Triaconta Weekly #211

The following topics will be addressed in this weekly.

  • Bundle performance
  • Winners & Losers
  • New crypto: ThorChain (RUNE)

Bundle performance
Market leader Bitcoin continues a pattern of higher tops and higher bottoms so we remain positive even though the overall market is up just a little more than last week. The US Fed once again threw a spanner in the works by announcing a 0.5% rate hike in May and even considering a 0.75% hike in June and July. Apparently this was priced in anyway because otherwise there would have been big moves. The crypto market also seems to be increasingly going its own way (of increasing adoption) and we see that reflected in the long term rise of the Triaconta bundles. Little movement this week though and that is rare.

Big 3:
1 Month: -5.18% | 7D: -1.85% | 24H: -2.53%

Top 30:
1 Month: -5.04% | 7D: -1.36% | 24H: -1.94%

Penny stock:
1 Month: +13.19% | 7D: +0.48% | 24H: -3.16%

DeFi:
1 Month: -3.03 | 7D: +0.92% | 24H: -2.03%

Winners & Losers
This week, Steem (+59%) wins perhaps because the possible Twitter takeover makes people more interested in social media platforms on the blockchain and that is SteemIt. The roles are reversed this week for new Penny Stocks JasmyCoin (+36%) and Just (-7%). 0x (+24%) benefits from Coinbase’s choice to run their NFT trading on this blockchain. Terra (+18%) reverses last week’s loss. Losers this week are further Maker (-9%) which had to give up its position in the DeFi bundle in early April to ThorChain (+5%), Waves (-7%) and UniSwap (-7%).

New crypto: ThorChain (RUNE)

ThorChain is a decentralized cross-chain liquidity protocol. The main objective of ThorChain is to resist centralization and seizure, while enabling liquidity between different blockchains. The project was started in 2018 when exchanging one crypto to another could only be done through centralized crypto exchanges.

There is a huge variety of level-1 or standalone blockchains (think especially of the oldest blockchains BTC, ETH, LTC) that have been created to support one unique applications and in addition a multitude of level-2 solutions that are built mostly on Ethereum. ThorChain makes it easy to exchange assets between all these different ecosystems. So simple that in the future you won’t even notice that an application you use is using it in the background.

Safer
ThorChain is unique in enabling cross-chain liquidity without the need to wrap assets. Many exchanges on decentralized exchanges or swaps do not happen instantly for example like BTC to ETH on a centralized exchange. On a decentralized exchange, assets are often converted to a representation of BTC called wBTC on the relevant blockchain and so those wrapped BTC are not secured by the Bitcoin blockchain.

Liquidity
ThorChain acts as a vault administrator who is familiar with all deposits and withdrawals. An exchange with ThorChain is always done directly from your Bitcoin wallet to your Ethereum wallet via a ThorChain node validator that has locked enough Rune tokens for this purpose so there is a guarantee it can be trusted. Without derivative solutions (wrapping as described above), this generates liquidity in a decentralized way. You can have the right crypto almost instantly while owning a totally other crypto.

ThorSwap
ThorSwap is an application and desktop app that runs on ThorChain. It works like a Uniswap, and the token RUNE acts as the exchange in each pool (ETH/RUNE, BTC/RUNE etc). RUNE is also used to pay for transaction fees and governance. ThorSwap now supports eight blockchains and is a pocket exchange that eliminates the need for any other solution.

ThorChain past, present and future
2021 was a roller coaster ride for the ThorChain token with the price of Rune reaching a peak of $20 only to drop to $3 after a series of attacks and crypto theft. Security was significantly improved thereafter and the price rose to a new high of $17. Since November 2021, there was a sharp decline in interest in DeFi solutions. The price again sought the bottom of $3 and when the whole market started to rise again joined the new interest in DeFi and quickly went up to $12. In the correction that followed the revision picked up ThorChain for around $10 in the Triaconta DeFi bundle.

The recent major integration with the successful Terra blockchain and its own mainnet launch only a few months away (latest news is late May) we are very optimistic about the price decelopment. It marks a new mature phase of the Thorchain project. The future is very much multi-chain and is only going to work with the ability to exchange value quickly and securely as possible with the decentralized cross-chain swaps on ThorChain.

The upcoming stricter European regulations are going to make it harder to move crypto to and from a central exchange. The capabilities of ThorChain make this no longer necessary for crypto to crypto exchanges and this could lead to a significant increase in the use of Rune in the coming years.