethereum, Tron, and Binance Smart Chain.

For example, the Ethereum blockchain’s native token is ether (ETH), but there are also many other tokens that use the Ethereum blockchain, including DAI, COMP and CryptoKitties (Each Kitty is an ERC-721 token).

Crypto tokens can be used for a wide variety of purposes from trading, buying, and selling goods, to participating in decentralised finance (DeFi) mechanisms, playing games, or accessing platform-specific services.

Usually, companies create a crypto token in order to raise funds through crowdfunding by selling their tokens in what is called a “token sale” or crowd sale.”

There are different types of crypto crowdfunding platforms including an Initial Coin Offering (ICO), Security Token Offering (STO) and Initial Exchange Offering (IEO). Two concepts that have become very popular are the Initial Liquidity Offering (ILO) and the Initial Dex Offering (IDO).

Initial Liquidity Offerings (ILOs) have emerged as the most popular option for the launch of new tokens surpassing even Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs). Initial Dex offerings, or IDOs are tokens hosted on a decentralised exchange (DEX) and are very attractive due to their immediate liquidity and trading, and low costs for listing.

Benefits of crypto tokens

Their unique features such as anonymity, decentralisation and increased security, and their growing use in the cryptocurrency marketplace have made crypto tokens popular among crypto users and startups.

Crypto tokens are programmable, permissionless, transparent and trustless. They are programmable as they are controlled by smart contracts which carry the inherent logic and function of the token.

In this respect, they are also characterised by transparency as the rules and the transactions are viewable and verifiable by all.

They are permissionless as everyone can participate in the system and are trustless as there is no central authority.

Popular crypto tokens in the market

There are various types of tokens depending on their use, but the main ones are: common tokens, utility tokens, security tokens (asset-backed, equity and debt tokens), and non-fungible tokens.

Some of the most popular tokens among crypto traders are Binance USD, Compound, Chain link, Maker, Wrapped bitcoin and Huobi token.

How to develop and launch a crypto token for your business?

Before you move on to choosing the blockchain platform to develop your crypto token, you will first need to select the right consensus mechanism.

A consensus mechanism will ensure that all transactions are legitimate and can be added to the blockchain.

Once you have chosen your blockchain platform you will need to ensure that you are fully satisfied with the internal architecture of the blockchain as you will be unable to make any changes to the parameters of the blockchain platform after the token is deployed.

The next step is the APIs. Since some platforms do not provide any pre-built ones, you will need to get them from third-party blockchain API providers such as ChromaWay or Bitcore, to name a few. Finally, make sure that your token complies to international cryptocurrency rules and regulations.

Developing and launching a crypto token can be a significant step for your business, as a crypto token will help you reduce operational costs and expand your customer base.

A crypto token will also transform your transactions, eliminating fraud risk, providing anonymity, transparency, and security.

Leading fintech firm XValley Technologies is the ideal partner to help you access the exciting new sphere of blockchain payments and crypto transactions.

If you are considering launching your own crypto token, then get in touch with their friendly and experienced team to help you get started.

PRESS RELEASE. 25 February 2021 – Animoca Brands, the developer and publisher of the successful blockchain games F1® DeltaTime and The Sandbox, is further expanding its push to bring mainstream consumers to blockchain by announcing that MotoGP™ Ignition, the competitive management and collectibles game platform based on MotoGP™, will be built on the Flow blockchain, with the first content sale to begin 26 March 2021. Flow was originally created by Dapper Labs, the company behind NBA Top Shot and CryptoKitties.

MotoGP™, managed by Dorna Sports, S.L., is the oldest motorsports championship in the world, featuring the fastest riders and the most technologically advanced prototype racing motorcycles on the planet. MotoGP™ Ignition will allow fans to own and trade collectibles of their favorite MotoGP™ bikes and personalities on blockchain.

MotoGP™ Ignition will deliver two forms of MotoGP™ branded experiences centered around limited-edition non-fungible tokens (NFTs): a digital collectibles platform where users buy and sell cards of varying rarity, and a racing manager game. The game’s racing management experience will offer the bikes, riders, and champions of MotoGP™ as NFT collectibles that players use to assemble their racing teams to compete against other players.

Yat Siu, the co-founder and chairman of Animoca Brands, said: “We are very excited to begin launching MotoGP™ Ignition in the coming months and are absolutely thrilled to be the next major sports brand on the Flow blockchain after the success of NBA Top Shot.”

Collectibles in the first ever MotoGP™ Ignition sale will be purchased using fiat currency with payment via credit card, and also using REVV, the utility token and in-game currency for branded motorsports blockchain games (learn about REVV in this video).

Flow blockchain is uniquely positioned to enable big brands to deliver richer user engagement and unique experiences, such as digital ownership or provable scarcity, in addition to offering access to a global, open ecosystem at launch. Coupled with innovative technology that allows for scalability without compromising decentralization, Flow offers unparalleled user experience for mainstream audiences.

“Flow is the perfect platform for high quality developers like Animoca Brands to build on because it provides the opportunity to scale,” said Roham Gharegozlou, CEO and founder of Dapper Labs, creator of the Flow blockchain. “MotoGP™ has done a fantastic job of engaging millions of fans of motorsports around the world, and those fans deserve a great, stable, fast experience.”

Pau Serracanta, Managing Director of Dorna Sports S.L., commented: “We are delighted to continue working with Animoca Brands and announce MotoGP™ Ignition, offering fans the chance to own and trade collectibles on blockchain – curating their own collections as well as competing against each other in the racing management experience. The digital sphere has been a key focus for Dorna for many seasons and we are delighted to give our hundreds of millions of fans around the world yet another opportunity to interact with their favourite sport and get involved with MotoGP™.”

The first MotoGP™ NFT collectible sale will begin on 26 March 2021. To receive news about the sale and other updates about MotoGP™ Ignition please sign up at https://motogp-ignition.com/.

About Flow

Flow is a fast, decentralized, and developer-friendly blockchain, designed as the foundation for a new generation of entertainment apps, games and the digital assets that power them. Flow is the only layer-one blockchain originally created by a team that has consistently delivered great consumer blockchain experiences: CryptoKitties, Dapper Wallet, NBA Top Shot. Flow boasts a rich ecosystem of top entertainment brands, development studios, and venture-backed startups. Flow ecosystem partners include global IP brands like Warner Music, Ubisoft, NBA and UFC; leading game developers, including Animoca Brands, Sumo Digital and nWay; and many leaders in the crypto space such as Circle and Binance.

About Dorna Sports

Dorna Sports, founded in 1988 and based in Madrid, Spain, with subsidiaries in Barcelona and Rome, is a world leader in sports management, marketing, and media. Dorna Sports took over management of the MotoGP™ World Championship in 1991 and is the exclusive commercial and television rights holder of the series, as well as of the MOTUL FIM Superbike World Championship (WorldSBK), the FIM Enel MotoE World Cup, the FIM CEV Repsol, the Idemitsu Asia Talent Cup and the British Talent Cup.

About Animoca Brands

Animoca Brands is a leader in the field of digital entertainment, specializing in blockchain, gamification, and artificial intelligence technologies to develop and publish a broad portfolio of products including the REVV token and SAND token, games such as The Sandbox, Crazy Kings, and Crazy Defense Heroes, as well as products utilizing popular intellectual properties such as Formula 1®, Marvel, WWE, Garfield, Snoopy, Power Rangers, MotoGP™, Formula E, and Doraemon. Animoca Brands’ portfolio of blockchain investments and partnerships includes Lucid Sight, Dapper Labs (creators of CryptoKitties), WAX, Harmony, and Decentraland. The Company is based in Hong Kong, United States, South Korea, Finland, Argentina, and the Czech Republic. Subsidiaries include The Sandbox, Quidd, Gamee, and nWay. For more information visit www.animocabrands.com or get updates by following Animoca Brands on Facebook or /p>

This is a press release. Readers should do their own due diligence before taking any actions related to the promoted company or any of its affiliates or services. Bitcoin.com is not responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in the press release.

Published Sunday, Jun. 6, 2021, 2:34 pm

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New crypto coins to buy in 2021, the topic that’s been on every investors’ mind.  Since a tidal wave of nearly a trillion dollars was injected into the cryptocurrency market, global attention has glued to digital money. Bitcoin, Ethereum, and XRP have reigned supreme with financial whales making homes in their safe harbors.  Alternatively, coins like Safemoon and Shiba Inu made big gains of fast swings and lots of pumping action. Now, the world is seeking the latest high potential crypto coin and new signals are screaming about the return of the SafeTitan.

The China Coin

The group fueling this digital moneda’s rise are well known to the technology world of China.  Perhaps this is why the rising Titan of cryptos is being dubbed ‘The China Coin.’

Marketing Gurus Xia Yue, Ye Maozhong, and Wang Wenzon are pushing the SafeTitan brand through Asia’s mainland. More specifically they are targeting the youth of the 1.4 billion populated country, which many say has an economy ahead of America as of 2021.

The trio are currently planning a large-scale promotional campaign that will dominate Chinese social media platforms: Douyin, Sina Weibo, Youku, Kuaishou, Qzone, Xiaohongshu, Zhihu & Baidu Tieba. Together these powerhouse platforms serve nearly 3-billion users daily.

New Crypto Coin Moon

The official SafeTitan website is ‘out of this world.’ The page header gives users the feel of cruising outer space, perhaps to the moon. Either that or  trip to “Titan,” a moon of Saturn, which is akin to the cryptocurrency brand name.

The initial offering price of the SafeTItan token is .005 cents (USD) according to the home page.  Another boasted stat includes that several ICO registrations have been done, which means a new initial coin offering is quite likely in the near future. Most cryptocurrencies get listed with 2-5% of the initial exchanges which they register for an ICO with.

This is not Dogecoin.  There is no Elon Musk nor Mark Cuban screaming its name. However, there are rumors floating that a group of social media influencers are quietly aligning with SafeTitan. According to social media group chat rumors, when this new crypto coin releases in 2021, over 15-million followers will get notice pre-sale.

Where to buy in 2021

In layman’s terms, SafeTitan will be available for buyers on PanCakeSwap in July of 2021. The initial coin offering is less than a month away. These ‘facts’ are according to redditors. There is a subreddit community that’s been created for fans of “The China Coin.”

The .005 cents (USD) standard is a bit higher than many competitor coins, but this is also due to projected technology upgrades and usage features.

Not only that, the supply of this coin is drastically lower than most of your ‘mooning’ or ‘mainstream’ name brands on exchanges today. Only 1 billion tokens will be created for use.

This supply will decrease with time. Though nothing specific can be confirmed, this crypto coin will auto-burn 20-30% of its supply over time.

‘The 100’

The team of Chinese executives marketers working on outreach, are also working with influencers from all digi-spheres of the web. And from all over the world.

A “TItan100” plan may unfold later in June. Though not defined well, allegedly 100 powerful influencers will be given 1,000 tokens to sit at the table with SafeTitan’s bosses. This ‘Titan100’ group will be monitoring and influencing communities such as Telegram, reddit, Facebook, skype, WeChat, and more. Public data will be mined to help improve and inform the public about SafeTitan.

Of course, some of those influencers will also be YouTube or TikTok stars. Their company roles are not clear. There is a recent tweet confirming The 100 however (@SafeTian).

SafeTitan token uses

On the SafeTitan website, the company’s insights are clear.  The ‘moon bound’ token will have proof of elapsed time of Space consensus algorithms implemented. The crypto titan will also be focused on sharding technology and other digital currency techniques to allow for cross-chain bridging between the most popular crypto coins. The end goal, be a part in the decentralization of finance and keep fees minimal.

When Dogecoin reached the world-leading crypto exchange Coinbase in June 2021, it was already .30cents. The biggest gains by investors were already made. Active investors have sought out the ‘shiba inu’ faced coin on smaller cryptocurrency exchanges since 2018.   After a lot of buzz built on social media, much like what’s happening with SafeTitan in China, OKEx’s founder offered the coin on their exchange. One tweet was made to announce the event (read here).

Smart and maybe somewhat lucky investors plowed in millions, purchasing the Doge for $.0077, which is less than a penny. Those who purchased $100 of Dogecoins at that time would have approximately $4,739 more, if sold at 38 cents (USD).

No pair of shoes that you invested $100 on in 2019, could have been that comfortable to miss out on nearly $5,000 profit. Not unless you were walking into a Diamond or Gold mine.

Perhaps SafeTitan will be the next rocket to the moon. If as the company claims, it will be ‘beyond the moon.’

The new cryptocurrency ICO launch in July may be the reason one should hold off on that ‘swanky’ sneaker purchase and walk barefoot to success.

The best cryptocurrency to buy in 2021 earlier was Bitcoin, then Ethereum, then Dogecoin, then Safemoon. The moon-rides are coming faster than Elon Musk could have predicted.

Story by Carolina Khid

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Published Saturday, Jul. 31, 2021, 5:48 pm

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SafeTitan (STTN) cryptocoin announced recently that they’re pushing back their ICO until Saturday, August 14, 2021. Originally scheduled for July, the much anticipated coin cited security protocol upgrades on their official blog. According to the statement published on the blog the delay is in the long-term interest of the token and their buyers. Notably, they also mention hiring two senior developers to aid in the preparation for the coin’s official pre-launch.

SafeTitan aims to offer simplicity and security in crypto trading, while reducing the environmental toll of larger organized mining.

Designed according to BEP20 smart-technology, SafeTitan ($STTN) is paired with the BNB token by Binance. This opens up buying opportunities to a market of over 13.5 million active Binance users (in 2021) who will have access after the coin’s public launch.

Users will need to register to purchase STTN tokens before August 9.  The sale will happen via their official website (SafeTitan.net/ico), which has an on-line app utility. This application will take users through a verified registration process before ICO launch. Options for buying will be made available August 14th.

Once the coin is listed publicly, Binance users will need PancakeSwap which is the largest DeFi exchange (DEX) for Binance Smart-Chain network. First the coin is traded to BEP20 on PancakeSwap, from which it is sent to Binance to trade for other coins. There are more than 1 million crypto wallets registered with the exchange with over $9 billion (USD) in volume. PancakeSwap is the largest DEX in the Binance Smart Chain network.

‘The China Coin’ lifts off

One of the greatest strengths of the company is its marketing team which will be useful for attracting buyers and building a following. Efforts will include distributing 500,000 STTN to users who complete ‘micro tasks’ such as social media follows. The company is also giving away the NFT of their company, not to be reproduced ever, to one lucky user.

There is also talk of a SafeTitan 100, a mysterious group of 100 powerful influencers who will market the coin. Apparently,  the selected influencers have wide networks of followers and will promote STTN on various platforms. Social Medias chosen include Reddit, Facebook, and WeChat & several Chinese platforms, increasing possibilities of the coin going viral.

The ICO also appeals to an international market because of its relatively low token fees on the DeFi exchange. With an initial coin offer price of $0.005 users will have to make a minimum purchase of $10 worth of tokens. The maximum is set at $1,000 (USD) to protect against crypto whales and users hogging all the tokens. There is 980,000,000 total supply available for purchase on the date of the ICO.

Through Twitter SafeTitan announced that recent registration and traffic activity indicate more than 67,000 potential registrants for the ICO. However, there will only be 10,000 spots for fully registered and verified users to make a purchase on the August 14 date. The suspense for the long awaited coin may help catapult the China Coin.

IDO vs ICO: What’s the difference?

ICOs or Initial Coin Offerings are a way of selling crypto tokens before the public listing. This gives early investors a chance to buy up to a limited amount of tokens, and only so many tokens are available during the ICO. The prices are usually cheaper and savvy investors buy as much as they are willing to spend on with the hopes of reselling later at a higher price.

IDOs or Initial DEX (Decentralized Exchange) Offerings skip the presale process and are listed right away. Of course, there is still a cap on how much people can buy, but it’s open to everyone. With an IDO there is a third-party platform that’s vetting the transactions, but the actual token sale is decentralized.

The START of a solution for 2021

Next month also starts the launch of the STARTER IDO on August 2nd. Starter proposes a solution to the myriad noise of the cryptocurrency world, with new tokens appearing constantly. Investors face the problem of sifting through all the new offerings and must decide which stand out. Similarly, developers who want to launch a new project face the problem of attracting investor support and liquidity.

To mitigate these problems, Starter provides a community of START token holders who review IDO’s from different projects. Users can stake their tokens as a way of voting for which programs they want launched on the platform. This way, users have a chance to review the various IDO’s and vote on the ones they think are the best. Afterwards they are able to participate in the presale of each project while earning BNB.

Most notably, the platform launched the IDO of MONSTA on their platform which rose to #4 on their IDO Moonsheet. Cryptocurrency investors can currently buy START on QuickSwap or PolygonScan. The goal for this round is $100,000 and ends on August 3rd, 2021.

Bitcoin makes a comeback

Bitcoin prices surged on July 28th climbing more than 8% to $39,937, according to CoinDesk reports. Over the past couple of months the iconic cryptocurrency has been on the rise after speculation that Amazon may join the crypto sphere. Likewise, similar comments from Tesla CEO Elon Musk contributed to the gains.

This is a welcome comeback for Bitcoin investors since the price dip in May after reports of the coin’s environmental impact. Similarly, China has shown an ever increasing stance against cryptocurrency. In May of this year China banned all institutions and companies from providing crypto services. This was followed by arrests of suspected crypto users, and companies were suspended from dealing with crypto.

But according to Coinbase, the effects of this weren’t as bad as previously thought. Data from the 20 largest exchanges worldwide shows a 489% increase in Bitcoin trading volume from laste year. While other coins such as Ether had a much larger gain, this consistency is good for Bitcoin as it continues to grow.

Marion man pleads guilty to distribution of child pornography Saturday, 9:37 pmBig day for Bridy powers #22 VMI to 31-23 win over Wofford Saturday, 6:59 pm

Can cryptocurrency become mainstream?

Below is a lightly edited transcript of the podcast:

SAM HELTMAN: Are we there?

JOHN HELTMAN: Not yet.

SAM: Are we there?

JOHN: Sam, we're not going to be there for a little while.

SAM: Are we there?

JOHN: We have eight minutes.

SAM: Are we there?

JOHN: No.

JASMINE FERNANDEZ: This is your regular host John Heltman and his daughter. They are on their way to a local 7-Eleven to run a very 21st century errand: buying some cryptocurrency.

JOHN: Alright honey, we're going to buy some Bitcoin.

SAM: Bitcoin?

JOHN: That's right. Here we go …

FERNANDEZ: So John, can you tell us what your experience was like getting Bitcoin?

HELTMAN: Yes, I can. You have to set up a wallet first. So I did some research on how to set up a cryptocurrency wallet. I found some cash that I had in my wallet. And I went to the nearest Bitcoin ATM with my daughter, who was home that day and we went and we got some Bitcoin. We went up to the ATM and it's just in a 711 it's not like next to a regular ATM, I actually kind of stood around like kind of looking for it and it was like, sort of in a corner next to like, kind of stacks of bottled water and stuff.

HELTMAN: Here it is.

HELTMAN: What was interesting is, it had a lot of like, instructions — or had a lot of disclaimers, like, "If you are you paying a bill or something using this ATM, did somebody send you here? If so, it's probably a scam."

HELTMAN: Romance scam disclaimer: have you been sent in to this ATM to send money to your boyfriend, girlfriend, fiancée, husband or wife that you met online? This is highly likely a scam. Terms of Service, blah blah blah …

FERNANDEZ: Cryptocurrencies have been around for more than a decade, but for most of that time they were viewed by mainstream retail investors as perhaps a novelty or perhaps a promising technology, but not a serious investment. That’s started to change, and it’s changed remarkably quickly. At the beginning of 2021, there were roughly 100 million cryptocurrency users worldwide. That number more than doubled by June, to some 221 million users, in just seven months. And the market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies has ballooned from roughly $350 billion a year ago to more than $2 trillion as of late August. And with that exponential growth in new users, banks are starting to look for ways to offer their customers access to this market, and regulators are starting to look at how or whether to regulate it.

JOHN: Sam, come here honey. Okay. Now it's processing. Transaction completed. Now it says I'm done. That's it. I just bought Bitcoin. Alright, Sam, you wanted a treat? Right?

FERNANDEZ: So what is cryptocurrency, and why is it becoming a mainstream investment option now? Is cryptocurrency the future of money, or is this a speculative bubble waiting to pop? And how are traditional banks and bank regulators adjusting to this new and burgeoning asset that brings into question the very meaning of money?

From American Banker, I’m Jasmine Fernandez, and this is Bankshot, a podcast about banks, finance and the world we live in.

FERNANDEZ: So let’s start at the very beginning: what is a cryptocurrency? And to answer that question I turned to someone who knows quite a bit about it.

MARC HOCHSTEIN: My name is Mark Hochstein, executive editor of coin desk, former editor in chief of American Banker. A cryptocurrency is basically a currency that is digital -- not only digital, but that is does not have any central authority or central issuer. It is it lives on a blockchain a blockchain being a sort of a distributed a public ledger that is maintained by a distributed network of computers.

FERNANDEZ: It’s not usually encouraging to require a glossary so early in the show, but in the case of crypto it’s a little bit inevitable. For one, in order to understand what a cryptocurrency is, it’s perhaps worthwhile to understand what a currency is and how it works.

Human beings have been trading for as long as there have been human beings — I have a chicken and you have some wheat, you want chicken and I want wheat, so we trade. But that arrangement doesn’t really scale — to paraphrase historian Peter Bernstein, the more useful something is, the worse it is as a medium of exchange.

That’s why people came up with the idea of money — a store of value, typically issued and underwritten by some kind of government. Money has been around in different cultures and in vastly different forms for thousands of years, and since the abandonment of the gold standard in the 1970s, all monetary denominations have worked more or less the same.

Then in 2008, a white paper — published under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto — was published laying out the basic tenets of Bitcoin and the blockchain. And from a purely theoretical standpoint, this had major implications.

HOCHSTEIN: There is no Bitcoin company. There is no Bitcoin CEO. Bitcoin is run collectively by the Bitcoin community. There's no office, there's no headquarters, there's no Board of Directors, there, you know, basically it is software that is distributed on nodes throughout the world. And as such, it cannot easily, it cannot easily be shut down. And it is — these networks are by design, open networks. Anyone with an internet connection can participate.

TOM HOENIG: Well, I would say that the simplest way to explain it is if you only had two individuals, and they trusted one another, and they said, ‘I will pay you, in a promissory note to you,’ and they were willing to rely on one another, then that's basically what you have in cryptocurrency.

FERNANDEZ: This is Tom Hoenig.

HOENIG: I'm Tom Hoenig. I was the distinguished senior fellow at the Mercatus Center in Arlington, Virginia, and I'm formerly vice chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and formerly the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. Now those two individuals want to go outside of their realm and say, for dollars, they would have to find an exchange, where other people would be willing to trade, say, U.S. dollars for their currency in this exchange, and that would take it outside the system. But that also means that more people have to have confidence or faith in the index cryptocurrency that those two individuals were initially trading.

FERNANDEZ: So in other words, cryptocurrency is a medium of exchange, not unlike dollars or yen or Euros. And like dollars or yen or Euros, you can buy currency with other currency, but to do that — or, at least, to do that at scale — you need an exchange. But cryptocurrencies aren’t just another currency, for a lot of reasons. For one, no central bank is pumping out more of it.

HOCHSTEIN: It's often compared to gold or referred to as digital gold. Bitcoin in particular, is designed to be scarce. Every 10 minutes or so a new Bitcoin is released into the world. And every four years that that rate is cut in half, until sometime in the next century, the very last Bitcoin, the 21 millionth Bitcoin, will be minted or mined, and that will be it. So in a sense, it's even scarcer than gold because it has this very fixed set supply schedule that's baked into the algorithm.

FERNANDEZ: And the fact that cryptos are a digital native medium of exchange means that it can do things that regular money can’t.

HOCHSTEIN: The closest one in value, currently, to Bitcoin is called Ethereum, which is a little bit … almost six years old now. Ethereum is sort of an interesting beast, because it's a blockchain that has its own native asset called ether. But it part of why it was created, it was created specifically to do more sophisticated type of operations known as smart contracts. A simple smart contract would be, let's say, we could create a multi-signature wallet. So there's a cryptocurrency wallet, where if Nick, John and Mark, each of us has one private key, no one of us can release the funds. But two out of the three can release the funds. Or even, you know, I want to if you want to, like defer someone's pay, right? To, like, incentivize them to stick around, you could create a smart contract that says, you know, "We will pay to this address a certain amount of ether or a certain amount of some asset every month." But the person controlling the wallet can't access it until a certain date.

FERNANDEZ: These distinctions between cryptocurrency and regular money are enticing, but they push the boundaries of what we might consider money — or, more accurately, what regulators might consider money.

HOENIG: It's a relatively new concept as a medium of exchange, in the sense of the Bitcoin concept, or the blockchain concept. Because of that, it is an asset. And I would suggest, at the moment, it is mostly a highly speculative asset, and its value is based upon the trust that individuals have in keeping it as a scarce, what they call, virtual currency under their, under this, blockchain method of creating this virtual currency. So it's mostly an asset at this time.

FERNANDEZ: But leaving aside the distinction between a currency and an asset, cryptocurrencies are becoming more mainstream very quickly.

JO ANN BAREFOOT: I think this year is a breakthrough year for crypto becoming mainstream in forms that enable people to use it conveniently.

FERNANDEZ: That’s Jo Ann Barefoot.

BAREFOOT: I'm Jo Ann barefoot. I am CEO and co-founder of the Alliance for Innovative Regulation. I think the breakthrough this year is that major, highly reputable companies have moved to accept crypto. I saw just today the announcement that Amazon is saying they're going to accept payments in Bitcoin or in cryptocurrency or at least start exploring it. But also, the creation of the PayPal crypto wallet, I think is another clear indicator that that PayPal sees a large and growing market for people who want to be able to use crypto to pay for things, and even things like Elon Musk saying that you can buy a Tesla with cryptocurrency — he, you know, he has gone back and forth a bit on that, but he is someone who garners attention.

HOCHSTEIN: People have started to take it seriously as a potential store of value, akin to gold, and as a as a hedge against inflation akin to gold. And let's remember that in the last year and a half with the pandemic and the economic effects of the pandemic. You know, you've had this you know, huge expansion in the money supply. You know, you've had stimulus money going out, and people are you know, for the first time probably in my adult life, people are talking like seriously about inflation is something they're really concerned about. So people, you know, so some institutional investors are looking at Bitcoin as a potential inflation hedge. I think so that's, that's, that's part of it. Others are just looking at cryptocurrency for the same reason that they're going into other risky risk assets, is because they're just looking for alpha — in other words, excess returns — anywhere they can.

HOENIG: The amount of cryptocurrency that can be issued, is driven by a rule, if you will -- what I'll call an algorithm, but it's a rule. So only so much of it can be created. So if you are suspicious of the Government printing too much money, you put your money in an asset, any asset that you think will go up in value, and cryptocurrency is one of those assets, because you're confident that it cannot, it cannot inflate the number of crypto tokens if you will, at an accelerated rate, only by the rule, and therefore you think it will hold its value or appreciate relative to those fiat currencies that governments are producing themselves.

FERNANDEZ: So, again, crypto’s recent market appeal is in part because some investors fear that the value of the dollar is going down, and so they want to use the dollars they have now to buy a currency whose value is not going down — namely Bitcoin, Ethereum or whatever. But by the same token — pun intended — people are also buying crypto because they think it will go up in value faster than other assets they could also buy; they intend to exchange their dollars for bitcoin and then later exchange their bitcoin for dollars again before the price goes down.

So is this a market that banks want to get involved in? More on that after this break.

The increased interest in buying and having crypto assets is getting more banks to pay attention to what's happening in these markets, in large part because it's something that their customers want.

GREG BAER: I think most of bank interest now is simply arising from the fact that their asset management, or corporate clients, want them to custody them, make markets, and basically facilitate their use of, so it's really a service provider.

FERNANDEZ: That’s Greg Baer.

BAER: Hi, I'm Greg Baer. I'm the president and CEO of the Bank Policy Institute. I wouldn't actually assume that most banks are interested in expanding into the world of crypto. I mean, I think they see them as an extremely volatile asset, without any real backing. So for their own account, I think they'd be quite leery about ever owning it, even to the extent they were legally allowed.

FERNANDEZ: After the 2008 financial crisis, banks were no longer allowed to buy and hold things on their own accounts because of a provision in Dodd-Frank known as the Volcker Rule. But that rule has some exceptions, particularly for custodying assets — that is, holding assets in safekeeping — and market-making, where a bank holds assets on its books for the purpose of making them available to customers. So while banks may be providing those services, as an industry they are largely looking at cryptocurrencies with suspicion.

BAER: There are a lot of very volatile assets that bank clients want to hold, and banks will allow you to hold that. And but really, it's more as a service that is as a vote of confidence in the underlying value of the asset. I think a lot of banks and their CEOs have been quite outspoken about concerns that these assets are extraordinarily volatile that you can lose a lot of money on them, and I don't know that that view has changed. But there are a lot of volatile assets that people invest in, if you want to hold them in your account. You know, I think banks probably can and will allow you to hold up, even if they don't judge that to be the wisest investment.

FERNANDEZ: Part of that hesitation is because crypto markets are volatile — the value of a cryptocurrency can fluctuate a lot over a short period of time.

HOENIG: It's highly volatile. It's not necessarily the only assets out there that are highly volatile, some commodities are highly volatile. So the fact is, if it is highly volatile, that doesn't mean it is uniquely volatile, it just means it's highly volatile. Other assets also can have a great deal of volatility. The stock market, for example, could have a great deal of volatility, depending on time, so as we learned in the last financial crisis, and in the most recent pandemic — it fell and it came back up. So assets to do that. And crypto is one of those and its reliance is on whether or not people regain their confidence in it.

BAER: The concern I think most observers have is that these are assets that could go to zero, potentially, because they have no inherent value. And they're really based on a belief that somehow they're a hedge, although I think at least one analyst report I've read showed that they are actually the worst hedge against equity prices there is. I think we've also learned in the last few weeks that they're a terrible hedge against inflation. So I think there's just a general concern that investors are holding these, and that they end up — may end up — losing a great deal of money.

FERNANDEZ: The other thing about investing in cryptocurrencies is that one of their biggest features — that they have no central bank or governmental overseers — is also a bug. Anyone can make a new cryptocurrency, and for many of those splinter cryptocurrencies, the motivation is not to make a newer or more advanced technology, but to simply scam people out of money.

HOCHSTEIN: The software itself is open source, meaning that the code is public, and anyone can audit it. But that also means that anyone can make their own copy and play around with it and make their own adjustments to it. And so there are many different so-called forks or splinter currencies of Bitcoin. So people who were not happy with the way that the development of Bitcoin software was, was being managed, broke off from the community seceded, in a sense, and started their own sort of alternatives. There's a Bitcoin cash, is Bitcoin SV. Dogecoin is a fork of Litecoin, which itself was a fork of Bitcoin. So it's, it's like it's a splinter from a splinter. I think there actually may have been one or two secessions in between. So, yes, so like, it's a completely open market, there are thousands of cryptocurrencies, most of them are, are either half-baked or just absolute scams. It is anybody's guess how many of them are going to survive.

FERNANDEZ: And yet another reason many banks are wary of cryptocurrency is because it is the preferred payment method for cyber criminals, kidnappers, terrorists, and all manner of illicit activity — activity that banks are explicitly prohibited from financing or facilitating.

BAER: I think there have been a lot of concerns about the potential for cryptocurrencies to aid and abet money laundering, and financing of terrorism. I think that's an area that's rapidly evolving where more and more standards are being applied to the holding of those assets.

HOENIG: The use of cryptocurrencies, especially for an exchange, that is one area that has been a topic of conversation that is for criminals moving funds around more easily, for hackers who put extorted money or from different businesses, how they transfer that money. Those are areas that can become legally rather complicated for those who use cryptocurrency and for those who help, if you will, become an intermediary for those cryptocurrencies. So those are risks that you have to allow for and protect yourself against.

FERNANDEZ: But, ironically, the blockchain technology upon which cryptocurrencies are based has enticing potential for combating money laundering and illicit finance.

BAREFOOT: I think people underestimate the law enforcement advantages of cryptocurrency. We talk a lot with law enforcement authorities in the United States and around the world. And as you know, when money moves in a cryptocurrency on the blockchain, that blockchain is public, and can be scrutinized by everyone. Crime on a large scale — financial crime — has topologies that can be found if you bring artificial intelligence and machine learning into looking at large patterns of crime, like human trafficking has a different topology than drug trafficking, or wildlife trafficking, or terrorism financing, in terms of sizes of transactions, locations of transactions, timing of transactions. And so there's a lot of opportunity to follow these public records, unlike cash, public records of the movement of money, and where law enforcement has the appropriate legal authority to get go through the due process to determine who's involved and transactions that appear to raise red flags.

FERNANDEZ: With the exponential growth in cryptocurrency over the last few months has come a flurry of interest from regulators.

Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Gary Gensler has asked Congress to give the SEC more authority to regulate cryptocurrency exchanges amid concerns that many recent initial coin offerings amounted to illegal securities offerings.

The Treasury Department is also pushing for language in the pending budget reconciliation bill that would include reporting requirements for crypto exchanges and for tax purposes.

The Switzerland-based Basel Committee on Banking Supervision recently assigned cryptoassets the highest capital risk weighting, meaning banks holding those assets would have to hold extra capital against a loss in value.

And the Treasury Department convened a Presidential working group in July to discuss possible regulatory actions for stablecoins — cryptocurrencies that are pegged to traditional currency assets like Treasury securities and cash, and which are intended to be less volatile than other cryptocurrencies.

One other thing that U.S. authorities are considering is getting in the game themselves — that is, developing a central bank digital currency. A digital dollar.

KAREN PETROU: That's a work in progress. I mean, the Fed will be issuing a discussion paper this summer on central bank digital currency. And it could have any number of configurations.

FERNANDEZ: This is Karen Petrou.

PETROU: I'm Karen Petrou, managing partner of Federal Financial Analytics and the author of Engine of Inequality to Fit in the Future of Wealth in America.

FERNANDEZ: The Fed announced last year that it was exploring the potential for creating a digital dollar, spurred in part by competition from other countries like China and in part because of the nagging shortcomings of the existing U.S. payments system. Creating a digital dollar that could be easily transferred — and, perhaps, with those transactions easily tracked — could reduce a lot of friction in the economy. But there are a lot of different flavors of digital currency to choose from, and each is more or less palatable to the Federal Reserve and Congress.

PETROU: For example, the Fed can only handle wholesale transactions in digital currency, much as it now handles essentially, digital currency in the wholesale payment markets, and banks are the customer-facing payment intermediary. Or, as Democrats would prefer, the Fed would offer retail accounts to all customers, maybe with banks handling the servicing of it, and still operating ATMs when people want cash, but the Fed would be, basically, the National Bank. So there are a lot of different models for how a CBDC could be implemented.

PETER DUGAS: I think a lot of times the cryptocurrency debate is in search of a problem that really isn't a problem.

FERNANDEZ: And this is Peter Dugas.

DUGAS: I am Peter Dugas, Executive Director of Capco and head of Capco’s center for regulatory intelligence in Washington, DC. I think the bigger challenge, I would say, if the Federal Reserve Board and Congress spent as much time probably talking about how it can improve the overall banking system, as it does debating the potential use cases for cryptocurrency could solve for without having to even have cryptocurrency even entered the debate. I think a lot of the use cases when you're talking about, you know, financial exclusion, whether you're talking about trying to ensure that individuals have faster account access, are talking about limiting, let's say, the cost for overdraft or the speed of the payment system overall could be solved in other ways without even the need for a discussion around cryptocurrencies. So that's what I've been still struggling for over the last 10 years, and so far, really haven't seen any proof that there is really a true need for a cryptocurrency.

FERNANDEZ: And a central bank digital currency also could offer considerable advantages to the central bank as well.

PETROU: The way the central banks look at it is, “Central bank digital currency has a number of advantages for monetary transmission, policy transmission and financial stability.” For one thing, the Fed no longer has to rely on banks or other financial institutions to transmit policy. It could thus for example, drive rates below nominal zero in a way that's really not possible at private institutions. The other view is that CBDC prevents bank runs because nobody doubts the central bank has the money to honor its deposits and that provides financial stability. Each of those propositions are uncertain. For example, the central bank would need to be the deposit taker equivalent — not just for banks but also for money market funds and mutual funds — for there not to be a run from the private financial what's left of the private financial system into a central bank under stress? So there are two. These are really complicated questions. That really depends on how much you want a central bank turning into really a bank bank, and what kind of financial system you think is best for economic equality and long term shared prosperity.

FERNANDEZ: That kind of digitization of the dollar seems like it might squeeze out at least some of the appeal of cryptocurrencies, but for many consumers that may not be true. For one, you can’t hedge against the dollar with a dollar, digital or otherwise. And there is also a line of reasoning that the decentralized aspect of cryptocurrencies is not only a feature, but a critical check on government overreach.

HOCHSTEIN: Decentralization is, is it's a means to an end. And it serves a purpose. There's no beating around the bush with this: one of the attractions of cryptocurrency and having a currency where there's no central authority, and [is] what they call “censorship resistant.” So let's take the world of cash, you go into a bar, and you go to the bartender, and you say, you want a beer. And bartender gives you a beer, you give them a $5 bill, that's between you and the bartender, and there is no referee, there's no intermediary, to come in and say, "Ah! No, Mark, you've had too many to drink, no more for you." And we start to lose this as we go from physical cash to a world to a completely electronic payment world. Because prior to cryptocurrency, online payments or electronic payments were intermediated by either a bank or a payment processor — your bank, PayPal, an entity like that. And these intermediaries exist for a reason — I'm not saying that everything needs to be peer to peer necessarily. But the problem is that intermediaries can be politicized. When Wikileaks dropped their big dump of State Department cables, embarrassing the U.S. government and revealing all kinds of government secrets. This was Wikileaks was an organization that survived on donations. And politicians approached Visa and MasterCard and PayPal, and basically said, "You’ve got to stop processing donations to this organization." And so for a time, there was a payments blockade on WikiLeaks. However, Bitcoin existed at that point, and for a time, WikiLeaks survived on Bitcoin donations. I'm not saying that Wikileaks is a perfect organization — that's a whole other podcast or a whole other day. But the fact is, they were a journalistic outfit, they were a publication that was publishing salient facts in the public interest — most of them in the public interest. And there was a form of extralegal financial censorship that was brought to bear against them because of the power of these large intermediaries in a digital economy. And the beauty of Bitcoin is that it undermines some of that power and makes it possible to transfer value across borders online without permission of some gatekeeper.

FERNANDEZ: Do you think that both digital currencies can coexist?

DUGAS: I think they can. I think the Federal Reserve Board is smart enough to be able to have a thoughtful approach. If they do move forward with a central bank digital currency, I think they can coexist — they can be potentially complementary. There's a lot of unknowns there. One good example is on the data collection requirement. So, as part of any government program, there will be data collection requirements as part of that. So to what extent will, you know, consumers or individuals allow for the federal government to collect data and transactions, all you know, how they're going to operate and how they're going to be using those cryptocurrencies and whether that information should be shared with governments, I think some of the other challenges specifically are going to be consumer rights. So there's not a lot of clarity around potentially how central bank digital currencies would work regarding consumer rights. Whether those individuals once receiving a central bank digital currency, what obligations would that individual have in order to ensure that those funds were being used in a proper speed or fashion? So I think there's a lot of policy gaps currently in the debate around cryptocurrencies within that sphere.

TransitNet is providing the tools that will assist service providers with title verification for cryptographic assets. Despite the huge influx of institutional investment into crypto over the last year, many larger firms are apprehensive about entering the market because of the anonymity associated with crypto. TransitNet wants to allow crypto holders the option of registering their cryptographic assets and making it a more attractive space for institutions to invest in. 

Today Korea IT Times sat down with TransitNet CEO and former head of US marketing for PayPal, Eric M. Jackson to talk about institutional investment and the importance of title registry. 

Q: Firstly, why do you think the last year or so has finally seen institutions arriving into the crypto sphere? 

The concept of crypto at its core has always represented a great way to store wealth. Now with the huge increase in crypto’s market cap, especially for Bitcoin, crypto has become a more important asset class for many investors. I think there’s no longer a sense that crypto is going to fall and not come back. As a result, some financial institutions are beginning to offer services in response to market demand.

Q: Despite this interest, why do you think so many institutions are reluctant to invest? 

Crypto is still a bearer asset. While that’s useful as a cash substitute, it's a barrier to widespread adoption. Institutions are used to investing in something where ownership is so much more transparent. Lack of title is a problem for investors, companies, auditors, and other service providers and regulators have identified this as a major concern.

Q: Regulations appear to be having more and more of an impact on crypto across the world. Do you think this is a problem for crypto? 

The world is certainly moving toward more regulation of crypto. Case in point, earlier this week the Chairman of the SEC indicated that crypto in general and DeFi, in particular, should expect to see increased regulations going forward. 

Regulation is not in and of itself a bad thing. The question is what kind of regulations get put in place. Lack of clarity about what future regulation might look like is almost certainly worse for the industry than the implementation of a modest, common-sense set of regulations. 

Q: Tell us about how TransitNet can make it easier for institutions to get involved in crypto. Why is title verification so important?

Title verification stands to benefit many institutional players. 

Firstly, many custodians have a legal obligation to prove the title of assets taken into their possession. This will be vital as regulators aim to stamp down on any crypto assets that may have been illicitly obtained.

Secondly, neither insurers nor auditors can rely solely on clients’ possession of private keys as equivalent to the title. Insurers, for example, will require proof of title in order to underwrite policies related to assets.

Thirdly, Fund Administrators will, of course, need to verify the title of the assets they are given to manage and finally, for exchanges, KYC proves a client’s identity but can’t verify the title of assets acquired elsewhere. Title registry will provide a more comprehensive record of a crypto asset’s ownership. 

Q: TransitNet gives investors the ability to turn crypto from a bearer asset to a registered asset. What are some of the benefits for retail investors holding crypto as a registered asset? 

So many different financial applications become available when you can register an asset in your name. When you have Proof of Reserve, you can demonstrate that you have control over your own assets. This allows you to use them as collateral and gives you the option of having them insured.

On top of that, when it comes to paying taxes and regulations, both of which are vital for major institutions, a title registry allows for auditability and therefore, proof of compliance. 

Q: TransitNet's first tool released is the Asset Collision Identifier. Tell us a little bit about that. 

The Asset Collision Identifier (ACI) is a product for service providers, including audit firms and fund administrators. It enables service providers to identify if wallet addresses are claimed by multiple fund managers, helping ensure that ownership of specific assets are claimed by only one fund.

Q: TransitNet has just completed a seed round totaling over $2 million. What notable investors does TransitNet have, both from the seed round and previously?

Our earliest investors, the ones that came on board before the seed round, include some pretty big players in the crypto investment circle such as Alphabit, BKCM, and Kenetic Capital. Our recently completed seed round was then lead by Silicon Valley angel investor Stephen Roulac, and included a number of professional crypto and tech investors.

Q: Finally, can you please tell us a little about what TransitNet has in store for the future?

We’re putting all our energy into launching our crypto title registry to the public later this year and can’t wait to see how the crypto sphere reacts to it.   

Madrid, Sep 4 (EFE) .- The market for “fan tokens” (cryptocurrencies of sports entities) currently moves about 550 million dollars (460 million euros) but, according to its promoters, its value could reach 10,000 million dollars (8,400 million euros) in the coming years.

The signing by Paris Saint-Germain of Leo Messi, who received “fan tokens” from the French club, put the focus on this type of cryptoactive, which has skyrocketed its price.

Currently, the cryptocurrency market of sports entities has a value of more than 500 million dollars, according to data from the specialized website Fan Token Rank.

According to Alexandre Dreyfus, CEO of Socios.com, the commercial brand of the HX Entertainment company, which has created most of these digital assets, the market will reach 10 billion dollars in a few years.

Socios.com has signed contracts to create the “fan tokens” of 37 sports organizations, among which are European football teams such as Paris Saint-Germain, Atlético de Madrid or FC Barcelona; national teams such as Argentina and Portugal; Formula 1 teams like Alfa Romeo and Aston Martin, and even esports clubs like Heretics and Allianz.

Although Socios.com is the best known “fan token” company, there are others as well. One of them is Bitci, the Turkish crypto bank that has created the cryptocurrency of the Spanish soccer team (SNFT) and those of other clubs in the Spanish League.

This class of digital assets are a source of income for Socios.com and for the associated clubs, since the “fan tokens” are sold jointly and each organization takes a percentage of the sales.

According to Almudena de la Mata, managing partner of Blockchain Intelligence, the “fan tokens” are one more evidence that crypto assets are imposed as an investment medium with very varied underlying values.

“The value of this class of digital assets lies in the possibility of participating in the club’s activity and in the access to special benefits. Thus, they experiment with new digital forms of citizen participation that could be transferred to other spheres of shared decision such as schools, neighborhoods and associations “, explains De la Mata.

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Bitcoin (BTC) hit 24-hour highs later on Wednesday as fresh comments from the United States regulatory sphere boosted flagging price action.

Gensler bullish on Bitcoin’s “potential”

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView confirmed local highs above $39,000 on Bitstamp, with BTC/USD jumping more than 2% in an hour.

The move, which ended a descending channel in place overnight, followed a mainstream media appearance by Gary Gensler, the new Chair of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission.

A seasoned lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on cryptocurrency, among other topics, Gensler had been welcomed by the industry as a potential catalyst toward favorable regulation by Washington.

A speech Tuesday had gone some way to reassuring markets, while Wednesday’s CNBC stint reinforced Gensler’s desire to iron out fraud while allowing investors access to what he called “speculative” assets — Bitcoin and altcoins.

“This innovation — Satoshi Nakamoto’s innovation — if it is going to meet its potential, needs to come within public policy frameworks,” he told the network, notably singling out Bitcoin in particular over other cryptocurrencies.

Gensler’s comments had been a potential source of concern for traders as the week began, this due at a timely juncture, as Bitcoin was already coming down from a rapid ascent to multi-week highs above $42,500.

Solid support remained at $36,000 on major exchange Binance on the day — this level yet to see a true test after Wednesday’s sudden turnaround.

Moving averages are trader’s “biggest concern”

Nonetheless, it was clear that price action on the day was attracting attention.

Related: 3 reasons why Bitcoin can suddenly explode to a new $50K–$65K range

For trader and analyst Rekt Capital, potential strength here could allay fears that Bitcoin will end up flipping its 200-day exponential moving average to resistance for the long term.

The 200EMA, currently at around $38,300, lay below spot price after the Gensler episode.

— Rekt Capital (@rektcapital) August 4, 2021

In comments to Cointelegraph, fellow analyst Filbfilb added that Bitcoin had also yet to reclaim the 100-day and 20-week moving averages.

“This is my biggest concern,” he warned.

Two of the largest American news magazines, Fortune and TIME, have jumped headfirst into the non-fungible token (NFT) ecosystem in recent times. The New York-based multinational business magazine Fortune raised $1.3 million selling its first NFT collection this week. Furthermore, after selling NFT magazine covers, TIME has revealed the company is teaming up with the Cool Cats NFT project.

Cool Cats NFT Project and TIME Magazine Collaborate

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are very popular in 2021, and many people believe the trend will continue for a very long time. The NFT industry has attracted a great number of popular artists and it has lured a large quantity of celebrities as well. Alongside celebrities, well known brands are diving into the crypto sphere via NFTs. For instance, at the end of June, Bitcoin.com News reported on the largest U.S. newspaper publishing company Gannett launching the firm’s first NFTs.

In mid-April, Bitcoin.com News reported on TIME magazine telling the public it was adding bitcoin (BTC) to its balance sheet after auctioning three NFT covers at the end of March. On August 14, the NFT project Cool Cats told its followers that it was teaming up with the company TIME in order to mint 400 NFT pieces.

The Cool Cats project is an NFT project similar to Cryptopunks and Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), as Cool Cats has issued 10,000 limited edition NFT cats. The newly minted Cool Cats will feature cats reading TIME magazine and there will be 100x Elu’s cat, 100x Clons’ cat, 100x Xtremetom’s cat, and 100x Lynoid’s cat, according to the recent announcement.

“Wow, what a crazy TIME to be alive,” the project’s team said in the announcement. “We are honored and privileged to announce a limited edition drop with one of the most iconic and well-respected companies out there, TIME magazine. The president of TIME, Keith Grossman, likes the cats so much that he suggested we do a collaboration together! As Keith mentioned in this tweet — cats have been in TIME’s DNA.”

Business Magazine Fortune Raises $1.3M in Ether

In addition to Gannett and TIME magazine, the well known business magazine Fortune announced on August 12 it raised $1.3 million selling NFT covers. Fortune sold 256 limited NFTs for approximately one ether per NFT, as well as three NFTs that were auctioned separately. The artwork was crafted by the “high-quality meme generator” and digital artist dubbed “pplpleasr.”

In total, Fortune says the company raked in 429 ether and the authors Robert Hackett and Declan Harty said the firm was donating half of the funds to nonprofits. Just like TIME magazine holding bitcoin on its balance sheet, the remaining ether funds will be held by Fortune. The Fortune authors said the company was now a group of “HODLers.”

Furthermore, after the company’s last sale, the news giant Gannett said it predicts non-fungible token (NFT) assets will be a “large opportunity” for publishing companies.

What do you think about the publishing giants TIME, Gannett, and Fortune getting into the crypto space and selling NFTs? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

PRESS RELEASE. NEW YORK/PARIS – October 29, 2020 – Bitcoin.com Exchange, one of the leading authorities in cryptocurrency exchanges announces the launch of the Atari Token (ATRI) public sale today at 12:00 UTC.

Public sale of the ERC-20 Atari Token (ATRI) is now available on Bitcoin.com Exchange: https://exchange.bitcoin.com/ieo/Price listed at USD0.25 in Contribution Currencies: BTC, BCH, LTC, ETH and USDT.

The entertainment industry is at a point where to remain competitive, one must start thinking on future developments in payments and community management. Atari’s mission is to conquer the crypto space, and by creating this token, they are attempting to enable access to as many platforms and users in the videogame industry as possible via atarichain.com, the Atari wallet and generally the creation of a blockchain-based ecosystem around the Atari brand.

Atari Token has been in steady development, already establishing multiple use cases and partnerships with industry leaders, while continuously expanding its reach. These developments will only continue to expand, well past the Public Sale, as we work to bring Atari Token to the masses. Information about use cases & partnerships can be found here.

Purchasers who have already registered, and passed KYC/AML procedures via our platform can already buy ATRI tokens via our IEO platform. For purchasers who have not registered, but wish to learn how to register, pass KYC and ultimately buy some ATRI tokens may check out our IEO Guide for the Atari token.

Details of the Atari Token (ATRI) Public Sale

For more information and to buy ATRI tokens, please visit the Bitcoin.com IEO platform.

*Kindly note: Atari Tokens (ATRIs) will be available at the specific price until the Hard Cap is met.

Within the past month, prior to the launch of the Atari Token (ATRI) public sale, Bitcoin.com Exchange and Atari have conducted multiple social competitions, podcasts, vodcasts, AMAs, interviews, guides and marketing activities; effectively boosting the Atari Token name across the crypto sphere and beyond. Both crypto entities’ goal is to promote mass adoption, and subsequently a new age in the finance and entertainment spheres alike.

“The Atari Token team, in collaboration with the bitcoin.com team, have been working tirelessly over these the course of the last month to bring the Atari Token to the public, we’re extremely pleased to finally be able to share all of our hard work with you. This is only the first step in our journey in creating the token of reference for the interactive entertainment industry.” – Fred Chesnais, CEO of Atari Chain.

“Atari’s mark on the videogame industry is just the beginning” said Danish Chaudhry, CEO at Bitcoin.com Exchange. “From announcing this IEO around a month ago till today, the amount of interest gathered was highly significant, paving the way for the future in their respective industry. Atari will now, via the Atari Token, be for sale until the $1,000,000 value has been met, where the token will then be listed on Bitcoin.com Exchange for users to store, access and trade.”

Be Part of the Public Sale

Bitcoin.com Exchange has launched the public sale of the Atari Token (ATRI) via their platform. By accessing the link here, you will have the chance to be one of the first people to join in Atari’s journey in becoming the leader of both the video-game industry, and also conquering the blockchain space as well.

Sign up to Bitcoin.com Exchange here.

What is a Public Sale/IEO?

In brief, an Initial Exchange Offering, commonly referred to as an IEO, is a fundraising event that is administered by an exchange. In contrast to an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) where the project team themselves conduct the fundraising, an Initial Exchange Offering means that the fundraising will be conducted on a well-known exchange’s fundraising platform, similar to the upcoming Bitcoin.com Exchange Launchpad, where users can purchase tokens with funds directly from their own exchange wallet.

About Bitcoin.com Exchange

The mission of Bitcoin.com Exchange is to empower people from all over the world to trade cryptocurrencies with ease and confidence, from first-time traders to advanced trading professionals. With high liquidity, 24/7 multilingual support and dozens of trading pairs, complemented with a high level of security, we offer an attractive platform for trading any cryptocurrency. Within one year since launch, on average, our exchange has been visited by more than 500K active traders per month, and this number continues to grow as you read this sentence.

About Atari

Atari, composed of Atari SA and its subsidiaries, is a global interactive entertainment and multiplatform licensing group. The true innovator of the video game, founded in 1972, Atari owns and/or manages a portfolio of more than 200 games and franchises, including globally known brands such as Asteroids®, Centipede®, Missile Command® and Pong®. From this important portfolio of intellectual properties, Atari delivers attractive online games for smartphones, tablets, and other connected devices. Atari also develops and distributes interactive entertainment for Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo game consoles. Atari also leverages its brand and franchises with licensing agreements through other media, derivative products and publishing.

Media Contact Info

Bitcoin.com Exchange

Contact Name: Antonio Bileci

Contact Email: antonio@bitcoin.com

Atari Chain, Ltd

The Transform Group

Contact Name: Transform Group

Contact Email: atari@transformgroup.com

Internal:

Contact Name: Peter Dao

Contact Email: Peter.Dao@Atari.com

This is a press release. Readers should do their own due diligence before taking any actions related to the promoted company or any of its affiliates or services. Bitcoin.com is not responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in the press release.

Except for the hype around famous cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, dogecoin, ethereum, and tether, there is no sign of big improvement among others. Although the digital currency sphere is constantly undergoing massive transformation, little do we expect from new cryptocurrencies that crack into the market. This back-to-back uncertain situation is mostly because of the volatility that cryptocurrencies carry. To break the chain, gold-pegged cryptocurrencies emerge as a more stable form of investment.

The price uncertainty in the digital currency sphere is not a new thing. For many years now, bitcoin has been gambling with millions of investors. In May 2021 when bitcoin prices hit a record US$60,000, crypto investors were very happy about the sudden surge. Even new people jumping into the digital currency investment preferred to try their hand on the front-running cryptocurrency. But later, things changed drastically. Bitcoin almost touched a death cross before retaining back to a moderate state. However, at that stage, many were frustrated and wanted to invest in something less volatile than bitcoin. As a result, many opted for USD-pegged and gold-pegged cryptocurrencies.

Gold-pegged cryptocurrencies are more or less like stable coins, backed by physical gold. When a digital token is pegged to the current gold price value, it experiences less volatility compared to other famous cryptocurrencies. Although fiat currency-backed cryptocurrencies are seeing high adoption in the fast-evolving time, gold-pegged cryptocurrencies are also making their own remarkable space among crypto investors. The concept of gold-pegged cryptocurrencies emerged in 2017 when bitcoin stood alongside the gold price. It instigated interest among investors to opt for something as precious and stable as gold. Analytics Insight has listed some famous gold-pegged cryptocurrencies that are tradable on exchanges and/or can be bought directly from the creators.

Perth Mint Gold Token, also known as PMGT, is one of the most-trusted gold-pegged cryptocurrencies in the market. Remarkably, PMGT is officially validated by the Australian government. Created by Western Australia’s Perth Mint, the digital gold is vouched with actual gold blocks and the company also provides digital gold certificates as proof over every buying. Besides, PMGT is famous among investors for its inclusiveness to easy storage, less custody and insurance fees, and competitive and cost-effective alternative.

The Singapore-based company, DigixGlobal, offers DGX tokens. Each DGX coin represents 1 gram of gold that is held in vaults in Canada and Singapore. Remarkably, the gold vaults are completely insured, making DGX one of the safest investment forms. Another advantage of this gold-pegged cryptocurrency is that it is divisible, redeemable, and transferable through merely buying and selling the tokenized representations. The company imposes 1% fees for exchanges and assumes the demurrage fee.

Known for running the world’s most famous stable coin, Tether has jumped into the gold-pegged cryptocurrency market to drive the next wave of disruptive investment. Tether Gold was introduced in 2020 and has risen to a total market capitalization of US$160 million. With gold reserves in the Swiss vaults, Tether Gold offers various services to exchange their crypto for physical gold or redeem it for cash. Investors can identify their gold by entering the wallet address which holds their AUXt.

An Australian tech start-up, Meta Gold, has partnered with Algorand, a blockchain protocol company to successfully establish a decentralized gold token. Meta Gold can be bought through the company’s platform for gold rate. It is integrated into the current gold supply chain, which allows the seller to deliver instant gold trading and settlement via tokenization. One more leniency is that the platform offers users the to trade both virtual gold tokens and physical gold.

AABBG is one of the recent entries in the gold-pegged cryptocurrency market. Fortunately, the virtual token comes with a handful of disruptive and futuristic advantages. It follows a mine-to-token gold-backing format that ensures the existence of tokens in the digital web. It verifies physical gold assets that back the AABBD token 100% from the company’s mining production segment.

Launched by Pax Gold, a trusted American company, PAXG token represents one troy ounce of a London Right Delivery bar of gold. Launched in 2019, PAXG is stored in Brink’s vaults, one of the approved storage facilities of the London Bullion Market Association. The creators of the gold-pegged cryptocurrency created the token to make buying gold and easy, and most importantly, digitized. By buying PAXG, the token owners hold complete ownership of the portion of gold and can also use it for trading purposes.

AurusGOLD, also known as AWG, is a gold-backed token collateralized by, and redeemable for 1 gram of 99.99% gold from LBMA certificate refineries. The sustainable digital gold token can be used as an alternative to unstable fiat currencies or as the earliest way to invest in gold. AWG is minted by gold traders that can arbitrage between the AWG and bullion gold markets, keeping the price of AWG in line with spot fold price.

THE RECENT expansion of the crypto-universe is a thing of wonder. Only a year ago there were about 6,000 currencies listed on CoinMarketCap, a website. Today there are 11,145. Their combined market capitalisation has exploded from $330bn to $1.6trn today—roughly equivalent to the nominal GDP of Canada. More than 100m unique digital wallets hold them, about three times the number in 2018.

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This maturing, however, has failed to tame the wild gyrations that characterise crypto markets. Bitcoin sank from $64,000 in April to $30,000 in May. Today it hovers around $40,000, having dipped to $29,000 as recently as July 29th. Every downward lurch raises the question of how bad the fallout might be. Too much seems at stake for the cryptocurrency to collapse—and not just for the die-hards who see bitcoin as the future of finance. Algorithmic traders now conduct a hefty share of transactions and have automatic “buy” orders when bitcoin falls below certain thresholds. Still, in order to grasp the growing links between the crypto-sphere and mainstream markets, imagine that the price of bitcoin crashes all the way to zero.

A rout could be triggered either by shocks originating within the system, say through a technical failure, or a serious hack of a big cryptocurrency exchange. Or they could come from outside: a clampdown by regulators, for instance, or an abrupt end to the “everything rally” in markets, say in response to central banks raising interest rates.

There are three types of crypto investors, says Mohamed El-Erian of Allianz, an insurer and asset manager: “fundamentalists”, who believe bitcoin will replace government-issued currencies one day; “tacticians”, who reckon its value will rise as more people invest in it; and “speculators”, who want to gamble. Though a crash would come as a monumental upset to the first group, it is least likely to sell out; the third, meanwhile, will flee at the first sign of trouble. To avoid a terminal stampede, the second group must be persuaded to stay. It is unlikely to do so if the price falls to zero.

A crash would puncture the crypto economy. Bitcoin miners—who compete to validate transactions and are rewarded with new coins—would have less incentive to carry on, bringing the verification process, and the supply of bitcoin, to a halt. Investors would probably also dump other cryptocurrencies. Recent tantrums have shown that where bitcoin goes, other digital monies follow, says Philip Gradwell of Chainalysis, a data firm.

The result would be the destruction of a significant amount of wealth. Long-term holders would suffer small losses relative to the price they paid, but cede huge unrealised gains (see chart 2). The biggest losses relative to the purchase price would fall on those who bought less than a year ago, at an average price of $37,000. That would include most institutional investors exposed to crypto, including hedge funds, university endowments, mutual funds and some companies.

The total value erased would go beyond the market capitalisation of digital assets. A crash would also wipe out private investments in crypto firms such as exchanges ($37bn since 2010, reckons PitchBook, a data provider) as well as the value of listed crypto firms (worth about $90bn). Payments companies like PayPal, Revolut and Visa would lose a chunk of growing, juicy business, which would dent their valuations. Others that have ridden the crypto boom, such as Nvidia, a microchip-maker, would also take a hit. All in all, perhaps $2trn might be lost from this first shockwave, a little more than the market capitalisation of Amazon.

Contagion could spread through several channels to other assets, both crypto and mainstream. One channel is leverage. Fully 90% of the money invested in bitcoin is spent on derivatives like “perpetual” swaps—bets on future price fluctuations that never expire. Most of these are traded on unregulated exchanges, such as FTX and Binance, from which customers borrow to make bets even bigger. Modest price swings can trigger big margin calls; when they are not met, the exchanges are quick to liquidate their customers’ holdings, turbocharging falls in crypto prices. Exchanges would have to swallow big losses on defaulted debt.

The rush to meet margin calls in cryptocurrency—the collateral of choice for leveraged derivatives—could force punters to dump conventional assets to free up cash. Alternatively, they might give up trying to meet those calls since their crypto holdings would no longer be worth much, triggering liquidations. Meanwhile, other types of leverage exist, where regulated exchanges or even banks have lent dollars to investors who then bought bitcoin. Some have lent dollars against crypto collateral. In both cases borrowers nearing default might seek to liquidate other assets.

The extent of leverage in the system is hard to gauge; the dozen exchanges that list perpetual swaps are all unregulated. But “open interest”, the total amount in derivatives contracts outstanding at any one time, provides an idea of the direction of travel, says Kyle Soska of Carnegie Mellon University. It has grown from $1.6bn in March 2020 to $24bn today. This is not a perfect proxy for total leverage, as it is not clear how much collateral stands behind the various contracts. But forced liquidations of leveraged positions in past downturns give a sense of how much is at risk. On May 18th alone, as bitcoin lost nearly a third of its value, they came to $9bn.

A second channel of transmission comes from the “stablecoins” that oil the wheels of crypto trading. Because changing dollars for bitcoin is slow and costly, traders wanting to realise gains and reinvest proceeds often transact in stablecoins, which are pegged to the dollar or the euro. Such coins, the largest of which are Tether and USD coin, are now worth more than $100bn. On some crypto platforms they are the main means of exchange.

Issuers back their stablecoins with piles of assets, rather like money-market funds. But these are not solely, or even mainly, held in cash. Tether, for instance, says 50% of its assets were held in commercial paper, 12% in secured loans and 10% in corporate bonds, funds and precious metals at the end of March. A cryptocrash could lead to a run on stablecoins, forcing issuers to dump their assets to make redemptions. In July Fitch, a rating agency, warned that a sudden mass redemption of tethers could “affect the stability of short-term credit markets”. Officials from America’s Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Reserve are paying closer attention to the risks from cryptocurrencies, and stablecoins in particular.

A cryptocalypse could affect broader sentiment even beyond fire sales. The extent of this is unclear: more entities are now exposed to cryptocurrencies, but few have staked big shares of their wealth on them, so losses would be widespread but shallow. Crucially, banks are immune; and most will not rush to hold bitcoin on their balance-sheets any time soon. The Basel club of supervisors recently proposed making banks fund their bitcoin holdings with only capital, not debt.

But a worse case is not hard to imagine. Low interest rates have led investors to take more risk. A crypto collapse could cause them to cool on other exotic assets. In recent months the correlation between bitcoin prices and meme stocks, and even stocks at large, has risen. That is partly because punters reinvest gains made on faddish stocks into crypto, and vice versa.

A sell-off would begin with the most leveraged punters—typically individuals and hedge funds—in high-risk areas: meme stocks, junk bonds, special-purpose acquisition vehicles. Investors exposed to these, facing questions from their investment committees, would follow in turn, making risky assets less liquid, and perhaps provoking a general slump. If that sounds improbable, remember that the S&P 500, America’s main stock index, fell by 2.5% in a day after retail punters’ infatuation with GameStop, a video-game retailer, wrong-footed a few hedge funds.

For general market turmoil to ensue, then, you would need a lot of things to go wrong, including the price of bitcoin to fall all the way to zero. Still, our extreme scenario suggests that leverage, stablecoins, and sentiment are the main channels through which any crypto-downturn, big or small, will spread more widely. And crypto is only becoming more entwined with conventional finance. Goldman Sachs plans to launch a crypto exchange-traded fund; Visa now offers a debit card that pays customer rewards in bitcoin. As the crypto-sphere expands, so too will its potential to cause wider market disruption. ■

An early version of this article was published online on August 2nd 2021.

For more expert analysis of the biggest stories in economics, business and markets, sign up to Money Talks, our weekly newsletter.

This article appeared in the Finance & economics section of the print edition under the headline "The disaster scenario"

Even prior to Cardano’s (CCC:ADA-USD) recent Alonzo hard fork, it was fast gaining ground on Ethereum (CCC:ETH-USD) and its decentralized app (dapp) dominance. Now that momentum is working towards reality for Cardano.

© Provided by InvestorPlace A concept coin for Cardano (ADA).

That’s all I want to talk about today: The market opportunity for Cardano to disrupt Ethereum as it relates to dapps and what the Alonzo hard fork means for ADA and Cardano. 

The idea that the defi revolution and the decentralized economy will largely run on Bitcoin (CCC:BTC-USD) as a gold analog and Ethereum as oil is becoming less and less likely. Forget the first half of that statement. I’m not here to argue the merits of Bitcoin in this article. 

But I am going to assert that Ethereum is eroding and that its early market dominance in fueling the dapp space is far from certain moving forward. 

It’s no secret that Cardano is fast establishing itself as a potential name with disruptive potential in the sphere. Investors who question whether Ethereum truly has an unassailable position are increasingly wondering aloud if Cardano could supplant it one day. 

7 Undervalued Stocks to Keep an Eye on as We Head Towards October

One way to understand the demand and potential there is to put some numbers behind the likelihood that dapps continue to be built on Ethereum. 

A recent interview by Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson strongly indicates that the potential is quite high. The facts that he lays out regarding a shift in dapp development away from Ethereum should give investors pause. 

There are currently approximately 3,800 dapps within the cryptocurrency landscape. Roughly 3,000 of those dapps are on Ethereum. That’s 79%. 

In terms of value and transaction volume, a slightly higher 81% is attributable to Ethereum. Logically looking at that statement there is indeed a suggestion that Ethereum is dominant, and its position, safe. 

Not so fast.

There’s an underlying trend that suggests Ethereum users aren’t satisfied. This bodes very well for Cardano and ADA. 

Hoskinson points out something truly interesting for Cardano’s disruptor potential when he rhetorically asks: “How many of the top 15 dapps on Ethereum are looking to either migrate or become multichain?”

The answer according to him is that all have considered it and several are actively pursuing a migration from the Ethereum network. 

I mentioned that Ethereum controls 79% of the dapp space as measured by usage. That too, is shifting in a direction that favors Cardano. 

In 2020 a mere 31% of new dapps were deployed on Ethereum. That’s quite a stark figure. And it makes it really difficult to suggest Ethereum is the future and competitors including Cardano are simply flashes in the pan.  

Hoskinson goes on to compare the shift as being analogous to that which occurred from Windows to IoS. If Cardano is indeed IoS, it’s clearly where investors will want to be moving forward. 

That comparison is hardly the most germane news related to Cardano though. That distinction goes to the Alonzo Hard Fork. 

On Sept. 12 Cardano’s Alonzo hard fork moved from the testnet to the mainnet. That means Cardano now supports smart contract functionality on its blockchain. 

IOHK noted that 150 projects are being developed through the company’s (Cardano’s) Project Catalyst innovation program. 

At the same time management was quick to note that development will not occur overnight and the full release of smart contract functionality is an ongoing process.

 “There are high expectations resting on this upgrade. Some unreasonably so. Cardano watchers may be expecting a sophisticated ecosystem of consumer-ready DApps available immediately after the upgrade. Expectations need to be managed here,” the blog post reads.

Nevertheless, a clear trend has emerged. Companies including Cardano have emerged as a real threat to the established powers in the defi space. 

Cardano is now the #3 cryptocurrency measured by market capitalization. There is little reason to bet against it now. In fact, I’d assert that there’s every reason to bet in favor of it.

On the date of publication, Alex Sirois did not have (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer, subject to the InvestorPlace.com Publishing Guidelines.

Alex Sirois is a freelance contributor to InvestorPlace whose personal stock investing style is focused on long-term, buy-and-hold, wealth-building stock picks. Having worked in several industries from e-commerce to translation to education and utilizing his MBA from George Washington University, he brings a diverse set of skills through which he filters his writing.

The death of DeFi in the summer of 2020 has been grossly exaggerated. In fact, Ethereum and DeFi are storming ahead, and getting a lot of attention in the media sphere.

While the days of heady token bidding and 6000x returns are probably behind us, the DeFi space continues to create an incentive for developers to push into new territory.

Ethereum’s co-creator Vitalik Buterin warned of this trend recently at the EthCC conference, in Paris.

To wit,

“If you just take DeFi and push it into infinity, you’re just going to get tokens that give you profit from yield farming, and prediction markets on top of yield tokens…That’s good up to layer two, but once you start getting up to layer six you’re setting yourself up for a collapse and potentially getting a lot of regulators angry.”

Hmm…angry regulators.

The fact that somehow more than a decade after the crash major banks like Deutsche Bank are still insolvent aside (zombie bank walking on bailout funds), Buterin probably has a point.

There probably will be a wash-out in the DeFi space, and regulators in developed nations will take notice. The world of DeFi has taken a turn to architecture over value creation, although – one could say the same thing about the established financial system.

Ethereum is Following in Fiat’s Footsteps

There is zero doubt that Buterin’s goals are totally admirable.

He helped to create perhaps the most innovative use for the internet since the millennium, and to see Ethereum become a platform for anyone who wants to take a shot making big cash might be hard to accept.

Of course, Buterin has done pretty well with cryptos, so as much as he may not like people trying to create 40,000x gains in the space of a week his road to wealth has no doubt encouraged millions to dream big – and take bigger risks.

Igor Dyachenko, the co-Founder & CEO Studyum, put it in these terms,

“There are plenty of high risk, high yield protocols that offer little added value in the market…Most of these platforms are copycats of existing innovations, so there’s little risk to someone who has done their homework as to which are the original movers and shakers, and which aren’t. Just like with the altcoin markets in previous years, fundamental research and reading the whitepaper, studying the team and measuring product-market fit are important aspects before making the choice to invest.”

The same thing could be said of any investment fund, or startup company, or any early stage venture, in any market.

The simple fact is that because cryptos are both global and open to anyone, the major blockchains will see boom and bust cycles, with all the profits and pain that come with an unregulated development process.

The Way Forward is Less Regulation, and Less Governance

If governments and regulators were effective in offering a financial market that was both stable, and allowed people to enter the wealth building process, cryptos likely wouldn’t have the level of popularity they do.

Want to transfer a few dollars – forget it. Fees are too high. How about international transfers – oh man, are you in for some fun…if you are poor and in a nation like Indonesia or India, just forget about the financial system altogether.

You don’t even have enough money to open a bank account.

No…regulations and more rules aren’t the way forward. Deregulated markets aren’t perfect. Only a child would think that.

There is no way to save us from human nature – but regulations can create situations where innovations aren’t possible, and entrenched interests have de-facto control over vital social systems. Much like the world of today.

There have been reports of scammers approaching companies via Telegram, LinkedIn and Other Social platforms purporting to represent Blockonomi and offer advertising offers. We will never approach anyone directly. Please always make contact with us via our contact page here.Related Posts

Greedy executives are not known to care much about their employees. Workers and their families are often let down by corporate governance in favor of other stakeholders. The creation of a movement-oriented token called $STOPBEZOS by StopBezos is just the beginning for those wanting to create a better universe for workers.Taking billionaires head on

StopBezos recently announced its intention to deploy its token, $STOPBEZOS, on Binance Smart Chain (BSC). The token is also about to become available on PancakeSwap. This is the first cryptocurrency aimed at taking on billionaires.

Recently, StopBezos CEO, Jalal Alp, commented, “Join us in restoring working people’s rights. $STOPBEZOS is the first token released with a mission of taking billionaires head-on. The movement-oriented token helps in the effort to decentralize the governance within powerful corporations. Join us, and together we can create a better universe.”

Hard-working people are being steamrolled, and $STOPBEZOS is the community-based token created with the intent of stopping this. Their native coin is designed to enable charitable contributions. The company established its “Worker Fund” to allow everyone to become involved in the effort.

A series of large-scale events with token holders and supporters are planned by the movement. These aim to eventually lead to an entirely new system that allows people to stake traditional shares that gain returns from their $STOPBEZOS token. In a revolutionary move that encapsulates the supportive nature of the crypto sphere, the stake pool allows for governance executed through community polling.

StopBezos has a published and verified smart contract source code. This is verified by BscScan and is available for public review. StopBezos has introduced what they call Honeypot Mechanics. This means that anyone can transact in the $STOPBEZOS tokens at any time. Funds are never locked or blacklisted, and hackers don’t stand a chance, ensuring all transactions are safe and secure.

In their effort to promote transparency, a fixed supply of $STOPBEZOS is guaranteed and no new tokens are to be minted. Anti-whale mechanics place a limit on the maximum acquisitions for each holder.

Other unique features of the cryptocurrency include advanced tokenomics, several charitable causes, and the generation of liquidity.

Each transaction of token transfers has a programmed burn that includes a hyper-deflationary buyback and an auto-burn by reflection mechanism. Each investor can buy, sell, or get rewarded for their holding, while each transaction makes a small donation of 1% toward helping workers and their families.

There are five phases in the rollout of the new cryptocurrency, leading to the availability of the movement’s digital currency on multiple platforms. About to make a historic launch in the history of cryptocurrencies, its CEO recently answered a question about where the company was headed. His reply: “To Jupiter. We intend to give control back to workers and the community. To StopBezos.” After all, the principle behind the cryptocurrency movement is a community initiative championed by their native token, $STOPBEZOS.

The workers’ fund at StopBezos was set up well ahead of the projected phase to quickly commence the work it is dedicated to. It aims to restore the rights of employees at large corporations, provide charitable contributions to worker funds, and is set to decentralize the traditional governance of large-scale businesses.

Token transfers from wallet to wallet incorporate some of the most advanced and cutting-edge token functions available on Binance Smart Chain (BSC) to date. Developers at StopBezos has ensured some of the finest features for the token, including its safe exchange. StopBezos have already worked with some of the biggest crypto pages on Twitter, including Furr with its 358.8K followers and Kimii with 147.1K followers.

Buying tokens is easy through any wallet that is compatible with Pancakeswap. Users need to download the Trust Wallet on an Android or iOS device. Thereafter it is straightforward to use. BNB can be transferred to the wallet from Binance on the BEP-20 network. The Trust Wallet can also be topped through the Smart Chain wallet.

Anyone can donate any BEP-20 token, including $STOPBEZOS and BNB Smart Chain to the StopBezos Charity Worker Fund and the other causes available on the StopBezos website.

For cryptocurrency holders, being safe, or #SAFU is imperative. This extremely advanced system of tokenomics offers its investors a frictionless yield, liquidity generation, and hyper-deflationary buyback. Investors earn just by holding, and its relative scarcity increases with the burn-on transaction which effectively removes tokens from the available supply. Above all, its charity mechanism ensures that a percentage goes to the worker fund, and token holders are rewarded. Holder rewards include additional burn wallets.

There is no end to the innovations crypto allows. As StopBezos launches, its unique features and plans ensure it is a groundbreaking and forward-thinking movement aimed at accomplishing its mission effectively. All it takes is buying and HODling $STOPBEZOS. 

The capital that rotates in the cryptocurrency is estimated at billions of dollars. Each country has separate legal base that make it unprofitable to invest in cryptocurrencies. Uzbekistan was not an exception. However, the country has changed its opinion in the long run. Recently several acts have been signed in order to support the development of cryptocurrency activities.

To create a framework and regulate this rapidly developing sphere, the President of Uzbekistan has signed the Decree of the President No. 3832 "On measures for the development of the digital economy in the Republic of Uzbekistan" dated 03.07.2018.

The Decree outlined the most important tasks:

introduction and development of activities in the field of crypto-asset turnover, including mining (activities to maintain a distribution platform and create new blocks with the ability to receive remuneration in the format of new units and commission fees in various cryptocurrencies), smart contracts (an electronic contract, the fulfillment of rights and obligations under which is carried out by performing digital transactions automatically), consulting, issue, exchange, storage, distribution, management, insurance, crowd-funding (collective financing), as well as blockchain technologies for the diversification of various forms of investment and entrepreneurial activity;creation of the necessary legal framework for the introduction of blockchain technologies, taking into account the best practices of foreign countries.

Important mechanisms to facilitate cryptocurrency transactions have also been identified as:

Transactions of legal entities and individuals related to the turnover of crypto assets, including those carried out by non-residents, are not subject to taxation, and the income received from these transactions is not included in the tax base for taxes and other mandatory payments;Currency transactions related to the turnover of crypto-assets conducted by persons who have received a license to carry out activities in the field of turnover of crypto assets by the established procedure are not subject to the norms of the legislation on currency regulation.

After that, the Decree No.3832, the Decree No.3926 "On the organisation of the activities of crypto-exchanges"  dated 02.09.2018 was later signed.

The Decree defined the main directions:

a crypto exchange is an organisation that provides an electronic platform for the exchange, purchase, and sale of crypto assets;a crypto asset is a set of records in the blockchain that has a value and an owner;the activities related to the turnover of crypto-assets and crypto exchanges are not subject to the legislation on securities and exchange activities;a license to operate crypto-exchanges is issued exclusively to foreign legal entities by opening subsidiaries or other enterprises on the territory of the Republic of Uzbekistan;for the implementation of industrial mining (the use of more than 100 kW/h), land plots are provided without an electronic auction.

The activities carried out by the crypto exchange are subject to licensing.

To obtain a license, it is necessary:

a) to have a formed authorised fund in the amount of at least 30,000 basic calculated amount in the form of funds as of the date of application submission (about 761,000 USD), of which 12,000 (about 305,000 USD) are reserved in a separate account with a commercial bank of the Republic of Uzbekistan;

b) the presence of a functioning electronic system of crypto-exchange trading hosted on servers located on the territory of Uzbekistan, and meets the requirements provided for in the Regulation on the procedure for licensing the activities of crypto-exchanges;

c) the existence of rules for crypto-exchange trading, which must necessarily reflect:

the procedure for admission to crypto-exchange trading of participants;measures aimed at ensuring compliance with the requirements of the legislation on countering the legalization of proceeds from criminal activities, the financing of terrorism, and the financing of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction;procedures for admission to circulation and exclusion from the circulation of crypto assets;procedure for the implementation and registration of transactions with crypto assets;the procedure for mutual settlements of participants in crypto-exchange trading when concluding transactions;the amount of the fee for using the services of the crypto exchange and the procedure for determining it;measures to prevent price manipulation on the crypto exchange and the misuse of confidential information;prohibition on the use of crypto assets for illegal purposes;

d) the implementation of quotations for crypto assets based on the ratio of supply and demand for them;

e) storage for 5 years of information about transactions with clients' crypto assets, as well as their identification data and materials on customer relations, including business correspondence.

Crypto-exchanges were granted the right to:

receive remuneration for the services provided, including crypto assets, set its amount and the procedure for charging trading participants (clients);organise exchange transactions with residents and non-residents of the Republic of Uzbekistan aimed at the acquisition and (or) alienation of crypto assets for national and foreign currency, as well as the exchange of crypto assets for other crypto assets.

The turnover of crypto assets and tokens was regulated with the adoption of Order No.16 of the Director of the National Agency for Project Management dated 21.01.2019, No. 3127, which approved the Regulation on the procedure for licensing the activities of crypto exchanges and the rules for conducting crypto-exchange trading.

The rules for the implementation of crypto-exchange trading gave definitions to the main concepts used in crypto-exchange trading:

blockchain is a distributed data registry in which all data is written sequentially and distributed in blocks, while each new block is connected to the previous block by a cryptographic signature;

a crypto asset is a set of records in the blockchain that has a value and an owner;

a crypto exchange is an organization that provides an electronic platform for the exchange, purchase, and sale of crypto assets and tokens;

a token is a unit of accounting designed to represent a digital balance sheet, performing the function of a "substitute for securities" in the digital world, representing an entry in the register distributed in the blockchain. The token is issued by a legal entity or an individual entrepreneur (issuer) to attract investment and financing to the activity;

a stablecoin is a crypto asset whose value is tied to the asset of a legal entity.

Under the Rules of crypto-exchange trading, residents of Uzbekistan cannot buy digital currency. They are only allowed to sell crypto assets and tokens. This restriction does not apply to citizens of other countries. They have the right to buy and sell crypto assets, subject to their mandatory identification and the conclusion of official contracts with them.

Any anonymous transactions with cryptocurrency are prohibited in Uzbekistan. Also, crypto-assets cannot be used as a means of payment on the territory of Uzbekistan. The authorised body regulating transactions with cryptocurrency is the National Agency for Project Management under the President of Uzbekistan (NAPU).

The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.