Weekly #90 | 13-09-2019
The following topics will be addressed in this weekly.
- Bundles performance
- All coins great and small
- Market overview
Bundles Performance
This week’s number one coin is without a doubt Cosmos (+53% and big volume) but nobody can figure out why an announced Binance.us listing creates such a buzz. Second place is also a double digit gainer EOS (+11%). But sadly we see some double digit losers as well. Ethereum Classic (-11%) lost a part of its previous gains in the final week before it’s 12 September hardfork and Lisk (-12%) performed disappointingly reaching its lowest price of 2019.
The net effect on the Bundles was a flat performance this week, but with large differences between the currencies. Big 3 (-2%) was slightly down because of Bitcoin (-5%) returning yet again to $10k and only compensated by Ethereum (+2%) which seems to have found its bottom price for now. In the Top 30 (-0.7%) only as little as eight coins performed positively. In Penny Stock (-1%) the BitTorrent token (+12%) stole the show and with Cardano (+2%) another big drop for this Bundle was prevented. There is a shift towards a few altcoins, but not yet a general change.
All in all the market responds very positively to news of adoption and actual use-cases and negatively to struggle and conflict in a project team which could cause delays in development. Keep an eye out for this type of news if you are investing in single cryptocurrencies.
All coins great and small
What exactly are cryptocurrencies for? Where is my money actually going? We think it’s a good idea for you as an investor to know a little bit more about the cryptocurrencies you can invest in with Triaconta.
Stellar (XLM)
Stellar was founded by Jed McCaleb, who also founded another popular currency, the Ripple. In the beginning, Stellar even used the same protocol as Ripple. Like Ripple, Stellar is also intended to be a cross-border transfer and payment system that connects everyone quickly to each other at very low transaction costs. The main difference is that Ripple Labs is a for-profit commercial company and the Stellar Foundation is a non-profit charity that seeks to promote global access, financial inclusion, and financial education. The Stellar protocol, unlike the Ripple code, is fully open source.
Developing countries
Stellar’s primary focus is on developing countries and on bringing remittances, bank loans and other financial services to those who are still excluded from the services of the banks. No fees are charged to individuals or institutions for using the Stellar network. Each transaction requires only a fee of 10 stroops or 0.00001 lumens, currently around 1 millionth of a dollar. This focus however does not prevent one of the world’s largest asset management funds, Franklin Templeton, to tokenize a new moneymark fund on the Stellar blockchain. Check out the full story in our news section.
Stellar token
Stellar received an initial $3M funding from payment processor Stripe (in exchange for 2 billion lumens) and donations from organizations like BlackRock, Google and FastForward.
The project covers the operational costs of further development of the protocol by accepting tax-deductible public donations, and by using the 5 billion lumens (5%) reserved for this purpose at the start of the currency.
Stellar wants to be the email of money, and of course with the exception of spam. A required minimum balance of 20 lumens in your account is meant to prevent spam accounts. This minimum does not apply if you hold lumens on your Triaconta account.
Stellar inflation
Stellar does not use Proof of Stake like other cryptocurrencies and also does not use Proof of Work like Bitcoin or a dividend system like Neo with Gas. Stellar has an inflation rate of 1% per year. This fixed nominal inflation is distributed in the form of new tokens to all Lumens holders with more than 0.05% of the votes of other accounts in the network. So there is no block reward, and most transaction processing nodes in the Stellar network will be active applications of the Stellar blockchain. They don’t run a node for any other reason than to maintain the network they use themselves.
Decentralized exchange
A very important part of the Stellar blockchain is the built-in decentralized exchange. Through the lumens token a user can send every coin (crypto and fiat) to someone else and they can receive the value in every coin (crypto and fiat). The network automatically finds the best exchange rate.
Stellar and IBM
World Wire is a global payment system that connects banks via the Stellar network. It is developed by IBM and six international banks. Currently, the network is limited to two currencies: Stellar Lumens (XLM) and Stronghold USD, a stablecoin with underlying value in US dollars. It replaces the usual SWIFT network in a way that makes the entire “crypto” part invisible to the banks. Invisible but capable of switching real-time between different (crypto) currencies. A large reliable party like IBM makes it a little less stressful for the conservative banks to step into such a new technology.
Stellar or Ripple?
World wire looks a lot like Ripple, and that’s not a problem. The more banks become convinced that they can save money for themselves and their customers by joining a digital crypto network, the better. Some will choose Ripple for this, others will choose IBM and Stellar. The fact that many banking systems are already running on IBM machines does of course give World Wire a unique entrance to these companies.
How can I buy Stellar?
Stellar (XLM) is currently only available in our Top 30 Bundle. It contains 30 of the most popular cryptocurrencies and spreads your investment risk across all cryptocurrency categories. We are working on making more coins available as single cryptocurrencies.
Market overview
Smart move by Dash to partner with Lighthouse Cinemas in Nigeria, and let people who pay with Dash purchase movie tickets at a discount. Dash is really active all over the world. Part of the deal is that Dash gets to show a Dash commercial before the movie starts. So, when at Pathé cinemas?
A Californian politician has become the first elected official to use cryptocurrency to purchase cannabis in the United States. The purchase used Bitcoin Cash (BCH) for the Cannabis and Universal Dollar (a stable coin on Ethereum) for sales and city tax. A special bill allowing cash-free cannabis tax remittance is welcomed by local governments and cannabis shops. With 70% of the cannabis industry in California still being denied access to banks, it is often difficult and dangerous for these companies to pay their taxes in large cash deposits.
Dutchman Wietse Wind officially registered his XRP Community Fund as a foundation. You can now donate, comment and vote for suggestions on improving the use of XRP for payments. The XRP Community Fund is a non-profit organisation to support the development of tools / apps / integrations / plugins that make it easier to use XRP for (consumer/small business) payments. Brad Garlinghouse (CEO of Ripple) was interviewed on CNN today but was (of course) only asked about the price. It would have been epic if he had mentioned this little initiative of enthusiastic XRP developers. Every cryptocurrency project, even Ripple, needs lots of developers to move forward.
Watford FC, a major English football club that plays in the Premier League puts the Bitcoin logo on their shirts. That is exposure of BTC to hundreds of millions watching the league worldwide. But who is paying for this, since there is no Bitcoin company? Sportsbet.io is the primary shirt sponsor and this is their way of giving back and supporting the crypto community, which according to the betting firm’s head of marketing has always been highly supportive of them.
European Central Bank president Mario Draghi announced this week to resume quantitative easing and cut the deposit rate for banks holding euros at the central bank further to minus 0.5%. Negative interest rates and depreciating value of the Euro make an excellent case for plan B, Bitcoin!