Crypto Guides, Knowledge & Insights

Bitcoin Futures World-Wide Hit $14 Billion for the First Time

IN BRIEF　　BTC futures hit an all-time high on Feb. 6, as the top cryptocurrency neared $41,000.　　This comes as the wider cryptocurrency market saw several days of record performance.　　Traders are capitalizing on cryptocurrency derivatives to maximize returns.　　The aggregate value of all Bitcoin (BTC) futures reached $14 billion on Feb. 6, according to Skew data.　　Bitcoin For the Future　　The total value of all unsettled Bitcoin (BTC) futures in the cryptocurrency market soared to over $14 billion yesterday according to cryptocurrency analytics firm, Skew.　　The record valuation follows a recent BTC rally to just under $41,000. Binance, the largest exchange by volume, led the futures charge, accounting for just under half the aggregate trading volume for BTC futures.　　The top cryptocurrency exchange also led the tally for open interest in BTC-based derivatives, with $2.33 billion worth of contracts unsettled.　　The most famous bitcoin futures provider, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), came third on the tally ($2.05 billion). Rival exchange OKEx held second ($2.21 billion).　　A futures contract allows its owner to purchase the underlying asset at a pre-agreed price at some specified time in the future. Unlike an options contract, the holder is obligated to make the purchase.　　$1.5 Trillion on the Horizon　　With the cryptocurrency market‘s record performance

2021-02-08Deep Dive

What Are the Risks of Governance Tokens?

Many of today‘s leading DeFi projects are popular because of their governance tokens – something that hasn’t really been the case back in the ICO boom of 2017.　　Now, the yield farming hype has created many new governance tokens to control a projects properties. Yet, these tokens have been abused in various ways, acting as a monetary incentive instead of a true representation of voting power.　　In theory, a governance token gives the token holder voting power to influence the DeFi projects direction. For instance, community members can launch new proposals to change particular properties for the project. Further, governance token holders can vote on each proposal.　　The ultimate goal is to create a self-governed decentralized community as it allows every stakeholder to discuss and vote on how to manage the protocol or project.　　Compound, for example, believes that “by placing COMP directly into the hands of users and applications, an increasingly large ecosystem will be able to upgrade the protocol, and will be incentivized to collectively steward the protocol into the future with good governance.”　　Governance tokens, however, come with a certain number of risks. This article discusses three potential challenges:　　The risks of trading governance tokens　　The risks of proportional distribution　　The risks of governance communication　　　　Risks

2021-02-08Deep Dive

Is Michael Saylor’s Bitcoin Playbook A Success Already?

Key Bitcoin fundamentals like Hash rate and on-chain indicators like exchange outflows are recording significant jumps already suggesting corporations are on a Bitcoin buy spree again. Michael Saylor is putting his money where his mouth is and he owns 17,732 Bitcoins ~$664 million himself.　　Key takeaways:　　Bitcoin hash rate records new ATH and hits 179.19 EH/s　　11,754 Bitcoins~ $438 Million scooped off from Gemini in just an hour　　MicroStrategy leading by example for crypto adoption　　Bitcoin Hash Rate Hits New ATH while Exchange Outflow Rate Spikes　　The Bitcoin bull run driven by MicroStrategy is only getting strong with thought leadership from Michael Saylor who is leading by example.　　From an investor point of view rise in Bitcoin hash rate is healthy as it indicates more and more miners are joining Bitcoin Mining and are using efficient hardware to mine Bitcoins. Bitcoin hash rate hit an all time high last time on Oct. 18th, 2020 hitting 162.263 Million Tera hashes per second and it spiked to 179.19 EH/s today. Max Keiser who is praised by Bitcoin community for predicting correct long term Bitcoin price is also follower of “price follows Hash” theory.　　On-chain analyst Willy Woo shared recent exchange outflow data that reveals Bitcoin price may see a movement

2021-02-07Deep Dive

Charles Hoskinson: Cardano will ‘kick Ethereum 2.0’s ass’

It is an open secret within the crypto community that Charles Hoskinson, former co-founder of Ethereumand its creator Vitalik Buterin are not the best of friends. As Hoskinson has stated in the past, the two have parted ways due to disagreements over the further development of Ethereum.　　In a new interview with Ben Armstrong, founder of BitBoy Crypto, the Cardano creator again criticized Ethereum 2.0and laid out why his project will be the superior platform in the future. Hoskinson expressed fundamental doubts about the sustainability of ETH 2.0.　　Opening the interview, Hoskinson first and foremost criticized Ethereum 2.0‘s scaling model, stating that ETH “has put itself in a position where they’re betting on Optimistic Zk rollups and these other things.” On the differences in terms of scaling, Hoskinson noted that it is much easier for Cardano to achieve a high number of transactions per second (TPS):　　“We‘ve chosen a radically different scaling models. And actually I think both of them have the potential working, but I think Vitalik’s are a little bit riskier from an engineering and research point of view. This is why it is so difficult for them to get Eth 2.0 out. They have chosen to shard all that stuff.

2021-02-07Deep Dive

KardiaChain Expands KAI Membership Ecosystem With NEM Partnership

KardiaChain, a hybrid blockchain solution for enterprises and government, announced on Twitter that they would be partnering up with NEM – a smart asset management blockchain.　　“KardiaChain Forms Partnership with @NEMofficial - a 2015-founded blockchain veteran with many recent collaborations with DeFi projects - to Expand Ecosystem for KAI Membership Dapp including users from the NEM community, and technology exploration. $XEM.”　　NEM also tweeted about the partnership, noting that the partnership will accelerate decentralized development.　　“KardiaChains KAI Membership App is integrating $XEM to support #NEM ecosystem growth. @KardiaChain is an interoperable blockchain platform, built on their Dual Node tech. The partnership accelerates decentralized development, utilizing both sides technologies and networks.”　　Finer Details Of The Partnership　　As per the partnership, Kardiachain will integrate NEMs XEM token into their KAI Membership dApp to boost technological integration from both projects. As of now, the Member dApp already has north of 100,000 global users. Post-XEM integration, KAI will see an influx of new users ushering in from the NEM community. New and old users will be able to experience many real-world and DeFi applications in the membership dApp.　　Plus, having successfully launched its mainnet in December 2020, KardiaChain also combined it with the Dual Node technology. This will allow KardiaChain

2021-02-07Deep Dive

Glassnode CTO Dispels the Myth That Bitcoin Ownership Is Highly Concentrated

Earlier this week, Rafael Schultze-Kraft, CTO at blockchain data and intelligence provider Glassnode, did an analysis of “the distribution of Bitcoin across network participants”.　　In a blog post published on Tuesday (February 2), the Glassnode CTO referred to a Bloomberg report (from last November) titled “Bitcoin Whales Ownership Concentration Is Rising During Rally.” He said that problem with such reports is that “that analyze the distribution of BTC across network addresses. This leads to misleading statistics, which result in false narratives around BTC ownership among stakeholders.”　　He then pointed out two problems with this approach:　　“Not all Bitcoin addresses should be treated equal.” (e.g. an address belonging to a crypto exchange can hold funds for millions of individuals)　　A Bitcoin address is not an “account.” (e.g. one person can own/control multiple addresses)　　Here are the results of Glassnodes analysis:　　The Bitcoin supply held by the smallest participants (shrimps and crabs) has increased by 130% since 2017, and the second smallest (i.e. octopuses and fish) has increased by 14%.　　As for the larger entities, i.e. “dolphins + sharks” and “whales + humpbacks”, they have decreased their Bitcoin holdings by -3% and -7% respectively.　　Glassnode goes on to say that they found “on a more short-term time window” a significant

2021-02-07Deep Dive

Crypto custodian Protego gets national charter from the OCC

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has granted another crypto firm a national charter.　　Per an announcement shared with Cointelegraph today, Washington-based institutional crypto custodian Protego is the second crypto-native firm to get national licensing from the OCC.　　The new charter is conditional, and Protego is authorized as a national trust bank rather than a traditional bank, meaning that it will not handle deposits. Interestingly, Protego is a relatively new firm and is still in the process of organizing. It will have 18 months to launch operations before the current charter expires.　　The OCC is the office of the U.S. Treasury responsible for regulating national banks. Over the past year, it has made much work of integrating crypto into that purview, including giving the first national charter of this kind to Anchorage just last month.　　Not everyone has been happy with the OCCs interest in onboarding crypto firms. A consortium of state banking regulators recently filed suit against the OCC over Figures application for a national charter, claiming that the OCC is stretching the definition of a bank beyond recognition.

2021-02-07Deep Dive

Unlocking Earning Opportunities with Staking, the PoS-Based Consensus

Staking through the Proof of Stake(PoS) consensus algorithm has proven to be a viable method of earning an income in the crypto space. Despite being a new concept emerging after the Proof of Work mechanism(PoW), PoS introduces a less labor-intensive way users can make huge profits.　　The process involves making a certain amount of deposit on a staking wallet to qualify as a block validator. Contributing a more considerable amount of stakes ultimately lands you the highest chance of validating transactions on the PoS based digital asset.　　Essentially, it can also portray governance rights in that you become part of a community that makes implementations on behalf of the PoS ecosystem. In return, you garner staking rewards for rendering your services to the blockchain. The rewards are majorly the transaction fees used by the transacting parties.　　Later on, PoS extensions such as the Delegated Proof of Stake finally came into the limelight to solve the scalability issues PoW ecosystems experienced. Under the DPoS system, users must select a node operator who will oversee the networks governance.　　After a while, another PoS solution known as the Leased Proof of Stake arrived, whereby users can lease their stake to other nodes. Interestingly, under the LPoS system,

2021-02-07Deep Dive

Decentralized Exchanges Exploded on January 2021, Registering a New ATH in Volume

The use of decentralized exchanges has been increasing over the years. With cryptocurrencies making their way into the business world, activity in this sector is skyrocketing.　　Unlike a centralized exchange, a DEX (Decentralized exchange) has no central entity responsible for its operation. Instead, traders rely on a smart contract and the whole platform runs on the blockchain —generally Ethereum.　　This makes them slower and inefficient, but traders gladly embrace this temporary issue because, among many perks, they dont need to comply with KYC requirements and other regulations and norms beside what is written on the smart contract, token listings is easier, and yield farming makes them interesting.　　Decentralized Exchanges Are Booming　　The number of decentralized exchanges increased, and so did the activity on each of these new platforms. According to Dune Analytics statistics, during January 2021, trading volume on decentralized exchanges surpassed the $63 billion mark for the first time ever.　　This record is more than double the mark recorded during September 2020, when trading volume on DEXs came very close to touching $30 billion. This happened at the peak of the DeFi boom.　　According to Dune Analytics statistics, Uniswap is the undisputed leader in the sector, with over $25.8 billion traded in August. This figure

2021-02-05Deep Dive

Dash trade volumes soar 282% in 2020 as commercial adoption grows

Dash, a cryptocurrency analog for electronic cash, recorded impressive growth in 2020 as average daily trade volumes, users and retail payments grew considerably.　　During its fourth-quarter livestream on Thursday, Dash Core Group reported that average trade volumes jumped 282% year-over-year, from $9.8 million to $37.4 million. On a quarterly basis, average trade volumes increased by 48%.　　The total volume of payments hit $916 million, up 80% from the previous year. Commercial payment values rose 37.3% year-over-year, exceeding 22,000 transactions per day, which is reportedly higher than Bitcoin (BTC) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH)　　The quarterly report indicated that DASH is currently accepted as a payment method at thousands of stores, which is a reflection of growing mainstream adoption. “In January, Dash outperformed Bitcoin in terms of the number of brick-and-mortar retailers accepting digital payments in the United States,” Dash Core Group said.　　Merchant adoption got a boost in January after Dash partnered with CrayPay, a U.S. loyalty program, to enable Dash spending at major retailers, including American Eagle, CVS, Dominos Door Dash and Gap, among others.　　Dash‘s quarterly results follow a rare exchange delisting in January over the cryptocurrency’s alleged privacy features. Dash was grouped alongside Monero (XMR) and Zcash (ZEC) as a privacy coin that

2021-02-05Deep Dive

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