Altcoins

Dubai Based Crypto Investment Fund to Convert $750 Million Worth of BTC Into ADA and DOT Tokens

26/02/2021 by Idelto Editor

A Dubai based crypto-based investment fund, FD7 Ventures says it will offload bitcoins worth $750 million and will use the proceeds to increase positions in Cardano and Polkadot tokens. According to FD7 Ventures, this switch to the two altcoins will help the fund to better serve the interests of investors who are looking to diversify their portfolios.

Altcoins Preferred

In his remarks following this announcement, Prakash Chand, the managing director at FD7 Ventures, touts the potential of the two altcoins while claiming that BTC “is actually pretty useless.” Chand added:

Projects such as Cardano, Polkadot and Ethereum are the foundation of the new internet and Web 3.0.

The managing director adds that after spending time with the founders of both projects, he is “willing to bet that each of Ethereum, Cardano and Polkadot will be more valuable than Bitcoin within the next few years.”

ADA and DOT Surging

Meanwhile, since the start of the new year, both Cardano’s ADA and Polkadot’s DOT have surged with the latter setting a new all-time high (ATH) of over $41 on February 20. However, at the time of writing, DOT, which is the sixth-ranked token according to Messari data, was trading at just over $29. On the other hand, the token’s market cap was just under $27 billion.

In the meantime, the fifth-ranked ADA token surged to its 52 week high of $1.18 on February 25 after starting the same month at $0.175. Since the start of the year 2021, ADA is now up by more than 500% and this growth has seen token move up the crypto market cap rankings. At the time of writing, the ADA token was trading $1.05 translating to a market capitalization of $32 billion.

In the meantime, FD7 Ventures says it expects to complete the conversion of BTC into the two altcoins by mid-to-end of March.

What are your thoughts on FD7 Ventures’ decision to increase its altcoin holdings? Tell us what you think in the comments section below.

Bitfinex and Tether Fined $18.5M in Settlement With NY Attorney General, Both Firms Barred From Trading in the City

24/02/2021 by Idelto Editor

Bitfinex and Tether have been banned from operating in New York and must pay a fine of $18.5 million as part of a settlement with the New York Attorney General’s (NYAG’s) office over a case dating back to 2019.

In a statement on Tuesday, NY Attorney General Letitia James accused the two entities of hiding severe losses from investors. “Bitfinex and Tether recklessly and unlawfully covered-up massive financial losses to keep their scheme going and protect their bottom lines,” said James.

She continued: “Tether’s claims that its virtual currency was fully backed by U.S. dollars at all times was a lie. These companies obscured the true risk investors faced and were operated by unlicensed and unregulated individuals and entities dealing in the darkest corners of the financial system.”

Per the statement, an NY Attorney General’s investigation found that the companies made false statements about the backing of tether, with Bitfinex using Tether’s funds to clandestinely cover an $850 million financial hole at its bank Crypto Capital in Panama.

According to the investigation, from 2017, Tether had no access to the banking system and did not have reserves to back the tether (USDT) in circulation at the time. Bitfinex stresses that it did not lose any money, claiming Crypto Capital’s funds were confiscated by governments in Portugal, Poland and the U.S.

Bitfinex and Tether have now been barred from having any trading activity with the citizens of New York, as a result. The NYAG requested that the two companies submit regular reports on core business functions. Tether must also offer public disclosures, by category, of the assets backing tether, including disclosure of any loans or receivables to or from affiliated entities.

Tether published a statement on Tuesday “admitting to no wrongdoing.” It argued:

The Attorney General’s Office concluded, in essence, that we could have done better in publicly disclosing these events. Contrary to online speculation, after two and half years there was no finding that Tether ever issued tethers without backing, or to manipulate crypto prices.

What do you think about Bitfinex and Tether settling with the NYAG’s Office? Let us know in the comments section below.

Binance Suspends Ethereum and ERC-20 Token Withdrawals Before Quickly Reversing Course

23/02/2021 by Idelto Editor

The rollercoaster-ride in cryptocurrency prices on Monday was accompanied by Binance’s fresh restrictions for ethereum and ERC-20 tokens.

Ethereum Network Congestion Fingered as the Culprit for the Temporary Halt

Through the official Binance Twitter account, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges by volume, announced that it had “temporarily suspended withdrawals of $ETH and ethereum-based tokens” due to network congestion while underscoring that user funds were SAFU (Secure Asset Fund for Users).

#Binance has temporarily suspended withdrawals of $ETH and Ethereum-based tokens due to high network congestion.

Rest assured funds are #SAFU and we apologize for any inconvenience caused.

Updates to follow.

— Binance (@binance) February 22, 2021

Although Binance has since reversed its earlier decision and restored service in an announcement 37 minutes after its first tweet, traders were quick to pile on with the criticism. This latest move came amid a spike in Ethereum gas costs and a backlog that quickly escalated past 151,000 pending transactions. Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao corroborated the stress on the system, noting that gas shot past “+1200” during the latest congestion.

ETH is super congested now, at 1200+ gas. @Binance have suspended withdrawals.

There was a conspiracy theory that Binance is deliberately making ETH gas fees high. 😂 Let’s see it come down a bit. pic.twitter.com/tNK9b3b9OK

— CZ 🔶 Binance (@cz_binance) February 22, 2021

Binance has already become a big target among the crypto community after being blamed for persistently high gas costs. Some claim that the congestion is a concerted effort on the part of Binance to attract more users to its Binance Smart Chain. However, given the tremendous transaction volumes and gas fees that Binance pays to the Ethereum network weekly, this claim is hard to corroborate

Binance Outage Underlines the Need to Scale

Yet, together with other recent events like the AWS problems that surfaced last week, this latest service outage begs the question as to whether centralized exchanges are capable of handling the latest torrent of investor flows. Moreover, the rollout of Ethereum 2.0 has brought to light similar scaling issues and whether already clogged blockchains can keep pace with advancing adoption.

For some market participants, the answer lies in liquidity aggregators. While service interruptions have dotted the cryptocurrency landscape for years and become commonplace during periods of serious volatility, aggregators that pool liquidity from centralized (CEX) and decentralized exchanges (DEX) have cobbled together a patchwork solution. Still, questions linger about the security of their custody along with blockchain interoperability.

Offerings like Orion Protocol have addressed many of these challenges by aggregating liquidity in a hybrid fashion from CEXs, DEXs, and now automated market-makers (AMMs). Aggregators are attempting to help decentralize the pressure and reverse the load issue strain felt by exchanges during peak periods while avoiding the custody question.

Still, for traders on centralized exchanges, load balancing issues and volatility remain a scourge for the ecosystem as the latest Binance outage underlines.

Do you think withdrawal suspensions will become the norm or a solution to network congestion will be found? Let us know in the comments section below.

Pricing Gold, Food, and Altcoins With the BTC Denominator: How to Measure an Asset’s Worth in Bitcoin

21/02/2021 by Idelto Editor

On February 21, bitcoin touched a lifetime price high at $57,844 per unit after the crypto asset’s market valuation crossed the $1 trillion zone for the first time in history the day prior. Meanwhile, a number of digital assets have seen fiat values increase as coins like litecoin, ethereum, and others gather gains against the U.S. dollar. However, when bitcoin is the base denominator in terms of value, a lot of coins have a long way to go to catch up.

Measuring Alternative Crypto Assets With Bitcoin

The crypto asset bitcoin (BTC) has seen phenomenal gains and a lot of other digital currencies have seen price increases as well. For instance, ethereum (ETH) is the second-largest digital asset in terms of market capitalization, and ETH has touched the $2,040 price range.

Now ETH has seen pretty decent gains against the U.S. dollar, as its up a decent 76.32% during the last month, and 249.90% over the last three months. Traditionally people price everything in their local fiat currency like U.S. dollars or euros, but things look a whole lot different when other crypto assets are priced against or with BTC.

Pricing Gold, Food, and Altcoins With the BTC Denominator: How to Measure an Asset's Worth in Bitcoin — Bitcoin (BTC) hit an all-time price high on February 21, 2021, hitting $57,844 per unit against the U.S. dollar. But what if we measured other assets in BTC?

For instance, data from messari.io shows an ether priced in bitcoin is worth 0.0341 BTC and on Tradingview the price is a hair higher at 0.0343 BTC at the time of publication. Now even though ether has seen decent gains against the U.S. dollar in 2021, it was a lot higher in comparison to BTC back in 2018.

At that time in January 2018, a single ETH was around 0.1090 BTC. Bitcoin’s price at the time was around a third of what it is today, while ether’s value was closer to where it was back then albeit a touch higher. The same can be said for a myriad of other alternative assets in the crypto economy.

Litecoin (LTC) is a good example, as LTC is a cryptocurrency with a market valuation of around $15.5 billion and holds the eighth largest valued market cap. Against fiat, LTC has done well this year increasing over 66% during the last month against the U.S. dollar.

LTC has gained 157% against the dollar for the last three months, but has yet to capture the coin’s all-time high (ATH). Litecoin is still 38% away from the ATH three years ago, which was $369.32 per LTC. Back in February 2018, a single LTC was around 0.019533 BTC but today one LTC is swapping for 0.003966 BTC.

Pricing Everything in Bitcoin Gives a Different Perspective

People can price anything in BTC and in other common denominators or vice versa. For instance, a person can get a 2021 Lamborghini Huracan EVO today for 5.08 BTC, a brand new Honda Accord is only 0.44 BTC. You can get a pristine 3.0-carat diamond ring for a single BTC and 0.12 BTC buys the average American food for a whole year.

Back in the day when a single coin crossed parity with a single Federal Reserve note ($1), it was a milestone. Then years later, it passed the value of one troy ounce of fine silver ($27), and everyone noticed.

Years later the price surpassed the value of one troy ounce of fine gold and that definitely got some attention. On Saturday, BTC ripped into another ATH and crossed parity with one kilo of fine gold. The fact of the matter is, the common denominator can be perceived a whole lot differently when measuring things in BTC or against it.

What do you think about measuring assets and other cryptocurrencies in bitcoin? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Tezos Announces Major Upgrade to Improve Network Functionality

19/02/2021 by Idelto Editor

Open-source platform Tezos has just announced Edo, its fifth and most ambitious upgrade to its blockchain to date. This upgrade will add the Sapling protocol, tickets, and a new Adoption Period to support future upgrades that improve network functionality.

Sapling, Tickets, and a New Adoption Period will Bolster Future Upgrades

Tezos has been ramping up development activity following the growing hype around its native token XTZ, which has risen nearly 120% year-to-date as of writing. Its last update, Delphi, was released three months ago and cut gas costs by 75%.

Tezos says its new Sapling protocol will enable developers to power “new types of applications” by incorporating “voting or supporting asset transactions with selective disclosures.” One-use tickets will act as a ‘convenient mechanism’ to unlock contractual functions, according to Tezos. Besides improving developer efficiency, tickets are designed to encourage more ‘secure and composable contracts’ and issue tokens.

New Adoption Period to Ease Transition to New Protocols

The new Adoption Period is set to address the common challenges users face on the Tezos network during the transition period of new protocols. Users can now expect a five-cycle period between the approval of upgrades and the adoption process (approximately two weeks). This signals a departure from Tezos’ previous mechanism of four periods to eight cycles, with Tezos declaring its commitment to “seamless upgrade transitions for all users.”

Edo will tackle minor bugs, improve overall performance, and lower gas consumption than previous ecosystem upgrades. Tezos’ progress continues apace, with the project already working towards the next milestone. In the Edo release, Tezos stated that users could anticipate news on its next major update, Florence, soon.

What do you think about the future of the XTZ token? Let us know in the comments section below.