Yes, even cryptocurrency gets a birthday.
It’s time for your Friday coin rundown.
Here are your top ten coins.
Bitcoin
market cap $207,644,157,408
People are holding onto Bitcoin in record numbers. People on crypto-twitter and other places where conversations like this tend to happen call it the “HODLwave.” It’s a metric that shows the amount of BTC that hasn’t moved on the blockchain in the past year, which shows that investors are busy accumulating the coin rather than unloading it or shapeshifting it away.
“Bitcoin’s 1-year HODL wave—BTC unmoved on the blockchain over the last 365 days—has hit a new all-time high of 63%. Bitcoin’s HODL wave is up 1% since the start of July,” according to researchers at Cryptowatch, a crypto market data company owned by the Kraken exchange.
The last time this happened was in 2019, when BTC rallied from $4000 to $14,000.
Ethereum
market cap $38,499,159,467
Ethereum marked its 5th birthday yesterday. In the past five years, it’s grown from code on a page to become the second-biggest cryptocurrency by market cap. So that’s not a bad five year trajectory. It was, of course, the first and only general-purpose blockchain, until recently when other pretenders have arrived to stake their claim.
So happy birthday, Ethereum. Maybe when you can get your shit together vis a vis scaling, you’ll be worth owning.
XRP/Ripple
market cap $11,512,954,606
The ongoing class-action legal drama involving Ripple, the corporation behind XRP, has gone into another round. You’ll remember that Ripple filed a motion to dismiss the class action suit last month in an attempt to get the court to dismiss all three counts of fraud. Well—the opposition has filed a motion opposing the motion to dismiss, saying that the suit had in fact met the demands of the United States fraud law, having pointed out “over a dozen false or misleading statements made by Ripple and its CEO.”
This is the problem with centralization. If you have a storefront where you can hang a shingle, then you’re not centralized.
Tether
market cap $10,678,171,671
Tether did their best impression of a central bank this week by printing $300 million in USDT on Wednesday, and still lost their third place spot to XRP.
Bitfinex CTO, Paulo Ardoino, responded to a whale alert post to explain that this printing was for replenishing inventory on the Tron Network.
“Note this is an authorized but not issued transaction, meaning that this amount will be used as inventory for next period issuance requests,” says Ardoino.
Naturally, people on Twitter mocked him mercilessly for it because Twitter-people do that.
So Tether became FED printing money. They go Bbbbrrrrrrrrrr pic.twitter.com/233pXtnr1t
— Crypto Favs ⭐ (@cryptofavs) July 29, 2020
Bitcoin Cash
market cap $5,526,065,660
There’s another birthday on the list. BCH turns three on August 1 and the community is celebrating the network’s third birthday by doing its utmost to remind you that the coin still exists and that it’s totally worth buying. Come on, guys. It’s its birthday for crying out loud.
All kidding aside, developers have completed some upgrades over the past few years. Kind of like performing open heart surgery on a child born with a defective heart valve, and it’s now solidified itself as chief among also-rans.
Still, there’s a Bitcoin Cash Games website and their online casino is launching a leaderboard where you can win $3,000. So if you own bitcoin cash, pop in and play slots, keno and roulette.
My roulette strategy? Put it all on black. Good old black. Nothing beats black.
Cardano
market cap $4,301,602,611
Cardano’s much touted Shelley hard fork went live this week. The upgrade introduces stake pools and delegations. What this does is it allows for both traditional proof-of-stake, complete with primacy given to people with the greatest amount of coins, but also allows for those people to endorse other people to close the block.
Here’s what decrypt wrote about it:
“You can also operate something called a stake pool, which lets you stake other users’ coins on their behalf or delegate their coins so that someone else can stake them.”
Fairly neat.
“It’s a monumental achievement, but this doesn’t mean we’ll be standing still, and we’re looking forward to the delivery of the Voltaire and Goguen phases of the Cardano roadmap, which will see robust governance arrangements and smart contracts functionality put in place this year,” said Aparna Jue, IOHK’s product director.
Maybe by its next birthday, it’ll have smart contracts in place.
Bitcoin SV
market cap $4,219,029,820
Bitcoin SV had their inaugural DevCon this week, and apparently it drew thousands of people from over 80 countries. It focused on building the Bitcoin blockchain and proved that developers understand how important a massively scalable blockchain is when traders seem to care primarily about pump and dumps.
I’m half amused by all of this, because Bitcoin SV hasn’t exactly proven itself to be anything more than a pump and dump. At least not to me.
It was hosted by the Bitcoin Association in connection with nChain and WeAreDevelopers. The event brought together developers, startup founders and plenty of other enthusiasts. Personalities from the cryptocurrency world in attendance were Liu Xiahoui, Brendan Lee, Ryan X. Charles, Rafa Jimenez and more. Naturally, since nChain was there, Craig Wright had to make an appearance, offering a fireside chat with Steve Shadders.
Seriously, the ego on that guy, sitting down and pontificating like he’s FDR talking to the nation.
Litecoin
market cap $3,759,231,019
Earlier this week, a substantial amount of on-chain litecoin moved from around on the blockchain, suggesting that there may be some volatility coming.
“Spikes in Token Age Consumed can sometimes signal changes in the behavior of certain long-term holders, and tend to precede increased volatility in the coin’s price action,” according to Santiment, a behavior analytics platform.
Predicting how cryptocurrency is going to fluctuate is more the province of the Tao Te Ching or crystal balls, but there are some real-world effects, which show distinct correlations. One of these is that a certain level of correlation can be found when old tokens change hands.
In October 2019 LTC dropped 16% after Santiment recorded a good amount of coins moving between addresses. Earlier this month, Litecoin jumped 14% when the ratio of tokens changing hands increased.
Binance Coin
market cap $3,046,485,926
It’s become something of a truism. If the government can get access to a core company behind a cryptocurrency, eventually they will. Now it’s Binance’s turn—as the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is preparing to put Binance coin (BNB) and other tokens on the Binance blockchain under the microscope.
The SEC wrote in a memo on Wednesday that it intends to give the contract to California-based CipherTrace.
“CipherTrace products are the only known blockchain forensics and risk intelligence tool that can support BNB and all tokens on the Binance network,” according to the SEC.
Crypto.com coin
market cap $3,039,139,623
A quick glance at the 1 year performance gives us that crypto.com coin, or CRO, is up 182.3% on the year, suggesting that this is one of the best performing coins on the market. The company insists that it’s not from speculation, but instead from their marketing, including promotions and sponsorships, and by attracting new business that have brought users and interest in CRO.
But it’s not hard to see that if you had have bought in a year ago, you’d be much richer today.
—Joseph Morton