Daily Archives: March 27, 2017

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What is The Future of Cryptocurrency?

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What is The Future of Cryptocurrency?

  

Bitcoin is experiencing high volatility

Currently, Bitcoin is experiencing high volatility that it maybe caused by the recent SEC impediment to create the first bitcoin ETF, or exchange traded fund.Some people in the crypto community were confident about the U.S. Securities and exchange commission positive decision that this hope drove the price, allowing bitcoin to reach its new all time highs.

Then, the SEC announcement about its decision to reject the Winklevoss’ proposal affected the bitcoin and other digital currencies market, but – after a first drop – the greatest part of the digital currencies are currently experiencing new highs.Right now, Ether, or the cryptocurrency that fuels the Ethereum blockchain, reached its new all time high with a price of $40 at present time.

That said, leaving aside the price-related matters, the SEC decision opened another important question: can bitcoin and other digital currencies survive without any approval by institutions? Is it true – as said by Bank of Canada – that it cannot reach a massive diffusion without any formal regulation?

Where will crypto be in the future?

Of course, I don’t have a crystal ball, but for me Bitcoin – with capital B, or the technology behind it: the blockchain – will have a prosperous future.Its importance goes far beyond bitcoin and payment transactions as this is just one – and the most banal – of its application.

Davide Menegaldo, COO at Helperbit, said:

“I would imagine this scenario: in the future financial instruments linked to bitcoin will be finally approved. High finance will invest into the cryptocurrency (more than the 300M expected for the bitcoin ETF approval). I’m thinking about 5-10 times the current price. Bitcoin will not necessarily be used as a method of payment (it depends also on how the size block / Segregated witness / LN matter will proceed or will not), but primarily it will be used as a store of value. However, there will be much more competition as a payment method because some banks could issue their own crypto currency, while the current ones will remain a handful. Ethereum will consolidate as the second most important infrastructure, and 99% of ICO tokens will have any value”

Ethereum future

The same thing happens with the Ethereum blockchain. Ether is only one of its possible applications, so people could not use ether as a method of direct payment, but the main important revolution brought by Ethereum are the so-called smart contracts and we will hear a lot about them in the next future.Smart contracts, in fact, allow a huge possibility of applications. They are computer protocols that have the main purpose of executing the terms of a contract in order to satisfy common contractual conditions without the need of trusted intermediaries.

This way, smart contracts can be used as the deepest layer of any kind of application development and not just to set payment-related transactions.According to Leonardo Pedretti (Ethereum Italia and Etherevolution), in five years from now, Ethereum will be the undiscussed leader as the main platform to be used for development and smart contract execution:

“Users will use Ethereum even without knowing it. The same thing happens today when you download an app, without knowing deeply the technology used behind it,” explained us Pedretti.

Dash and Zcash

Everyday we experience the birth of a new digital currency, but only a few will survive in the next future, as said by our friends above.Two of those crypto might be Dash and Zcash (ZEC) that recently experienced new higher prices.At present time, Dash and Zcash have respectively a value of $100 and $70. Of course, their monetary values mean nothing in terms of what will happen in future, but we can say that they are showing a high interest.

Also, Zcash provides a revolutionary cryptocurrency that is fully anonymous, so the data showed on the blockchain doesn’t provide any info about the amount or the people involved in the transaction. This feature may could be vital for Zcash future because no other digital currency – together with Monero (XMR) – allows this kind of complete anonymity and privacy.

Today Monero ($123) reached the fourth place according to its market capitalization ($255.773.115), right after bitcoin, ether and dash. Created back in 2014, it soon doubled – and then quadrupled – its price. This renewed interested in the Monero currency might be caused by the low bitcoin scalability. In fact, it is faster and with lower fees than bitcoin.

This means that if the scalability-related issue of bitcoin won’t be solved soon (Hard-fork scenario), altcoins will increase their value, popularity and market cap, so they will be more used to as a payment gateway, while bitcoin will be more and more exploited as a store of value. But this only if the block size debate won’t be solved soon…Of course, as I said, we can only do speculations and predictions as we don’t really know what can happen next, but according to me Bitcoin and blockchains will be never forgotten and will be more and more used in the next five years.

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

Markethive

Some of the Largest Cryptocurrency Premines in History

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Some of the Largest Cryptocurrency Premines in History

 
Premining CryptoCurrencies

There have been several dozen premined cryptocurrencies throughout the past few years. Not all of these projects amounted to much, although some of them successfully gained some traction in one way or another. Below are some currencies with significant premines, although not all of them used this concept for nefarious purposes.

 Gulden

                                                 

It has to be said, the Gulden project had a 10% premine reserved for development, marketing, and other miscellaneous expenses. With a premine of 10% – 170 million coins out of a total 1.68 billion – there is some reason for concern. Despite the premine, however, Gulden – ticker NLG – has managed to gain some traction in the real world, although its success is limited to The Netherlands. Gulden is still under active development to this very day, according to their bitcoin talk thread. Gulden has a US$8.655m market cap with 342,46 million NLG in circulation

FuelCoin

                                                       

FuelCoin is a fully premined coin for redistribution. The bitcoin talk thread mentions how the 50 million coins were held by a trusted third-party for a fair distribution. 10 million of those coins were used for charity donations, the remaining 40 million coins were to be used for marketing efforts. Fullcoin also maintains a 2% annual inflation through its proof-of-stake system. It appears Fuelcoin is no longer actively developed, even though the currency still has a US$272,000 market cap with over 100 million coins in circulation.

Startcoin

                                                        

Startcoin is the second project to be linked to Max Keiser, who is quite a popular figure among cryptocurrency enthusiasts. Unfortunately, Startcoin also came with a 50% premine, which immediately raised a red flag. Despite developing the StartJOIN platform – which uses StartCoin – the currency never amounted to much. It is anything but surprising to see Startcoin’s market cap drop to US$164,488 with over 45 million START in circulation.

Auroracoin

                                                 

When Auroracoin was first introduced, a lot of people seemed to be on board with the idea. The cryptocurrency is designed to serve as a new currency for anyone living in Iceland. Its 50% premine was distributed through an airdrop in 2014, which put AUR into the hands of every Iceland resident. Even though most recipients decided to sell their Auroroacoin right away, the currency still holds some value today. Its market cap sits at US$1.244 million, with 8,658,439 AUR in circulation.

Curecoin

                                                  curecoin logo

Curecoin is a very different project from the rest, as it is an effective reward for protein-folding. This process is used to aid scientists in researching cures for diseases and other illnesses. A total of 28,692,524.32 coins will be in circulation, of which 23,226,284.65 were premined. These coins are distributed to all participants, regardless of the mining hardware used. Close to 95% of all coins are issued to folders, whereas the rest of the funds are used for project development donations and developers. Curecoin has a market cap of US$1,485,223 with 26,431,310 CURE in circulation.

 Paycoin

                                                  

Perhaps the biggest scam coin of all time is Paycoin. It is not surprising to find out Paycoin also had a significant premine, as 12 million coins were kept in control of the developers. Considering there were only 12.5 million XPY to be issued at it speak, it was evident this project would not get very far. Paycoin was involved in many different controversies and eventually turned into a complete scam. Despite this rocky history, the currency still has a US$28,176 market cap with 11,671,263 XPY in circulation, quite surprising to say the least.

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

Markethive

Will The Bitcoin System Change Drastically in 2017

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Will The Bitcoin System Change Drastically in 2017

Bitcoin continues to be as popular as it is volatile. Prices have been fluctuating since the beginning of the year, hitting an all-time high at more than $1,300 per unit a couple of weeks ago. Nevertheless, value has yet to stabilize for a number of factors.

The cryptocurrency market has more competitors entering the game every day, with alternatives like Ethereum and Litecoin gaining more ground in the digital world. Still, they all suffer similar setbacks when it comes to prices.

Below, we take a look at the seemingly unusual phenomenon that has been affecting Bitcoin value over the last couple of months. Cryptocurrency still has to pass some big hurdles if it ever wants to stabilize as a trustworthy option to gold and bonds.

The market is small and it moves fast

When compared to precious metal markets like gold and silver, the market size of Bitcoin is so small that it makes it too easy for someone to come one day and make a major investment that would significantly impact currency movements.

Forbes estimates that with just a $50 million buyout of Bitcoin in one day, the market would flip causing volatile price hikes and plunges across the world.

Doing this, of course, is not as easy as it sounds, but it remains a possibility that fuels distrust among traditional investors in safer value-preservation assets.

Is Bitcoin as good as Gold or bonds?

While Bitcoin has been gaining many supporters and endorsements that legitimize it as a real-world currency, it still doesn’t have as much credibility as more traditional methods such as stock shares and precious metals.

The inherent issues of Bitcoin trading make it a hard sell to most people not well-versed in next-generation finances and transactions, and particularly cryptocurrency.

Moreover, there is no regulatory body creates rules for the Bitcoin market which is why is so appealing to certain groups on the Internet. However, economists have been increasingly talking about digital money could end up in its adoption and regulation.

There is a hard fork in the Bitcoin horizon

There is an unresolved paradigm that deals with how the Bitcoin transaction system works at its core, but that issue is coming to an end in what many predict will split the virtual currency in two.

Essentially, the Bitcoin transaction process deals with exchanges through a network that can no longer support the high-demand of users, miners, developers, and others that use it every day, thus slowing and halting its growth both in price and adoption.

Two potential solutions have come up, but only one of them will be implemented by developers of the Bitcoin network once community consensus reaches 95% for either option.

The first, Bitcoin Unlimited, would grant greater power over the network to miners, who would decide to “increase” its capacity if and when needed. This option has faced some technical difficulties in the past during its development phase.

Segregated Witness, on the other hand, would “double” the capacity of the network and allow a greater influx of transactions while also retaining decentralized control over it. This, however, is not the greatest long-term solution since it is still limited.

Pressure from third parties to implement such a framework that would enhance transaction volumes in the Bitcoin network. The impending possibility of change has the market on its toes which also explains the radical price changes.

Either choice will have a permanent impact in Bitcoin as we know it, effectively splitting the cryptocurrency into two parallel systems that will compete and affect each other’s price with a high projected correlation.

 

David Ogden
Entrepreneur

Source: Coinbase

 

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member