Top Ten Aspiring Crypto Coins For April
This article will take a look at ten cryptocurrencies that have interesting developments lined up for the month of April, which could also have a positive effect on their price.
Ethereum (ETH)
Current Price: $1716
Market Cap: $214 Billion
Market Cap Rank #2
Ethereum is a decentralized open-source blockchain that employs its native currency, Ether (ETH).
More importantly, ETH is a platform for several other cryptocurrencies. It enables the execution of smart contracts and the construction of decentralized applications (dApps).
Besides smart contracts and dApps, Ethereum’s blockchain can also use its ERC-20 compatibility standard to host other cryptocurrencies. These are called tokens, and so far, more than 280,000 such tokens have been launched, including LINK & BNB.
A hard fork for Ethereum is scheduled for April 14. The fork is named ”Berlin” and will occur at block 12,244,000.
While it was initially scheduled for mid-2020, it was pushed back due to some centralization concerns.
Berlin will include numerous optimizations, more specifically for gas prices, potential DDOS attacks, and an update on how the Ethereum Virtual Machine reads code.
As for its price movement, ETH has been increasing since re-testing its previous all-time high on Feb. 28.
IOTA (IOTA)
Current Price: $1.43
Market Cap: $3.96 Billion
Market Cap Rank: #28
IOTA is a distributed ledger that enables the secure exchange of both data and value without fees.
The native token is IOTA, which has the ultimate goal of allowing humans and devices to exchange services and data.
The most extensive update in the network’s history will launch in April. It is named ”Chrysalis” and will improve wallets, software implementations, libraries, and protocols. Also, it will create a foundation for future features such as tokenization and smart contracts.
The starting date for the ”Chrysalis” upgrade is set on April 21st, while the transition date on April 28th.
As for its price movement, IOTA has fallen below the $1.52 level after purportedly breaking out above it.
Story continues
Skale (SKL)
Current Price : $0.61
Market Cap: $405 Million
Market Cap Rank: #130
SKALE network is an open-source platform, which aims to scale dApps for usage in the real world. The SKALE innovator program has more than 100 dApps in development.
It is a project from the Network Of Decentralized Economics Foundation. The foundation supports the network by electing representatives and validators to run SKALE chains and nodes.
The native token is SKL, which has use cases in staking, payments, and governance of the network.
Despite being a small market cap coin, SKL is the 9th highest crypto asset when measured by its staking value. This means that there are only eight projects that have more staked value than SKL.
The new staking epoch will begin on April 1st and could further increase the staking value of SKL.
As for its price movement, SKL has been decreasing since reaching an all-time high price of $1.244 on March 13. However, it has just bounced on its 0.618 Fib retracement support level at $0.51.
Elrond (EGLD)
Current Price: $146
Market Cap: $2.51 Billion
Market Cap Rank: #44
Elrond is a protocol that aims to offer exceptionally fast transaction speeds through its sharding mechanism, which is known as adaptive state sharding. The mechanism combines the advantages of three distinct sharding types to improve the communication between them.
The native token is known as EGLD. It has three main purposes: Staking, paying fees in the network, and rewarding validators.
On April 9, Elrond’s DeFi 2.0 module will be released. It will offer six new components:
Elrond NFT standard
Launchpad
Swap
Lending
Synthetics
Bridges
Every one of these components will aim to improve important issues, mostly in the banking sector. Also, each of them is going to be built by an independent team.
As for its price movement, EGLD has just broken out from a descending resistance line.
Swipe (SXP)
Current Price: $3.26
Market Cap: $285 Million
Market Cap Rank: #156
Swipe is a platform that wants to connect the cryptocurrency and fiat worlds. It offers three main products. It offers three main products:
The Swipe Wallet – which enables users to store assets.
The Swipe debit card – which provides users with a simple way to spend their cryptocurrencies.
The native token – SXP, which is used for transactions and fuels the Swipe Network
Version two for the Swipe Wallet will launch on April 2021. Among others, it will improve layer two scaling solutions and allow for DEX trading.
The wallet is already available on the Apple app store.
As for its price movement, SXP is potentially trading inside a parallel ascending channel, after beginning to drop on March 20.
Qtum (QTUM)
Current Price: $8.44
Market Cap: $829 Million
Market Cap Rank: #93
QTUM is a public, Proof-of-stake blockchain platform that enables smart contract coding, deployment, and execution. It is also a platform for decentralized applications (dApps) due to its protocol, which allows for the modification of its settings.
A hard fork will occur on April 30, just before block 845,000. It will provide numerous updates, such as:
The reduction of block time to 32 seconds
Improve Graphic user interface (GUI) responsiveness
Provide a new Staker that is highly efficient.
Fix bugs related to wallets, GUI call contracts, and text box links.
As for its price movement, the QTUM increase has stalled since March 26. However, it is still trading above the previous resistance at $7.65.
Coti (COTI)
Current Price : $0.45
Market Cap: $300 Million
Market Cap Rank: #150
COTI is a platform that allows companies to effortlessly build and be the sole owners of their payment solutions.
It provides numerous elements that are crucial for an effective payment infrastructure, including but not limited to scalability, simplicity, security, buyer-seller protections, etc.
In April, COTI will launch the 3.0 staking update. In it, each community Node will have its capacity increased from 7 Million to 8 Million COTI. This will allow new participants to enter the network and will provide upgrades to existing stakers.
In addition, a new staking campaign will be hosted on KuCoin.
As for its price movement, COTI seems to be trading inside a very large symmetrical triangle pattern.
COTI Triangle
Centaur (CNTR)
Current Price: $0.019
Market Cap: $16 Million
Market Cap Rank: #815
CENTAUR is an ecosystem that aims to connect the current financial system with the economy of decentralized finance. With its interconnection protocol, it aims to solve the problem of interoperation between different blockchains.
There are several important events coming up for Centaur in the upcoming weeks.
On March 31, the Centaur Wallet will be launched. It is a DeFi compatible wallet, which places special emphasis on user experience and interface.
On April 14, Centaur LP will be released. It is an Automated Market Maker (AMM) that uses single-side staking to provide liquidity.
Finally, Centaur Chain, the official Centaur mainnet, will be launched on April 28.
As for its price movement, CNTR seems to have been following an ascending support line since Jan. 16.
Enjin Coin (ENJ)
Current Price: $2.46
Market Cap: $2 Billion
Market Cap Rank: #50
Enjin Coin (ENJ) is a cryptocurrency that is designed for the gaming industry. More specifically, it deals with gaming products and their tokenization.
Another use for ENJ is to create and back the value of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs).
On April 6th, ENJ will release JumpNet, a bridge network that will allow for faster on-chain transactions.
As for its price movement, ENJ has broken out from a descending resistance line and validated it as support afterward.
Stater (STR)
Current Price: $1.67
Market Cap: N/A
Market Cap Rank: N/A
Stater is an open-source lending platform for NFTs. It allows users to leverage their assets while still maintaining ownership over their assets.
On April 16th, the Lydian Update is expected to launch. This will allow the Stater product to move into the Mainnet. This comes as the next step after a three-month development work that has been done in Rinkeby.
Stater is also launching partnerships with numerous other projects, such as Polygon (MATIC).
As for its price movement, STR reached an all-time high on March 28.
For last months aspiring coins, click here.
PayPal a-palooza for crypto markets as Bitcoin throws flash crash, but all is calm again - CityAM
Crypto at a glance
Bitcoin climbed again overnight, as the price continued to push past $59,000 and closer to another new all-time high.
A flash crash this morning, however, has seen the leading cryptocurrency fall back to $58,000, though it remains up over the last 24 hours and the upward momentum already looks to be back on track.
The latest price charge comes on the back of news that PayPal is to start allowing consumers in the US to spend a range of currencies at online merchants, including Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Litecoin (LTC). The initiative will allow consumers to make purchases with over 29 million online merchants worldwide around the world.
PayPal’s move is just the latest in a stream of major announcements that have moved cryptocurrency closer to mainstream acceptance this quarter.
Bitcoin is now looking to end Q1 of 2021 with its biggest Q1 gain for eight years. It’s up more than 100 per cent at time of writing, outperforming the second-best performing asset, oil, which is up 26 per cent. Bitcoin is now up more than 1,000 per cent from the March 2020 lows.
It was a strong performance generally yesterday in the cryptocurrency markets, with Ethereum (ETH) also buoyed by PayPal’s announcement. The second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap continues to push above $1,800, though is still yet to seriously threaten the psychologically all-important $2,000 level it broke last month.
Binance Coin (BNB) had a particularly good showing and is up almost 7 per cent, while Filecoin (FIL) was also up almost 20 per cent, continuing the recent streak of gains that followed institutional crypto investment giant Grayscale’s decision to launch a Filecoin trust.
All this means that the total market cap of crypto is approaching $2 trillion again. How long before we break that level?
All feedback on Crypto AM Daily in association with Luno is welcome via email to James.Bowater@cityam.com 🙏🏻
Start your investment journey into crypto with Luno with £10 on us!
If you’ve not started your crypto journey yet, we’ve joined forces with Luno to offer you £10 absolutely free. Click on the graphic below and simply use the code CITYAM10 when you sign up.
In the markets
The Bitcoin economy
*Definitions and insights can be found at https://bytetree.com/insights/
Total crypto market cap
The total capitalisation of the entire cryptocurrency market at time of writing is $1,878,404,221,948 yesterday, up from $1,841,128,747,142 yesterday.
What Bitcoin did yesterday
We closed yesterday, March 30 2021, at a price of $58,917.69 – up from $57,750.20 the day before. It’s now 24 days in a row that the price has closed above $50,000.
The daily high yesterday was $59,447.22 and the daily low was $57,251.55.
This time last year, the price of Bitcoin closed the day at $6,429.84. In 2019, it closed at $4,106.66.
Bitcoin market capitalisation
Bitcoin’s market capitalisation is $1.109 trillion at time of writing, up from $1.088 trillion yesterday. To put that into context, the market cap of gold is $10.807 trillion and Alphabet (Google) is $1.382 trillion.
Bitcoin volume
The total spot trading volume reported by all exchanges over the last 24 hours was $54,806,573,428 according to CoinMarketCap, down from $59,100,973,394 yesterday. High volumes can indicate that a significant price movement has stronger support and is more likely to be sustained.
Volatility
The price volatility of Bitcoin over the last 30 days is 55.31%.
Fear and Greed Index
Market sentiment is back in Extreme Greed again at 76.
Bitcoin’s market dominance
Bitcoin’s market dominance today is 60.92. Its lowest ever recorded dominance was 37.09 on January 8 2018.
Relative Strength Index (RSI)
The daily RSI is currently 61.64. Values of 70 or above indicate that an asset is becoming overbought and may be primed for a trend reversal or experience a correction in price – an RSI reading of 30 or below indicates an oversold or undervalued condition.
Convince your Nan: Soundbite of the day
“This is the first time you can seamlessly use cryptocurrencies in the same way as a credit card or a debit card inside your PayPal wallet. “We think it is a transitional point where cryptocurrencies move from being predominantly an asset class that you buy, hold and or sell to now becoming a legitimate funding source to make transactions in the real world at millions of merchants” PayPal head Dan Schulman, speaking yesterday
What they said yesterday
The bull run takes a spicy turn…
Bitcoin is up a $1000 since this tweet…
Listen, I know I was wrong about #Bitcoin. And I love the #BTC people. I wish I was in. But I need a price I can stomach to get back in #DDTG @Blockfolio pic.twitter.com/k7Fo6M7ecs — Dave Portnoy (@stoolpresidente) March 30, 2021
Woah…
Good thread…
The time has come
We have finally added bitcoin to our markets section, replacing the price of gold
here is why we made the switch pic.twitter.com/RWWUzEmzOv — Morning Brew ☕️ (@MorningBrew) March 30, 2021
Crypto AM Editor writes
General Motors could be the next big car manufacturer to accept Bitcoin
Binance announces two more major appointments
Elon Musk: you can now buy a Tesla with Bitcoin
Sophia the robot to become next NFT sensation
Bitcoin falters as $60,000 starts to feel like a distant memory
Crypto AM: Longer Reads
City AM Markets: What is Decentralised Finance (DeFi) by Aave
Crypto AM: Conversation with James Bowater
Crypto AM: Market View in association with Ziglu
Crypto AM: Technically Speaking in association with Zumo
Crypto AM: A Trader’s View with TMG
Crypto AM: Mixing in the Metaverse with Dr Chris Kacher
Crypto AM: Talking Legal
Crypto AM: Spotlight
Crypto AM: Founders Series
Crypto AM: Industry Voices
Crypto AM: Tiptoe through the Crypto with Monty Munford
Crypto AM: Definitively DeFi
Crypto AM Parliamentary Special Five Part Series
March 2021
Day Five
Day Four
Day Three
Day Two
Day One
Crypto AM: Recommended Events
CC Forum
Global Investment in Sustainable Development
March 31 to April 1 2021 – Dubai
Global Technology Governance Summit
April 6 to 7 2021 – Tokyo
https://www.weforum.org/events/global-technology-governance-summit-2021
Cautionary Notes
It’s definitely tempting to get swept up in the excitement, but please heed these words of caution: Do your own research, only invest what you can afford, and make good decisions. The indicators contained in this article will hopefully help in this. Remember though, the content of this article is for information purposes only and is not investment advice or any form of recommendation or invitation. City AM, Crypto AM and Luno always advise you to obtain your own independent financial advice before investing or trading in cryptocurrency.
All information is correct as of 08:30am GMT.
‘Crypto is going to be the most significant macro event of my career,’ says longtime investment analyst Jim Bianco
Jim Bianco, president of Chicago-based Bianco Research, has been one of the leading independent voices on macro investing strategy over the past three decades.
He appears frequently on television, writes a column for Bloomberg Opinion and is active on Twitter, where he has over 113,000 followers.
Bianco argues we’re at inflection points in inflation, stock and bond markets, and crypto currencies.
The U.S. economy is widely expected by analysts to boom this year, with Goldman Sachs researchers expecting a 7.2% increase in 2021 gross domestic product. The benchmark 10-year Treasury’s yield has already tripled from a low last year on expectations of faster inflation as states loosened coronavirus restrictions. Stock market investors, meanwhile, have rotated into value stocks, cyclically sensitive companies and financials, selling pandemic winners such as software, renewable energy and the big tech giants known as the FAANGs, which have been spectacular performers for years.
An edited version of our Q&A follows.
April 7 and 14 virtual events hosted by MarketWatch: How to invest in crypto — with Fidelity’s Tom Jessop, investor Tim Draper and the SEC’s Hester Peirce
Jim Bianco.
Howard Gold: You’ve been writing about inflation versus reflation. What is the difference, and which one do you think we’re going to experience?
Jim Bianco: Reflation is real growth. It’s standards of living expanding. It’s better profitability. It’s the economy getting better. Inflation is higher prices, a loss of purchasing power, so that your dollar next year will buy you less than a dollar this year.
Inflation hit its zenith around 1980. But it wasn’t really until the mid-1990’s that it essentially went away. There are three drivers of low and steady inflation — demographics, globalization and technology. When you get older, you’ve already got a house, you’ve already got a car, you don’t need to spend as much. So that helps to depress inflation. Globalization means you can search the world to find the lowest price. And technology has been hugely deflationary. Technology really kicked in around the mid-1990s, because that’s when the internet took off. So it’s been about 25 years that we’ve had very low, very stable inflation.
Gold: How much inflation do you expect?
Bianco: I’m going to look for 2.6% core PCE (personal consumption expenditures price index). It has not been above 2 .5% in 28 years.
We’ve got 100 million [checks] that are supposed to go out, each one for $1,400. So, we’re stuffing people full of money, and this is the third set of checks that we’ve had, and we’re not done. Between the CARES Act, the $900 billion that we did in December, and the $1.9 trillion [under President Biden], we are at around $6 trillion. That doesn’t include monetary policy [or] whatever else may come for the rest of this year. That has blown up the deficit to $3.6 trillion, or 16% of GDP. There have only been three years in American history that the deficit as a percentage of GDP has been that high — 1943, 1944 and 1945.
Gold: Do you think what we’re seeing now is going to be a sudden burst, a catch-up, or do you see it continuing beyond?
Bianco: Ultimately, I do think it’s going to be somewhat sustainable, because if we don’t get inflation in the second half of this year, I think we’re going to [do] more stimulus. Let me be clear on one thing: Inflation is not there right now. I think this is about something that might happen in the second half of this year, into the early part of next year. We’re talking about what’s to come. If we do get inflation in the second half of the year, it will linger into 2022 and 2023, because companies will have pricing power again.
Gold: Do you think we’re going to see inflation returning for a few years after that?
Bianco: I think if you get 2.6% inflation on a sustained level, you’re going to move real interest rates [interest rates less the inflation rates]. They are now negative, meaning interest rates are below the current inflation rate, [so we have] negative real rates. You’ll move them to positive. And I think you can see the 10-year Treasury note TMUBMUSD10Y, 1.738% go over a 3% yield. (It currently yields 1.72%.)
Gold: Over 3% if you get 2.6% sustainable PCE?
Bianco: Yes, exactly, 2.6% sustainable, 50 basis points real. If you got the 10-year to 3%, on a total return basis, that would equate to one of the worst losses the bond market has ever endured. It would be very painful. The bond market would have a problem with that. And if the bond market has a problem, everybody has a problem.
Gold: So what does that mean for stocks?
Bianco: Higher sustained inflation is a net negative for companies. Their raw material prices typically go up, their input prices typically go up more than they can pass along those costs to the consumer. So their margins get squeezed. So what typically happens when inflation returns is the first time you start to see inflation, everybody says, “This is good for stocks, because it’s the best inflation hedge.” And then a few years later, they realize that that was exactly backwards, that you wind up squeezing margins, and it turns out to be very bad for stocks as well, too.
So I think the stock market has a problem. Technology stocks have struggled, because higher rates put most growth companies in a bad place. It is a relative benefit for the value companies, so that’s why we had all this talk about the rotation from growth to value.
A lot of the big FAANG stocks [Facebook FB, +2.27% , Amazon AMZN, +1.27% , Apple AAPL, +1.88% , Netflix NFLX, +1.61% and Google holding company Alphabet GOOG, +0.64% ] had peaked back in September. They’re now going on six months where they haven’t really gone anywhere. The financial stocks have been benefiting from higher rates, because it widens the yield curve, and it gives them better interest margins [at which] they can lend and make money.
Gold: We’ve seen all kinds of speculative excess, like GameStop GME, -2.39% and Tesla TSLA, +5.08% , for months. Could this rotation be accompanied by a big sell-off in stocks if we start seeing some of these speculative names not performing so well?
Bianco: I’m not a believer in Charlie Munger or Paul Singer of Elliott Management or Leon Cooperman warning everybody that all this speculation that you’re seeing in GameStop and in a lot of the technology stuff is going to end in tears. It very well might. But it isn’t going to end in tears by those stocks going down a lot and the S&P 500 SPX, +0.36% being unchanged. It will go down a lot, too. Everybody will lose when this ends. It will just be how much did you lose relative to the next person.
Gold: What about commodities? Is this going to be a good period for commodities and commodity stocks?
Bianco: Yes, it really is. I mean, most of the major commodity indexes — and I’m talking about industrial commodities now, and some of the agricultural commodities — they’re at decade highs, and they’ve been really advancing along quite well. And a lot of the commodity stocks — industrial stocks, basic material stocks — have been responding well, too.
So if I can quote my old friend, Dennis Gartman, “If you can drop it on your toe, you should buy it.” Because that seems to be a very good investment in the last couple of years, and I think it’s going to continue to be.
Gold: OK, in other words, ticker symbol ANVL, right? So, now we have crypto currencies. And you have written that crypto “is going to be the biggest game changer since the Bank of England invented the paper currency in 1693.”
Bianco: They developed the modern version of paper currencies. I think that crypto is going to be the most significant macro event of my career of the last 30 years, and it probably goes back even further. A lot of people think cryptos are a naked speculation on bitcoin BTCUSD, +0.40% , whether it will go up or down.
If you dig into the crypto universe, and you understand the phrase “decentralized finance,” or “defi,” you will find that they are recreating the entire financial system in a decentralized way, complete with borrowing, lending, derivatives trading, insurance, lotteries, automatic market making as well, too.
When Mark Cuban in the mid-1990s started looking at streaming video, you had to download and configure the browser, download and configure an application, download special files and run them on this application. They were grainy, and you could only do about five minutes at a time.
And then he concluded, “This is going to change everything.” You could have said, “Are you kidding me? This is hard. This is not very efficient.” But he said, “Look, they’re going to solve all those problems. And we’re going to get something that’s going to be useful,” and that’s what he turned into broadcast.com, which he sold to Yahoo and became a billionaire.
I see crypto the same way. It is difficult to use. It is fraught with fraud and potential for being hacked. It’s not ready for prime time. But beyond that is a complete remaking of the financial system from the ground, up, in a decentralized, digital way. I would be very worried if I was at a traditional commercial bank. You would be somewhere between where a traditional newspaper is, traditional nightly news and a yellow taxi. They still exist, but they’re a shell of what they used to be, because we’ve gone to a new digital world.
The biggest problem that I see with the crypto space is the American regulations of anti-money laundering and know your customer. Because of those rules, you can run afoul of American regulations. Now, the way you get around that is you can transfer your money to an unregulated wallet, and you can connect to these decentralized exchanges, but that’s really hard. And there’s risk that you do it wrong and you lose your money. I’ve already lost some money, because I’ve done it wrong, too.
But you’re left with a “holy s–t” moment: “This is going to change everything once they get it solved.”
Gold: So, nothing but blue skies?
Bianco: Here’s the risk. There are lots of different systems out there, and there are a lot more coming. Most of them will go to zero. And the few that make it are going to redefine everything.
It’s kind of like it’s 1997 and you correctly said, “Oh, I think search engines on the internet are going to be the next great big thing,” and you bought Lycos, and it went to zero, and you bought Alta Vista, and it went to zero. You bought Yahoo, and you were kind of successful at it. And then you gave up, and then Google was created.
Gold: Don’t these things have to fit into the legal system? And regulators and central banks are very concerned about it.
Bianco: Right now, everything’s priced in dollars, and the United States has a competitive advantage over everybody else. But what I’m afraid of is, by shutting everybody out, and by having the first world basically say, “We’re going to try to ban this stuff,” first of all, it’s decentralized. You can’t ban it.
But what I think is going to happen if you’re not careful is Asia, the Third World, and the Middle East are going to adopt some form of a decentralized exchange, some form of a decentralized token, and they’re going to adopt that as their reserve currency. And we’re going to have no say in the transition to the next reserve currency.
Go back to my Mark Cuban example. When he looked at the beginnings of streaming video, you and I didn’t do it. It was just too damn hard. But he figured out that it would become what YouTube is today: You just push one button and watch. He saw that that’s what it was going to become. That’s what I think a lot of people in the digital space see — a whole new banking system, a whole new financial system, as well.
Howard Gold is a MarketWatch columnist. His Q&As appear monthly. Follow him on Twitter @howardrgold.