Category Archives: cryptocurrency

China is making giant strides on its cryptocurrency – $ 3 million up for grabs and (more) a huge lottery ahead

China, cryptocurrency

The world’s number one asset management company now allows two of its funds to purchase bitcoin derivatives. This first foray into cryptoassets follows the change in tone of BlackRock, now more accommodating towards these highly speculative assets. In Europe, regulators remain vigilant with regard to these products.

Never 2 without 3 – Far ahead of the rest of the world, China continues to test its MNBC. In addition, the city of Shenzhen is preparing to host a giant new lottery to democratize the crypto-yuan.

A new lottery for Shenzhen

China has been working on creating a Central Bank Digital Currency (MNBC) for several years now. Following a series of life-size tests carried out in 5 cities across the country, the country is now trying to democratize its crypto-yuan.

However, since November 2020, the pilot city of Shenzhen has organized 2 giant lotteries, during which residents had the opportunity to win 200 crypto-yuan. The goal was simple: distribute it for free to promote adoption of MNBC.

With two successful editions in November 2020 and early January 2021, the city will therefore put the cover back.

This time around, it’s a lottery totaling $ 3 million in prize money. Each winner will pocket a “red envelope” containing 200 crypto-yuan.

Obviously, Shenzhen is not the only one to have carried out this type of project. Eh yes ! The city of Suzhou did the same last December with the same success. Certainly, the 4 corners of China are in great shape.

Top DeFi tokens poised to make big gains against Bitcoin

Bitcoin, cryptocurrency, DeFi

Bitcoin has formed a double top near its all-time high, while tokens related to decentralized finance are making solid gains.

By failing to achieve a new all-time high, Bitcoin is vulnerable to a strong short-term correction. From its high of nearly $ 20,000, BTC is already down 6% after falling back below $ 19,000.

This could be good news for those who trade DeFi tokens instead of BTC to accumulate more sats.

Several popular Bitcoin traders have pointed an Immediate Edge, and one of them has said that “Major DeFi / BTC pairs show 50-100% higher moves”.

Source: Twitter
DeFi tokens are on the move
The trader also said that almost all DeFi-related tokens are likely to outperform Bitcoin in the coming weeks. Many of them are posting double-digit gains after the drops they suffered following the launch of the protocols a few months ago.

The analyst predicted four DeFi tokens that he believes will be the best performing: SushiSwap, Aave, Synthetix, and Uniswap.

DeFi & blockchain

SUSHI has already made massive gains over the last 24 hours with a 30% increase and raises the price to $ 2 for the first time since mid-September when prices were falling.

So far, the protocol’s governance token is down 75% from its peak of over $ 8, so even a 50% recovery could double current prices.

The guarantee also appears to be returning to SushiSwap after the attempted security vulnerability that occurred over the weekend. Since November 27, the total blocked value (TVL) in the protocol has increased by 34%, thus reaching 738 million dollars, although it is far from its maximum, since the current TVL is half of what it was before Uniswap’s vampire attack.

Locked value (TVL) near its all-time high

Aave’s native token has gained around 16% over the last week and is approaching $ 80 once again, while Synthetix’s SNX token is at nearly $ 5.

Uniswap’s UNI token also appears poised for further gains, given that it is below half of what it was during the initial high when it topped $ 8. Today UNI is trading at $ 3.70 and has gained 56% over the past thirty days.

Other DeFi tokens that are making big moves right now are Serum, Swerve, Cream, and Curve, among others, according to Messari DeFi.

On December 1, the total value locked across the industry hit an all-time high of $ 14.74 billion, according to DeFi Pulse. Today, it’s back down to $ 14.26 billion, but it doesn’t look like it’s reversing its trend just yet.

DeFi in Bitcoin: The World’s Most Secure Smart Contract Network? analyzed in Cryptonight

Bitcoin, Blockchain, cryptocurrency, DeFi

Bitcoin and DeFi together may not be very popular terms in the same project, because, essentially, Ethereum is the leading smart contract platform in the decentralized finance industry. However, despite the robustness of Bitcoin as a system, it is possible to develop a myriad of financial protocols on its network – which include DeFi protocols – and this would denote that Bitcoin could become the home of the decentralized network of smart safest contracts in the world.

Is Bitcoin part of the DeFi revolution? The answer could be yes, although other unknowns would appear: How is it possible? How much is the improvement compared to Ethereum? How far can you go?

DeFi and its risks

Many of them, not to mention all of them, were answered at CryptoNight 2020, an event organized by the NGO Bitcoin Chile and of which Eudebate2009 is a media partner, and a place where RSK solutions were discussed as a network of smart contracts built on the network Bitcoin

Gabriel Kurman, co-founder and current RSK was in charge of exposing the true integration of decentralized smart contract networks with the robust, strong and seemingly inflexible Bitcoin network, sponsored by the project that he and RSK support.

Bitcoin and smart contracts is no longer just an idea, it is now a reality

The problem is clear. After more than 8 months of confinements, economic debacles, job losses, and signs of financial unsustainability, it was shown that this process of “inequity, all it has done was to worsen even more”, according to Gabriel’s statement in the introduction of your presentation.

Gabriel continued to denote that those better positioned benefited, while “those who have been fighting it the most, suffer the most; they are always the most vulnerable in this type of shocks ”.

Gabriel’s idea showed that the current centralized financial pillars are unsustainable when the world requires equal opportunities, especially speaking of economic opportunities.

Their data pointed out that there are more than 3 billion people ignored by the system, which in turn, are mostly part of the most vulnerable already mentioned.

The strength of Bitcoin

Starting from this relevant problem, perhaps the philosophy of DeFi can be better perceived: a financial system decentralized in opportunities, decentralized in participation, decentralized in control, and decentralized in operation.

But for Gabriel, you cannot talk about DeFi without starting with Bitcoin, since, first of all, “Bitcoin has taught us why it is important that the system that is going to help us replace [the traditional financial system], has to be decentralized ”.

Words from Gabriel Kurman in his introduction to CryptoNight 2020.
Why Bitcoin?

Although Bitcoin “represents better than any other cryptoactive in the system” the purpose of DeFi, given its governance, scarcity, and global neutrality; the elasticity factor is always present.

“Bitcoin lacks programmability, scalability and automation if we want it to really serve us to end the problems of inequality that the system has.”

Gabriel said.

On the other hand, regarding the reality of a decentralized financial system, for the co-founder of RSK and his colleagues it was not possible to choose the programmability of the smart contracts of Solidity in Ethereum, since in addition to the fact that Ether could not be compared to BTC as a safe haven for the necessary collateralization, the “world’s computer” network was not going to be able to cope with the security level of the Bitcoin network.

Indeed, if you talk about the power of hashing as a security factor within a decentralized data network, Bitcoin leads, and Ethereum is far behind. According to data from Glassnode, the hashing power of Bitcoin, measured in Ehash / sec (quintillion hashes per second) is 134 Ehash / sec, while Ethereum, whose figure can be measured in Thash / sec (trillions of hashes per second) , is 252 Thash / sec.

The hashing power of Bitcoin reaching 134 quintillion hashes per second.

In conclusion, the Bitcoin network is approximately 500,000 times more secure than Ethereum in terms of hashing power, or mining power.

In addition to this, Gabriel highlights how the Bitcoin network continues to lead the amount of value transferred per second in a way that is also safe and efficient, where the non-viability of attacks on the network is noted taking into account the economic incentives of the herself.

On RSK, this second layer network that runs on top of Bitcoin already accumulates 60% of all the hashing power of Bitcoin, that is, a value that would be around 80 Ehash / sec, which is the same as approximately 300,000 times the total power Ethereum mining.

In other words, and according to Gabriel’s own:

“To make an attack on RSK, you have to have 60% of the cost necessary to make an attack on Bitcoin, and this makes RSK the most secure smart contract platform on the planet.”

Words from Gabriel Kurman in his presentation of CryptoNight 2020.

Gabriel Kurman during his presentation with the value of 58.9% for RSK’s hashing power absorbed from the Bitcoin network.

The capacity of the RSK-Bitcoin duo

In addition to using the Bitcoin network as the engine to give life to RSK, smart contracts, which have multiple implementation possibilities, seek to take the value of the BTC currency for its functionality.

To test such ability of RSK, after Gabriel Kurman’s presentation, Manu Ferrari from Money On Chain entered the scene, one of the most important decentralized finance protocols built on top of RSK, based on financial services including the creation of the first backed stablecoin. with BTC.

Blockchain smart city

Money On Chain largely deploys RSK’s ability as a smart contract network using Bitcoin as its main power without dispensing with decentralization, which, as mentioned above, should always be present in the DeFi-led revolution.

The current and fully operational development of Money On Chain breaks down 3 products:

Dollar On Chain (DoC): described according to its official website as the first stablecoin backed one hundred percent by Bitcoin, with a value that seeks parity with the US dollar, but without the need for the centralization that resides in alternatives such as Tether. It should be noted that transactions with DoC have a very low cost compared to transfers of other stablecoins that run on Ethereum, mainly thanks to RSK’s solution as a network.

BPro, “Bitcoin on steroids”: a financial derivative directly anchored to BTC that with leverage manages to accelerate the returns on the price of Bitcoin, as well as the losses in this case. An interesting factor of this product is that the profit of all the performance that the BPro generate are in BTC and not in another currency, therefore, it is an attractive product for bitcoiners, in the words of Manuel.

BTCX, “Leveraged Bitcoin”: it is the BTC with more leverage, more focused on investors, speculators and traders, as it describes a financial derivative with more marked leverage than BPro, but with relatively low costs.

Money On Chain made this possible by adding a very predominant ingredient within the DeFi realm: governance.

Indeed, it is not the creators of Money On Chain who have all the power over their protocol and therefore their products, but it will be the governance given through their MoC token that will decide the fate of the project itself.

Even though the Total Blocked Value (TVL) of the entire Money On Chain system is hovering around a very low figure compared to similar protocols in Ethereum, the reality and capacity of RSK and the usability of Bitcoin was presented at CryptoNight 2020 as a viable alternative that solves important problems within the ecosystem encompassed by smart contracts, decentralized finance, and the new financial paradigm sponsored by Web 3.0.

ABOVE 18,200 DOLLARS, THE BITCOIN FLIES TO ITS HIGHEST HISTORY

Bitcoin, cryptocurrency, Technical Analysis

The price of the most famous cryptocurrency is back to a value never reached since the end of 2017.

Bitcoin continues its momentum. The price of the most famous cryptocurrency jumped this Tuesday for the second consecutive session, gaining 1,500 dollars in less than 48 hours and approaching its all-time high of late 2017-early 2018.

At around 5:20 p.m. GMT (6:20 p.m. in Paris), bitcoin was costing $ 17,502, and had been evolving at levels more seen since the brief price spike at the end of 2017, when the cryptocurrency reached its all-time high at $ 19,041, before falling in early 2018.

“There is a real appetite for risky assets, including cryptocurrencies, due to the extraordinary economic stimulus measures by global banks and governments,” Fawad Razaqzada, analyst at Forex told AFP. com. Bitcoin Evolution has since exceeded $ 18,200 on November 18.

Bitcoin: An alternative to traditional currencies

Central banks, which are flooding the world with liquidity to support the global economy hit hard by the pandemic, are urging investors to look to all possible assets: in the United States, the S&P 500 and Dow stock indexes Jones Industrial Average both finished on record Monday.

Bitcoin, created in 2008 by an anonymous, presents itself as an alternative to traditional currencies, precisely because its issuance by a non-centralized network aims to prevent such monetary easing measures by institutions.

“I think investors have become more comfortable with the idea of ​​buying cryptocurrencies, many investment funds have been launched with this issue in mind in 2020,” said Michael Hewson, analyst at CMC Markets .

In addition to the interest of investment funds, bitcoin is of interest to other more traditional players in online payment. The rise of the past few weeks began when online payments giant PayPal announced on October 21 that it was launching its own platform for exchanging bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies. What mark a new course towards the democratization of this currency.

Bitcoin has more than tripled since March: Spectacular comeback reveals how it could get out of the niche

Bitcoin, cryptocurrency

In March, Bitcoin fans also had to realize that cryptocurrencies cannot completely decouple themselves from developments on the financial markets. In the middle of the Corona crash in March, the price of the flagship crypto currency also collapsed: At the low point, a Bitcoin was only worth just under $ 4,000, after it was still above the $ 10,000 mark in February.

But since then, Bitcoin has celebrated a spectacular comeback – again for the first time in its history. It’s now worth a little less than $ 16,000, but had briefly passed that mark. The cryptocurrency has more than tripled in eight months.

The planning of the US payment service provider PayPal was particularly decisive for this. In October, the group announced that customers in the USA will in future be able to buy, sell and store bitcoins via the platform. At the beginning of next year, it should also be possible to pay with cryptocurrencies at retailers using PayPal. “PayPal’s entry into the crypto sector was the main reason for the increased interest in Bitcoin,” said analyst Timo Emden in an interview with Business Insider. “When such a big name becomes active in the sector, acceptance also increases,” he adds.

For Bitcoin, acceptance is an important factor for the future

Discussions about digital currencies are also part of this acceptance of cryptocurrencies. The European Central Bank (ECB) is currently conducting a survey of the population on how they would feel about a digital euro as part of an official currency. “Discussions about the possible introduction of digital national currencies such as an e-euro also help that crypto currencies such as Bitcoin can shed their supposedly dubious image,” said Emden.

In fact, cryptocurrencies have long been associated with strong fluctuations and the associated rapid gains or high losses as pure objects of speculation. With more and more areas of application in everyday life and the discussion about using the technology in the background for official currencies, the discussion is getting out of this niche. A survey by the management and technology consultancy BearingPoint shows that Bitcoin is still a niche product. Of more than 2,000 respondents in Germany, only four percent said that they use crypto currencies. One in four, however, knows how the payment method works.

Bitcoin is also considered the new gold among fans

On the other hand, there are numerous Bitcoin fans on the stock exchange. Since the number of Bitcoins is limited, some investors are already comparing the cryptocurrency with gold. Some investment professionals therefore see Bitcoin as a safe haven on the stock exchange. In uncertain times – such as in the current corona pandemic – investors rely on corresponding asset classes. After the crash in March, the price of Bitcoin quickly stabilized again.

When it became known on Monday that Biontech and Pfizer were making great strides in their corona vaccine search, stocks jumped for joy around the world – and gold came under severe pressure. “Bitcoin also came back that day, but not as strong as the gold price. This shows that it is not just the uncertainty due to the corona pandemic that is driving the price, ”explains Timo Emden.

In fact, Bitcoin was anything but under pressure over the course of the week. Rather, it was quoted above the $ 16,000 mark for the first time since the beginning of 2018. “The current price increase is indeed rapid again, but cannot be compared with what happened in 2017,” said Emden. Back then, Bitcoin rose to its record high of around $ 20,000. “While investors today are waiting for a setback to enter, three years ago they wanted to buy at any price for fear of missing out on the rally. The result was the dramatic crash, ”says Timo Emden.

Bitcoin will continue to fluctuate widely

This dramatic crash spanned about a year, during which the value slumped from $ 20,000 to about $ 3,300. Numerous investors lost money and are now concerned about burning their fingers on Bitcoin again. “It is also true that cryptocurrencies – and thus also Bitcoin – suffer from strong fluctuations. Investors who sometimes cannot sit out heavy losses should stay away from the asset class, ”warns Emden.

But one thing is also clear to him: The blockchain technology behind cryptocurrencies is an important factor for the future. “Digitization and Industry 4.0 are clear signs that cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology will no longer disappear from the market.” He therefore also expects that the increase is not over yet. “If the current data situation continues, I expect further price gains for Bitcoin in the long term. The record high of around 20,000 US dollars is definitely a realistic goal in the coming months, ”says Emden, but advises interested investors to wait for a setback of at least 14,000 US dollars to get started.

A Bitcoin ETF would be “the accolade”

Anyone who is interested in investing in Bitcoins or crypto currencies in general has to buy them directly, because corresponding financial products are still hardly available on the market. It is true that the fund company Fidelity, one of the largest asset managers in the world, introduced a corresponding fund in August with the “Wise Origin Bitcoin Index Fund I”. However, it is not aimed at the masses with a minimum investment of $ 100,000. “There is still no approved fund or ETF for private investors, because so far the US Securities and Exchange Commission has rejected any attempt or postponed a decision. Only after this step will such a product be approved in Europe, ”Timo Emden expects.

Private investors could then use an ETF to track the performance of Bitcoin and would not be dependent on crypto exchanges, Bitcoin marketplaces or speculative financial products such as CFDs. For Timo Emden, a Bitcoin ETF would be beneficial for private investors, but not only for savers. “If an ETF is approved for the masses, that would be the accolade for Bitcoin. It would be another big step on the way of growing up for cryptocurrencies. “