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Learn How to Swap your USDT-Omni to USDT-Tron

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Tether is a blockchain project with a twist (or a bonus, for some). For the beginners, such firms issue a cryptocurrency that is not 100% virtual as most other coins are but a “stablecoin,” which is a currency backed by some fiat currency or some other commodity. In Tether’s case, the currency was initially supported by a US Dollar per every token (which is why the currency is called USDT). The project has evolved and it now also includes loans to affiliate companies as backing. This new development is quite recent as it happened barely a month ago.

The idea of a stablecoin is to have a cryptocurrency that has all the advantages of portability and transaction speeds we can find in the best digital assets (Bitcoin, XRP, Litecoin, Tron, etc.) but that it’s immune to the inherent price volatility so its value can be depended upon.

The token has been useful in avoiding volatility. Even during the coldest stages of the crypto winter that started on December 18th, 2017, USDT’s price always remained around USD 1.00, which is quite remarkable as most other prices went down by more than 85%. As we write this, tt’s the 8th cryptocurrency by market capitalization at $2,555,882,951 total value. So while it’s still not one of the dominant players in the market, it holds a prominent place.

The project’s blockchain was based on Bitcoin’s, and it was called Omni. And that’s where most of the project’s limitations used to be. The Omni network was rather slow in transaction speeds, and the fees were relatively high, so that’s limited the coin’s prospects for adoption, despite its apparent advantages.

But that’s changed since this April 9th

To solve the Omni’s network’s problems, Tether decided to partner up with another blockchain project which owns a high-speed network that possesses a high-speed and reliable network in which the USDT token can be re-issued, and in which transaction fees will be non-existent: Tron.

The new USDT-Tron based tokens online, now what?

So what will happen to the old USDT-Omni or USDT-ETH coins? Well, if you hold some of those, there’s good news for you, there’s no need for you to lose them at all. There is a swap going on so that your obsolete USDT tokens are upgraded to the Tron version.

So how do you do that? Well, first you need to have a wallet or be in a cryptocurrency exchange that is supporting the swap. The list of those digital wallets and trading platforms is immense, so there’s undoubtedly one to suit your needs. Then you do this:

  1. Deposit your USDT-Omni or USDT-ETH digital coins in the wallet or exchange, making sure that it’s one that supports currencies based on Tron’s TRC20 token technology.
  2. Find out what your wallet or exchange’s instructions are to effect the swap.
  3. Wait for a little and check your USDT balance.

That’s it. It couldn’t possibly be more comfortable, and it will cost you nothing but a bit of time.

An additional benefit of turning your old USDT into the USDT-Tron is that the currency will be every bit as compatible with all apps and contracts in the Tron network as the blockchain’s native currency, TRX.

Image courtesy of Pixabay.

Disclaimer: The presented information is subjected to market condition and may include the very own opinion of the author. Please do your ‘very own’ market research before making any investment in cryptocurrencies. Neither the writer nor the publication (TronWeekly.com) holds any responsibility for your financial loss.

Want a million bucks? Join the Satoshi’s treasure hunt!

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Blockstream Satellite broadcasted a message from an anonymous user. It was cryptic and rambling. It was a challenge to the Bitcoin community to join the hunt for a million dollars (198 BTC approximately) which he called “Satoshi’s Treasure.” With no fear of grandiloquence this user said that the contest would “test the resolve, courage, intelligence, and savvy [sic] of would-be hunters,”

“This message should reach you at the middle of the fourth month of your calendar year, in the year 2019,” the message said. “If you are reading this, something has led you to search for things which bring excitement to an otherwise predictable world.”

The message continues saying that clues will be provided to find the reward through the website satoshitreasure.xyz. He also said that the first three keys will b published in the next few days, and he got the ball rolling himself. “What you are reading is the first clue in a grand Hunt,” according to the message.

“It is not the first Hunt, nor of course will it be the last one, but the hunt is MINE, and so it is to me that you must prove yourself.”

The message kind of publishes the ground rules albeit in a somewhat confused and enigmatic way. It describes the final prize as “neither gold, nor jewels, nor the pieces of worthless paper that pass for money in this sad age,” it insists, will go to “the most successful Hunters and their clan.”

The game master claims to have broken the million dollars “bitcoinucopia” into a thousand pieces. He achieved that using the “splitting magic of the wizard Shamir.” The contest consists in finding 400 out of those thousand pieces and cast Shamir’s “spell of recombination” to rebuild the artifact and claim the prize.

“Once you have done so, the treasure will be irrevocably yours,” the message proclaimed.

The Shamir reference is itself quite ambiguous. It could mean a character from the role-playing game “Magic: The Gathering or Dungeons & Dragons” or a well-known Israeli cryptographer Adi Shamir.

The world would have already found out what the first three keys were starting from April 16th to April 18th at noon in three selected geographic coordinates.

Satoshi’s Treasure fits into a tradition of games and puzzles in which anonymous enthusiasts embed little bits and pieces of data about a Bitcoin private key in all kinds of things such as art, pictures, and other forms of media.

The last episode happened in France where USD 1.000,00 in Bitcoin was hiding inside a replica of the famous picture “Liberty Leading the Republic.”

The most important event of this kind was probably the one known as “The Legend of Satoshi Nakamoto.” This one was cracked in early 2018. It’s really too bad that the puzzle got solved as Bitcoin was losing so much value at the time because solving it needed more than three years.

So are you feeling competitive? Creative? If you are, you can always redirect your browser to the contest’s website and try your hand at the clues that the game master has published so far. Good luck!

Image courtesy of Pixabay.

Disclaimer: The presented information is subjected to market condition and may include the very own opinion of the author. Please do your ‘very own’ market research before making any investment in cryptocurrencies. Neither the writer nor the publication (TronWeekly.com) holds any responsibility for your financial loss.

Ripple whale moves 20 million XRP

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The Ripple ledger recorded a biggish payment worth 20 million XRP a couple of days ago, April 17th. The operation was worth 6.71 USD million at current XRP prices (the token is trading at $0.335736 as we write this). But the price was quite lower at the time the transfer went through. During that day, XRP traded between 0.3157 and 0.32533, so it would have been a little cheaper at the time, depending on the exact time of transacting (which hasn’t been disclosed), but not by much, not more than 6%.

The operation was reported by a Ripple blockchain watcher known as XRPL Monitor on Tweeter:

https://twitter.com/XRPL_Monitor/status/1118246091437301760

This kind of transfer is usually called a “whale movement,” and some observers pay attention to this kind of operations. The reason is that making such payment or transfer requires for the originating party to buy XRP tokens before it could send them, it’s the kind of thing that increases trading volume and drives the currency price up.

As whales go, this one is not that impressive. Sure, it’s most probably a lot more than what you and I have stored in our crypto wallets, but in the past, we’ve seen transfers as high as 73.2 million XRP in volume. When that whale sang, the transfer was worth about USD 15 Million, so the whale in question is not even half as big. That’s why other observers such as “Whale Alert” didn’t take the trouble to report it.

So we don’t know the time of the transfer, who sent it or who received it. Well, we know the address of the receiving wallet, of course, as that’s standard information stored in the Ripple ledger, but we have no idea who it belongs to. We do know that, before the transfer, it held 0.99982 XRP.

So what else do we know? Nothing more, strictly speaking, but we can make a few educated guesses.

We can start by assuming that the sender didn’t buy any XRP to send, so he had them ready in advance. Why? April 16th has been the slowest day of the week for XRP trading. The price was the week’s lowest, and the trading volumes were almost non-existent. A buying order for 20.000.000 XRP would have affected the market in apparent ways. At least it would have prompted a spike in trading volume indicators which we didn’t see at all.

Before you object, yes, XRP’s daily trading volume is slightly above a billion dollars. So a lousy six million would not have changed the game at all in 24 hours right? Well, wrong. If it had happened because of a single order, it would have produced a jump in the charts, especially since, as we wrote already, it was a prolonged day for XRP traders.

Our suspicion is also confirmed by the sender’s balance which is of 1,898,209,057.9865 XRP. That’s about USD 626 million. So this was either a wealthy guy paying a bet (or something of the sort) or one of Ripple’s institutional partners was settling a pending account. There are no more clues for the time being, except that the receiving wallet was basically empty, but that tells us nothing.

So we haven’t seen Moby Dick in the XRP market yet. But, if you know the story, every whale is valuable in its own way.

Image courtesy of Pixabay.

Disclaimer: The presented information is subjected to market condition and may include the very own opinion of the author. Please do your ‘very own’ market research before making any investment in cryptocurrencies. Neither the writer nor the publication (TronWeekly.com) holds any responsibility for your financial loss.

All of Tron’s currencies now supported at MagnumWallet

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The MagnumWallet web site is an exciting cryptocurrency wallet service that doesn’t get the attention it deserves.

It’s an anonymous (and light) web-based digital asset wallet that supports more than 700 different tokens. It implements decentralization by not storing any user’s private keys (which means you remain in full control of your decryption keys, which, in turn, means you stay the undisputed owner of your digital wealth). And you don’t even need to create an account.

So how do you have a secure service without having an account at all? That’s one of the beautiful things that cryptographic-based technology can do for you.

The wallet is also very keen on supporting all kinds of airdrops to facilitate passive-income earning for users, and it has some in-house passive income models that can be quite interesting for any cryptonaut. And unlike other wallets, the lack of individual accounts also means that your country of residence is irrelevant in terms of becoming a user. It doesn’t matter where you are because the wallet doesn’t care.

Magnum includes all the big players (Bitcoin and all its forks as Bitcoin Cash ABC, Litecoin, and others, like Ethereum).

Participation in DPOS-like networks also allows users to earn passive income; you can even become a retail-banker of sorts by earning interest if you delegate or stake your funds in the Tezos or Komodo networks.

And those are the currently available features only, but the platform keeps working and observing the cryptoverse to incorporate and deploy all kinds of new profitable features without compromising security so that users can earn more income.

Other of the wallet’s features include support for Trezos (XTZ only) and all ETH tokens. The wallet supports instant coin exchange from the directly from the Ledger device. There’s an airdrop claim option which allows you to keep getting the new (and old) forks of Bitcoin, Ethereum and others.

Last but not least, there’s the delegation option for DPoS currencies like Tezos. The coin, along with the Callisto Network improves UI for users too. And you can use among a variety of block producers (called bakers in crypto-jargon) if you want to stake some or all of your funds.

So the platform is already quite interesting and very complete. But something new is happening.

According to a tweet published by Justin Sun (Tron’s founder and CEO as well as BitTorrent’s CEO) last week, MagnumWallet now supports all of the Tron-based tokens in the market. This includes the tokens issued using both of Tron’s token technologies (TRC10 and TRC20). Furthermore, not only Tronix will be available at Magnum but also the BitTorrent Token (BTT) and, most interestingly, the new USDT-Tron based stable coin.

Tron keeps securing new and relevant strategic partnerships with all kinds of key players in the crypto verse thus ensuring that the project’s fundamentals remain solid. Which will drive the TRX price up sooner or later. As of now, it trades at USD 0.026992 in modest green numbers, and the trend is currently bullish which is good news for any TRX holder.

Image courtesy of Pixabay.

Disclaimer: The presented information is subjected to market condition and may include the very own opinion of the author. Please do your ‘very own’ market research before making any investment in cryptocurrencies. Neither the writer nor the publication (TronWeekly.com) holds any responsibility for your financial loss.

Coincheck brings top three cryptocurrencies to institutional investors in Japan

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Japan, the cryptosphere and OTC trading

Japan is a critical trading hub in the cryptocurrency market. A few years ago, the world’s largest exchange was based there until it went down after being unable to recover from a security fiasco. It’s suspected that the 20.000 BTC order that changed the market two weeks ago came from Japan too.

And those are only two of the many reasons for which keeping an eye on the Asian cryptocurrency community in general, and in the Japanese one in particular, serves well those who do.

Coincheck is a digital asset exchange based in Japan which is trying to attract institutional investors through a trading system called over-the-counter or OTC. The system works like this: if you’re an investor with enough dough, you can trade in high volume at a pre-arranged price.

It’s a static price so you don’t need to worry about volatility or price variations as you would do if you were doing the ordinary spot trading that is the standard way of doing business in most platforms.

The new service started on April 1st, and it allowed for Bitcoin trading only. The OTC trading option starts at 20 BTC, but the recommended volume is of 225 BTC which is higher than USD 1 million.

Two coins to join the OTC game

And now, the platform is looking to expand its horizons by offering two more digital assets for trade in OTC mode: Ethereum and Ripple’s XRP. This move probably has to do with the fact that both cryptocurrencies are the second and third most extensive by market capitalization, so they’re quite crucial within the crypto verse.

Trading for both cryptocurrencies starts at about USD 80.00,00, which is 500 ETH or 250.000 XRP.

This novel trading method could be responsible for the bullish run we’ve seen over the last couple of weeks, according to Cumberland, a market maker. It claims it’s traced the price spike on April 2nd to OTC trading (at least partly).

Cumberland identified 13 OTC orders that were each worth more than a thousand BTC, and that were placed inside of an hour. Those conclusions fit with the pattern everybody saw that day (Bitcoin going up by USD 1.000,00 roughly in 60 minutes), so while you don’t need to believe them, they make sense. Other researchers have spoken of three orders placed basically at the same time through three different exchanges at the same time, more or less.

The hack and the new rules

This is not the first time Coincheck is on the news this year as it turned out it played a pivotal role in improving the Japanese legal environment for cryptocurrency trading.

On last January Coincheck suffered one of the crypto verse’s most massive hacks ever. The exchange managed to survive the fraud and the scandal, and it’s found a way to repay its customers for any lost assets. The total refund will be of USD 532 million in stolen

The hack prompted the country’s Financial Services Agency to reconsider in full its regulatory framework. The new rules force crypto exchanges to improve customer security by using cold storage only, which means that all of the platform’s digital treasure chest must be kept disengaged from the internet at all times.

Image courtesy of Pixabay.

Disclaimer: The presented information is subjected to market condition and may include the very own opinion of the author. Please do your ‘very own’ market research before making any investment in cryptocurrencies. Neither the writer nor the publication (TronWeekly.com) holds any responsibility for your financial loss.

What would happen if Craig Wright turns out to be Satoshi Nakamoto?

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Craig Wright has claimed to be Satoshi Nakamoto in the past, he even says he can prove it in a court of law. Most of the cryptoverse has received Mr. Wright’s claim with skepticism, and he’s even been nicknamed “faketoshi.” A release by WikiLeaks calling him a “document forger” hasn’t helped his case either.

In this article, we’re not going to examine Mr. Wright’s credentials or try to decide if the man is indeed the mysterious programmer and mathematician who got the cryptocurrency movement started. Instead, we’re going to try and imagine what could happen if it turned out that the character in question is indeed the Satoshi Nakamoto of legendary status.

We start with the obvious. That would mean that Mr. Wright is incredibly rich as he would be among the world’s largest BTC holders (if not the biggest one) and he made most of those tokens when the price was around ten USD cents or less. This needs to be mentioned because it would be unavoidable, but it would also be utterly irrelevant for the cryptoverse as a whole.

What would happen to Bitcoin?

Probably nothing. By that, we mean that the Bitcoin network would continue to develop organically as it’s grown for roughly a decade already? Why? Bitcoin it’s already too big, too strong, and also established as the world’s premier cryptocurrency for a single person to alter its course.

Bitcoin is not only a payment system, a means to store wealth, or a lucrative hobby for retail users. As things stand now, Bitcoin is the largest and most respected institution in the cryptocurrency world, at least in practical terms.

So what if Satoshi is found and it’s Craig Wright? It’s somehow like asking what would happen to all of Batman’s enemies that are already incarcerated or living in Arkham Asylum. If Bruce Wayne went public with his identity, all those guys would stay where they are, and nothing would really change in Gotham except that Bruce’s reputation as a playboy would be enhanced as he’d be known as a hero too.

Some cryptonauts think that if Mr. Wright proves he’s Satoshi, then a lot of Bitcoin users would leave BTC behind to join Bitcoin Cash SV (BSV) which is the blockchain project currently supported by the candidate for Satoshiness.

That is, again, unlikely because Bitcoin is just too well established and it remains a reliable network while Bitcoin Cash SV is fraught with problems of all kinds. The system doesn’t perform very well (it’s even been claimed that the code allows for tokens to be spent twice) either technically or as an asset.

Maybe a few investors would indeed move to BSV, driven by some kind of personality cult, but most players have more of a rational outlook, and the numbers about BSV are there for everybody to see, and they’re not good.

Also, the smartest cryptonauts know that in this business you trust the technology and the math, and not an individual figure. So it’s unlikely that they would follow Mr. Wright anywhere unless he could come up with a new technology that was far superior to Bitcoin. He hasn’t done that at all so far. Instead, he’s come up with BSV.

This situation would be somewhat akin to Jesus and Christianity. Please don’t get us wrong, we’re not saying that Satoshi (even less Craig Wright) can be compared with Jesus at all. Our point is that it’s become fashionable among some intellectual circles to say that Jesus never existed, that no historical individual ever called Jesus was alive in Palestine 2 millennia ago, and carried out all the deeds attributed to Jesus by the Gospels and the New Testament.

Just for argument’s sake, let’s say they’re right. Let’s accept, just for a moment that Jesus never incarnated, was crucified or came back to life on the third day. Then let’s ask ourselves how would that change anything? It wouldn’t. Not at all. Christianity is still all around the world as one of the main religions in the world. There would still be a Pope and the Vatican in Rome, and American fundamentalists would still be trying to have creationism accepted as a scientific theory.

Something alike would happen with Bitcoin. It doesn’t really matter who was the individual that started the ball rolling ten years ago. What matters is that the ball indeed has been running for all that time, and it’s not just rolled but snowballed, and it’s created or inspired the massive thing that the cryptocurrency and fintech movements are today.

Would Mr. Craig become more influential? Maybe. But his influence would increase only so far as he gets things right, which has not been the case so far. He went against Ripple’s XRP, for instance, which turned out to be the cryptosphere’s most profitable coin for two years straight (yes, even more than Bitcoin), just to give you an example but we could keep going by pointing out that Bitcoin Cash SV has been an unmitigated disaster so far. Whatever personal prestige any celebrity or personality of any kind enjoys because of his or her past achievements, needs to be maintained with good work to be kept current.

Great reputations (as Satoshi’s would be) are lost all the time because of mistakes or inconsistency. Think about Ringo Starr. Yes, he was one of the Beatles. The most revolutionary and successful rock and roll band ever to exist. And what’s happened to his career after they disbanded?

All that means that proving his identity as the elusive Satoshi Nakamoto would make Mr. Wright very famous (instead of notorious as he is now). But it’s doubtful that it would make him more influential, or that it would help with fixing all that is wrong with the BSV project, or with the character’s current behavior (which has become so erratic that Binance and other platforms have threatened to ban BSV already). Which also means that he would hardly become more respected because a big chunk of cryptonauts is already sick and tired of his antics which include offering a bounty to hunt down a Twitter user’s real identity.

The bottom line is this: Satoshi’s true identity is utterly irrelevant. We know about him because of the work he did and the consequences it’s had in changing the world. So it doesn’t really matter if the real man behind the pseudonym is Craig Wright, Elvis Presley or Santa Claus. It’s all about the work and the technology, and not about an individual personality. Things are too far gone now for any individual to exert any significant influence or change things.

Our advice is straightforward. It’s just not worth it to spend energy, time, thoughts or sleep over an issue that makes no difference whatsoever for the real decisions you must make as a cryptocurrency developer, investor or aficionado. It just distracts you from getting things right as it becomes noise that prevents you from separating the chaff from the wheat.

Yes, it would be very cool to find out who Satoshi is finally. But that’s all. It would be cool, not significant, not a game changer at all unless he had a better technology than Bitcoin to deploy. But it would have to be so good as to change the world for yet a second time. That’s a very high standard that only a handful of geniuses have been able to meet during human history.  That would be a great reason to identify the great Satoshi at last. But it’s the most unlikely scenario as well.

Image courtesy of Pixabay.

Disclaimer: The presented information is subjected to market condition and may include the very own opinion of the author. Please do your ‘very own’ market research before making any investment in cryptocurrencies. Neither the writer nor the publication (TronWeekly.com) holds any responsibility for your financial loss.

Tron tops Q1 Dapp market report with more than 300k active users

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Dapp.com is a website which tracks the decentralized applications available in the web today. It aims to demystify decentralized technology so that users, developers, and people, in general, feel more comfortable using this new technology and joining the decentralized environments.

It’s something of a directory or a who’s who for the decentralized applications world and it publishes a quarterly report which is radiography for the cryptosphere’s programmable platforms. And in this article, we’ll give you the highlights.

Tron, Steem, EOS, and Ethereum are the four blockchains that are moving the dApp world forward. They have most of the active users in the market.

Q1 saw 504 new dApps come online (in terms of addition to Dapp.com). More than half of those appeared in Ethereum’s network. That happens to show that Ethereum is still the platform of choice for developers to build and deploy new projects. This wasn’t obvious because EOS and Tron have had great success with their dApps. But there’s also a trend for multi-platform development. Many of those Ethereum apps were deployed in parallel in other blockchains like EOS or Tron.

Persistence is high in all the relevant networks. 326 out of the 342 apps active in EOS transacted in some way during Q1, and 95% of the blockchain’s applications remain active. Tron’s and Steem’s apps have active users at the tune of 80%. Ethereum has the highest number of apps, but almost 600 of those are dead as they have not transacted even a single time over the last 90 days.

The four main blockchains kept their strength during the quarter. They transacted USD 3.2 billion in total volume. Tron and EOS lead the way as both processed more than a billion. Ethereum is stuck in the PoS vs. PoW discussion. The main issue will remain the network’s efficiency as well as suspicions about bot trading issues as a consequence of zero transaction fees.

Tron’s applications boast more than 300k active users. EOS is not too far behind at 260k. The number of wallets created in the Tron main net went beyond USD 2.3 million of which almost 16% were decentralized app users. That’s about one and a half growth rate since the year began. And, moreover, Tron users are economically very active as 80% of them transacted at least once in one of Tron’s applications during the quarter.

Gambling apps are what make the environment tick. They’re driving the ecosystem’s growth by attracting about 350k new users into the atmosphere. Increase in games and exchanges were similar as both types of apps attracted almost 100k users during the quarter.

At Ethereum, growth in wallet addresses and increase in dApp users are very different things. The platform lost about 4% of its users, compared yearly. Ethereum users are leaving the network looking for greener pastures. Only 72,422 of the network’s old users are still around as dApp users this year. That’s not even 7%.

Volume usage in Ethereum remains the same as last year’s. Exchanges generate about half of the volume. Next, come gambling apps. The exciting thing is that Ethereum’s gamers are the most active in the whole dApp environment. Players comprise more than 40% of the daily application users, but they make up only 30% of total active users for the quarter. So Ethereum’s games have a stable and loyal user base that’s becoming a healthy community.

EOS: Diversity in a blockchain

Traffic configuration has changed quite a bit in the EOS network from last year. EOS gambling dApps account for an astounding 99% of traffic volume in total. But the system is becoming more diverse as more games and financial service apps are joining the network.

Steem is losing some steam

Steem’s applications have diversified beyond social networks. Tools websites, gambling, and gaming sites appeared over the last quarter. The fraction of transaction volume carried out by gambling dApps went up by 104% to become 94% of the network’s size.

Steemit remains the largest app in Steem, according to SimilarWeb data. That’s not surprising as it continues to be the project’s flagship website. Traffic in the site is of 10 million visits, but barely 100k of those were Steem’s on-chain users for the last 90 days.

“On chain” means those users who use the network to transfer funds, vote in the project’s polls, and post content. All of those activities are recorded in the blockchain’s ledger, which makes Steem one of the more decentralized networks because more than just currency data is stored directly in the blockchain.

Tron: Growing fast, keeping transaction volumes high

Tron grew more quickly than any other app environment so far in the year. That is true for both main net wallets and new app users. About 85% of Tron’s dApp users kept using the apps during Q1, which is the highest retention rate for any of the relevant blockchains.

Tron’s transaction rate is also considerable. Last month, on March 15th alone, it transacted more than USD 91 million, which is beyond any record previously set by Ethereum or EOS.

Image courtesy of Pixabay.

Disclaimer: The presented information is subjected to market condition and may include the very own opinion of the author. Please do your ‘very own’ market research before making any investment in cryptocurrencies. Neither the writer nor the publication (TronWeekly.com) holds any responsibility for your financial loss.

Tron network now hosts almost 300 dApps as 38 new apps join the family

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The Tron network keeps attracting new decentralized applications establishing itself as the world’s most rapidly growing dApp platform. It also has the highest trade volumes in the crypto verse, beyond Ethereum’s and EOS’. A fresh report published recently by the Tron Foundation states that 38 new decentralized applications are online in the Tron environment.

The Tron Foundation dApp report

Among the many exciting bits and pieces of data included in the Tron Foundation’s decentralized applications report, there’s the number of daily active users. It’s stable at about 30k steady users over the last few weeks. The development trend for new apps leans towards gameplay and strategy. The point is to create novel user experiences in those areas.

On further news, the Foundation informed that many more decentralized app in the games category are in the development agenda with a higher degree of complexity. At this point, it bears mentioning that betting apps boomed a few weeks ago, but user interest in gambling has waned off a bit recently so, there is something of a dip in the dApps’ DAU.

Blocklords

“Blocklords” is among the new apps deployed this week. This game is blockchain-based, and it’s a strategy adventure that brings users to middle-ages war scenarios. While the game is newly deployed, its reputation precedes it as it won a grand prize in the Tron Accelerator competition.

The gaming experience includes the storage of the users’ objects and items to enhance the player’s experience as they join in the way Europe develops while the medieval era comes to life through Tron’s blockchain. Users can put fortresses under siege and recuperate any items they’ve lost.

And there’s airdrop on every 800 new blocks completed by the network that’s allocated to the users with newly conquered fortresses. So the game even provides a source of passive income.

And since we’re on the passive income subject, if you control a city, you collect a 10% tax on every transaction carried out there.

MyWish

Another app mentioned in the Foundation’s report is “MyWish” which was released about two years ago on the Ethereum network. This app allows to build and implement custom smart contracts in the Tron Main Net.

Justin Sun (Tron’s CEO and founder) celebrated the Tron’s network further progress as dApp platform in his typical way, which is tweeting it. Tron Foundation tweeted:

Last but not least, the Foundation informed that IPFS is currently undergoing tests for integration into Tron’s dApps.

Tron keeps reporting great news that strengthens the project’s fundamentals which, in turn, will end up driving the project’s currency (Tronix or TRX) price up. As we write this, the token remains 11th by market capitalization, and it trades at $0.0262 in slightly red numbers for the last 24 hours.

Image courtesy of Pixabay.

Disclaimer: The presented information is subjected to market condition and may include the very own opinion of the author. Please do your ‘very own’ market research before making any investment in cryptocurrencies. Neither the writer nor the publication (TronWeekly.com) holds any responsibility for your financial loss.

Can the next global financial crisis be prevented?

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Economic cycles

You maybe did an Economics 101 course at your university. Economics has become so relevant for any professional that many universities around the world make all their students take at least a most basic semester in Economics even if their specialties have nothing at all to do with it. It’s not a bad idea. If you’re involved with cryptocurrency trading, even the most rudimentary economic notions can help you a great deal to negotiate the cryptoverse which is incredibly hard to navigate.

Among the main ideas in Economics is the cycle. All national economies in the world develop in cycles. Sometimes they’re expanding, sometimes they’re contracting. An expansion ends up in a crisis that we call a recession in which a lot of the value achieved during the development is lost. But then it recovers, and it starts growing again. Then the cycle begins again.

That idea holds the status of dogma in Economics, and it’s the cornerstone (direct or indirect) of almost every other thought in the area. It implies that economic growth can’t possibly be sustained indefinitely and that expansions inherently hold the seeds of recessions.

Insane amounts of ink have been spilled on that subject as economists have tried very hard to do all kinds of intellectual contortions aimed at proving that recessions are not such a bad thing after all. That’s how we get, for instance, the idea of “creative destruction” also called Schumpeter’s gale. It’s a contradiction in terms of course, but it’s not rare to find such glaring paradoxes in Economics.

We’re telling you all this because right now we’re experiencing two different cycles at the same time. The cryptocurrency market encountered a crisis on Dec. 18th, 2017 that’s cost more than 85% of the value in all assets available. On the other hand, the world’s traditional economy has been doing reasonably ok since the last global crisis in 2008, which was among the worse in history.

If you go by the traditional cycle theory, then there are two conclusions to be drawn for each case. For crypto, the receding cycle will stop sometime in the future, and the market will start growing again. Some analysts are even saying that last week’s events in Bitcoin pricing are proof that the growth cycle (a bullish run) has already started. We believe that to be premature, but that’s material for another article.

The world economy, on the other hand, is headed towards yet another global financial crisis. Nobody knows when it will happen or how it will start. But everybody knows (or at least they should) that winter is coming again for the world and making preparations wouldn’t be the worse of ideas.

The question is: can the next global crisis be avoided? More importantly, can it be avoided using cryptocurrencies and new financial technologies? Some observers think so, mainly because of Ripple’s technology and cryptocurrency (XRP). Let’s follow their reasons to feel like this.

Liquidity in a crisis

When a crisis hits, money is needed everywhere. More in some places than in others, but the point is that a good injection of capital in some strategic locations could lessen the effects of a crisis and prevent it from running amok.

If you (well, the banks, the governments) can’t fill a money void with actual money, such void becomes larger it begins to create terror and to influence other zones in the economy (geographical and industrial) thus propelling the crisis forward. It becomes a vicious cycle. The mess gets worse because you don’t have the money available to stop it. The crisis prevents you from getting the money to stop it, so it keeps getting worse. It becomes an egg and chicken kind of thing.

The problem is that transferring value all over the world is a slow, expensive and challenging process. Even as the worse crisis develops, there is money and value somewhere in the world. But because the procedures required to bring that money to the right place are so awkward, it rarely happens that the badly needed cash finds its way to the area where it’s needed most. In other words: the problem is lack of liquidity when the world faces a new crisis.

By that token, if liquidity could be improved significantly, the next crisis could be avoided or, at least, its effects could be controlled before it becomes too severe. This line of reasoning continues by saying that the perfect tools for that are none other than cryptocurrencies, specially XRP.

Why XRP? We’re glad you asked. XRP is Ripple’s cryptocurrency, and Ripple is a private company that’s obsessed with international liquidity transfers. Ripple wants money to move freely all around the world quickly, cheaply and reliably and it’s been working hard at achieving that for almost seven years. Because that’s been Ripple’s use case of choice for XRP, the coin is now incredibly efficient when it comes to international value transfers. In that regard, it has no real competition in the crypto verse.

Crypto as the crisis begins: The capitalization issue

So if you want liquidity for money to move around the world, XRP is the way to go. We agree with that wholeheartedly.

But let’s dig just a little deeper.

As a global crisis starts, stopping it in its tracks would require insane amounts of money. Trillions of dollars to be available in a matter of seconds so that the critical weakest links in an economy can be strengthened. Could that really be done with cryptocurrencies? We fear the answer is negative.

So why not? Because it’s all about volume. XRP’s market capitalization is about USD 13.5 billion. That is a lot of money, of course, but it’s also peanuts compared to the amounts you need to have available if you’re going to stop a crisis from going rogue. You just can’t change a national economy’s direction with 14 billion. That amount is not enough even to buy Amazon, Apple or Microsoft which are all valued at a Trillion dollars currently.

The highest market capitalization in cryptocurrencies is Bitcoin (surprise, surprise!) which is worth 88.7 billion. That’s also not nearly enough even to start a bailout in the scale needed to prevent a global crisis.

So no, the numbers are cold, discouraging but clear. At the current capitalization levels, the cryptocurrency market is a drop of water in the ocean of money that global crises move when they happen.

Cryptocurrencies are useless in preventing a new crisis as things stand. The question is, will they remain useless forever in this regard? Not necessarily.

Let’s say that at some point in the future Bitcoin’s success (or XRP’s) is such that it reaches a capitalization level that is similar to the amount of USD available in the world. That would be a completely different scenario. In such a case, there would be enough value in Bitcoin or XRP to stop any crisis as it starts, and the added liquidity facilitated by fast transfer times would indeed make all the difference in the world.

So yes, it’s possible in principle, for a handful of cryptocurrencies to reach a capitalization level that would make them useful in preventing the world’s next economic holocaust. But we’re not there yet.

Chances are that when the next global crisis arrives, we’ll have to face it without any help from crypto. On the other hand, if such a disaster should materialize at a time when the cryptocurrency market has a good cycle, then that will help digital asset investors to face the music without so much stress.

Satoshi Nakamoto created the blockchain and virtual currencies with the explicit aim to get rid of the traditional financial system. He (whoever he is) was very vocal about that. And it’s not an impossible goal. But before it becomes viable, Bitcoin’s price must go up a great deal. And if Bitcoin really eliminates banking as we know it, that itself would go a long way in preventing a further global crisis. Let’s not forget that the 2008 global crisis came about because of the mixture of sheer greed and incompetence prevalent in Wall Street regarding the real estate market.

We hope for the blockchain and cryptocurrencies to really help the world be a better place and prevent the pain that comes with every global crisis, affecting the weakest people in all countries primarily. But crypto is still too young, and before it can really make such a significant difference, it has to grow up and mature.

Image courtesy of Pixabay.

Disclaimer: The presented information is subjected to market condition and may include the very own opinion of the author. Please do your ‘very own’ market research before making any investment in cryptocurrencies. Neither the writer nor the publication (TronWeekly.com) holds any responsibility for your financial loss.

Will Tron (TRX) hit the top five before 2019 ends?

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Tron’s Tronix (TRX) price has increased by 16% in total over the past two weeks (as per the CoinGecko data), after Bitcoin’s magical 60 minutes on Tuesday, April 2nd. Bitcoin went up by 20% in an hour flat, and it dragged up the whole market including TRX. It’s trading at $0.0269 as we write this article.

Let’s not forget that this is a digital asset that’s hardly 19 months old and it’s gone up by 21% over the last thirty days. It’s the eleventh cryptocurrency by market capitalization with 1.79 Billion in total market capitalization value. So the price may seem low, but the numbers are thoroughly impressive.

Tron’s ambition is to use blockchain technology to decentralize the web and create a content network in which content producers keep all the rights to the work they do, and it which central authorities (such as Youtube) are no longer in a position to dictate terms. However, that’snot all. Tron is also a third generation blockchain that functions as a programmable platform that allows for the deployment of decentralized applications and smart contracts.

Its current CEO, Justin Sun founded the Tron project (ruled by the Singapore-based Tron Foundation). Mr. Sun had worked for Ripple for a while before starting his own project, he has a proven track record as a technologic business tycoon in China (the country’s most successful messaging app is his), he’s one of Forbes’ 30 under 30 and he’s known to be a close friend and protegé of Jack Ma’s, the man who founded and owns Alibaba.

So Tron is a substantial project with strong fundamentals but the token, despite being in the top 11 already remains rather cheap and it hasn’t performed spectacularly well as a financial tool. Can that change? Can the TRX break into the world’s top five cryptocurrencies before this year ends? In this article, we’ll try to answer that question.

Right now, the top five are Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple’s XRP, Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash, in that order. Bitcoin cash is worth $5.20 billion which is a lot more than Tron’s capitalization. It surpasses it by roughly three billion.

So, should everything else stay the same (which never happens in crypto) Tron would need to gain at least three million in value from here to December. However, it’s not impossible. It’s a very innovative project that works very hard to keep improving and using blockchain technology to solve new problems, so the potential is there. However, will all the ducks line up?

Let’s explore the reasons that could indeed line up the ducks.

CoinPlay

Tron has managed to outperform almost everybody else as a decentralized application platform, and its new independent Main Net is not yet one year old. Also, on top of that, it bought CoinPlay.

CoinPlay is a blockchain-based decentralized application store. It offers software, games, cryptocurrency ratings and indices. Both projects have similar value and visions, so it’s somewhat natural for them to join forces as they strive in “providing a better user experience for blockchain practitioners.”

The point in CoinPlay is to make the transition into the crypto market easier for newcomers. As Tron’s dApps keep generating interest inside and out of the Tron network, Tron’s new partner should make it easier for new users to find dApps to their liking. It should also help developing teams to list and promote their projects.

Tether

Last month, Tether announced that it would create a stablecoin that will run on Tron’s blockchain. The new USDT stablecoin (which is called like that because every token is a cryptographic currency, but a fiat USD also backs it). It will be a Tron-based token that will use TRC-20 technology, which is the most advanced amongst the two token-issuing technologies Tron has developed (the other one being TRC-10). The new USDT-Tron will be fully compatible with the Tron network, and it will be accepted by all of Tron’s decentralized apps and protocols.

A Tron stablecoin launched using the Tron network could make potential institutional investors pay attention to the project as a whole because the new token can’t be worth less than a USD thus eliminating volatility, which is the institutional world’s main fear about the crypto verse.

The new stablecoin will be launched soon, sometime during the 2019’s Q2. Mr. Sun is quoted saying that it could even be launched in early April, so keep your eyes open, it could arrive any day now!

Odyssey 3.5

Odyssey 3.5 is Tron’s latest network update (which blockchain projects like to call a “hard fork”).

The upgrade has many new exciting features that will enhance the network’s performance and security.

There’s the introduction of multi-signature Tron accounts. This is all about improving security because it means that a single key will no longer be enough to secure an account and enter into the wallet.

The updated virtual machine is 50% faster and far superior in functionality compared to its predecessor.

BitSpeed

Justin Sun is looking forward to seeing how the BitTorrent token will affect the Tron network and project. The Tron Foundation paid USD 140 Million for BitTorrent, which wasn’t exactly cheap. But BitTorrent will bring into Tron 100 Million new users scattered all over the world, so maybe it wasn’t a high price to pay either.

The new Tron-based BitTorrent network includes a token called BitTorrent Token which has already been launched.

The next step is BitTorrent Speed. This will be a new BitTorrent client that will do all the tricks you know and love from Transmission or Deluge (two very popular BitTorrent clients) plus a few new tricks enabled because of integration with a blockchain network. Chief among those is that the client will compensate seeders with BTT tokens thus allowing them to earn some passive income for sharing their bandwidth and content with the network. The new software should be available sometime in the current quarter.

TRX Price Analysis (long term)

If Tron is to reach the top 5, it has to get beyond the $0.08 level. That will mean that a few resistance levels must be faced and broken. Here are some details.

Current daily charts show that the TRX market has broken the 200 days EMA as well as the 100 days. This strongly smells of bulls.

The price action also broke beyond resistance levels, according to Fibonacci Retracement Theory, at USD 0,028. This indicator is computed using the coin’s height from May 21st of last year to the December 2018 low.

Buyers are driving the TRX/USD trading pair higher. Should they continue to do so, they’ll need to face the music at USD 0039 which is the .328 Fibonacci Retracement level. If it goes above USD 0,040, the new resistance could be one cent higher with the next retracement level (.618 Fibonacci) located at 0,056.

If (and this is a big “if”) the bulls keep insisting and driving the price up, they will face resistance at USD 0,064, and then again at 0,070, and 0,076.

Final thoughts

Tron has a lot of potential to get to the top five, especially after the hard fork implementation has given the network a whole new functionality level, and especially once that Project Atlas (the total merger of the BitTorrent decentralized network into Tron’s blockchain Main Net) brings 100 million new potential users and gives them BTT tokens they can use around the Tron network.

The BitTorrent Speed launch will get Tron all kinds of new attention from expert computer users who are otherwise uninterested in crypto. And that kind of new momentum could be the thing that finally brings the TRX price higher than the required $0,08.

So yes, Tron can hit the top five this year. Will it? We’ll have to see.

Image courtesy of Pixabay.

Disclaimer: The presented information is subjected to market condition and may include the very own opinion of the author. Please do your ‘very own’ market research before making any investment in cryptocurrencies. Neither the writer nor the publication (TronWeekly.com) holds any responsibility for your financial loss.