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.
‘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, 1.694% 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, -0.24% , 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.
The best crypto is anyone’s guess: Bitcoin and 11 more cryptocurrencies you need to know
Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash
While you’re probably at least passingly familiar with Bitcoin, what the heck is Dogecoin?
With all the noise – and it’s fair to say, craziness – associated with cryptocurrency, we thought you might like a bit of an overview. Like the off-the-rails GameStop stock hack, the cryptocurrency Dogecoin has been on a bit of an undeserved roll. And, because what’s a fake currency without a bonkers billionaire, much of Dogecoin’s recent moment (and that of Bitcoin, too) can be attributed to Elon Musk and his fondness for tweeting.
In this article, we’ll take a quick look at the 12 cryptocurrencies we find most interesting. If you haven’t heard of many of them, you’re not alone. There are, of course, a whole lot more than twelve cryptocurrencies out there. Some of these are, well, let’s just say that if you read the whole article, you’ll find a currency based on the market value of weed. Need I say more?
What are cryptocurrencies?
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When Bitcoin and the blockchain concept exploded onto the internet in 2009, it took the speculative world by storm. It offered a way to transact money, protect identity, and move value across the world virtually instantaneously and free from government, banking, and central oversight.
This freedom provided great value to many different types of individuals and organizations, ranging from activists stuck in repressive countries, to organized crime organizations hiding transactions, to individuals and massive corporations interested in exploring a new data management paradigm.
Today, there are thousands of different cryptocurrencies. Some are mere “forks” of the original Bitcoin concept, while many others have been coded from the ground up. Most leverage the architectural benefits of the blockchain concept, which allows transactions to be added to a central, yet distributed data store.
Bitcoin’s blockchain is particularly interesting because, while the identity of each person conducting transactions can be hidden, every single transaction ever conducted in Bitcoin is available for anyone to review and analyze.
Bitcoin also introduced the concept of coin “mining,” the practice of using computer hardware to solve challenging problems as a way of creating new digital coins. Mining exploded over the past few years, transforming from a program running on a spare PC to giant mining complexes built into the sides of mountains in frigid climates in order to control the heat generated by mining computers.
It’s important to note I am not recommending any of these cryptocurrencies. Investing in cryptocurrencies is speculative, at best. Their values can fluctuate wildly, their underlying management is often unknown, and the question of how governments will react and regulate is always top of mind.
That said, cryptocurrencies are fascinating, and it’s possible you’ll transact business using one or another at some point in the near future. It’s almost guaranteed that you’ll transact business using blockchain technology, whether because you’re specifically using a cryptocurrency, or because one of the businesses you encounter has adopted it as an underlying technology.
With that, we present a dozen fascinating cryptocurrencies, starting with the one that started it all: Bitcoin.
Bitcoin (BTC)
Market Cap
Max supply: 21M BTC
Circulating supply: 16.8M BTC
Mineable: Yes
Bitcoin is the famous cryptocurrency that set off the entire digital gold rush. Launched on the internet in 2009 by a mysterious figure calling himself Satoshi Nakamoto, the Bitcoin code introduced blockchain technology and solved many challenging technical problems about transaction security.
Bitcoin kicked off a rush of investment, jumping in value from $100 per Bitcoin to more than $60,000 in mid-March. You can even buy a Tesla with Bitcoin.
Unfortunately, Bitcoin also set off a race for so-called mining of the digital coins. The core Bitcoin algorithm requires more and more resources for each coin mined, as a way to add friction into the production of the currency. The inevitable side-effect of that design is an ever-increasing energy footprint.
Scientists estimate that worldwide Bitcoin mining consumes somewhere between 500 megawatts and 3.4 gigawatts, or more than enough to keep an entire coal-powered electrical plant busy. A typical electrical plant generates about 600 megawatts. Some writers have even postulated that Bitcoin’s mining operations will consume the world’s entire energy supply. This is unrealistic for many reasons, but there’s no doubt Bitcoin (and other cryptocurrencies) are consuming energy at a disturbing pace.
All this is to say that the days of running Bitcoin mining software on a spare PC are long gone. Today’s Bitcoin miners are so sophisticated, they’re building mining operations in very cold countries like Iceland, where the cooling costs for all those computers can be offset by the naturally cold conditions.
Because Bitcoin was the first major cryptocurrency, some inherent limitations have become apparent over time, including the cost and time of mining a single coin, and the limits to its scalability. To improve upon the original Bitcoin, there is a whole slew of alternative currencies.
One such is Bitcoin Cash, which is considered a “hard fork” from the original Bitcoin code. It uses a different verification mechanism and a larger block size. There are also Bitcoin Gold, Bitcoin Dark, Bitcoin Plus, BitcoinZ, Bitcoin Scrypt, and Bitcoin Red. If you’re looking for the original Bitcoin, verify that it is the currency trading as BTC.
Litecoin (LTC)
Market Cap
Max supply: 84B LTC
Circulating supply: 54.6B LTC
Mineable: Yes
Litecoin is the less-filling alt currency. Litecoin is one of the most popular Bitcoin-alternative currencies out there, with a market capitalization well into the billions of dollars.
It’s important to understand that, at its core, each cryptocurrency is essentially a software application. Therefore, the underlying code of the application greatly impacts the behavior of transactions in the currency.
Litecoin’s primary claims to fame revolve around three key elements. First, it is API-compatible with Bitcoin, so all software that talks to Bitcoin can theoretically talk to Litecoin. Second, blockchain updates (the actual transaction processing itself) are substantially faster, leading to quicker transaction confirmations. Finally, Litecoin was founded by a former Google engineer who now works at Coinbase, a leading currency exchange. This means that access to Litecoin through Coinbase may be more efficient.
Litecoin can be mined, but instead of using the SHA-256 algorithm, it uses Scrypt. This algorithm is far more memory-intensive than compute-intensive, so the custom ASIC chips that have been developed to mine Bitcoin aren’t suited for Litecoin. The prevailing premise is that this reduces the so-called “arms race” in mining technology that’s caused such a frenzy in the Bitcoin world.
Ethereum (ETH)
Market Cap
Circulating supply: 96.8M ETH
Mineable: Yes
Ethereum, which originated in Russia, takes the currency-as-software concept even further. Ethereum is considered an application platform, rather than merely a digital analog of money. This will undoubtedly give you a headache, but it’s worth paying some attention.
The underlying architecture of Ethereum was designed to decentralize computing processes, to take the storage resources of cloud apps out of a single entity’s hands (like Google or AWS) and to distribute the storage resources across the entire internet. If this seems to you to have the flavor of the old peer-to-peer music sharing services, you aren’t wrong.
Since these resources, even if they’re on individuals' computers, aren’t free, they’re paid for by a currency called “Ether.” Ether is the actual cryptocurrency, while Ethereum is the platform. The idea is for web apps to be built on top of Ethereum, and for Ether to pay for their use.
One very interesting aspect of this idea of currency-as-platform is that you can add intelligence to transactions. This opens the door to smart contracts, which are contracts built into the DNA of software rather than negotiated by lawyers. Once a certain condition is met, the currency itself can decide to spit out payments.
Royalties are a good example. A smart contract can be built into a royalty currency app that decides that once a month, a certain amount of Ether would be distributed, based on some pre-programmed criteria.
Ether can be mined, essentially by providing the resources for the Ethereum platform. There is no top-end circulating supply of Ethereum, so inflation is definitely possible.
It should be noted that you might run into something called ETC, which is Ethereum Classic. This uses the so-called original Ethereum blockchain but is subject to considerable controversy. If you’re trading in Ethereum, do so in ETH, not ETC (unless you are very, very sure you know what you’re doing).
Ripple (XRP)
Market Cap
Max supply: 99.9B XRP
Circulating supply: 38.7B XRP
Mineable: No
Ripple is another very popular cryptocurrency, with an overall market value of over $25 billion at the time of this writing.
What makes Ripple different from most of the other cryptocurrencies profiled in this directory is that Ripple is built entirely around the centralized control of one company, Ripple Labs, Inc. The company, which has deep ties to the banking industry, controls nearly 60 percent of the overall supply of XRP, the Ripple currency. XRP can’t be mined.
This means that the company can either keep or dump that supply, which could result in possibly problematic company-initiated sell-offs and value fluctuations, outside of the influence of the market as a whole.
What makes Ripple interesting is that it’s a blockchain technology being adopted by some very blue-chip banking companies, including Bank of America and UBS. This technology is being used to fuel-secure international transactions, with relatively high speed and low transaction fees, making it interesting to those who are looking at new generations of banking and transaction technology.
Zcash (ZEC)
Market Cap
Circulating supply: 3.0M ZEC
Mineable: Yes
While most cryptocurrencies support anonymous trading, there are limits to the privacy afforded. In Bitcoin’s case, for example, while the owner of a given wallet’s identity can be kept private, all the transactions associated with a given Bitcoin wallet are actually a matter of very public record. If you can be connected to a given Bitcoin identifier, all your transactions can be traced through your entire transaction history.
This has been a concern for privacy advocates and has given rise to what is considered “private” currencies. These are, essentially, blockchain-based currencies where the identity information of both the sender and recipients can be concealed through “zero-knowledge” cryptographic security.
Zcash implements zero-knowledge in its blockchain algorithm. While it competes with other private currencies, none other than the NSA-records fugitive Edward Snowden has declared, “Zcash’s privacy tech makes it the most interesting Bitcoin alternative. Bitcoin is great, but if it’s not private, it’s not safe.”
Zcash also protects transactions through a blockchain mechanism that is almost the polar opposite of Bitcoin’s. While Bitcoin’s proof of security is the availability of every transaction in history for verification, Zcash does not link older transactions to currently trading coins. It is a mineable currency. Many miners are actively using commercial gamer GPUs to mine this currency, whose valuation at the time of this writing exceeds $1.5B.
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Dash (DASH)
Market Cap
Max supply: 18.9M DASH
Circulating supply: 7.8M DASH
Mineable: Yes
Dash has been something of a digital currency in search of an identity. A portmanteau of “digital” and “cash,” Dash was originally launched as XCoin (XCO). Its developers then changed its name to Darkcoin, and then, finally, they settled on Dash.
Dash is a fork of the Litecoin code but provides nearly instantaneous transaction speeds and private money transfers. Unlike Bitcoin and Litecoin, the blockchain of Dash is tiered. One tier, the one used for block creation, is utilized by currency miners. The second tier, the “masternodes” tier, is used to perform transfer and governance functions.
Dash (the organization behind the currency) fashions itself to be a decentralized autonomous organization (or DAO). What this means is that its governance is not conducted by a human board of directors, but rather is encoded in a series of smart contracts embedded in its own software program.
Masternodes become masternodes when they’re loaded with 1,000 DASH, or – at today’s trading rate – roughly $200K. In other words, if you didn’t start with a pile of DASH, and want to be part of the DAO’s governance, you’ll need to have nearly a quarter-million bucks in DASH equivalent.
Dogecoin (DOGE)
Market Cap
Circulating supply: 112B DOGE
Mineable: Yes
We’ve managed to go almost 2,000 words without coming back to Elon Musk. You’re welcome. Musk, it seems, has been tweeting about Dogecoin. It started with this:
The future currency of Earth — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 6, 2021
And he’s gone on to tweet more about it. Apparently, there was some discussion about an SEC investigation of that tweet, in which Musk responded it would be “awesome.” So, there’s that. Seriously. You can not make this stuff up. He’s like what would happen if you merged the psyches of Bruce Wayne and the Joker into one high-tech executive. And, of course, “Space Karen.”
But I digress. There’s Dogecoin. Which is, itself, quite the story.
When a currency is based on the image of a Shiba Inu dog, derived from a Reddit joke, which in turn was based on Strong Bad’s nickname “Doge” in the Homestar Runner animated cartoon series, you might not be inclined to take it seriously. But somehow, despite its odd origins, Dogecoin has a market cap north of $7 billion (with a “b”) and therefore is worthy of attention.
It’s a very odd currency with a very dedicated fan base. Although it experienced a serious hack in 2013 resulting in the theft of coins, members of the Dogecoin community jumped in and covered the losses of those affected.
Dogecoin has been used over the years to collect donations for the Olympics, to sponsor a NASCAR driver, and to build a well in Kenya. It’s also become very popular in certain online circles as a way to send tips to content producers and gamers.
Monero (XMR)
Market Cap
Circulating supply: 15.5 XMR
Mineable: Yes
Monero takes the privacy concept promoted by Zcash and ups it a notch. Zcash allows transactions to be triggered as anonymous, but that’s not the default behavior. By contrast, all of Monero’s transactions start anonymous, by default.
The currency uses a number of mechanisms to preserve the anonymity of the transacting parties, as well as of individual coins themselves. This is in strong contrast to Bitcoin, which allows individual coins to be identified as part of given transactions. With Bitcoin, it is possible, therefore, to trace which coins were involved in criminal behavior, possibly tainting those coins for future trading, or subjecting those coins to blacklisting from vendors and exchanges.
By contrast, Monero mixes various keys and identities, so it’s not possible to identify either the coins or the participants in any individual transactions. Unlike many of the other cryptocurrencies, the original Monero designers did not block off a set of coins for themselves. Instead, the entire pool of digital coinage was released for public use.
Unfortunately, the deeply secure and anonymous nature of Monero has found an appeal among criminals. In late 2017, Europol (the EU’s equivalent of the FBI) released a report indicating that Monero, along with Ether and Zcash, has been adopted by darknet operations. Monero, in particular, has proven popular with darknet operators, even to the point that malware has been found to be mining Monero.
Bytecoin (BCN)
Market Cap
Max supply: 184.4 BCN
Circulating supply: 183.6B BCN
Mineable: Yes
Bytecoin is, in many ways, functionally similar to Monero. Both Monero and Bytecoin were derived from the open-source CryptoNote application protocol. Like Monero, Bytecoin has default transaction privacy. Like Monero, Bytecoin has mixed coins, making tracking individual coins theoretically impossible. Like Monero, Bytecoin has full participant security, providing anonymity to both parties in a transaction.
As with some other alt currencies, there is some controversy about the nature and anonymity of Bytecoin. While the coin is mineable, we do find it curious that the maximum supply (at least according to CoinMarketCap.com) and the circulating supply are quite near each other, indicating that all the available Bytecoins may soon be mined and in circulation.
Bytecoin provides an interesting lesson in cryptocurrency: these alt currencies are, essentially, software and can be cloned. Like various open-source projects, there are often unique features in an implementation forked from a single originating code source. But, like many open source projects, some forks exist merely to be forks or to meet an agenda of the forking developer and may not provide a unique value to users of that technology compared to other available implementations.
Neo (NEO)
Market Cap
Max supply: 100M NEO
Circulating supply: 65M NEO
Mineable: No
Until mid-2017, Neo was known as Antshares and originated in China. At first glance, Neo shares many of the characteristics that defined Ethereum as a currency platform, most notably the idea of smart contracts.
But while Ethereum smart contracts can be coded in specialty languages like Solidity, Serpent, LLL, and Mutan, Neo contracts can be coded in C#, Java, and Python. Additionally, while a focus of Ethereum is on the creation of new coin types on top of the Ethereum platform, Neo focuses on using the blockchain platform as a method of linking tangible assets to cryptocurrency and algorithmic operations. An example of this is a domain name marketplace operated entirely based on the blockchain and smart contracts.
Neo may well be worth watching. As one of the few blockchains originating in China, it has the potential to appeal to a giant, growing market. According to some reports, Neo has already established some level of support from the Chinese government, and partnerships with giants like the Alibaba Group (the world’s most valuable retailer) and Microsoft.
With a focus on accessible programming languages, smart contracts aimed at real-world uses, and a strong foothold in what will be the world’s largest market, Neo seems to have a great deal of potential.
PotCoin (POT)
Market Cap
Max supply: 420M POT
Circulating supply: 219M POT
Mineable: No
Medical use of cannabis (with a doctor’s recommendation) is legal in 36 states, plus Guam, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia. Recreational use of cannabis is legal in eight states. An additional 15 states have decriminalized use. But because the federal government still classifies cannabis as a Schedule I substance, the business of legal weed remains in a sort of limbo.
Banks generally won’t accept or provide accounts to businesses in the legal cannabis industry. The same is true of credit card processors. As a result, the cannabis industry, which Bloomberg estimates will be worth $50 billion by 2025, has been an almost entirely cash business.
As you might imagine, the ability to send payments over a distance is difficult with cash. That’s where cryptocurrencies come in. Most cryptocurrencies don’t abide by general banking regulations. As a result, there is definitely cannabis trade in Bitcoin, Litecoin, and other currencies. Where there’s a need, there’s a currency, and the weed business is no different.
In 2014, PotCoin was launched as an open-source cannabis-industry-oriented alt currency. Since then, the currency has established relationships with some dispensaries and medical marijuana organizations and has reached a market cap of almost $6 billion at the time of this writing. There are other cannabis-oriented alt currencies as well, including CannabisCoin (CANN), DopeCoin (DOPE), HempCoin (THC), and CannaCoin (CCN).
In case you’re wondering why you’ve already heard of PotCoin, this is probably the answer: Basketball player Dennis Rodman was wearing a T-shirt with the PotCoin logo while he was visiting North Korea Yep, North Korea. These things happen.
Waves (WAVES)
Market Cap
Circulating supply: 100M WAVES
Mineable: No
Waves is another currency platform on the par with Ethereum and Neo, but this time initiated in Russia. What makes Waves interesting beyond its basic feature set is the partnership it’s developed with Deloitte CIS in Russia, a unit of the big-four financial services firm Deloitte.
“Blockchain technologies are gaining ground, already allowing start-ups, investors, and other stakeholders to quickly raise significant funds in cryptocurrencies. However, the cryptocurrency market is relatively young, and not all the regulatory mechanisms are in place,” states Artem Tolkachev, Director of Legal Services for Technology Projects at Deloitte CIS. He continues, “This is why we are glad to cooperate with Waves Platform and are confident that our joint effort will help create the necessary conditions for putting together the legal framework for blockchain projects both in Russia and the CIS.”
Whether Waves will make waves outside of Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States remains a question. Even so, the partnership with Deloitte makes Waves worth watching.
Final thoughts
As I said way back at the beginning of this article, we’ve looked at just twelve of the many cryptocurrencies out there. Investopedia estimates there are more than 4,000. But even though we’ve only scratched the surface, this will hopefully have given you an idea of what’s available and what’s happening in this ever-growing tulpenmanie-like market.
What do you think about blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies? Do you have a favorite? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.
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