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February 14, 2018Watch this video to see how to use this newsletter. Click the square in the lower right to expand the view.
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Crypto Market Commentary
Not A Valentine’s Day Massacre
Market Green After Bullish Confidence Returns
Today Crypto surprised us with a very thoughtful Valentine’s day gift.
It’s been far too long since we’ve seen green across the board, and it’s a welcome reprise, even if it was only a moderate rally in comparison to others we’ve seen in the past six months.
The rally can be traced to several reasons. Most importantly, the market is on its feet again, and like a tide slowly receding, the fear that captured the market weeks ago is almost like a bad memory. It feels like some sunlight is shining through the bearish clouds. That being said, we are cautiously optimistic and watching for a trend reversal. We simply haven’t seen enough trading volume return to the market to declare this a true recovery.
Today we saw several congressional meetings on Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technology as a whole. During the “Beyond Bitcoin: Emerging Applications for Blockchain Technology” hearing, the House Subcommittee on Research and Technology and the Subcommittee on Oversight asked a number of compelling questions.
Our two big takeaways in terms of what the questions were targeting: What have been the prominent use cases and how can this technology be used in conjunction with the government?
Additionally, there was heavy suggestion of a blockchain advisory group, which would encourage and fund research into uses of the technology within the public sphere.
“. . . The idea with the blockchain commission would be to provide a degree of uniformity and a unified approach to the numerous regulatory decisions. Some issues raised by the witnesses today – there’s privacy issue, identity issues, consumer protection, commodities laws, and there’s competing interpretations that have been issued already by federal agencies, so the thought would be to standardize that,” said Aaron Wright, an associate clinical professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law and co-director of its Blockchain Project.
Most surprising to us was a distinct lack of discussion regarding regulation. It was clear the focus was instead on the applications, of which there are many.
“Perhaps most importantly, [Congress should] recognize the difference between blockchain’s use in new forms of currency from broader uses of blockchain when considering regulatory policy. Carefully evaluate policies established regarding cryptocurrencies to ensure that there will not be unintended consequences that stymie the innovation and development surrounding blockchain,” said IBM’s Jerry Cuomo testifying before the subcommittee.
While no substantial moves were made with today’s hearings, the tone echoed that of the CFTC / SEC hearing earlier this month: The U.S. does not want to impede the growth of an impactful new technology, but it must address the potential nefarious and unlawful applications. In other words, work with it and not against it.
In the traditional markets, inflation fears, market pressure, and a struggling retail sector drove the Dollar Index to a 15-Month Low.
“With a large inflation expected here [the US] the markets are going to be tense, the slow and gradual rise of Bitcoin from $6000 mark to now above $9200 might lure a lot of traditional investors to cryptocurrencies,” said Elijah Markus, a Market Analyst.
It remains yet to be seen how the cryptocurrency market as a whole will fare in times of uncertainty with other markets. We do believe Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies may be a port in the coming storm, but it is hard to say and cryptocurrencies have never weathered a recession, while safer assets such as previous metals may be seen as less volatile than “digital gold”.
There were also reports that the surge in prices today were due to an ease in fears regarding outright bans in Europe and South Korea.
Mario Draghi, President of the European Central Bank (ECB), said it was not his organisation’s job to regulate Bitcoin, while also warning the public about the risks of an asset as volatile as cryptocurrency. Meanwhile, the South Korean government gave the strongest signal to date that it will allow the continued operation of crypto exchanges in the country, despite fears a month ago that there would be a ban on trading.
Notably, the central bank chiefs of the G20 member states are expected to discuss cryptocurrencies during the summit in March. Expect a strong market reaction to anything tangible originating from that meeting.
No matter what they say or what actions they take, as we’ve seen from the past every roadblock that has every hindered crypto has only made it bigger and stronger. Expect some wild and crazy days ahead as we start to emerge from this winter lull.
See you tomorrow.
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Offense – Adding Trades
Offensive Actions for the next trading day:
- Will Enter BTC & adding WTC positions; see Doc’s “Technical” section below.
- Entered POE position.
Defense – Managing Risk
Defensive Actions for the next trading day:
- No actions
Current Portfolio
How to read this portfolio: Please click on the Chart Key tab above for definitions and color codes. The colors correspond to our 7 categories in the graphic below. Tier 3
NANO
Nano uses a technology called DAG ( Directed Acyclic Graph ) Nano offers us an alternative to bitcoin as it solves two of the big problems that BTC has Slow transactions High commissions Nano offers us the solution that being a currency that does NOT depend on MINERS, its ecological impact is less, since by not promoting mining the energy consumption is enormously low compared to the cryptocurrencies that use the miners for the creation of coins and the confirmation of transactions, and by not depending on miners for the confirmation of transactions, they are free of any commission.
Tier 4
OriginTrail
OriginTrail enables seamless data sharing along any supply chain. The decentralized, blockchain-supported network protocol ensures trust, transparency, and security. It helps companies exchange relevant data seamlessly and in a secure way to build accountability, protect their brands and increase efficiencies.
LociCoin
Currently the inventing process is convoluted, expensive, and stifles progress. In short, the process is broken forcing many inventors to go straight to market with their idea or never follow through. InnVenn is designed to reform the inventing process through simplifying the process and making it efficient, thereby increasing the possibility of new inventions, innovations, and inspiring the next big idea. Loci holds numerous patents to protect our IP, but our InnVenn product development has been guided by the main patent “System and method for fuzzy concept mapping, voting ontology crowd sourcing, and technology prediction.” The ideas covered in this patent have been researched and developed since 2008 and is the bedrock of what we are doing at Loci.
Po.et
How do you take an open, trustless and decentralized system that anyone can write to at basically no cost and determine what information is useful, trustworthy or accurate? What’s to stop someone from copying a famous work, timestamping it to Po.et and claiming it as their own? How do you filter the “good” from the “bad”? Facts from “fake news”? The answers to these questions, these problems, can be crowdsourced by aligning economic incentives of content creators, publishers and curators via competing token-curated marketplaces, using the Po.et token — POE.
Tier 3
REQ
SUB
LINK
Tier 4
XBY
BNTY
TAU
WISH
TRAC
PHR
ReadySetCrypto’s 7 Categories Of CryptoCurrency
Tier 1 coins are those coins which we have considerable assets invested, are firm believers in the project direction and execution, and have very little reason to sell within short to mid term. These are coins which we risk evaluated to be very solid, and have a high probability of existence duration.
NEO
NEO ($NEO) is classified as a Dividend and Platform coin. As our largest holding, we believe NEO has the potential to become a dominant smart contract and DApp platform in 2018. It’s four most compelling features are:
- An innovative consensus algorithm which will allow for greater TPS (transactions per second) over its competitors.
- A dividend structure for holders, incentivizing coin retention and network stability / diversity.
- SE Asia location, enabling NEO to break into markets more easily than competitors.
- Agnostic smart contract language, allowing for smart contract developers to use existing mainstream programming languages, which allows for cheaper smart contract implementation as compared to Ethereum who’s proprietary smart contract language, Solidity, can be a barrier to integration.
NEO is best acquired through Binance. Storing NEO on the Binance exchange will result in a GAS distribution once a month on the first. We recommend the NEON wallet for safe storage. GAS will be distributed on the NEON wallet daily.
WaltonChain
WaltonChain ($WTC) is classified as a Dividend and Utility coin. Waltonchain is on the cutting edge of using RFID hardware to enable supply chain management 2.0. We believe Walton has the potential to become a dominant IoT blockchain solution Waltonchain is the only truly decentralized platform combining blockchain with the Internet of Things (IoT) via patent pending RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) technology. The custom RFID chips are able to digitally sign and verify transactions at the integrated circuit level, automatically and instantly reading and writing data to the chain without human intervention. This unique implementation of blockchain + IoT facilitates the true interconnection of all things in the real world with the virtual world, creating a genuine, trustworthy and traceable business ecosystem with complete data sharing and absolute information transparency. Walton has two major competitive advantages:
- A recently confirmed (to be signed) partnership with China Mobile’s IoT Alliance. China Mobile is the largest mobile telecommunications service in the world as well as the world’s largest mobile phone operator by total number of subscribers. Walton’s Management system is set to be implemented through mobile communication networks, and China Mobile is the largest one. Waltonchain is positioning themselves to be the single connector of the entire Internet of Things initiative put forward by the China Mobile IoT Alliance.
- They implement the blockchain through the RFIDs at the foundational layer. Their technology is patent-pending and gives Waltonchain a solid claim as the only blockchain that connects the physical world with the virtual world with truly reliable data. This is because all other IoT solutions tag items through API, and this means all the data is first passed through a centralized intermediate, a potential point of vulnerability.
Ethereum
Ethereum ($ETH) is an open blockchain Platform that lets anyone build and use decentralized applications that run on blockchain technology. Like Bitcoin, no one controls or owns Ethereum – it is an open-source project built by many people around the world. But unlike the Bitcoin protocol, Ethereum was designed to be adaptable and flexible. It is easy to create new applications on the Ethereum platform, and with the Homestead release, it is now safe for anyone to use those applications.
OmiseGO
OmiseGO ($OMG) is classified as a Dividend and Utility coin. OmiseGO is a Southeast Asia-based company creating an e-wallet that will make transfer of assets and currencies possible. Merchants and users of the wallet can transfer whatever asset or currency they desire. For example, you could use your ethereum, bitcoin, international fiat, or even your airline points to buy groceries using the e-wallet app on your mobile phone. Transfers can happen across borders, or even while traveling abroad. Unlike Western Union or PayPal for example, the fees are almost negligible, and the transfer is instant. Because it’s based on a blockchain, there are no intermediary banks necessary and users don’t need bank accounts to access those funds. This is especially good for migrant workers who send money home and often don’t have bank accounts and are forced to use expensive wire services instead.
NAVCoin
NAVcoin ($NAV) is a Privacy coin with upcoming Platform features. NAVcoin has been around for 3 years. It is not minable, instead being based on a Proof of Stake system in which stakers earn 5% annual returns. Theoretically this means there could be 5% inflation on the supply, however, that would require every coin holder to stake, so likely there will be very marginal inflation between 1 and 3% year over year. It is a currency originally based off of Bitcoin version 0.13, which should tell you it’s got a good foundation from which to build its feature set. Being based off Bitcoin, it currently is a method of transaction, with notable upgrades in the form of Segwit (with possible lightning network integration in the future) and 30 transaction times with extremely marginal fees. That’s great but a lot of coins have that going for them, so thankfully we’re just getting started with the real interesting pieces of NAV. The first and currently only implemented feature, NavTech is a unique dual blockchain technology. Essentially, NAV runs on these two blockchains in order to completely disconnect the sending wallet (your wallet), to the receiving wallet (where the money is getting sent). Think of it like a VPN, NavTech completely strips the sender’s details so the transaction is completely anonymous. The anonymous transaction space has really gotten big lately, with Monero’s recent price action and Ethereum’s implementation of ZKSnarks being two big examples that come to mind.Moving on to the roadmap, there are two big upcoming features for NAV:
- The first is Polymorph, which is a really cool blend of Nav’s anonymous transactions and Changeally’s instant exchange. What this means is that, for example, I wanted to pay someone in Bitcoin but I wanted to do it anonymously. Polymorph would take my bitcoin, turn it into navcoin in order to be processed and sent anonymously using the Navtech dual blockchain, then turned back into bitcoin at the to be sent to the receiving wallet. This will certainly set NAV apart, as it guarantees anonymous transaction for all of the coins on changeally. This is huge for exposure, and a great opportunity for NAVcoin to gain trust, which is absolutely critical anonymous transaction coins.
- The second big upcoming feature is ADApps, or Anonymized Decentralized Apps. This is also a huge potential win for Nav as there is already a huge amount of interest in the crypto space surrounding Dapps, such as Ethereum and Omni. Adding in the anonymous layer would attract projects that would value the anonymity. Nav is still in the planning stages for this project so it could still be awhile before it comes to fruition, but we should see the whitepaper for it soon, and if they could be first to market with ADapps that could prove to be a killer feature for them as it would give them first access to the interested demographics.
ICON
Simply put, ICON ($ICX) is a massive scale blockchain Platform that allows
- Decentralized Application (DAPPS) – Build DAPPS on ICON Platform like on Ethereum and NEO. Yes, soon, you will see ICOs happening on ICON platform for different DAPPS
- Interchain (Interoperability with Blockchains) – Allows different blockchains connecting to one another through their protocol. ICON is fully compatible with traditional blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum and in future can bridge other public blockchains such as Qtum, NEO and many others to achieve their mission statement – “Hyperconnect the world”
- Artificial Intelligence (AI) – Use of AI to ensure all nodes contributing to ICON Republic/platform are rewarded fairly and not to have certain powers over distribution policies. AI will continue to learn a variety of variables to determine optimal distribution policies and achieve complete decentralization.
- Decentralized Exchange (DEX) – ICON will integrate different DEX protocols on their platform to facilitate exchange of ICX and other future ICON platform currencies. Bancor protocol will be their first DEX protocol when mainent launches this month end and Kyber and others will follow. Not just throwing Kyber’s name out there, it was confirmed they are working with each other, official partnership yet to be announced.
Ripple
Ripple ($XRP) is a real-time Payment protocol for anything of value. It’s a shared public database, with a built-in distributed currency exchange, that operates as the worlds first universal translator for money. Ripple is currency agnostic and has a foreign exchange component built right into the protocol. Ripple acts as a pathfinding algorithm to find the best route for a dollar to become a euro or airline miles to become Bitcoin. It will look at all the orders in the global order book. The case for XRP comes down to the following: 1) Payment systems work best with bridge assets to focus liquidity. 2) There are good reasons to expect a cryptocurrency to be the most popular bridge asset. 3) There are good reasons to expect that cryptocurrency to be XRP.
- Open, decentralized payments will have lots and lots of assets, including national currencies of all kinds and cryptos. A significant fraction of payments will be among assets that aren’t the most popular. Using intermediary assets to settle those payments concentrates liquidity and reduces spreads.
- National currencies are always tied to jurisdictions and can’t be universal. Systems built around them will never be as open and inclusive as systems that aren’t.
- XRP settles faster than any other major crypto. It higher transaction rates than other major cryptos. It is beat by others only by the amount of liquidity available today. And, most importantly, XRP has a company that is devoted to making sure XRP succeeds for this specific use case.
Fundamental Currency Research
The top 10 certainly had a rally today as we continued the first positive week of the year after the crash. Leading the pack was Litecoin, who rode the enthusiasm of an announcement from the company called LitePay. They will seek to offer a merchant solution for Litecoin similar to BitPay for Bitcoin. This continues a long streak of services and solutions that Litecoin has sought to incorporate from Bitcoin, though Litecoin is a very different coin now than when it first forked off Bitcoin in 2011.
Elsewhere, Bitcoin once again topped 9,000 and Ripple has been able to hold onto the nearly 50% gain for the week. In news released today, Ripple announced that it will partner with the Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority (SAMA) to provide support for Ripple’s cross-border payments technology to banks in Saudi Arabia. Dilip Rao, Ripple’s global head of infrastructure innovation, said: “Central banks around the world are leaning into Blockchain technology in recognition of how it can transform cross-border payments, resulting in lower barriers to trade and commerce for both corporates [sic] and consumers.SAMA is leading the charge as the first central bank to provide resources to domestic banks that want to enable instant payments using Ripple’s innovative blockchain solution.”
Ripple has made waves recently, having partnerships with over 100 financial institutions, and most recently last week partnering with LianLian International, a China-based payment services provider.
“Blockchains have a myriad of applications in areas such as cyber security, identity authentication and verification, supply chain risk management, and digital rights management, among others. These applications have potential implications and benefits for the Federal govt.”
We are heavily invested in supply chain management coins, WTC, VEN, WABI, TRAC. It’s by far one of my favorite blockchain use cases, and has already proven to be a lucrative investment group for us.
We are expanding our portfolio to include Po.et in response to this comment by the subcommittee regarding “digital rights management”, and other research we’ve done on it.
Additionally, despite the recent price correction, we’ve had no qualms about holding onto our T2 coin, ICON, as we’re thoroughly convinced in the potential use cases and strength of the team. We look forward to the performance of this coin later this year as they continue to prove themselves.
Please note that while we did drop below our stop limit during the day for our NANO position, we have not closed the position as we wait until the time of publication to make that exit judgement. Thankfully it seems to have been the right call at the moment as the price is rising.
OTPPAY
For flipping Neutral.
For long-term holding Good. A lot of compelling features could make this a standout
What is it?
OTPPAY is an “Omni Token Platform for Payments”, the Blockchain powered Wallet (Buy | Sell | Exchange & Pay). OTPPAY will be the world’s largest platform in which all major crypto assets can be bought, traded and even make payments to the merchants at low fees instantly or escrow based. The pain point of crypto to fiat conversion by the merchant is bridged. Yes, trough our innovative artificial intelligence and machine learning based order/transaction matching engines will convert any cryptocurrency to OTPPAY tokens and OTPPAY tokens to fiat currency just in time. OTPPAY is a unique payment platform, which will have a way to use their favourite cryptocurrency in order to pay the vendors/merchants instantly. We provide vendors with the safety and convenience of receiving funds in fiat currency. One can even change the primary payment option from any cryptocurrency to OTPPAY tokens or fiat currency instantly, thus by protecting them from cryptocurrency market volatility. Our OTPPAY security system will be designed with the blend of traditional fiat currency security standards and latest blockchain technology. We will be acting as the catalyst to enable the just in time cross-border e-commerce and business transactions which will reduce the dependency of forex mediums. Our solution will disrupt the forex/cross-border financial market instantly. Our API’s will interact with the global eKYC interfaces and hyper ledgers to avoid the anti-social transactions. Our omnipresence data mining infrastructure will help us to build the proprietary negative database of suspicious transactions and block them in future thus by saving crypto-miners time & money. In near future, our AI-powered smart engines will be used to frame Crypto Credit Rating (CCR) system, by which merchants & users will be benefited from the OTPPAY Lend features.
What is our verdict?
What we like: A lot of the right features we want to see in a solution such as this.
What we don’t like: Very crowded space both in crypto and in the broader market space.
Website: https://www.otppay.io/
Whitepaper: https://otppay.io/Assets/otppay-whitepaper/OTPPAY_White_paper_v1.1.pdf
Technical Analysis Research
Coinigy is a great tool for determining prices on each exchange, however I may not have access to the full suite of tools on TradingView charts. I am currently not using it as a front-end GUI for my exchanges, which it supports.I also use Blockfolio to give me a quick snapshot of my holdings, and find that it does an excellent job to aggregate all of my holdings into one easy-to-read snapshot of my cryptocurrencies, which are typically located in many different places.
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