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Banks will be required to work with crypto, e-money and CBDCs to survive
Image a scenario where you need different messengers to send different types of messages — for example, WhatsApp for text messages, Viber for audio, Telegram for video, etc. Rather inconvenient, right? But this is exactly what happens in finance: There is no way to send both digital fiat money and cryptocurrency from a bank account without extra steps. It’s not affecting the masses just yet, but after the issuing of national digital currencies, or central bank digital currencies, in the next few years over the world, the situation is about to become complicated. We need to start looking for a solution now.
CBDCs require a multi-format framework
The traditional financial system can’t brush off new technologies anymore. According to the Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance, the number of cryptocurrency users has almost tripled from 35 million people in 2018 to 101 million people in Q3 2020. Another…
Bitcoin (BTC) bears looked on in disbelief as BTC price rallied to over $57,800 on Feb. 21, sparking a major altcoin rally. It seems bull flags are being printed one after the other on coins like Polkadot and Cardano, which are playing out predictably.
However, one coin that is not getting the limelight it deserves right now is Yearn.finance (YFI), and at present, it looks like a period of aggressive selling could be coming to an end with a potential 50% move to the upside being imminent. But first, let’s take a look at why it has been struggling recently.
Troubled waters for Yearn
Much to the dismay of investors and traders on Jan. 20, Yearn.finance retweeted a gif of Pepe the Frog dressed as a wizard, which linked to the proposal entitled “YIP-57: Funding Yearn’s…
The price of Bitcoin (BTC) dipped to as low as $53,905 on Binance overnight, recording a sudden 6% drop. But despite the minor correction, the price of Bitcoin quickly recovered thereafter, reaching a new all-time high above $57,800 on Feb. 21.
Why did Bitcoin drop and recover so quickly?
Although Bitcoin saw a steep drop within merely hours, analysts pinpointed that it fell to the exact bottom of a short-term trendline.
John Cho, the Director of Global Expansion at Ground X, noted that the drop was a liquidity fill at a lower price.
$BTC just needed a little liquidity that’s all. https://t.co/XTeAYPROWz pic.twitter.com/zlkcBAAI4x
— John Cho (@JohnCho__) February 21, 2021
A liquidity fill simply means when an asset drops after stagnating to fill buy orders at the bottom of the range
A drop was expected because Bitcoin was consolidating with the…
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The staking race: Late entrant Ethereum lags behind rivals with Eth2
The Proof-of-Stake model has been around since 2012, when it emerged as an alternative way to achieve consensus than Bitcoin’s computationally heavy Proof-of-Work. However, it’s taken until now for PoS to take off, spurred by the launch of staking on high-profile platforms including Ethereum 2.0, Polkadot, and Cardano.
Despite epic price rises since the start of the year and the fact that it’s the second-biggest cryptocurrency by total market capitalization, Eth2 lags behind competitors in the staking rankings. So, why isn’t Ether (ETH) the number one staking cryptocurrency?
A brief history of proof-of-stake
Back in 2012, Peercoin developers Sunny King and Scott Nadal proposed a PoS proposal as part of a hybrid consensus model. In 2013, the Nxt genesis block hailed the first pure proof-of-stake blockchain, which Blackcoin rapidly followed in early 2014. At that time, crypto was still relatively niche, and consensus models, in general, were…
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Blockchain tech will bridge the gap between DApps and enterprises
Blockchain technology is revolutionizing the way we interact, transact and share information, with many experts predicting it will be the most disruptive technology in the next decade. After little structural innovation since the 19th and 20th centuries, decentralization has brought industries such as finance, media and technology closer to transparency, freedom from intermediaries and heightened efficiency.
Traditional enterprises rely on a centralized closed-door structure. In contrast, decentralized finance projects are being built with the ethos that governance should be decentralized and democratic. Transitioning society to decentralized platforms can make many services safer, more accessible and more transparent than ever before. The increasing interest in the space speaks to a collective desire to have more control over critical elements of our lives, especially our finances.
While decentralization helps to solve issues like transparency and efficiency, the lack of a trusted central authority means that decentralized applications, or DApps, must…
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Exchange tokens benefit as centralized exchanges battle with DeFi platforms
Fresh institutional and retail investor inflows into the cryptocurrency market have led to bull market conditions for many top tokens from blue-chips like Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) to more recently established DeFi projects like AAVE and Synthetix (SNX).
Exchange tokens are another easily overlooked sub-sector of the market but they have been performing exceptionally well in 2021 as increases in trading volumes results in a larger pool of fees to collect when the exchange’s native token is used for settlement. Native exchange tokens are also typically used as the base pair for funding new listings and token buybacks.
Here are three of the top-performing exchange tokens in 2021 that continue to see upside potential as new investors flood into the market.
Similar to the experience of CryptoKitty users in 2017, the decentralized finance community has discovered that the main drawback of increased usage of the Ethereum network is…