Crypto Guides, Knowledge & Insights

Will Nigeria Lead The Digital Currency Movement In Africa?

Nigerias apex regulatory bank, The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), earlier this week hinted at its plans to create a digital Naira.　　Godwin Emefiele, the nation‘s CBN Governor, made this disclosure at a Monetary Policy meeting held in Abuja, the country’s capital. The CBN Governor also made use of the opportunity to address the recent trends of growing volatility and value decline in the cryptocurrency market, taking a swipe at the recent fluctuations that have rocked the market as a result of Teslas CEO, Elon Musk changing predilections. Godwin was quoted as saying:　　“We saw the market collapse. Initially, when Elon Musk tweeted around the time when we said our banking and payment facilities are no longer available for cryptocurrency transactions and he tweeted that he will invest $1.5 billion and the price (Bitcoin) went up. He now tweeted and raised a few concerns and the thing (Cryptocurrency) plunged.”　　Crypto Through Thick and Thin　　The CBNs latest intention comes as a mild shocker. Early February, Nigerians woke up to a red-alert warning on crypto-trading within the country, followed by an outright ban on all transactions related to cryptocurrencies with local banks in the country, forcing tens of millions of Nigerians to seek other indirect

2021-05-31Deep Dive

Volatility Paves Way for USDC Presence on Balance Sheets

The volatile nature of crypto market front-runners like bitcoin (BTC) could lead to their replacement on company balance sheets.　　As price swings lead to low returns for corporate treasurers, they look for an alternative. An alternative in the form of the stablecoin USD Coin (USDC). According to Bloomberg, Circle Internet Financial Ltd., one of the chief developers of USDC, has proposed an alternative for corporations looking to have a hand in the crypto space but are reluctant to go down the precarious BTC avenue.　　The proposal asserts that firms can invest their savings in USDC, and earn up to 7% interest per year when placed in a high-yield account. Reports indicate that this figure equates to over ten times the return expected from a one year Treasury Bill.　　More specifically, corporate treasurers will open a special account in which fiat money gets converted to USDC. The subsequent interest is therefore paid out in USDC. Meanwhile, Circle lends the funds to a network of investors willing to pay an interest rate, which in turn generates the yield.　　The appeal of stablecoins　　Stablecoins like USDC have their value tied to that of another reference. Such as, in USDCs case, the US Dollar, with which it is pegged

2021-05-31Deep Dive

Dogecoin Is Not Worth $37 Billion, Says Crypto King Barry Silbert

Digital Currency Group CEO Barry Silbert has doubled down on his criticism of Dogecoin.　　During a recent Twitter spat with Billy Markus, the co-founder of the meme crypto who tweets under the “Shibetoshi Nakamoto” handle, Silbert wrote that DOGE wasnt worth $37 billion.　　The “crypto king” claims that the coins value comes from “a collective belief” instead of any sort of utility.　　On May 5, Dogecoins market cap surpassed an eye-popping $90 billion.　　On May 8, Silbert announced that he shorted the joke coin while urging its holders to convert their proceeds to Bitcoin. Tesla CEO Elon Musk had his “Saturday Night Live” hosting debut on the same day, which ended up being a typical “sell the news” event: DOGE tanked over 30 percent.　　While Dogecoin has so far failed to recover, it remains the seventh-largest cryptocurrency with a market cap of $39 billion, according to CoinMarketCap.　　Image by tradingview.com　　Dogecoin is here to stay　　Even though Silbert has emerged as the arch-enemy of the Dogecoin community, he admits that the canine coin is here to stay because it has “one of the most passionate” communities.　　The Dogecoins subreddit recently surpassed 2 million followers. Only r/Bitcoin can boast a higher number of followers among coin-specific subreddits.　　Earlier this year, Dogecoin

2021-05-31Deep Dive

America's Oldest Bank Creates Cryptocurrency Unit in Ireland

BNY Mellon, Americas oldest bank, has set up a Digital Innovation Hub in Dublin, Ireland, according to a May 30 report by Business Portal.　　The cryptocurrency unit will provide custody services for different types of different assets.　　As reported by U.Today, BNY Mellon announced its foray into crypto in February, racing ahead of rivals like Citi and JPMorgan. It claimed that it would allow its customers to hold and trade digital assets in 2021 but didnt specify when exactly the new service would launch.　　In March, the bank also disclosed its strategic investment in cryptocurrency startup Fireblocks.　　The largest custodian bank in the world with roughly $41 trillion worth of assets under management established its presence in Ireland back in 1994.

2021-05-31Deep Dive

‘I felt like a moron’ for not buying Bitcoin, says billionaire Stanley Druckenmiller

Billionaire investor Stanley Druckenmiller has recently explained why invested only $20 million in Bitcoin (BTC), skeptical of Ethereum (ETH), and prefers to pretend that Dogecoin (DOGE) doesnt exist at all.　　“For the first move in Bitcoin—I think from like $50 to $17,000—I just sat there aghast. And […] I wanted to buy it every day. It was going up and—even though I didn‘t think much of it—I just couldn’t stand the fact that it was going up and I didnt own it,” Druckenmiller said in an interview with The Hustle earlier this week.　　The problem Bitcoin solves　　A few years ago, Druckenmiller famously said that Bitcoin is a “solution in search of a problem.” Since then, however, he “evolved on this” thanks to a couple of occurrences. First, he finally realized what problem Bitcoin aims to solve—and that problem was called “central banks.”　　“I found the problem: When we did the CARES act and Chairman Powell started crossing all sorts of red lines in terms of what the Fed[eral Reserve] would do and wouldn‘t do. The problem was Jay Powell and the world’s central bankers going nuts and making fiat money even more questionable than it already has been when I used to own

2021-05-31Deep Dive

Fed Inflation Metric Soars To Three Decade High, What It Means For Bitcoin

Is Hyperinflation On The Way？　　The PCE measures price changes in consumer goods and services exchanged in the U.S. economy. Along with the Consumer Price Index (CPI), the PCE is used by the Fed to make monetary policy.　　However, when compiling the PCE, the Bureau of Economic Analysis excludes food and energy costs because they are deemed too volatile. Some critics argue that this policy underestimates the true cost of living.　　“A measure of prices that people living in the United States, or those buying on their behalf, pay for goods and services. Its sometimes called the core PCE price index, because two categories that can have price swings – food and energy – are left out to make underlying inflation easier to see.”　　Nonetheless, the PCE has spiked to its highest level in 30 years. Against a backdrop of record government spending, there are real fears that inflation risks will not be “transitory,” as Fed Governor Lael Brainard mentioned earlier this month to quieten concerns.　　Back in February, U.S investor Michael Burry, who predicted the U.S. housing bubble, warned that he expects the onset of rapid and out-of-control inflation, also known as hyperinflation.　　Looking to history, Burry draws parallels with post-WWI Germany, in which markets

2021-05-31Deep Dive

3 reasons why Polygon (MATIC) outperformed Bitcoin and major cryptos this week

MATIC, the native cryptocurrency of Polygon, rose by over 35% in the past week due to three reasons.　　Polygon (MATIC) is on a tear. In the past seven days, it has gained 35% in the past seven days, outperformed every major cryptocurrency apart from Uniswap.　　There are several big reasons behind the strong uptrend of MATIC, including the growing hype around Polygon, Google BigQuery announcement, and Mark Cubans investment.　　Growing sentiment and hype around Polygon　　On Feb. 9, Matic first announced its plans to rebrand to Polygon. At the time, they brought in promising metaverse projects and integrated Matic Plasma Chain.　　By implementing Plasma Chains, Polygon was able to provide a layer one blockchain network with built-in scaling solutions for projects.　　The Polygon team said in February:　　“We implemented and offered Matic Plasma Chains, a production-ready Ethereum Layer2, predicates-based Plasma implementation; We implemented and offered Matic PoS Chain, a permissionless, EVM-compatible, PoS-secured Ethereum sidechain which relies on strong Ethereum security for validator staking and checkpoints; Onboarded 80+ amazing applications, including Polymarket, Aavegotchi, Neon District, Skyweaver, Cometh, EasyFi with more being added everyday.”　　Since then, Polygon has become a major layer-one blockchain project, specifically for metaverse projects with the numbers of users skyrocketing.　　The growing fundamentals seem to also be

2021-05-29Deep Dive

Binance Smart Chain DeFi project Burgerswap hacked for $7 million

BurgerSwap, a decentralized finance (DeFi) platform based on smart contracts network Binance Smart Chain (BSC), fell victim to a so-called flash loan attack today, allowing the malicious actor to get away with roughly $7.2 million worth of tokens.　　Another day, another DeFi hacked　　“BurgerSwap Flash Loan Attack Details: At around 3 am on May 28th (UTC+8) #BurgerSwap on the BSC chain encountered a flash loan attack; $7.2M was stolen from #BurgerSwap in 14 transactions,” the project tweeted.　　According to BurgerSwap, the hacker(s) created their own “fake coin”—which can be done by anyone on BSC—and used it to form a trading pair with the platforms BURGER token.　　“By adjusting the routing, the attacker created $BURGER - Fake Coin - $WBNB routing; through $BURGER - Fake Coin trading pair, attacker re-entered BurgerSwap through Fake Coin & manipulated a number of reserve0 and reserve1 in the pairs contract, causing the price to change,” the developers explained.　　Then, the attacker took a flash loan of 6,000 Binance Coin (BNB) from PancakeSwap, another BSC-based DeFi platform, and swapped the funds for 92,000 BURGER tokens. After that, they added 100 “fake tokens” and 45,000 BURGER to a liquidity pool and used it to exchange the “fake tokens” for 4,400 BNB.　　“Because of

2021-05-28Deep Dive

UAE authority issues warning about Dubai Coin

As a tech-friendly region, Dubai is never short of new and promising projects, including crypto and blockchain, but the influx of new cryptocurrencies makes it harder for newcomers to distinguish shady campaigns from reliable ones.　　The Dubai Media Office announced that the authorities have never approved a digital currency named Dubai Coin, which saw a 1,000% jump when the project launched as “the official digital currency of Dubai” earlier this week.　　“Its not the official cryptocurrency of the city,” the announcement warns. “The website promoting Dubai Coin is an elaborate phishing campaign that is designed to steal personal information from its visitors.”　　Following the announcement, major listing platforms CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko have removed Dubai Coin from their pages. The price of the coin crashed by more than 50% since the official statement, according to data from TradingView.　　The now-defunct website of Dubai Coin claims that its a project powered by ArabianChain Technology, a public blockchain developed in the region. ArabianChain was quick to announce, one day prior to the officials, that the Dubai Coin website is not related to the company. They also called the project website a scam.　　According to the ArabianChain website, DBIX is the native digital currency of the platform. But its

2021-05-28Deep Dive

MakerDAO Unveils Scaling and Multi-Chain Strategy Roadmap

The largest decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol, MakerDAO, has revealed its scaling strategies for moving forwards in a multi-chain environment.　　In a lengthy post on the MakerDAO governance forum on May 27, a protocol core engineer detailed the current state of the Layer 2 and multi-chain ecosystem. At the end of it, the DeFi lending platform highlighted its potential plans for going forward in this rapidly evolving landscape.　　The purpose of the post was to engage with the broader community on the specific topic, gather feedback regarding the various opportunities, and:　　“Align technical and development resources to agree on a strategy for how MakerDAO should embrace this new and complex landscape.”　　Scaling is essential　　There was a lot of in-depth information on current scaling and crypto-bridge solutions, but it highlighted the need to expand from Ethereum which is the current standard:　　“Ethereum is likely to become a global settlement layer (think of it as the Manhattan of crypto), in this context it is unreasonable to assume that everybody will fit into a single ”city“ where property prices skyrocket.”　　It added that instead, people with growing DeFi needs will establish new, thriving communities by creating their own “islands.”　　It claims that MakerDAO is uniquely positioned to take advantage of the

2021-05-28Deep Dive

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