Crypto Guides, Knowledge & Insights

Coinbase Runs Risk of Delisting From German Exchanges

Coinbase is in danger of being delisted on Friday by the Deutsche Börse due to issues with proper reference codes.　　Friday could prove to be a major day in the history of Coinbase as it was announced that the Deutsche Börse is planning to delist shares from its Xetra and Frankfurt systems. Along with this, the shares of the cryptocurrency platform are down 2.1% to $313.63 as of early Wednesday. Overall, shares are down 20% from last weeks price of $381.00 at the opening.　　Coinbase stock made its long-anticipated Nasdaq debut a week ago, the biggest yet of any cryptocurrency company. CEO Brian Armstrong unloaded nearly 750,000 shares or 1.5% of his total stake for around $300 million shares on day one. Early investors sold nearly $5 billion worth of stock on the day of listing.　　Despite this hiccup, Deutsche Börse continues its commitment to expanding the range of cryptocurrencies available for trading. Litecoin ETN became the latest big name to get into business after Deutsche Börse became the first worldwide exchange to trade centrally cleared cryptos, including Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, and Litecoin.　　The current product offering is comprised of over 200 ENTs and almost 1,700 EFTs as of April 20th.　　Potential delisting due

2021-04-22Deep Dive

Young Koreans Flock To Crypto

6 out of every 10 Koreans who are investing in crypto for the first time are in their 20s and 30s. 2.5 million accounts were opened across the top four Korean exchanges over the first three months of the year. Korean authorities were concerned as to the risks for these young investors in what they considered a risky sector.　　According to an article today in the The Korea Herald, based on a report released by the opposition People Power Party, many young Koreans were attracted to Crypto as opposed to more traditional forms of investment, and this was raising concerns over the risks these young people were now exposed to.　　The report cited that of the 1.58 million new account holders, 63.5% were in their 20s to 30s, while 1.5% were teenagers.　　Concerns are being voiced in the Korean government over a “potential bubble being formed in the crypto sector” and there were calls to “crack down on illegal transactions and fraud”.　　“The recent crypto fad reminds of the Tulip mania in the past as people are passing over a ‘ticking time bomb’ that is imminent to explode anytime soon,” said Lim Jong-in, the dean of the Graduate School of Information Security at

2021-04-22Deep Dive

Why Bitcoin Could Be The Key For The Future Of Clean Energy

Much has been said lately about Bitcoin‘s impact on the environment. Mainstream media has been especially keen on declaring BTC’s consensus mechanism (Proof-of-Work) a potential danger for the future of the planet.　　A White paper published by Square and ARK Invest, as part of “The Bitcoin Clean Energy Initiative”, makes the opposite case and argues Bitcoin is in fact a “key driver of renewable energys future”. The research paper claims Bitcoin mining along with renewable energy to facilitate an “energy transition”.　　Thus, energy asset owners could become the “bitcoin miners of tomorrow” operating a resilient electricity grid. BTC miners have certain characteristics which can sustain this new energy model. First, miners are geographically agnostics, with a “flexible and easily interruptible load”, as the White paper claims.　　As such, they are “unique energy buyers” appropriate to face the clean energy sectors main challenges: low production when demand rises and intermittency. The research claims the following:　　Bitcoin miners, on the other hand, are an ideal complementary technology for renewables and storage. Combining generation with both storage and miners presents a better overall value proposition than building generation and storage alone.　　Bitcoin Leverage The Cleanest And Cheapest Form Of Energy　　The Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE), metric use to

2021-04-22Deep Dive

More Users Flock to Crypto in Argentina, Peru

Crypto adoption is on the rise in South America, where Argentinians have opened at least two million crypto trading accounts, while Peruvian traders have broken new ground.　　Per Infobae, a “number of industry sources reported” that Argentines have been increasing their crypto buying in recent months.　　However, the media outlet noted that the experts agreed the market was in an “experimental stage” that meant that “two million accounts does not equate to two million active customers.”　　The media outlet quoted Andrés Ondarra, the CEO of Bitso Argentina, as stating that the companys Argentinian operations have seen 375,000 customers join since it began operating a year ago.　　Ondarra added that the coronavirus pandemic had led to “the adoption of cryptocurrencies by large companies, as well as new, different customer profiles.” He added: “A lot of liquidity has begun to be generated.”　　The CEO claimed that the bitcoin (BTC)-peso market has in recent months risen to become “equivalent to half of what the Buenos Aires Stock Exchange moved” over the same period.　　The reports authors noted that while a large portion of investors is still people looking to escape peso hyperinflation by “dollarizing” their fiat via BTC purchases, the picture is diversifying.　　USD sales are still limited at banks

2021-04-22Deep Dive

Why XRP Holders Could Be Key In Lawsuit Against Ripple Labs

Former federal prosecutor James K. Filan has been involved with the lawsuit filed by the Securities and Exchanges Commission (SEC) versus Ripple Labs and two of its executives. Accused of the alleged illegal sale of an unregistered security, the token XRP, Filan has shared his opinion on the case, presented crucial documents, and discussing with the community an important subject.　　According to Filan, the XRP community, with their active role and participation, is making “a huge impact” on the case. As evidence, the lawyer said the court from the Southern District of New York handling the case has increase accommodation for the public from 500 to 4,000 people.　　The court has also opened an international call-in number for any person interested in listening to the discovery conference. This session will take place on April 30th and will regard the SEC contacting foreign regulatory entities to build its case against Ripple Labs. The defendants consider this to be a violation of Federal Procedure and the Hague Convention.　　A petition To “End The War” On XRP　　Another community effort has been led by lawyer John E. Deaton. In March, Deaton introduced a formal pre-filing pleading. Later, judge Analisa Torres granted him permission to represent over 10,000

2021-04-22Deep Dive

How IBM Will Turn Patents In NFTs With Its Blockchain

IBMs partner IPwe will tokenize patents as non-fungible tokens (NFTs), according to a press release. The company will build an infrastructure to store the NFTs. The objective is to improve the way patents are traded. IPwe hopes to “bring new liquidity to this asset class for investors”.　　Hosted on IBM Cloud, IPwes platform operates as a “global patent marketplace”. On it, users can research, seek, and transact with Intellectual Property. The company has operations in over 50 countries worldwide.　　Per the release, the cooperation aims to offer corporations and investors a transparent platform to trade their patents. A company could use a patents NFT and add it to its balance sheet. Thus, there could be a “transformation” in how this asset class is commercialized around the world. IPwe CEO Erich Spangenberg said:　　“The use of NFTs to represent patents will help create completely new ways to interact with IP. This is expected to benefit not only large enterprises that have significant intellectual property, but it will bring new opportunities to small and medium enterprises and even individual IP owners. We believe it will usher in new offerings by financial services firms.”　　How Will The NFTs Be Traded On IBM Blockchain　　IPwe platform will allow NFTs

2021-04-22Deep Dive

Expert explains why Britain needs a digital pound

The United Kingdom Chancellor of the Exchequer announced the launch of a CBDC task force this week, bringing together the Bank of England and Her Majestys Treasury to coordinate the exploration of a potential central bank digital currency.　　Depending on the feedback received from various areas of industry, academia, and civil society, the task force will advise the Bank of England on the future rollout (or not) of what would be a digital version of the pound.　　Antony Welfare, executive director of enterprise at NEM, is a member of the Whitechapel Think Tank and the Finance Payments Working Group, both of which provided preliminary research to the Bank of England in the formation of its CBDC taskforce. Welfare contributed to a report titled The Impact of Digital Currency on the Future of Payments, which was commissioned by the Bank of England, and published in December 2020.　　The task force will consider the implementation of a CBDC from every available angle, but speaking to Cointelegraph, Welfare said one of the biggest boons offered by a digital pound could be financial inclusion, citing the ubiquity of mobile devices and their commonplace use among the population:　　“A CBDC can help significantly in building financial inclusion. The overwhelming

2021-04-21Deep Dive

Uniswap deploys V3 contracts to four Ethereum testnets

Leading decentralized exchange Uniswap has taken a step closer to launching its highly anticipated “V3” iteration, announcing the successful deployment of V3s smart contracts to all Ethereum test networks.　　In an April 21 announcement, Uniswap Labs confirmed that the protocols V3 core and periphery smart contracts have been deployed to all major Ethereum testnets — Ropsten, Rinkeby, Kovan, and Goerli.　　The testnet addresses were posted to Github, with Uniswap reminding users that the addresses are not final and will be changed as the team makes final updates to the periphery repository. Version threes core contracts have also been deployed to GitHub.　　A bug bounty was started on March 23 offering rewards of up to $500,000 for the discovery of high severity bugs in V3s contracts. According to the official announcement, Uniswap v3 is expected to launch to mainnet on May 5.　　Uniswap has taken a path of capital efficiency for its next upgrade which may complicate the passive income aspect of liquidity provision for many casual DeFi investors.　　Some of the upgrades in the next iteration include multiple fee tiers which allowing liquidity providers to be compensated for taking on varying degrees of risk. There are also upgrades to the automated market maker bonding curves,

2021-04-21Deep Dive

Data shows NFT sales fell 40% last week amidst market pullback

The latest mania surrounding non-fungible tokens (NFTs) is seemingly cooling off as sales revenues have decreased nearly by half in just one week, blockchain data and news outlet PANews pointed out today.　　The NFT train　　NFTs are a special type of non-interchangeable tokens that have taken the world by storm over the past couple of months. Unlike “common” cryptocurrencies, each NFT is unique and scarce—qualities that are highly valued by collectors. NFTs can contain all kinds of digital data such as artworks, music, photographs, videos, and so on—or even combinations of them.　　Per the report, daily revenues from sales of NFTs have declined by 42.43% over the last week—from $79.62 million on April 14 to $45.26 million on April 21. This suggests that collectors are becoming less eager to pay thousands or even millions of dollars for digital certificates of ownership that NFTs represent.　　Notably, NFT sales on secondary markets—where people are basically reselling their tokens bought from original creators—historically have been even higher. However, they saw a drop too.　　What do on-chain metrics show？　　Over the past week, the total number of NFT sales on secondary markets decreased by 24.63%, amounting to around 25,400. Similarly, the number of active market wallets dropped to roughly 12,000,

2021-04-21Deep Dive

JPMorgan Warns About Collapsing Bitcoin Momentum

JPMorgan strategist Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou believes that Bitcoin‘s rally might be coming to a close due to the cryptocurrency’s waning momentum, Bloomberg reports.　　$60,000 is the key level　　Panigirtzoglou is convinced that $60,000 is now the do-or-die level for Bitcoin bulls.　　The flagship coin soared to nearly $65,000 on Apr. 14, the day Coinbase had its direct listing, but then plunged spectacularly to $51,000 on Apr. 18. Nearly $10 billion worth of cryptocurrency futures got liquidated during the Sunday crash.　　The lead JPMorgan strategist expects momentum signals to experience a multi-month decay after the massive wipe-out:　　Over the past few days, Bitcoin futures markets experienced a steep liquidation in a similar fashion to the middle of last February, middle of last January or the end of last November. Momentum signals will naturally decay from here for several months, given their still elevated level.　　Declining flows into Bitcoin　　While Bitcoin managed to quickly bounce back after similar corrections that occurred over the past few months, Panigirtzoglou doesnt think that it will be the case this time around due to declining institutional flows:　　Whether we see a repeat of those previous episodes in the current conjuncture remains to be seen.　　However, as reported by U.Today, hedge fund legend Bill Miller claimed that

2021-04-21Deep Dive

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