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Gold-Backed Crypto Tokens Will Be The Next Big Thing?

2020-08-25T15:35:36.229Z

In 2008-2011, gold kept going up as the world recovered slowly from the global financial crisis. This year (2020) we have yet another global crisis after COVID-19 pandemic hit the entire world. And once again, gold proved its worth whenever the world goes into uncharted territory. Gold recently broke all-time high and there’s no sign of it slowing down anytime soon.

Even though we had slight corrections, it’s still trading above $1,900.And then, we have the cryptocurrency world, where it was projected to be the next big thing once we have a new financial crisis. Satoshi Nakamoto created Bitcoin after the 2008 financial crisis. He also repeatedly said that fiat currencies’ history is full of breach of trust. It’s not surprising to see the crypto market doing well in 2020, in its first big test against a financial crisis.But, how about the marriage between the two?

How about gold-backed crypto tokens that currently exist on Ethereum? Will they be able to bring the best of two worlds? Let’s analyze why they are needed in the crypto space and why they matter for non-crypto enthusiasts as well.

The Existing Gold-Backed Tokens

There are already gold-backed crypto tokens where their prices are pegged to the physical gold. Tether has one, it’s called XAUT. Paxos also has one, it’s called PAXG. We also have DGX from the Digix team. There are also other gold tokens released by different institutions all over the world but they are not as popular as these names.

Among all of them, I believe PAX Gold (PAXG) is still the most traded gold token in the crypto market. It has decent liquidity, although it’s still not traded very much. While it’s been doing better than ever before, PAXG is still overshadowed by normal utility and governance tokens. Many altcoins have been pumping quite heavily, which have provided a more attractive ROI than gold price.

That being said, the gold-backed tokens still have their own market and their own selling points.

Why Are They Needed?

So, why are these gold-backed tokens needed in the crypto space? Well, it’s quite simple, actually. People who want to have normal stability against fiat inflation and failures would like to choose gold over cryptocurrencies. They don’t go down 50-75% like most altcoins in crypto winter. That’s why if you want to have a hedge against fiat inflation, you want to own physical gold.

The thing is, 2020 is a very different year than the previous financial crisis. Many people in many countries are still trapped in lockdowns or at least have their movements restricted. It’s not that simple to go to a store and buy a certain amount of physical gold in the time of worldwide quarantine. This is where gold-backed crypto tokens stand out. They still have the valuation of gold and yet it’s much easier to buy and/or sell them.

Of course, not all gold-backed tokens are created equal. Some of them cannot back up their claim that each token is backed by real gold. That’s why PAXG is the most popular gold-backed token right now. It is audited by a third party auditing firm regularly, and each of their issued crypto tokens is backed by real physical gold. You can redeem the tokens and exchange them with real gold in your hand, assuming you can travel to their gold vault.

The Future Of Gold-Backed Tokens

This is an interesting question. Nobody truly knows if gold-backed crypto will ever become mainstream. I think it all depends on the fight between fiat currencies vs. gold. If gold can maintain its bullish momentum even after the world starts to recover from this year’s pandemic, it’s quite possible that gold tokens will become much more popular than ever before.Remember that in 2009-2011 gold price kept going bullish despite at the time the world already started to recover from 2008’s financial crisis.

It’s believed that gold might keep going up in 2021 even after the world starts to recover from the current COVID-19 pandemic and financial crisis. In this case, all of these Ethereum-powered gold crypto tokens might become famous as well.

Is Basic Attention Token (BAT) A Good Investment?

2020-08-11T21:13:57.093Z

Brave Browser is a Chromium browser without all the features from Google. It is also one of the few adblock browsers with native adblock capabilities. Many people like it and it’s massively popular with over 10 million downloads on Google Play Store alone. Behind Brave Browser, there’s this cryptocurrency called Basic Attention Token (BAT), which serves as the core economy of Brave Browser.

Of course, the idea is that the demand for BAT would rise when there’s more demand for Brave Browser. Thanks to Ethereum’s smart contract, BAT is here to accompany Brave Browser. And so far, this business model has been proven to be successful. But here’s the more important question. Is BAT a good long-term investment? Well, let’s try to find out together, shall we?

The Basic Idea Of Brave Browser and Basic Attention Token

First of all, let’s see where the demand comes from. Brave Browser, as mentioned above, is another Chromium browser with native adblock capabilities. It’s hugely popular with more than 10 million of downloads and millions of active users. Brave browser has been used by plenty of users all around the world, especially those people who care so much about privacy.And considering that it’s based on Chromium, all the Chrome extensions that you love would also work perfectly on Brave.

Both crypto and non-crypto users like their web browsing experience with Brave. It’s comparable to other Chromium browsers such as Vivaldi or Microsoft Edge.One difference is that Brave Browser is natively designed to support crypto economics. The token that empowers the browser is called Basic Attention Token (BAT).

So, Brave Browser doesn’t block all ads. It actually gives options to the users to watch ads if they want to. However, if they choose to watch ads, they will be rewarded with BAT tokens. The users are incentivized to watch ads, unlike in Chrome. The ads are considered non-intrusive as they will be displayed by system notification instead of inside the web pages.

Of course, BAT tokens are not only used to incentivize the users. They are also automatically shared with the web publishers. Meanwhile, advertisers pay fiat to the Brave team and the fiat will be automatically converted to BAT to be shared among the publishers and the browser users.

Considering the fact that Brave Browsers still have ads (even though the default option is not turned on), there are some controversies and debates inside the Brave community. Some hardcore users believe it’s hypocritical for Brave team to take off ads from websites while they themselves have an ad marketplace mechanism that utilizes a crypto token. These users eventually “forked” Brave browser and they created Bold browser, a tokenless Brave browser without any ad system.

So, Is BAT A Good Investment?

Now we have arrived at the most important question. Is BAT a good investment? Well, here’s the thing. If Brave browser can keep growing and they can attract a good number of serious advertisers, obviously the price to advertise will go up, and the users (who view ads) and the publishers will benefit more from the Brave Rewards marketplace.

However, this is a big if. In 2020, many traditional companies have decided to cut off their advertising budget, and Brave has more dependency on crypto advertisers to reach their audience. There’s also no real metrics to show how targeted the ads are despite what the Brave team has said.

Nevertheless, Brave has plenty of corporate partnerships. Its founder, Brendan Eich, is a big name in the web browsing business. He was the creator of JavaScript and co-founder of Mozilla Firefox. That’s why Brave Browser has a decent success rate despite the fact that its adoption rate is still below both Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge.If you believe in the future of Brave Browser, BAT is the right token for you. It’s a good long-term investment.

Among other smart contract powered tokens in the Ethereum blockchain, BAT has one of the best use cases.

Will There Be A Real Ethereum Killer?

2020-08-03T02:28:46.953Z

Ethereum is a real game-changer. Since its inception many years ago, Ethereum has matured to become a monster in the crypto space. Unlike Bitcoin and other older-gen altcoins, Ethereum has a native capability to create smart contracts. This is especially important because it allows the crypto ecosystem to create something that was not thinkable before.

For example, decentralized games, decentralized finance, and decentralized exchange. Yes, they are all popular now, thanks to Ethereum. If you don’t know much about Ethereum, you might want to click here to check the article.

However, Ethereum’s rise to celebrity status also asked one very important question. Is it scalable enough? At its current state, Ethereum is not able to process more than 25 transactions per second. The limit looks even more obvious now more than ever after it gets tested to the max with DeFi-based transactions and DEX trades.

The transaction fees get much more expensive, and the average waiting time is much slower too. People started to look for alternatives. Will there ever be a real Ethereum killer? Well, let’s analyze the closest candidates.

Cardano (ADA)

Cardano was founded by Ethereum co-founder, Charles Hoskinson, and it’s perhaps the most hyped Ethereum competitor right now. Cardano uses Ouroboros Proof-of-Stake, which is a unique form of Delegated Proof-of-Stake. Cardano also has its own smart contract programming language called Plutus Core.

Cardano has been hyped even more recently with its Shelley mainnet upgrade that would allow the users to stake their ADA tokens. The price of ADA kept rising, and now it sits on the 7th position of coin market cap rankings comfortably. Whether Cardano will be able to overthrow Ethereum or not remains to be seen. Cardano is still untested, and there’s no running Dapp here.

Tron (TRX)

If there’s a live candidate that can overtake Ethereum, Tron is perhaps that candidate. Compared to other Ethereum-killers, Tron’s DApp community is pretty much alive and well. Tron has been one of the top 3 DApp platforms for quite some time, and it has also expanded its journey to cover the recent DeFi craze.

Previously, Tron’s DApps ecosystem was usually only around gambling applications.And yes, just like Cardano, Tron also utilizes a more modern consensus mechanism. Tron adopts a Delegated Proof-of-Stake, like EOS, but with more Super Representatives. Tron’s advantage over Ethereum is its speed and its cheap transaction fees. However, until today, most people still don’t really trust Tron and its founder, Justin Sun.

Cosmos (ATOM)

One of the brightest dark horses is definitely Cosmos Network. Cosmos calls itself the “internet of blockchains” because its Tendermint Core Engine allows enterprises to start their own blockchain under one same ecosystem (which is Cosmos). Cosmos rose to popularity after its Tendermint was forked to create Binance Chain (BNB).

However, it is still able to maintain its relevance nowadays due to the rising DeFi platforms that utilize Cosmos, such as IRISnet and others. It’s predicted that Cosmos would be able to rise to top 10-15 market cap rankings in the near future, although it would be hard to overtake Ethereum.

Polkadot (DOT)

This is perhaps one of the biggest hypes of 2020. Created by Ethereum’s former CTO, Gavin Wood, Polkadot is a very promising and fast public blockchain platform with various “parachains” to support one same ecosystem. Projects that utilize Polkadot include Stafi, Edgeware, and Kusama.

Even though DOT itself is not yet transferable, top exchanges like Huobi and OKEx have enabled its IOU tokens to be traded. Recently, Binance also announced that it would accept premature DOT deposits. It looks like they will compete with the big boys right from the beginning.

Conclusion

Out of these candidates, none of them has any mature DApp ecosystem compared to Ethereum. It looks like Ethereum still has a very good head start due to its massive stablecoin and DeFi ecosystems. If Ethereum can keep its momentum with the launch of Ethereum 2.0, it would be hard for these dark horses to convince crypto traders to move to their platforms.If you are interested to discover Ethereum even more, you can click this link.

Is NEO A Good Investment?

2020-07-26T18:35:37.811Z

Previously known as AntShares, NEO was once the biggest competitor to Ethereum when it comes to smart contracts. It was often dubbed as the “Chinese Ethereum”. However, the spotlight around NEO has been diminishing in the past few years. Since the beginning of crypto winter in 2018 until today, NEO kept going down. NEO tries to keep its hope alive by quietly developing NEO 3.0, which would fundamentally change NEO forever.

However, one very important question remains. Is NEO a good and worthy investment? Should you invest your money in it? Well, this article tries to explain exactly that.Anyway, you should know the technical basics of smart contracts, if you want to learn about NEO, as it’s the main selling point of this cryptocurrency.

To learn more about smart contracts, click here.

The Basics Of NEO

The basic idea of NEO is similar to Ethereum. It is intended to build smart contracts and create tokens on top of its own public blockchain network. Back in 2017, NEO was the second best smart contract platform after Ethereum itself. Some ICOs didn’t have any problem building their ICO tokens on NEO in the form of NEP-5.

Despite its similarities to Ethereum, there are also fundamental differences. NEO does not use the usual Proof-of-Work (PoW) algorithm nor Proof-of-Stake (PoS). Instead, it utilizes dBFT (delegated Byzantine Fault Tolerance) that has inspired plenty of newer blockchain platforms, including Binance Chain.NEO also adopts a dual token model system, where NEO is the governance token while NeoGAS is the utility token. By hodl-ing NEO, you are eligible to receive NeoGAS as your reward.

NeoGAS itself is used to pay for transaction or gas fees for each NEP-5 token transfer in the NEO ecosystem.NEO is able to process (more or less) 1,000 transactions per second. Back then in 2017, this kind of TPS capabilities was seen as something groundbreaking, as most blockchain platforms struggle to achieve the same feat.

So, Is It A Good Idea To Invest In NEO?

If you ask me this question back in mid-2017, I would say yes. At the time, NEO was very promising and it stole plenty of headlines in crypto publication websites. However, things change very rapidly in the crypto space. NEO has not been relevant in the past few years, after the death of ICOs.

Trends come and go, people have moved on to IEO and then DeFi, but NEO is still not able to capture any of these markets. Ethereum’s biggest competitors in terms of token issuance now are Tron, Binance Chain, and there’s also a lot of hype about Cardano.NEO team itself has been focusing its attention on Neo 3.0 development, which would fundamentally help NEO to become much more scalable and fundamentally better than its current state.

There has been plenty of developments going on but it doesn’t feel that NEO has a big chance to compete against bigger blockchain players as long as they fail to recapture some markets in the smart contract competition.At the end of the day, NEO is known to be a token issuance platform, and it’s known to be the “Chinese Ethereum.” In order to stay relevant in the smart contract industry, NEO needs to keep up with the trend and expand its user base by introducing and attracting its own DApps.

I still remember how they used to have this big team called CityofZion that manages Neon wallet. Members of CoZ also had various different NEO-based projects going on but none of them could become mainstream.

Conclusion

NEO has good technical fundamentals but it has been slowly going down when it comes to relevance and user base. NEO still has a lot of potential but it doesn’t look like the core team understands what is needed to be done in order to truly compete with Ethereum and other smart contract platforms. For me, NEO can provide a good short-term ROI, but it is not that good when it comes to longer-term investment.

However, Neo 3.0 might change how things shape up in the future. Let’s see what happens.If you are interested to learn about smart contracts, you can check out this link.

Tokenization Of Assets And The Problem Of Centralization

2020-07-11T22:19:38.097Z

Since the creation of Tether (USDT), things started to change in the crypto space. Previously, people were trading BTC against altcoins, and they only withdraw back to fiat whenever they want to take profit. However, the rising popularity of Tether has allowed crypto traders to use the stablecoin as their actual base cryptocurrency as the valuation is pegged to USD.

Since then, there have been dozens of new pegged tokens. Gold-pegged crypto tokens have been around with us since a few years ago. We also have real-estate tokens and traditional equity tokens on the blockchain.

The crypto space is getting all these tokenizations of real assets. Many crypto enthusiasts actually feel optimistic about these moves, as they believe tokenization will only help the crypto space to be taken seriously by governments and the non-crypto community.

However, there’s one big problem with this trend of tokenization - it allows a single point of failure aka centralization. Before we go on with the post, it’s important to know the basic idea of smart contracts. After all, tokenization is made possible thanks to the usage of smart contracts. Click here to check the article.

What’s The Big Deal With Tokenization?

Let’s start with the positive points. First of all, tokenization of assets, physical metals, fiat currencies, and all that are actually good for the crypto space. Why? Because they allow the crypto space to be taken seriously.

Stablecoins are valued 1-to-1 to fiat currencies and it is what the crypto people like to hold to have peace of mind regarding crypto volatility.Gold-pegged tokens can also give you a certain peace of mind because many of them are audited regularly and you can swap the tokens with real physical gold as long as you pass KYC.

And then, we also have real-estate crypto tokens on Ethereum blockchain where the token ownership indicates that you legally own a piece of the real estate.It’s kind of a big deal because tokenization of assets allow crypto space to have its own appeal outside the speculative trading instruments. People can actually HODL something that has real value behind the token and it makes the blockchain much more appealing to people who don’t like to speculate with crypto valuations.

When These Tokens Get More Popular, There’s A Risk

The problem with these tokens is the fact that they keep getting more popular. You might want to ask “what’s the problem with that? Isn’t that good?”, well, yes and no. Yes because it’s good when you see them getting more popular, but no because nobody addresses the real risk behind it.It’s important to admit that the crypto world is all about decentralization.

Decentralize the hash rate, decentralize the token ownership, and decentralize the need for trust. That’s the essence of cryptocurrencies. Whenever there’s a single point of failure, it gets criticized and rightfully so.The asset-pegged crypto tokens are exactly that. They are centralized.

These tokens are issued by private companies. The fact that they are regulated and regularly audited doesn't mean much if there’s only one company that can ruin it all for these tokens. More often than not, being at the mercy of a private company is worse than being at the mercy of a central bank.

Take a look at USD as an example. If you hold a $100 bill, you know you can just exchange it anywhere you want, because the central bank is guaranteed by a country. But if you hold a specific asset-based token, you are at the mercy of the issuer. The chance of a private company to fail is much higher than a country like the United States

The Future Of Tokenization

However, the future of tokenization would not be only a bad thing. There are, perhaps, some asset-pegged crypto tokens that can mimic the idea of DAI, a stablecoin with 1-to-1 valuation to USD, but it uses an algorithm instead of a centralized fiat deposit/withdrawal process.

Whatever the future has for tokenization of real-life assets, I just hope they would be much less centralized in the future versions. If you want to study more about tokenization, it’s important to start with smart contracts as they enable this exact concept. Click this link to learn more about smart contracts.

Is Bitcoin Cash (BCH) A Good Investment?

2020-06-26T04:23:55.469Z

Bitcoin Cash is the most popular Bitcoin fork on the planet. While other Bitcoin clones are not doing very well in terms of attracting community interest, BCH actually has some hardcore supporters on their side. Not only that, but Bitmain (one of the most well-known ASIC manufacturers) is also one of the main forces that support Bitcoin Cash hash power.

While BCH has been relatively stable in the top cryptocurrency ladder, it remains to be seen whether BCH is still a good long-term investment or not. Let’s try to analyze BCH together and its future. Before we continue, you might want to check the basic explanation of Bitcoin Cash. Check it here.

The Basic Idea Of Bitcoin Cash

To understand Bitcoin Cash, it’s very important to learn about its history. Unlike many altcoins, Bitcoin Cash was a direct fork of Bitcoin Core (BTC). Back in 2017, Bitcoin’s popularity kept on growing. As a result, Bitcoin transaction fees became very expensive, and its transaction speed became very slow. Some transactions could take hours just to get one single confirmation. In other words, the blockchain became clogged.

And because of this reason, some well-known Bitcoin supporters like Roger Ver (Bitcoin.com) and Jihan Wu (Bitmain) decided to propose fundamental changes to Bitcoin blockchain. They believe Bitcoin should adopt a much larger transaction limit block size (from 1MB to 8 MB at the time). The ongoing debates between the anti-change group and pro-change group forced the pro-change camp to hard fork Bitcoin and create their own version which is called Bitcoin Cash (BCH).

The basics of Bitcoin Cash works exactly the same as Bitcoin Core. It utilizes Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus algorithm, it does not have smart contract functionality, and it even shares the same legacy address. All second layer solutions that are being developed for Bitcoin Core also work for Bitcoin Cash.

The difference is just that Bitcoin Cash supporters are much more open to changes. Right now BCH upper size block limit has been expanded again to 32 MB. Compared to Bitcoin Core, Bitcoin Cash has much faster transaction speed and much lower transaction fees. The idealism here is that Bitcoin Cash must work as good as real-life cash. It is not meant to be used as “digital gold” like the main narrative of the original Bitcoin in recent years.

So, Is Bitcoin Cash A Good Investment?

Well, this is the tricky part. The name “Bitcoin Cash” still borrows the name of Bitcoin. Just like all the clones out there, unfortunately, Bitcoin Cash would never be more popular than the original Bitcoin - at least not in the foreseeable future.

While Bitcoin Cash successfully surpassed every other Bitcoin-something altcoin out there, it remains in the shadow of Bitcoin Core, Ethereum, Tether, and XRP. For it to be able to surpass all these big names, BCH needs to do something other than simple partnerships and marketing strategies that tell people Bitcoin Cash is the real Bitcoin.

Yes, Bitcoin Cash is fast and has cheaper fees than Bitcoin, but there are also plenty of other altcoins that are faster and cheaper. Bitcoin Cash does not have any unique characteristics. Because of this reason, it’s hard to see how BCH can eventually surpass BTC and ETH.ConclusionBCH is not a bad investment. As long as BTC remains the top dog of cryptocurrencies, I believe BCH will still be relevant. Why? Because BCH’s popularity is pegged to BTC’s name.

However, for the same reason, I also think BCH would never be able to overcome its biggest obstacle. As a “Bitcoin-something” altcoin, it’s very hard to change people’s narratives about it being a Bitcoin Core’s clone.

I still believe BCH is a decent investment for the long-term, but it’s just not good enough.If you are very interested to learn more about BCH, I suggest you read this article.

Knowing The Underlying Technology Behind Bitcoin

2020-06-11T04:12:37.103Z

Before we dive deeper into Bitcoin, we need to understand the underlying technology behind it. Bitcoin’s technology is called blockchain. Before we continue, make sure to understand the basic idea about Bitcoin, where you can read more on this link.

Decentralization of Power

Decentralization matters because it gives a “check and balance” feeling to every participant. If one entity has too much centralized power, it’s very likely this same entity can abuse his power, and most people still wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. The concept of blockchain is to prioritize decentralization by nature.

It’s an innovative technology that forces everybody to be accountable for his/her actions.In a blockchain, the mechanism of passing records is automated and secured in a unique way.

When one party broadcasts a transaction, it begins the process by creating a new block. This block would need to be verified by thousands of computers all around the world (or more). The verified block, then, would be added to the chain and stored publicly. This record of processes is immutable because you have to falsify the entire chain if you want to falsify just a single record.

When there are thousands of entities participating in the same blockchain network, it would be almost impossible to falsify the entire chain due to these decentralized powers from all over the world. Think of keeping your record in a simple notebook. If you are the only one maintaining that notebook, you can just edit the record anytime you want. But if any edit for the notebook requires thousands of approvals from different people all over the world, most likely you will never get those approvals from these people that you have never met.

Blockchain Is About Trusting The System

Bitcoin utilizes this blockchain technology because Bitcoin believes in immutability, transparency, and decentralization of power and influence. Bitcoin transactions are all utilized by the Bitcoin blockchain.Unlike centralized systems where you need to trust whoever issues or maintains the system, the blockchain allows you to trust the code and the system itself rather than whoever maintains it.

The check and balance mentioned above ensure that the blockchain technology is safe and secure when there are more participants and diverse entities or individuals.Even those people who don’t actually believe in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies might still trust the blockchain platform.

Many banks and big corporations are still experimenting with blockchain technology despite the fact that they don’t have faith in cryptocurrency prices.If this article makes you more interested in Bitcoin and the blockchain, this article might be able to help you understand the concept more. Check this article.

Can Ethereum Dethrone Bitcoin?

2020-05-28T01:42:18.653Z

A good question that often comes to people’s minds in the crypto space is “Will Ethereum Overtake Bitcoin?” A question that pops up once every few months or at least once every year. This question is normal considering Ethereum has been the “runner up” in the crypto ranking for quite some time now.

Ethereum, as the decentralized blockchain network that allows people to create DApps (decentralized applications), has been deemed “superior” than Bitcoin by many crypto enthusiasts. But even though Ethereum is arguably used for wider use cases than Bitcoin, will it ever overtake Bitcoin in the market cap ladder? Let’s find out together.

The Functions Of Bitcoin - Surpassed by Ethereum

Let’s talk about the very basic fundamentals of these two cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin, when it was launched for the first time, was designed to be the next level “wire transfer” - which means people were hyping it up as a medium to transport money across the border. Yes, unlike wire transfer that could take days, you could easily transfer money within just a few minutes with Bitcoin. There’s an article with a very good explanation regarding how Bitcoin works. You might want to check it here.

The narrative around Bitcoin had slowly evolved from just a medium of transfer to be a “digital gold” and a “store of value”. Yes, since a few years ago, many people started assuming Bitcoin as the new store of value that could surpass the likes of fiat currencies, especially when it comes to long-term prices.Compared to Bitcoin, Ethereum has actually surpassed these two functions of Bitcoin.

Yes, even until today, Ethereum is still deemed as a worthy investment with big potential for the future. Many crypto followers believe that Ethereum would be as big (if not bigger) than Bitcoin thanks to its future transformation to proof-of-stake consensus algorithm.But, apart from being used to transport money and to be used as a “store of value”, Ethereum also has other functions.

Remember that Ethereum was proposed to be used as DApp (decentralized apps), and it seems like Ethereum has started to fulfill its own prophecy. Nowadays, there are many applications that are operating on top of the Ethereum blockchain.Ethereum’s biggest strength is its smart contract. Unlike Bitcoin, Ethereum is capable of issuing different types of applications (finance, games, and others) through its native utilization of smart contracts. So yes, Ethereum can be used to issue DApps, to be used as a store of value, and for cross-border transactions.

But, Is It Enough To Overtake Bitcoin?

Above I have explained that Ethereum has plenty of use cases that Bitcoin is not able to achieve. However, does it mean that Ethereum will overtake Bitcoin? Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. Fundamentally, something with bigger use cases and as many (if not more) active users would surpass something with lesser use cases.

But, in reality, it’s not always about fundamentals.Take a look at the stock market. Even when the economy is going down heavily, the stock market has been recovering in the past few weeks. The fundamentals and the price speculation in the stock market could be two different things (although they could be correlated as well). Unfortunately, this is the problem with the crypto market as well.

While fundamentally, Ethereum is able to create smart contracts and DApps, but it won’t mean that much if the big traders or whales refuse to see Ethereum as more valuable than Bitcoin.Yes, the problem with “speculative assets” is that the price is determined by how valuable the said asset is in the eyes of speculative traders.

It’s not always about the fundamentals.So, when many whales believe Bitcoin is more expensive and deserves to have a larger market cap than Ethereum, that is what’s going to happen. To convince these same traders otherwise would require more than just Ethereum fundamental technology is superior to Bitcoin.

So, Is There Any Chance For Ethereum To Overtake Bitcoin?

Regarding future price action, nobody knows for sure. It’s actually quite possible for Ethereum to eventually overtake Bitcoin by price and market cap if enough traders believe it deserves to go there. The question is, will there be enough whales who believe Ethereum can surpass Bitcoin?

Because at the end of the day, everybody thinks differently.Fundamentally, Ethereum has what it takes to overtake Bitcoin. But, once again, when it comes to the market cap ladder, traders often speculate what’s supposedly worth more. And as long as their mindset does not change, it will be very hard for Ethereum to overtake Bitcoin in the market cap ladder.

But, never say never. You will never know what’s going to happen in the next few years. There’s a big chance that Ethereum will be valued more by the whales when its use cases have increased as well. If you are interested in Ethereum and how it works, you might want to check this link.

The History Of Bitcoin Forks

2020-05-18T16:59:02.168Z

The Bitcoin movement has been praised by many people for introducing the idea of decentralization and blockchain technology. When one Bitcoin was only worth $100 or less, many people ignored it and they assumed it was just a scam or part of a Ponzi scheme.

However, as Bitcoin gets matured and the price keeps going higher, many people who brushed it off started to see it as a currency that deserves a second look. And yes, many people “missed the boat” and chose to ignore BTC even though its price has been going up.

Many of these people now try to find an alternative Bitcoin, something that’s still cheap in terms of price and market cap. They want to try to maximize their return by aiming for altcoins. And fortunately, there are many altcoins with the name “Bitcoin-something”, such as Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin SV, or Bitcoin Gold. But, do you know that they were started as forks of the original Bitcoin itself? Well, we can try to learn more about their history with this article!

Bitcoin Cash (BCH)

The most popular Bitcoin fork is definitely Bitcoin Cash (BCH). Created in August 2017, Bitcoin Cash quickly rose to the top of crypto rankings by market cap due to the number of big supporters it has. Compared to other Bitcoin-something, Alts, Bitcoin Cash is definitely significantly more famous.

The cause of Bitcoin Cash fork was due to the fact that the original Bitcoin (BTC) became too slow and its transaction fees became much more expensive. Some of Bitcoin veteran supporters such as Roger Ver and Jihan Wu believed that Bitcoin’s upper block size limit should be increased from 1 MB to 8 MB. Due to never-ending debates, the pro-changes supporters decided to fork Bitcoin and decided to create its own coin which was called Bitcoin Cash (BCH).

As of today, Bitcoin Cash has upgraded its block size limit once more from 8 MB to 32 MB. If you are interested to learn more about BCH, this article might be able to help you.

Bitcoin Satoshi Vision (BSV)

Bitcoin Satoshi Vision (BSV) was launched by the controversial Craig Wright (who claimed he was Satoshi although he could never prove it). Another popular figure in BSV creation was Calvin Ayre. The two (among other BSV supporters) decided to fork Bitcoin Cash blockchain because they felt that the BCH main leaders wanted to change how BCH works by introducing two new opcodes in the script.

Craig Wright and Calvin Ayre believed these new opcodes should never be accepted. Because they couldn’t compromise, they decided to create a new coin and call it Bitcoin Satoshi Vision (which means their version of Bitcoin aligns with Satoshi’s original vision). The split between BCh and BSV was so controversial that both camps decided to redirect their hash power to attack each other.

Even though BSV was not a direct fork from BTC blockchain but indirectly they are quite related because BCH was forked from BTC while BSV was a fork from BCH.

Bitcoin Gold (BTG)

Just like Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Bitcoin Gold was forked from the original Bitcoin blockchain. Forked on October 24, 2017, Bitcoin Gold (BTG) claimed that it won’t let any company centralize the hash power. The argument from Bitcoin Gold main developers was that BTC mining space was too centralized in the hands of the few.
For that reason, BTG implemented a new mining algorithm which is named Equihash.

With Equihash, it’s believed that ASIC’s won’t be able to mine BTG. The hope is for standard computers to be able to mine BTG. However, the developers themselves were criticized for mining 100,000 BTG coins straight after the fork had taken place.

The developers defended themselves and claimed that these 100,000 BTG coins were placed for future development (not to be dumped on the market). As of today, BTG is the third most popular Bitcoin-something altcoin even though it’s far less popular than BCH and BSV.

Bitcoin Diamond (BCD)

There are other versions of Bitcoin forks although they are typically even less popular than BTG. The fourth most popular Bitcoin-something altcoin is called Bitcoin Diamond (BCD) where they forked Bitcoin blockchain in November 2017. Just like BCH, BCD developers decided to fork BTC because they were not satisfied with Bitcoin’s transaction speed and costs.

The creation of Bitcoin Diamond introduced several fundamental changes to the protocol which helped BCD to become faster and more efficient than Bitcoin. At the time of the fork, all Bitcoin holders received 10 BCD for every BTC they held.

Anyway, there are other Bitcoin forks but usually, they are far less popular than these four Altcoins (BCH, BSV, BTG, and BCD).

To understand how they work, you should learn more about Bitcoin fundamentals, which you can do so in this article here.

Privacy-Centric Cryptocurrencies And Their Future

2020-05-18T16:23:35.349Z

Privacy-centric cryptocurrencies or better known as privacy coins have a special place in the heart of crypto investors. Coins such as Monero (XMR), Zcash (ZEC), DASH, and Zcoin (XZC) and others added a layer of privacy on top of public blockchain networks.

Unlike Bitcoin and some of the most popular altcoins where every transaction is trackable on the blockchain explorer, these privacy coins allow its users to spend money privately, unknown from the public investigation and prying eyes.

However, these privacy coins also get into various troubles recently - from regulatory perspective to stereotype about illegal use cases, they might face a more uncertain future.

How Do These Privacy Coins Enforce Privacy?

Well, let’s start with the most famous privacy coin, Monero (XMR). Monero has several different features that allow itself to enforce privacy. First of all, it utilizes a technology called Ring confidential transactions or RingCT to obfuscate the amount sent in a transaction using cryptographic commitments and range proofs.

On top of that, Monero also utilizes what they call as Ring signatures. Ring signature is a group of possible signers who are mixed together to generate a distinctive signature that can be used to authorize a transaction.

Inside the Monero’s ring signature, there’s an actual signer, who is mixed with non-signers to form a ring. The actual signer and non-signers inside this ring signature are seen as equal. The non-signers are basically past transaction outputs that are pulled from the blockchain itself. You can learn more about Monero on this link.

After Monero, we also have ZCash (ZEC). ZCash’s privacy technology is called zk-SNARKS, which is its unique implementation of zero-knowledge cryptography. With zk-SNARKS, the transaction values and wallet addresses can be “shielded” from the public eye. In order to prove that the sender actually owns the transaction and wallet address, the sender has to prove both input and output values with the logic of zero-knowledge.

There are also other privacy coins such as DASH and ZCoin but we won’t get into too many details about them. The idea is that each coin has its own privacy-enforcing technology to shield their users’ transaction from the public eye.

Why Does Privacy Matter?

The biggest supporters of these privacy coins often praise the importance of privacy because financial transactions are meant to be discreet. Their argument is that just like how cash transactions are often discreet from the public eyes, crypto transactions shouldn’t be made “transparent” in the public blockchain explorers - except if the users are asking for it.

In other words, they believe users have the financial right to be discreet.
This argument is true that fiat transaction history won’t be publicly available. However, fiat transactions can be tracked by the banks and authorities while these privacy-centric blockchains are significantly more complex.

The Future Of Privacy Coins

While privacy coins were/are great but their future remains questionable. Many governments from all over the world have issues with privacy coins due to how hard it is to track a rogue user’s transaction history. For example, if someone uses Monero to pay for illegal service, it would be much harder for the authority to track it (compared to if that same person uses Bitcoin mixer service).

That’s why many governments are still in the crossroads when it comes to privacy coins. So, even when a big institution like JPMorgan adopts Zcash’s zk-SNARKS privacy implementation, Zcash itself (as a whole package) might not face easy approval from the governments.

Recently, Monero (XMR) has been delisted from two popular exchanges, Huobi Korea and Bithumb due to Nth room scandal. For your information, Nth room scandal is the scandal where many Telegram users utilize XMR to purchase illegal minor porn materials.

And of course, there’s a reason why these people prefer to use XMR rather than more mainstream cryptocurrencies. Because of its privacy technology.

And this reputation damage to Monero might also affect the general privacy coin industry and its stereotype among the outsiders, even among other altcoin supporters. Anyway, if you are interested in learning the variations among different altcoins, you can check out this article.

It remains to be seen what would be the best solution for privacy coins to get out from these uncertainties. And while ZCash looks more “mainstream-friendly” than Monero due to its technology being adopted and tested by JPMorgan and even praised by Vitalik Buterin, it still faces a similar dilemma.