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March 28, 2024

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The Coin Collector’s Guide: The Maximum Effort Edition

Bitfury dumps stock in a bitcoin miner, Chainlink is no longer dependent on Ethereum, and ETH doesn’t care, because the whales are swimming, and almost everyone else is putting in maximum effort  Ripple still sucks, though.

It’s time for your Friday coin rundown. Let’s see what happened.

Here are your top ten coins.

Bitcoin

market cap $334,121,269,129

The problem with Bitcoin only miners is centralization. No. The coin isn’t centralized—we all know that—but the operations themselves run into the same problems as any centralized currency. If your bets are only on Bitcoin, then anything that produces a system shock to the coin is going to ripple out and affect the way you construct your daily operations.

Such is the case of Hut 8 Mining (HUT.T). Bitfury signed on with Hut 8 back in September on the notion that Hut would become Bitfury’s forward face. Sadly, though, they’ve hit the skids in recent months, dropping $0.40 and prompting a selloff.

If Bitcoin’s a bit too price-heavy for you right now, consider Hive Blockchain Technologies (HIVE.V). They’re diverse and smart enough to bet on multiple different coins, so their risk is more spread out.

Just sayin’.

Source: coingecko.com

Ethereum

market cap $62,478,617,807

If you thought you were going to be able to set up a little side business mining Ethereum once ETH2.0 goes into full swing, there’s some news that came out this way that may put a damper on your plans.

Grayscale Investments, the firm behind Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC.Q) and Grayscale Ethereum Trust (ETHE.Q) (as well as trusts for for Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash) sunk $100 million into Bitcoin and Ethereum respectively this week.

Grayscale added 131,402 Ethereum worth approximately $74 million and 1,313 Bitcoin worth approximately $24 million on December 9th. Clearly, Grayscale’s looking to get involved in the potential upcoming staking craze for Ethereum, buying their way with maximum effort and lots of doughbucks into the top staking contenders.

That’s your competition.

Source: coingecko.com

XRP/Ripple
market cap $25,073,129,113

Here’s another reason why no one should ever buy XRP.

When a insider in a public company dumps a load of their shares onto the open market for cash, they have to file disclosure papers with an appropriate regulatory body. It’s meant to be a fair and impartial system that eliminates any unforeseen advantages that insiders over folks who don’t have the knowledge of the company’s internal workings.

XRP is technically not a security. Yet. And therefore, when the company dumps millions of dollars worth of XRP each quarter they’re under no obligation to tell anyone why. Their reasoning, though? Because if they didn’t, the company would not be profitable.

Honestly, that’s enough of an indictment right there, to admit that the senior bigwigs behind the scenes at Ripple headquarters do not actually believe in their own cryptocurrency.

No. Not a fan.

Source: coingecko.com

 

Tether
market cap $19,792,797,613

News came out this week that while Tether may not be the number one cryptocurrency by market cap, nor really anywhere close to that accolade, it does however hold the top spot in trading volume. In fact, the metrics show USDT as having as much trading volume as the top three cryptocurrencies combined – those being BTC, ETH and XRP.

It’s not much of a surprise, if you think about it. It’s pegged to the United States dollar and therefore would be the go-to first-choice for any company or outfit looking to offer a cryptocurrency option. Then there’s the decentralized finance angle, and of course, organized crime. Tether may be a stablecoin, but it’s still a cryptocurrency and therefore travels borders in much more of a unregulated fashion than fiat currency does.

But there’s a question regarding its longevity. China’s been experimenting with a central bank backed coin, as have a number of other countries, and you have to wonder just how long it is before USDC—backed by actual real dollars on a $1 to 1 coin basis—comes along to usurp USDT’s space. It’ll be a considerable shock, to say the least, when it’s revealed that the company behind Tether can’t fulfill their obligations.

Source: coingecko.com

Bitcoin Cash

market cap $4,816,379,297

A little over a month ago, we printed a story about a man going around in a city promoting Bitcoin Cash by leaving cash prizes for people to find. Now apparently Bitcoin Man, as his instagram page names him, came to Fresno.

The guy behind it says that he’s going to this effort to help people struggling financially because of the coronavirus, and to educate people about cryptocurrency. He does this by using QR codes hidden throughout the city.

Keep an eye out if you’re living in California.

Source: coingecko.com

 

Litecoin

market cap $4,754,628,229

This week The Litecoin Foundation announced a partnership with Hub to ‘deliver virtual and hybrid events to the crypto industry.’ The effort is geared towards increasing interactions and communication between the 1,000,000 Litecoin members spread out across the world.

“With the pandemic still affecting the globe, we were searching for a platform that could effectively deliver virtual events for our global community. We are excited to partner with Hub to continue to engage with our community in a new and even more engaging way,” said Charlie Lee, litecoin’s creator and the managing director of its foundation.

Hub is a crypto-based community platform that offers rewards for engagement and helps communities by providing identity profiles based on interactions with other users.

Source: coingecko.com

 

Chainlink

market cap $4,592,526,501

Chainlink’s enjoyed increased demand this week as their price feed has been going up everyday and they’ve been drawing endorsements from more participants across the crypto-sphere. The latest one comes from Prosper after the new protocol finished its mainnet integration built with Chainlink’s Oracle network.

Prosper is a decentralized short-term prediction market built on the Binance smart chain. Think Augur but better.

“Prosper will use Chainlink Oracle Price Feeds on both Binance Smart Chain and Ethereum to bring about the most decentralized and liquid prediction markets in the DeFi landscape,” said Prosper in a statement.

Source: coingecko.com

Polkadot

market cap $4,367,333,015

Earlier this week Polkadot found its way to the Changelly PRO exchange, where users can now deposit DOT directly to their accounts and trade pairings with bitcoin, ethereum and USDT. Functionally, it’s meant to connect private and public chains, public and permissionless networks, oracles and future tech that hasn’t been created yet, facilitating an internet where independent blockchains can share information and transactions in a trustless fashion using DOT’s relay chain.

While breakthroughs are happening seemingly every week, we’re not quite there yet so DOT is a coin like any other to be bought, sold, traded and given away. Right now, we’re looking at ETH2.0 as being the first major option towards building this trustless society everyone keeps talking about. If it fails, then we’ll see others put in an effort elsewhere.

I’ll withhold my judgments until later.

Source: coingecko.com

Cardano

market cap: $4,350,176,314

This week we learned that Bondly, a decentralized e-commerce platform, will be the first DeFi project to operate on Cardano as part of the platform’s new Goguen smart contract functionality.

The rollout effort, scheduled to be done by Feb. 2021, allows decentralized apps to be built on the network and introduces DeFi projects to Cardano’s ecosystem.

Charles Hoskinson, the CEO of IOHK, which owns and operates Cardano, said that the development will allow “DeFi to live up to its true potential, ultimately scaling to completely replace the global digital financial system.”

Source: coingecko.com

Binance Coin

market cap $4,029,436,232

This week, Binance announced that it had integrated its smart chain into Chainlink’s decentralized oracle platform. Ergo, Binance Smart Chain now supports Chainlink, which means the latter doesn’t have to rely on Ethereum, and it’s lack of scaling effort now. The addition allows Binance’s Smart Chain to run decentralized finance applications, posing a threat to Ethereum’s dominance.

“By integrating Chainlink, Binance Smart Chain can now support a robust ecosystem of externally connected DeFi applications and numerous other smart contract verticals such as gaming, insurance, and supply chain management. Chainlink oracles are accessible on Binance Smart Chain without any dependencies on Ethereum,” according to a spokesperson from Binance.

Source: coingecko.com

—Joseph Morton

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