Triaconta Weekly #253

The following topics will be addressed in this weekly:

  • Bundle performance
  • Winners & Losers
  • Market overview
  • What is Hedera?

Bundle performance
The market lost almost all of last week’s gains. A big one-time sell-off in Bitcoin put the price way down on Wednesday and we are now back at the level where we moved sideways for a long time between mid-March and mid-April. There is still plenty of positive sentiment and 2023 remains a very good year for crypto. Another interest rate hike is expected for May in the EU and the US though, so it is not clear in the short term which way we will go. Bundles are taking a step back this week.

Big3:
1 Month: +5.96% | 7D: -8.65% | 24H: -2.76%

Top30:
1 Month: -0.72% | 7D: -7.97% | 24H: -3.49%

Penny:
1 Month: +4.87% | 7D: -3.68% | 24H: -3.38%

DeFi:
1 Month: -2.69% | 7D: -9.20% | 24H: -4.11%

Winners & Losers
A small gain remains this week for Celer Network (+8%), which was previously at 20+ due to the expansion of the cBridge from Ethereum and USDC to more than 10 other blockchains. The PennyStock Zilliqa (+5%) blockchain also becomes EVM-compatible on April 25, making it more attractive to developers. Otherwise, there were mostly losers such as ICON (-18%) with no news and Reserve Rights (-19%) due to continued uncertainty about the status of stablecoins. Lido DAO (-19%) is experiencing a bit more competition from other providers since the Shanghai upgrade of Ethereum. There was bad news this week for Algorand (-18%) which, according to the SEC, was alleged to be a security and so yet another U.S. crypto exchange has been sued because they should have registered as a securities dealer for this then. A judge may get to decide who is right. By the way, Algorand has been traded on all major US exchanges for quite some time, so it is also not clear why exactly this exchange, this token and why now?

Market overview
The European Parliament this week approved the introduction of MiCA. The legislation aims to regulate crypto in the European market from 2024 while protecting and supporting innovation. Tailor-made crypto legislation has also been developed in Asia, and the only country lagging far behind in this is the US. The SEC regulator appears to believe that the 1930s laws regulating stock trading and ownership apply without exception to the new technology of blockchains, decentralized exchanges and cryptocurrencies. It is up to the unfortunately very divided Congress to change this, otherwise it is expected that even more crypto companies will leave America and/or cease providing services to American investors.

What is Hedera?
Hedera Hashgraph is a distributed technology platform founded in 2018 by Leemon Baird and Mance Harmon. The platform uses a unique consensus method called Hashgraph, which operates using the “gossip protocol. This makes it scalable, fast and inexpensive, even for large volumes of transactions. The platform is supported by a consortium of companies from around the world in the Hedera Governing Council.

Hedera Governing Council
The Hedera Governing Council takes decentralization seriously by separating governance from the consensus needed to process transactions. Hedera’s design ensures that no company, group of developers or node operators can have undue influence or control over the network. All members on the board serve three-year terms, with a maximum of two consecutive terms. Currently, dozens of major companies such as Boeing, Google, IBM, Ubisoft and Deutsche Telekom and institutions such as the Indian Institute of Technology Madras and the London School of Economics lead the Hedera network. Each Council member has 1 equal vote to decide the future of Hedera’s software and services and is committed to network innovation, stability and continued decentralization.

Hedera Hashgraph
The hashgraph is not a blockchain, but an alternative distributed system for keeping track of transactions. The main difference is the way consensus (agreement) is reached on the validity of a transaction. Instead of blocks of transactions always being added to a chain, there is a nonlinear “gossip protocol. Nodes in the network distribute transaction information to nearby nodes that in turn share it with other nearby nodes. This method is more efficient and scalable and can easily handle up to 10,000 transactions per second. Well-known cryptocurrency projects that also use this so-called DAG (Directed Acyclic Graph) method are IOTA, Fantom and Avalanche.

Hedera has been in the PennyStock before
The HBAR token was added to the PennyStock bundle in September 2020 with a price of €0.03 and, due to PennyStock rules, had to leave the bundle again within a year in May 2021 due to a price too high of €0.25. After peaking at €0.40 in November 2021, the entire crypto market began a downward trend throughout 2022 with a low for Hedera of €0.03 again on Jan. 1, 2023. Due to an increase in sales and social media attention for HBAR, the coin was again selected for the PennyStock bundle in February of this year with a price of €0.06 which is still approximately the price today.

Hedera future
Blockchain began as a platform for supply chains and financial services, but it can do much more than what it is currently used for. Recently, Hedera became compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine and all Ethereum apps can easily move to the faster, cheaper Hedera hashgraph. The HBAR Foundation is pushing the use of the platform across multiple sectors. For example, it launched a $155 million DeFi stimulus fund in late March and a $250 million Metaverse fund in April, all designed to lure developers and their apps to Hedera. The latest metaverse fund focuses on gaming and virtual worlds, consumer brands and collectibles, sports and fan engagement and enterprise metaverse.

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