It may not be as well-known as Bitcoin, but Ethereum has had a sterling start to 2021. The world’s second-largest cryptocurrency by market value reached a record high of $1,824.59 earlier this week, beating its previous peak of $1,761.35.

Ether, the name of the native cryptocurrency on the Ethereum blockchain, has more than doubled in value in 2021, outperforming Bitcoin, which has also reached record highs in the early months of the year. The surge in the value of cryptocurrencies is likely the result of low liquidity across crypto exchanges.

It is thought that many investors may have taken direct custody of their coins or moved them to decentralized finance protocols instead of keeping them on exchanges. If more Ether coins are being stored in hot or cold crypto wallets rather than being listed on exchanges, sell-side liquidity could have dried up, leading to price increases.

Another potential reason behind ether’s value increase this year is the announcement that the Chicago Mercantile Exchange would allow the trading of Ethereum futures contracts – granting further legitimacy to the cryptocurrency.

In addition, although cryptocurrencies have had a few setbacks – including a recent spate of crypto-mining malware – they are now pretty well-established within the financial market. This gives cryptocurrency miners confidence in their assets, which in turn drives up valuations, whether individuals are building their own mining motherboards, using cloud-based mining providers, or simply conducting online trades.

Whatever the underlying reason for the price rises, things are certainly going well for both Ether and Bitcoin owners. While the former has more than doubled in value this year, Bitcoin has experienced a 58% rise.

Interest in initial coin offerings (ICOs) is increasing rapidly. But is this latest method of raising capital through token sales a fad or a long-term funding method of the future?  To date, approximately $1.7 billion has been raised through this novel funding model, with more than $500 million in July alone. Venture capital firms are also increasingly recognizing this new trend and giving it traction, some claim this method of capital raising breaking down the barriers associated with traditional methods. Max Kordek, co-founder and business lead at Lisk, a blockchain applications platform, explains with the introduction of token sales, entrepreneurs are now watching as projects promptly receive funding enabling them to begin development to bring their idea into fruition instantaneously. "In the long and arduous process of traditional capital raising by accelerators and VC models, start-ups find themselves in a hamster wheel of building a POC then urgently trying to find the next client, or attempting to survive while the wheels of large corporates churn." said Kordek. Kordek explains his firm has seen some record token sales receiving upwards of $200 million, but even the smaller sales of $5 to $10 million eclipse the typical seed rounds for most startups. "Not only have we seen a huge rise in the number of token sales taking place, but there has also been a giant shift in the type of token sale participants, moving from solely cryptocurrency enthusiasts to everyday people. On a stage previously defined by anonymity, we now see respectable, reputable names backing these crowdfunding campaigns - instilling additional confidence in potential participants and adding credibility to the projects." said Kordek. We will also see regulations around ICOs come into force. In July, we saw the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission move in on the "Wild West" world of ICOs. Recently, the Israel Securities Authority has announced its own plans to form a panel to regulate ICOs. Aaron Lasher, co-founder and CMO of Breadwallet, explains after the creation of Bitcoin in 2009, companies and individuals slowly realized that it was possible to tokenize any asset in a trust-less peer-to-peer fashion. This meant that anything from car titles to house deeds to stocks could, in theory, could be replaced by a blockchain token. "There were many before it, but the first modern-era token sale was the Ethereum pre-sale in 2014, in which the Ethereum foundation raised over 25,000 BTC (then worth about $15 million)," Lasher said. "The second important innovation was the invention of the ERC20 token standard which rides on the Ethereum blockchain. This token standard allows anyone to quickly and efficiently exchange tokens that they have created for Ethereum." He explained that since the ERC20 token standard, there has been a Cambrian explosion of ICOs, many of which have raised over $100 million. According to Lasher, there are two dominant factors driving the phenomenon: "One is a very low barrier to entry. Many of the successful ICOs did a full raise with little more than a white paper and a website. Second is the enormous latent demand for growth investments, particularly from unaccredited investors who previously had few options for high-risk speculation." Lasher believes that the ICO phenomenon is the beginning of a new standard methodology for raising funds quickly and efficiently and has even defined a new term to describe it called "Cellar Capital." However, in the short-term there are two risks. Lasher explained that all tokens are sold under the assumption that they will generate demand and, in turn, value. Some are a form of synthetic equity, tied to the performance of an organization. Others are what is known as "app fuel" meaning that the tokens will have a use within a specific ecosystem that is expected to grow. "For instance, imagine an ICO for a company that plans to monetize and incentivize spare computing cycles, allowing users to spin up a virtual super-computer with relative ease," he said. "That token would serve as the bartering tool within that economy, and would have a floating market price determined by exchanges. Although some ventures will likely succeed, not all tokens are properly designed, nor will all of the ecosystems flourish. As such, the value proposition of all ICO tokens should be examined with shrewd skepticism." The current paradigm does not prioritize the interests of investors. Laser explains, in traditional markets, investors sign on to a certain level of risk depending on their liquidation preference. This permits appropriate recourse in the event that an investment goes south. "For instance, if an organization needs to wind down, the typical pecking order is senior creditors, junior creditors, and then shareholders," he said. "Within this ladder, there are many nuances. For instance, mezzanine capital is a form of high risk debt allocation that is senior only to that of common shares. Because of the current ICO flurry and exuberance, many investors do not realize that they are granted almost no rights through token ownership." As you move down the ladder, the risk-reward profile moves gradually. Bond holders have limited upside, but also limited downside. Shareholders have exposure to equity gains, but are the first to lose. Until recently, there existed no options below the liquidation preference of shareholders. But with the advent of ICOs, a new capital rung has emerged. Going forward, Lasher expects significant turbulence and downside risk in the current ICO market. More of What's Trending on TheStreet: Stick with TheStreet for updated storm coverage as Hurricane Irma moves the market: Editors' pick: Originally published Sept. 5. Most of the biggest cryptocurrencies traded into the red Friday. Nasdaq halts trading 'pending receipt of additional information.' Meanwhile, the SEC has placed an emergency freeze on $27 million in stock sales. Bitcoin trades lower most of Thursday afternoon. Here's what you need to know. Tax liabilities for cryptocurrencies in the U.S. are estimated to total $25 billion, according to Fundstrat. Could this put selling pressure on cryptocurrency markets? While all eyes were on Wall Street, this is what you need to know Wednesday about bitcoin. Sign up to get started or log in to see your watchlist. Enter a symbol above to add it to your watchlist. A confirmation email has been sent to the address provided during registration. Please click on the appropriate link to confirm your email address.

This is exactly what the contribution page should look like. If it doesn’t look like this and the address isn’t “https://tokensale.investfeed.com/contribute/” then you’re probably in the wrong place. ***Simply use this as a cross-reference against our contribution page, as we cannot ensure the safety of this third-party Medium blog*** Do I have the right time for the token sale? Our general token sale starts on July 23rd, 2017 at 9AM UTC. Make sure to convert your timezone to 9AM UTC to make sure you have the correct time for the token sale. For example, here in New York City, 9AM UTC translates to 5AM. For an easy tool to use to convert time, check out the following website: http://www.thetimezoneconverter.com/ To fully participate, you need to have done the following: The only way to successfully participate is by following these steps. If for some reason your transaction isn’t going through when you try to send to our address, double check that your gas and data values are correct. In your transaction, make sure the “To Address” is the address we’ve listed on our contribution page. The amount to send is the desired amount of ETH you wish to use in the token sale. The Gas Limit is the limit we’ve provided on the token sale page. Remember to Add Data as well — as we’ve provided that for you to include in the transaction. Do I have an ERC20 compatible wallet? As we’ve mentioned previously, the ERC20 standard has not only allowed for wallet standardization where developers are able to streamline a solution to hold the various tokens being created, but it also defines a set of functions within the Ethereum network. By adopting the ERC20 standard in our token generation event (TGE), we’re ensuring our processes within the Ethereum network are as smooth as possible, and allowing our community to effortlessly store these tokens. Some compatible wallets for this event include Mist, MetaMask, MyEtherWallet, and Parity. Note: incompatible wallets include any exchanges such as Coinbase, Poloniex, Kraken, Bitstamp, Bitfinex, Gatehub, Bitrexx and more. Exodus and Jaxx aren’t compatible either. But how do I send funds using my ERC20 compatible wallet to participate? Do have one of the mentioned wallets but you’re still not sure how to send funds to participate in the token sale? Check out the following guides for each wallet: Phishing scams have been on the rise in relation to token sale events, and we want to make sure that you’re aware of what they look like. Scammers may try to use any of the following methods to steal your information and money: If there’s one takeaway that we can’t stress enough — it’s the fact that WE WILL NEVER POST OR SEND ANY PUBLIC ADDRESSES THROUGH ANY SOCIAL MEDIA CHANNEL. Sale information will be delivered through our website on our token page. Wait a minute, what is the FEED token again? If you’re just recently joining us, the FEED token is our way of revolutionizing the user experience on our platform by incentivizing community contributions. As a user on our platform, the FEED token provides you with the same ability as media outlets, professionals and nonprofessionals equally to promote your own content and profile for network exposure. For more information regarding our FEED token, see the following blog post. We want to make sure we take every step to ensure the protection of our users participating in our token sale. As a reminder, we will NEVER post or send any public addresses through social media. Please be aware of this, and be mindful of all the scammers looming around. We’ve taken appropriate security measures to ensure a smooth and safe token sale. We will be monitoring the address at all times during the token sale and have implemented a kill-switch script which will active in the case of the crowd-sale address being compromised. We thank you again for participating in this unique and groundbreaking event. We also invite you to connect with the investFeed team so that we may answer any questions you might have regarding our token sale or our project before the token sale begins. By clapping more or less, you can signal to us which stories really stand out. investFeed is the first incentivized next-generation social investment network for cryptocurrencies.

Bill Gates, the Microsoft founder turned philanthropist has weighed in on the most talked-about asset Bitcoin in recent times and said that even though he does not hold any bitcoin, he is not short on the top cryptocurrency but rather has a neutral stance. Gates comments came during his interview with CNBC. He said,

I don’t own Bitcoin, I’m not short Bitcoin. So I’ve taken a neutral view,”

— Squawk Box (@SquawkCNBC) February 18, 2021

Gates also revealed that even though his foundation is involved with digital currency transactions, though it is not necessarily in bitcoin. He added,

“I do think moving money into a more digital form and getting transaction costs down, that’s something the Gates Foundation does in developing countries.”

Bill Gates who now mostly spends his time in philanthropy work suggested that he is not aware of how bitcoin would fair in the future but suggested that the current price movement is highly speculative. He said,

“But Bitcoin can go up or down just based on the mania or whatever the views are and I don’t have a way of predicting how that will progress,”

Gates also shared his views on the recent Reddit frenzy leading to high price volatility in the stock market that created quite a controversy. Gates believe SEC should “look at this because we don’t think of the stock market as just performing a casino-like role”

While most of the leading financial institutions including the likes of BNY Mellon, Blackrock, JP Morgan, and many others have either already dwelled in bitcoin or are actively looking to integrate it looking at its growing demand, Gates comment reflects a lack of interest in the digital asset as he expressed that he is not aware how the top cryptocurrency would fair in future.

To keep track of DeFi updates in real time, check out our DeFi news feed Here.

Chainlink has successfully been deployed on the Matic Network, as confirmed by an announcement today. Matic is now the second blockchain after Ethereum to integrate Chainlink Price Feed Oracles. Five price feeds have already been launched on the mainnet:  MATIC/USD, USDC/USD, ETH/USD, USDT/USD, and DAI/USD. As it stands, more price feeds are expected to follow soon as a means of supporting the growing demand of DeFi on the Matic Network. In addition to Price Feeds, Chainlink is also said to be working with Matic to launch Chainlink VRF (Verifiable Random Function) and as a general-purpose oracle solution to connect to any off-chain API. A project called Digital Bridge, is a 2FA oracle built using Chainlink that allows developers to build an extra security layer into their smart contracts and launching on Matic Network. Reportedly, a number of projects on the Matic network are also already working towards implementing Chainlink VRF into their protocol. Aavegotochi, a DeFi staked Crypto Collectible project, and FarmTogether, are two projects that are working towards the support of a new wave of scalable gaming applications on Matic. As DeFi evolves as an environment that supports blockchain games and NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) as much as decentralized exchanges and platforms for alternative finance, the use of a provably-fair and verifiable source of randomness for smart contracts will become increasingly important. Related Topics: Samyuktha is a full-time journalist at AMBCrypto. Currently pursuing her Masters in Finance and Business Analytics, she is interested in cryptocurrencies, fintech, and blockchain technology adoption across various sectors.

The Bitcoin frenzy seems to have caught up with most of the mainstream publically traded companies, as now Uber CEO Dara Khoswshahi in a recent interview with CNBC said that they are seriously looking into Bitcoin and cryptocurrency as a form of payment on its platform. Khoswshahi during the interview said that they are looking into accepting crypto just like any other form of payment and not just as a part of a promotion.

— Squawk Box (@SquawkCNBC) February 11, 2021

Khoswshahi’s comments come on a day when Visa has announced that it would allow direct crypto transactions for its cardholders, while the Twitter CFO only yesterday commented that they are also considering using Bitcoin in their business and add it to their balance sheet.

The UBER CEO also revealed that there was a quick discussion about the recent trend of many publically traded companies converting a portion of their cash to Bitcoin, but it was quickly dismissed as the board members have decided to hold onto the cash reserves.

What cash? lol

— Documenting Bitcoin 📄 (@DocumentingBTC) February 11, 2021

The decision to not add bitcoin to their balance sheet surprised many as not only the likes of MicroStrategy has seen the valuation of its Bitcoin purchase nearly double, but their stock price has also seen a massive 154% surge ever since CITI bank downgraded their status for investing in Bitcoin. The stock price of Tesla and even BNY bank has soared ever since they announced Bitcoin integration. On the contrary Uber’s stock has taken a nosedive ever since the news about them rejecting the idea of Bitcoin as a treasury hedge asset surfaced.

Bitcoin this bull season has managed to reinforce its position as a true store of value courtesy to Institutional adoption, however, the naysayers still claimed Bitcoin has no real-world use case. That criticism seems to be fading soon as the likes of Tesla has started accepting bitcoin as a form of payment for its products and now even Uber seems to be seriously looking into offering Bitcoin payment option.

Bitcoin is currently on the verge of mainstream adoption as not just financial institutions and publically traded companies are actively adding bitcoin to their company’s balance sheet, the growing demand for the top cryptocurrency has brought the likes of BNY, America’s oldest custody bank to offer Bitcoin custody service.

This bull season has made the world realize the true potential and value that Bitcoin brings to the table and as its price nears $50,000. The top cryptocurrency’s growing popularity, rising demand, and wide adoption is a piece of clear evidence that it is no more limited to a certain section of the internet.

To keep track of DeFi updates in real time, check out our DeFi news feed Here.

Decentralized exchange Mettalex has integrated Chainlink price feeds into its platform, according to an announcement earlier today.

Chainlink’s integration will enable decentralized price oracles for a variety of new assets including cryptocurrencies, crypto indices, real-world indices, fiat currencies, and the world’s most popular commodities.

Mettalex will also be able to utilize Chainlink’s price feeds on the Binance Smart Chain DeFi ecosystem owing to Chainlink’s recent integration with Binance Smart Chain.

Mettalex stated that one of the reasons Chainlink was chosen as their go-to oracle solution was their dedication to providing high-quality price data sourced from data aggregators to prevent flash loan attacks.

Humayun Sheikh, Mettalex Founder, and CEO stated, “Chainlink’s secure data feeds were a major driver of DeFi’s growth in 2020.”

DeFi price oracles aren’t the only area of expansion for Chainlink, however, as they were recently integrated with VR content ecosystem Dvision Network.

Dvision Network’s initial integration with Chainlink revolves around using these Price Feeds as the primary oracle solution in the NFT marketplace.

It will be used to calculate the exact gas fees incurred when creating NFTs, ensuring users have access to accurate, up-to-date data on the true costs of using the network.

Dvision Network CEO Jung Hyun Eom commented on the integration saying that,

“By using Chainlink to access reliable price feeds and determine the distribution of random NFT rewards, Dvision users have assurances that the digital goods created by their gameplay will be based on provably fair systems, as well as be exchangeable on the open market for fair-market values and governed by economic models that are permanent and stable.”

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Samyuktha is a full-time journalist at AMBCrypto. Currently pursuing her Masters in Finance and Business Analytics, she is interested in cryptocurrencies, fintech, and blockchain technology adoption across various sectors.

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A Reddit user who claimed in a post a month ago to be a Tesla Inc insider and knew about the electric car maker's purchase of bitcoin said on Tuesday that his assertions were not true.

The user's original post stating Tesla was buying bitcoin drew little attention when it appeared Jan. 2. But it received a second look Wednesday, a day after the electric carmaker and its CEO Elon Musk disclosed a $1.5 billion investment in the cryptocurrency that sent bitcoin to fresh highs.

Reuters could not independently verify the user's identity or whether his initial or subsequent claims were accurate.

Tesla did not respond to an email to its press office.

"I am a software dev working at R&D at Tesla in California, over the past 72 hours our company bought 24701 BTC at an average price of 33142$," the user with the handle TSLAinsider posted on Reddit last month.

"I have no idea what will happen once this reaches the newspapers but I think the price will explode even more," the user wrote.

"I told you so," TSLAinsider wrote on Monday after the Tesla news on bitcoin. "I got laughed at and downvoted."

The user told the New York Post late on Tuesday that he is in fact a prankster from Germany.

"If you want to know the truth: I am a young German guy and I was on Acid while I did this post in the last month," the Post quoted him as saying. "I had this afflatus that Elon is going to buy Bitcoin, so I created this trollpost."

The user, who told the Post his name was Hendrik, told Reuters that the information in the New York Post article was correct.

Tesla said it started purchasing bitcoin in January. The New York Post added that with the timeline on the Reddit post, Tesla would have had to start buying bitcoin in late December.

Moderators in r/Tesla, a subreddit dedicated to posts on the electric carmaker, previously appeared to remove the post. It was left up in r/bitcoin, where the cryptocurrency is discussed.

Reddit posters were revisiting the post on Tuesday in the light of Tesla's disclosure. "Thanks for the heads up Elon," noted one poster, Valoured, on Tuesday. "Send me a PM (Private Message) before you make your next move please."

The power of social media users on forums such as Reddit's WallStreetBets to band together and move prices has come into focus in recent weeks, after a surge of retail buying helped fuel wild rides in shares of GameStop Corp and other so-called meme stocks. U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen last week vowed to protect investors, but said financial market regulators needed to fully understand the recent trading frenzy involving GameStop Corp and other retail stocks before taking any action.

Tesla said in its annual report published Monday that the decision to move nearly 8% of its reserves into bitcoin was part of its broad investment policy as a company aimed at diversifying and maximizing its returns on cash, including holding gold.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

This most recent rally has been sparked by an announcement on 8th February by Tesla, the autonomous car maker helmed by Elon Musk , that it had bought $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin, and that it would soon begin accepting cryptocurrencies as payment.

Of course, the overall rally in Bitcoin has been going on for a while now, with the token has increased by over 1100% since March 2020. This is a significant show of confidence in Bitcoin as well as the cryptocurrency space in general, as other crypto tokens have also risen at similar trajectories during this time period.

The prospects of this price rally continuing are extremely high, as the market dynamics indicate that a majority of Bitcoin’s supply is being held. Bitcoin, as with other cryptocurrencies, has a fixed number of tokens in the market, with new tokens only being released periodically during certain times.

Thus, this automatically improves the prospects for the price to increase, with rising demand and fixed supply. Moreover, according to market researcher Glassnode, more than 78% of Bitcoin’s supply is being held by investors rather than being sold, which leaves a very small portion available for trading.

In fact, it is estimated that there are only four million Bitcoins in open circulation, which is a tiny amount considering the various large institutional investors who have entered, and are looking to enter, the crypto space, such as PayPal and Square, along with hedge funds and ETFs, among many others.

It is not just this feeding frenzy that has sent Bitcoin soaring. There are many who believe that crypto and its underlying system, blockchain, can provide solutions to a number of issues and problems in various sectors.

Areas as diverse as retail, shipping, e-commerce and gaming, to name a few, are exploring ways to improve their prospects by applying crypto and blockchain solutions. The online gambling sector, for example, has already seen a lot of success with this.

There are many online casino operators which have begun offering players the option of placing bets through cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, while also utilising blockchain networks to improve the safety, reliability and performance of their games and payment systems.

Those interested can find a lot of useful information about this on https://winz.io/ , but it is safe to say that with crypto becoming attractive not just to those in the fintech space, its prospects are even better.

One of the biggest factors in any further rally for Bitcoin and other cryptos will be growing acceptance of these tokens in the form of payment. PayPal has begun accepting cryptocurrencies on its platform, and we saw how Tesla has also said that it will do the same in the near future.

More and more platforms and companies offering this option will allow crypto holders a chance to spend their accumulated tokens, which will only increase its circulation and therefore help increase the price as well, while also making it more attractive since people will now be able to spend those tokens without having to convert it back to fiat currency.

However, one big concern is volatility – Bitcoin remains quite volatile, prone to swings in price in both directions, and memories are still fresh of the crash of 2018, when it lost more than half its value in a matter of weeks, following a similar rally throughout 2017.

Nevertheless, the prospects for Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general look extremely bright, and we should expect to see this gain more traction in the coming months.

Robinhood, an online brokerage, announced today that the firm is planning to allow customers to deposit and withdraw through major cryptocurrencies including Dogecoin (DOGE). In January, the broker disabled some of the features on its app amid significant volatility sparked by Reddit frenzy.

According to the official announcement, Robinhood has no investment in cryptocurrency assets, and the firm is not planning to use the digital assets of clients for its own benefit. Also, Robinhood mentioned that due to security reasons, the company will not confirm which crypto addresses belong to Robinhood.

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The Committee on Financial Services of the United States House of Representatives called Vladimir Tenev, the CEO of Robinhood along with Steve Huffman, CEO and Co-founder of Reddit to testify on 18 Feb, following the extreme market volatility in stocks and cryptocurrencies triggered by retail traders on Reddit.

In January 2021, two major Reddit groups, r/WallStreetBets, and r/SatoshiStreetBets triggered a massive rally in stocks and cryptocurrencies. AMC and GME stocks skyrocketed after a massive demand from retail investors. The Reddit frenzy reached the crypto market with a massive rally in Dogecoin and XRP. The price of Dogecoin sparked nearly 900% within 24 hours. Major financial brokers including Robinhood limited some features on their platforms related to the trading of selected stocks and cryptocurrencies, including GME, AMC and Dogecoin.

In the recent announcement, Robinhood cleared the rumors about the company’s cryptocurrency wallets. “Cryptocurrencies purchased and owned by our customers are held in our wallets for the benefit of our customers. Additionally, we only receive coins when our customer’s trades have already settled,” the firm mentioned in a tweet.

Twitter CFO Ned Segal appeared on CNBC to talk about the recent frenzy around Bitcoin post-Tesla’s $1.5 billion purchase. Segal during the interview revealed that their company is currently considering a lot of things around Bitcoin that include paying employees salary in Bitcoin, giving merchant salary in Bitcoin, and also adding Bitcoin to their company’s The post Twitter CFO Reveal Their Company is Considering Bitcoin Payments and Adding it to Their Balance Sheet appeared first on Coingape.

This is definitely great news for the entire Matic Network community. 2020 has been dubbed the year of DeFi due to the unprecedented growth and adoption of DeFi protocols this year. Decentralized applications in general cannot function effectively without reliable real-time price oracle feeds. Hence, Matic Network’s integration of Chainlink’s price oracles.

Matic Network boasts of operating a low fee, high-performance platform for DeFi applications. The platform in recent times has attracted the attention of innovators and developers due to its recent mainnet launch. Last month alone, the blockchain platform has partnered with top industry players, amongst which are Wazirx’s Automated Market Maker (AMM) DEX. Maha DAO, EasyFi’s lending, PlotX’s prediction markets, and OroPocket’s synthetic assets.

These DeFi applications all require real-time data from a secure and reliable oracle platform. Chainlink will provide this off-chain data to the blockchain platform.

Chainlink is arguably the most widely used oracle platform in the DeFi industry today. The platform boasts of securing over $3 billion worth of assets for top crypto platforms.

Chainlink stands out in the DeFi space because of several features, namely:

Speaking on the announcement, Anurag Arjun, co-founder of the Matic Network, pointed out that dApp developers on his platform want “easy and dev-friendly access to oracles.” He added that the entire Matic ecosystem is elated by the partnership with Chainlink’s price oracle network. Arjun furthermore reiterated on the platform’s commitment to “providing a rich and seamless developer interface for blockchain programmers.”

Daniel Kochis, the head of business development for Chainlink, said, “We’re excited to empower Matic’s innovative and fast-growing Layer-2 solution by providing them with secure and reliable oracles to power high-throughput, universally connected blockchain applications.”

Since the DeFi space is relatively new, the blockchain platform has plans to tutor interested developers on the rudiments of using Chainlink oracles. The tutorial will take place via a series of workshops.

Matic Network also recently completed its phase 1 staking.

For the first time since 2015, Dogecoin (DOGE) is once again gracing the list of top ten crypto assets by market cap.

In less than two days, DOGE has surged 900% from $0.0078 to post a new all-time high of $0.078 — breaking its previous high of $0.0185 by more than four times.

As a result, the veteran meme-coin currently ranks as the seventh-largest crypto asset with a market cap of more than 9 billion, sitting above Chainlink and below Cardano. DOGE last traded for $0.073 at the time of writing.

Amid the frenzied rally, crypto data aggregator TheTIE reported that Dogecoin had become the subject of nearly 90,000 tweets, becoming the first altcoin to generate a larger Twitter-volume than Bitcoin.

With amazing gains on most cryptocurrency investments, better mainstream coverage, more applications of blockchain technology and the rise of crypto-based fundraising (popularly known as initial coin offerings), one can arguably say that 2017 has been the year of cryptocurrencies and the enabling technology behind them, blockchain.

Africa has not been (entirely) left behind in the cryptocurrency boom as record trading levels have been seen in different countries across the continent with South Africa, Nigeria, and Kenya leading the pack.

While the cryptocurrency boom is exciting, the true innovation lies in the technology powering cryptocurrencies which is the distributed ledger technology (blockchain). The top features of a blockchain include:

These and many other features have made blockchain technology become appealing mainstream. This is with many use cases being developed e.g. decentralized storage, real estate, identity management and many more. However, when it comes to the application, Africa has been lagging behind.

Dividing the global ‘invasion’ of blockchain into three phases i.e. the cash frenzy, tech recognition, and utilization  (as has been seen by the countries/regions where real use cases of the technology has started gaining momentum) will place the majority of ‘crypto Africa’ at the first phase yet.

Where most of the continent is currently. In this phase, what attracts most people is the promise of mind-blowing returns on cryptocurrency investments. This year for example, almost all cryptocurrencies took a parabolic bull run with ROIs in the range of 5x-100x being common.

Also, institutional investors have made strategic investments in African startups. Especially exchanges and remittance based startups such as BitPesa and BitMari. Also, foreign exchanges such as Belfrics have started making moves into the continent.

It, therefore, comes as no shock that the continent’s largest blockchain startups offer crypto-based remittance and/or exchange services.

While this phase is a smaller picture in the larger frame of things, it serves as the first step in introducing people to the innovative technology that blockchain offers.

This is the next phase that follows the cash frenzy. African cryptocurrency enthusiasts who became interested in cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology will carefully study and appreciate the innovative tech upon which their investments are built upon.

The many potential use cases start being realized and people move on from being purely crypto enthusiasts and investors to blockchain tech. This is as they begin to realize that the cash returns are just a tiny fragment of what the technology has to offer.

Several blogs, forums, and websites (including CryptoInAfrica) will also aid/have aided in this process to enlighten people.

Reaching this phase is the ultimate target for fans and enthusiasts of blockchain tech. In this phase, applications built on blockchain tech (including cryptos) will get mainstream adoption. More applications will be built across the continent that will utilize blockchain technology.

Currently, there a few other applications built on the technology across the continent. Custos Media (South Africa) is one of such startups that uses blockchain to track pirated media. Bitland (Ghana) is another startup that uses blockchain to provide land registry services.

So far, Africa has shown to be doing quite well in the first phase and progressing (slowly) to the second and third, like the rest of the world. However, Africa almost lags behind the rest of the world in most tech innovations. And it’ll be interesting to watch blockchain technology be an exception.

Companies now hold over 842,000 BTC, which at the current Bitcoin price of $18,200, is worth $15.3 billion. 28629 Total views 97 Total shares Listen to article 0:00 Market Analysis As of Nov. 20, companies hold around 842,229 BTC or 4.54% of today’s Bitcoin () supply, according to the Clark Moody dashboard and data from Bitcointreasuries. This is equivalent to a staggering $15.3 billion at the current price of $18,200. Public companies and institutional investors are. The spark that began with MicroStrategy’s ambitious $425 million BTC purchase has led to a broad institutional frenzy around the dominant cryptocurrency. The demand for Bitcoin from companies and institutions likely comes from its growing reputation as a digital store of value. Bitcoin is unique in that it can hedge portfolios against inflation, like gold, but has the potential to see exponential growth. Hedge assets are typically stagnant and demonstrate low volatility over a prolonged period. They are meant to operate as insurance for a diversified portfolio so that when the market dips, the portfolio is protected. Bitcoin achieves both: it is able to operate as a hedge asset and also expose investors to large growth potential in the long term. As such, Michael Saylor, the CEO of MicroStrategy, said Bitcoin should not be considered as a payment network nor a currency. BTC is highly compelling as a store of value, which also does not put it in the crossfire of regulators. Referring to the of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Jay Clayton saying BTC is not a security, Saylor said: As long as the perception of Bitcoin from institutions and corporations as an established store of value remains, the demand for BTC would likely remain high. Corporations are now holding roughly 4.5% of today’s Bitcoin supply, which is around 18.5 million BTC. This percentage is relatively high considering that BTC has a total fixed supply of 21 million. When lost or dormant coins are considered, the total supply is estimated to be around 17 million in total. Companies acquiring Bitcoin as a treasury asset, like MicroStrategy, is particularly optimistic because it shows they are not expecting short-term returns. Hence, when corporations hold BTC with a low time-preference, it would also result in lower selling pressure over time by decreasing the available supply. For instance, on Aug. 11, when MicroStrategy of $250 million worth of Bitcoin, Saylor said: The prospect of inflation and consistent liquidity injections from central banks further fuel the medium- to long-term outlook for Bitcoin, which some analysts for BTC to shine over time.  Meanwhile, to offset the negative economic impact the pandemic has had on the financial market, regulators are For stores of value, like gold and Bitcoin, such a trend is beneficial heading into 2021.