Coindesk - 4/14/2021 12:15:04 PM - GMT (+0 )
Sun, 11 Apr 2021 13:00:11 +0000
CryptoArt is hotter than ever.
CryptoPunks keep breaking records.
As Christie’s auction approaches, the demand for the original NFTs rises. Today, an anonymous and recently created account placed bids worth 3,034 ETH for 16 CryptoPunks. At the current price, that’s $6,309,476.33. This fact makes the story even more interesting: so far, none of the bids have been accepted.
Widely regarded as the original NFTs, the CryptoPunks contract was created on June 22nd, 2017. The project consists of 10.000 units. Each one is a 24×24 pixels, 8-bit image. The creators describe them as: “distinctly digital work, comprising both the image of the characters and the blockchain mechanisms for ownership and auction.”
John Watkinson and Matt Hall built the mostly automated pixelated character generator that created them. At the very beginning, they were free. To claim a CryptoPunk all you had to do was pay the necessary Ethereum gas to power the transaction.
In the first week, only 20 or 30 found new homes. Nevertheless, Mashable wrote a story about the project and within hours every single one was gone. Except for the 1.000 the creators set aside for themselves, that is.
Fast forward four short years and the biggest auction house in the world is selling nine of those pieces for $7.000.000. Not only the biggest, one of the most respected. A household name in the art world. What does this mean for the NFT market as a whole?
Christie’s 21st Century Evening Sale will take place in New York on May 13th.
Analysis of today’s $6M bidsEven though they might seem like vanity bids or even drunken bids, there’s something strategical about them. This recently created account got high praise on Twitter for its CryptoPunks selection, “great taste” a few people said. But the thing is, this anonymous person seems to know the market.
Of course, $6M is a lot, but if you check the prices of those that were up for sale another story emerges. The anonymous buyer offered less than the asking price each and every time. And to the ones that were not for sale, the person’s offers were certainly higher than previous bids, but not by a crazy amount. The anonymous buyer knows what it’s doing.
And so do the CryptoPunk holders, because they’re not selling.
ETH price chart on Kraken. Source: ETH/USD on TradingView.com
Cut to the Artchick.eth Twitter account, reporting live from the CryptoPunks Discord, “200 punks just got bought up for several millions of dollars in the past 2 hours since Christie’s announced a punk sale.” According to her, a rare zombie punk sold for around $800K. That makes it one of the all-time high sales in CryptoPunk’s history.
In a blog post from 2019 titled “CryptoPunks Two Year Anniversary,” the project’s creators said “We’re so happy to see the CryptoPunks still going strong two years after their introduction. We can’t wait to see what happens in year three and beyond!”
Nowadays, we know what happened. And things are just getting started.
Photo by Viktor Forgacs on Unsplash
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Potential Controversy for FEI’s Mechanism?639K $ETH committed and $1.3B $FEI Minted
Through Protocol Controlled Value, the $FEI – $ETH pair is now the largest pool on @Uniswap https://t.co/JvSWh6idBm
— Fei Labs (@feiprotocol) April 3, 2021
However, the project has already received criticism for its mechanisms. FEI’s use of protocol controlled value (PCV) means that, when users deposit collateral, their funds cannot be immediately pulled out. This is because the capital is owned and managed by the protocol itself — making it more capital efficient and decentralized compared to other stablecoins.
The project initially allowed participating users to mint FEI at $0.50 — a seemingly massive discount from the $1 peg. As the Ethereum bonding curve would grow based on supply, many users anticipated that the stablecoin would reach its peg once enough collateral was deposited.
However, liquidity providers and short-term investors found themselves unable to sell their FEI for ETH without incurring massive losses on the trade. This was because of the protocol’s direct incentive system which used a dynamic burning system to return the stablecoin’s price to peg. According to the protocol’s white paper, selling “FEI in a quick time frame during a period of high sell pressure” would lead to the user “incur[ring] a significant burn penalty.”
Over $1 billion in ETH temporarily trapped unless FEI holders want to incur penalties.
If you’re holding FEI, you’ll be alright If you’re patient.
But Solvency ≠ Liquidity https://t.co/xoae1sTE5f
— Ryan Watkins (@RyanWatkins_) April 3, 2021
Through a Twitter post, Messari research analyst Ryan Watkins shared his thoughts on the matter: “The issue with FEI right now is most people want to sell it back for ETH, but doing so incurs extreme penalties. Eventually, FEI will re-weight to bring [itself] back to its peg, but then what? There’s little real demand for FEI and most are still running for the exits.”
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The mid-cap blockchain project, active since 2009, provides services for building gaming communities and products for game developers. It offers a suite of tools based on a web interface that enables Ethereum digital assets in the form of ERC-1155 tokens. ENJ serves as the de-facto settlement token for the Enjin network, similar to how ether backs the Ethereum blockchain.
Jump on JumpNetThe cost to purchase one ENJ rose more than 1,500 percent as Enjin posed an alternative to Ethereum’s rising gas and trade transaction costs issues. Its massive upswing also came after a press release published in March revealed Enjin’s plans to launch two updates on its network to improve its scalability and interoperability.
At the same time, these updates proposed to remove Ethereum’s expensive gas fees altogether while increasing support for the booming non-fungible token (NFT) industry (NFTs are novel, non-replicable cryptographic tokens that exist on a blockchain).
The first of these upgrades, dubbed as JumpNet, will be released on Tuesday. It is “a private version of the Ethereum blockchain with a Proof of Authority (PoA) method of consensus, enabling instant, secure, and gasless on-chain transactions.” Enjin plans to add more nodes to the Jumpnet by partnering with “trusted companies.”
The JumpNet upgrade would lead to a full-fledged Enjin network overhaul, the second update dubbed as “Efinity.” It will introduce a multi-chain interoperability network for NFTs.
Enjin Trade OutlookENJ was trading lower ahead of the JumpNet update, partially because of a prevailing corrective mood across the cryptocurrency market. Most of the alternative cryptocurrencies trade under the top token Bitcoin’s influence. The BTC/USD exchange rate was down 0.65 percent on Monday morning. Meanwhile, ENJ/USD slipped 2.80 percent in the previous 24 hours.
Nevertheless, the lower levels provided buying opportunities for traders who would want to utilize the JumpNet news for their upside positions. Looking closely, the Enjin token tested an upward sloping trendline as support that constitutes a bullish continuation triangle pattern, dubbed as Symmetrical Triangle.
In retrospect, Symmetrical Triangles that appear in an uptrend tend to send the prices upward by as much as the maximum structure height. The height between the Enjin triangle’s upper and lower trendlines is $1.38.
Therefore, a breakout move to the upside could send the ENJ/USD rate to at least $3.81. Its current bid is near $2.26.
Photo by Kurt Cotoaga on Unsplash.
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The ticker FIL climbed four days in a row — by up to 79.07 percent — against the US dollar to reach its five-month high of $224.16 (data from Binance). Meanwhile, the token closed its first quarter at a 682.32 percent profit, beating Bitcoin and even the US stock market in terms of quarterly gains.
What are Filecoin and FIL?In retrospect, Filecoin is a decentralized data storage network. The platform allows users to sell their excess digital space on an open platform. It enables its community to use FIL to participate and transact in the Filecoin network. In particular, users can pay mining fees in FIL to store or share data and retrieve their information.
Storage providers also use FIL as collateral to provide a minimum guarantee threshold to their services. As usual, the deal falls through should the FIL collateral decline below the decided level. Filecoin has attracted investments from prominent Bitcoin evangelists, including Civic CEO Vinny Lingham and Meltem Demirors, chief strategy officer at Coinshares.
Economically, FIL comes with a limited supply cap of 2 billion tokens. 600 million of those now stay in the wallets of Protocol Labs (with 6-year linear vesting) and its team members and investors (again, with a 6-month to 6-year linear vesting). About 2.5 percent of the total 600 million FIL fund Filecoin’s future fundraising or ecosystem development.
Meanwhile, the rest of the FIL supply belongs to Filecoin miners, dispatched as rewards for offering their services on the network over time. That gives FIL an underlying utility and, in turn, value.
Institutional BoomNew York-based investment company Grayscale Investments launched a Filecoin trust, through which it expects to purchase FIL tokens and offers institutional investors the FIL-backed shares. Two weeks after its introduction, the trust attracted interest from mainstream investors, with ByBt.com data showing that “the Grayscale Filecoin Trust” added 45,550 FIL to its reserves.
Traders picked up on the FIL accumulation spree. They raised their FIL bids on the day that also saw Bitcoin prices stabilizing and the rest of the top crypto brass logging attractive profits. However, FIL took the cake for being the best performer, rising by almost 40 percent on a 24-hour adjusted timeframe.
The upswing also coincided with the news of The9. The Shanghai-based online game operator signed a $2 million Filecoin mining machine contract. It also agreed on a hosting agreement with a Filecoin mining service provider.
But the real question remains: could the FIL/USD exchange rate rise any further? Technically, the bias favors bears.
FIL’s relative strength indicator on a daily chart shows it as an excessively overvalued asset. That means the token could undergo a bearish correction in the coming session on de-risking sentiment. A sell-off could crash FIL to its previous support target near $123.
Nevertheless, with fundamentals favoring a bullish outlook, FIL could find intermediate support. Unfortunately, the token started trading in October 2020, so there is no historical data to find ideal pullback levels.
Cover Photo provided by Jungwoo Hong on Unsplash.
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Just a month prior, Evolve Funds scored an approval from the Canadian government to proceed with listing their Bitcoin ETF on the Toronto Stock Exchange. Found under ticker EBIT.TO, the fund is down approximately 15% since its listing date.
“As a leader in disruptive innovation, we look forward to providing Canadian investors with access to another leading cryptocurrency through an ETF structure,” said Raj Lala, President and CEO at Evolve Fund. As Ethereum is the second biggest cryptocurrency by market cap, the digital asset has enjoyed similar levels of attention to Bitcoin from financial institutions.
Moreover, the Ethereum-based ETF would give potential investors exposure to the daily movements of Ether. Thanks to the “creation and redemption” processes offered by ETF structures, there would be minimal tracking errors between spot price and the ETF. Its portfolio will be based on ETHUSD_RR, a daily benchmark index price for Ethereum denominated in U.S. dollars.
The proposed fund would work similarly to its pre-existing Bitcoin counterpart. If approved, both ETFs would contract Cidel Trust Company and Gemini as their custodian and sub-custodian. This means that these two firms will hold client’s securities in electronic form, most likely through digital wallets.
Institutional Interest in Crypto, From Bitcoin to Ethereum, Continues to GrowThere is no doubt that institutions will continue to bring crypto-based investment products to the traditional financial markets. Just days ago, Goldman Sachs, one of the largest investment banks in America, reopened its Bitcoin-futures trading desk.
As public demand soars and financial institutions rush to join in, the future of cryptos looks brighter than ever.
Featured Image from Unsplash
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Fri, 19 Feb 2021 06:42:57 +0000
In the week ending February 21, the BNB/USD exchange rate has already jumped by 100 percent. On Friday, the pair established a new record high of $283.39 in a price rally that somewhat reminds one of Redditors-backed GameStop stock-buying mania in January 2021.
But unlike the mob-led short squeeze of the video game stock that wanted to hurt hedge funds, Binance Coin’s rally has come on the heels of a handful of optimistic news. At first, its growing role as a utility token—a type of in-house private currency—in the Binance exchange and many of its ventures appeared to have attracted traders en masse.
In retrospect, users can pay BNB as trading fees on the Binance Exchange. They can also use the token to participate in tokens sales hosted by the Binance Launchpad. And most importantly, BNB also powers Binance’s newly-launched decentralized exchange, a platform that does not require a central authority to conduct trade-related operations, including custodianships.
Anticipating Demand for Binance CoinA University of Cambridge report released last year showed a 200 percent growth in crypto users since 2018.
It noted that more than 101 million users signed up with cryptocurrency service providers—such as Binance—in the third quarter of 2020. Given the recent institutional boom, led by MicroStrategy and Tesla’s multi-billion-dollar investment in the Bitcoin market, analysts expect the crypto adoption curve to only grow in the coming days.
“Tesla will also accept Bitcoin as payment, and Elon’s daring commitment to accelerating Bitcoin’s adoption will likely generate even more followers,” noted analysts at Weiss Crypto Ratings. “The endorsement from the richest man in the world should prove to be extremely impactful moving forward.”
As adoption grows, exchanges like Binance expect to attract more users, which, in turn, could increase demand for its BNB tokens. Meanwhile, a strong shift towards decentralized finance and Binance’s presence in the said sector would mean further growth for its native token.
So far, traders are betting huge on such an outcome.
Correction WoesBinance Coin trades under risks of massive price corrections, according to its Relative Strength Indicator readings on the larger-timeframe charts. A peek into the momentum gauger shows BNB/USD as an overbought instrument, meaning it would need neutralization by bears sooner or later.
Nonetheless, the euphoria around the entire cryptocurrency sector, led by Bitcoin’s growing adoption on Wall Street, could care less about what a technical indicator says. The only question remains whether the flagship cryptocurrency could handle itself at new highs. If not, its price correction could spell trouble for the rest of the crypto market, just like it did in 2018.
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Despite all of the sell-offs and volatility that was witnessed over the last week, data available online clearly shows that the number of addresses with 1,000 or more bitcoin (referred to as “whales” in the crypto world) has continued to increase. This “buy-the-dip” strategy is not uncommon and has traditionally been used by investors across markets. However, this time around, with the introduction of institutional players into the digital asset sector, such consolidation-centric activities have increased substantially, resulting in continuous fluctuations in the price of most cryptos.
It’s Bitcoin’s reign but is there a new sheriff in town?There is no denying that Bitcoin is the clear OG of the crypto world, as is probably best highlighted by the fact that the flagship digital asset has been able to pique the interest of many prominent traditional financial institutions – such as Microstrategy, BlackRock, Grayscale – over the last year or so.
Not only that, in recent months, a number of banks and venture capital funds like JP Morgan, Raiffeisen, Pantera Capital have projected BTC to scale past beyond the $100k mark with ease, indirectly indicating their growing confidence in this yet-nascent asset class.
That being said, it seems as though with each passing day Ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency by total market capitalization, is fast showcasing signs of decoupling from Bitcoin. In this regard, a report released by leading crypto exchange Bybit indicates that between 14-20 Jan, the price of Ether outperformed Bitcoin by posting a 35% growth, which has historically never been witnessed.
On a more technical note, when Ether hit its all-time high of $1,440 on Jan. 19, its market dominance rose up to a relative high of 15.65%, levels that were last witnessed back in 2018, when the ICO bubble was in full bloom.
Ethereum surpassing Bitcoin a fanciful projection or imminent reality?It is no secret that the DeFi boom of 2020 occurred in large part due to the technological capabilities afforded by the Ethereum ecosystem to developers all over the world. This is probably best highlighted by the fact that 29 of the top 30 Decentralized Finance platforms have been built atop the Ether network.
Furthermore, the total locked volume (TVL) across various DeFi platforms currently stands at a whopping $23+ billion, which is quite impressive, especially when considering that a majority of crypto investors are still only beginning to learn about DeFi.
Not only that, the daily trading volume on the Ethereum network is estimated to be nearly 30% higher than that of Bitcoin, with the number most likely to rise especially with the launch of the Beacon Network that currently has around $3 billion locked in staking pools.
Alt-season is coming to an exchange near youIn addition to Ethererum exhibiting sizeable returns during this ongoing bull season, a number of investors seem to have been grossly overlooking the fact that a number of other altcoins too have incurred some serious gains in recent months.
According to Bybit, between Dec 1 – Jan 17, a number of prominent alts like Decred (DCR), Dogecoin (DOGE), Cardano (ADA) have exhibited gains of 126%, 175%, and 146% respectively when compared with BTC’s value surge of 91% during the aforementioned time window.
Altcoin gains compared with Bitcoin (source: Coin Metrics)
Lastly, a number of other assets like Litecoin (LTC), ChainLink (LINK), Stellar (XLM), Bitcoin Cash (BCH) too have showcased sizable growth in recent months, with each of these tokens gaining more than 65% in value. What’s interesting here is that unlike the altcoin boom of 2017, where most currencies simply gained traction because of the hype surrounding them, this time around the growth of most tokens is being driven by innovation and real-life use cases.
Altcoins that seem primed to succeed in 2021While Ether is a no-brain addition to the list of alts primed for success in 2021, individuals looking to diversify their portfolios can potentially explore a host of other use-case driven projects to maximize their gains in 2021.
For example, Chainlink is a project that is looking to decentralize the internet by allowing smart contracts to be deployed in relation to a host of real-world applications. Its utility has helped drive the price of its LINK significantly, so much so that the currency is now in the list of top-10 cryptos by total market capitalization. Not only that, it should be pointed out that over the course of the past year, the currency has exhibited gains of over 700%.
Similarly, PolkaDot is a project that is looking to tackle the issue of blockchain interoperability, regardless of a platform’s features or its status as a private or public chain. Its innovative design and amazing technological proposition have helped push DOT to the fourth spot on the top-10 list of cryptos within a span of just six months.
Some of the other altcoins that seek to tackle real issues plaguing the crypto sector and therefore may be worth considering as long term investment vehicles include Cardano (ADA), Tezos (XTZ), Tron (TRX), Synthetic Network Token (SNX), VeChain (VET) and EOS (EOS).
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Ethereum and the rest of the cryptocurrency market have been flashing some subtle signs of strength over the past few days, with buyers being in full control of the crypto’s price action. This has helped buck a multi-week trend of underperformance seen amongst all altcoins, with Bitcoin’s rally happening almost entirely in isolation of the rest of the market. Where Ethereum trends in the mid-term may depend largely on whether or not bulls can sustain the newfound momentum they have created. One analyst is watching closely for a move up towards $850 in the near-term. At the time of writing, Ethereum is trading up just under 7% at its current price of $730. This marks a notable rebound from its recent lows of $560 set on the 24th of the month. The crypto’s recent strength has come about as Bitcoin’s rally takes a slight pause, with the recent rejection at highs of $28,500 sparking a consolidation phase. This has allowed altcoins – including Ethereum – to gain some momentum. Ethereum’s rally may just be getting started. One trader is now expecting it to see a move up towards somewhere between $800 and $850. He notes that strength on its BTC pair may drive this movement. “Sticking to the plan for ETH/BTC pairing. Next up 29, than 315. This should trigger some very solid movement on the USDT pairing. $800-$850.” Image Courtesy of NekoZ. Source: ETHBTC on TradingView.
The coming few days should shed light on where altcoins will trend in the mid-term, as it may depend entirely on Ethereum. Featured image from Unsplash.
Charts from TradingView.
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