Ethereum

Investment Firm Launches the First ‘Crypto Hedge Fund’ in Spain- Plans to Expand Across Europe, Latin America

27/02/2021 by Idelto Editor

In Spain, an investment company has begun to promote what they called the “first crypto hedge fund.” The product has been registered in Malta by Avenue Investment Crypto, headed by a crypto advocate, Martin Huete.

Investments Allocated Mainly in Bitcoin and Ethereum

According to Infobae, the hedge fund “exclusively” targets qualified investors whose minimum investment starts at 100,000 euros ($120,600). However, anyone who would like to join the crypto hedge fund should prove to the firm that they hold assets for 750,000 euros ($904,900).

Although Avenue Investment Crypto just launched the product, it was created by the firm in 2019. Huete was appointed as the institutional relations manager amid the commercialization phase of the crypto hedge fund.

Within the portfolio offered by the firm, the total exposure of the crypto hedge fund ranges between 40% and 100% of the fund with investments in ethereum (ETH), bitcoin (BTC), and other undisclosed cryptos.

Still, the fiat serving as base currency fund is the euro, and Avenue Investment Crypto clarified all profits accrue.

Firm Expects to Raise $122 Million by the End of 2021

The people in charge of managing the crypto hedge fund are Arne Vaagen and Francisco Gordillo.

Vaagen co-founded the hedge fund Futuris with Brummer & Partners in 1999, with over 1,300 million euros under management. Also, Gordillo has 25-years’ experience in the banking sector, and since 2012, it has been studying the cryptocurrencies sector, said the firm.

Gordillo commented about the crypto hedge fund:

What we propose to the investor is that they keep a plot of the future; it is like investing in Wall Street in its founding moments, taking a position on the foundations of the future.

In the first instance, the investment company seeks to promote the fund across Spain, Portugal, and North Europe. Moreover, the second stage targets Latin America and the rest of Europe.

Avenue Investment Crypto expects to collect almost $122 million before the end of 2021. As of press time, they’ve raised over $24 million.

What are your thoughts on the idea of a crypto hedge fund? Let us know in the comments section below.

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.

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.

Binance Blamed for Purposely Choking Ethereum’s Network

22/02/2021 by Idelto Editor

The recent ramp higher in cryptocurrency prices has assuredly attracted its fair share of cheerleaders and detractors alike, but the reality of this climb has been a concurrent increase in network fees from rising transaction volumes.

Binance is Blamed for Purposely Choking Ethereum’s Network to Drive More Users to Its Own Platform

The resulting volumes have clogged networks like Ethereum, which have seen gas costs climb almost 20x over the last 12 months. For the growing DeFi market, these sky-high costs have elicited significant criticism from the community and mobilized the ecosystem to hunt for more affordable options. Enter Binance, which may dethrone Ethereum as the new DeFi hotspot due to its interoperability and lower transaction costs.

Binance Smart Chain (BSC), which works on a Proof of Authority (POA) model, is centralized (Binance picks the authorities that run each node) relative to Ethereum’s entirely decentralized approach. This has prompted some users to criticize the approach, believing that Binance is abusing its clout and market power to intentionally clog the Ethereum network. However, this sharp critique misses the bigger picture.

A quick look at wallet and gas data highlights that Binance is the largest single gas spender. For instance, the image above tweeted by Nansen AI highlights from February 12th to the 18th, Binance spent the equivalent of nearly 5,000 ETH in gas alone. Although many users are quick to criticize publicized data of Asian exchanges which are known for inflating trading volume, this data can be corroborated by Etherscan data.

The data demonstrate that both in terms of gas spent and transaction volume over the last seven days, wallets attributed to Binance accounted for six out of 10 of the most active wallets in the entire Ethereum ecosystem. While it could be inferred that Binance’s volume is propelling Ether costs upward and doing so intentionally to attract more volume to its smart chain, this argument misses out on the blockchain interoperability that Binance has promoted. Moreover, Binance hasn’t shut off the taps to Ethereum, making the argument of it clogging the network somewhat moot.

Binance Pancakeswap Has Overtaken Uniswap

The costs of switching from Ethereum to Binance are very low, especially for smart contracts and Dapps. By improving the interoperability and reducing switching costs along with rebating developers who bring valuable projects online, Binance has built itself up as a formidable destination for all manner of activities.

Given the volumes of DeFi, any reduction in network fees and costs is likely to attract greater adoption. By filling this void quicker than competitors or more established chains, Binance is now home to PancakeSwap, which has overtaken Uniswap (based on Ethereum) in terms of volume.

Because the barriers of switching from Uniswap to PancakeSwap (which is effectively a copy of Uniswap on BSC), are fairly low, it’s no wonder why DeFi users have made the jump. Moreover, it has caused a sharp incline in Binance Coin’s (BNB) valuation, making transactions also more expensive on its own native chain.

Yet, unlike Ethereum, by building a more cost-effective ecosystem that rewards smart contract developers, Binance is actually incentivizing development and smart contract use, and not necessarily using its market power to clog other competing networks.

FTX Quick to Criticize

Still, that hasn’t been enough to silence critics like FTX, which blame Binance for the default chains where it sends transactions. In a recent tweet critique, cryptocurrency derivatives exchange FTX was quick to pile onto Binance’s withdrawal process which effectively defaults to promoting its own chains and creates a conflict due to the fees it reaps in return.

As a result, it has cost FTX dearly due to coins being sent to the wrong chains. Accordingly, the service has decided to pass along the extra costs to users in the form of a 5% deposit surcharge for tokens sent to the wrong chain. However, in large this argument speaks more towards user mistakes than Binance’s default settings.

While the Binance universe is undoubtedly growing, and exchange volumes speak credible truth to this reality, the self-promotion of its own tools will continue to spark the same sort of denunciations that marked the decentralized versus centralized exchange debate. Ultimately though, utility speaks the loudest.

What do you think – is Binance purposely choking the Ethereum network to gain more users? 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.