Back Market

backmarket

The Power of Market Disruption: How to Detect Fraud With Graph Data

DePIN Tackles the World’s Most Entrenched Industries

DePIN বিশ্বের সবচেয়ে প্রবেশ করা শিল্পকে মোকাবেলা করে

DePIN nimmt sich der am stärksten verankerten Branchen der Welt an

DePIN aborda las industrias más arraigadas del mundo

DePIN s’attaque aux industries les plus implantées au monde

DePIN दुनिया के सबसे अधिक स्थापित उद्योगों से निपटता है

DePINは世界で最も定着している産業に取り組む

DePIN은 세계에서 가장 확고한 산업을 다루고 있습니다

DePIN aborda as indústrias mais arraigadas do mundo

DePIN решает проблемы самых укоренившихся в мире отраслей

DePIN Dünyanın En Köklü Endüstrileriyle Mücadele Ediyor

DePIN giải quyết các ngành công nghiệp cố thủ nhất thế giới

DePIN 应对全球最根深蒂固的行业

Crypto’s largest exchange just got hit with $4 billion in fines. Its CEO resigned. Rumors are swirling that the largest stablecoin, a crypto version of the US dollar, will collapse under US regulatory scrutiny. Every major US crypto entity is getting sued by investors, users, or the US government. Bitcoin’s price is up 126% this year. The bear market warriors claim validation. The OGs chant “victory!” The bull market champions call for new all-time highs. They all expect crypto will go on an amazing run, they just can’t agree whether that means bitcoin’s price will hit $60,000 before the halving, deliver diminishing returns through the end of 2025, peak sooner than expected in a “left-translated cycle,” or reach some other number on a timeframe that fits within the cycle theories, trading charts, and data models. Torn between two lovers Nobody else seems to believe them. Mainstream commentators seem doubtful. Jim Cramer said crypto’s done. YouTube traders say this is the “B” wave of an A-B-C correction to $6,000 (whatever that means). Your favorite regulators say it’s a fraud. Munger and Buffett say its going to zero. Macro guys tell you the wheels are about to fall off the world’s economy but 2022’s Recessionistas tell you that the recession’s been called off. On-chain gurus say prices have to go up because 75% of bitcoin’s supply sits in the hands of people who either don't care enough to sell or care so much they won’t sell. Data guys say that can’t happen, “the maths” don’t work out. One side of YouTube says the bull market’s confirmed. The other side says prices have to go down because “there is no liquidity,” “interest rates are too high,” and “we need capitulation first.” You're torn between two lovers, a bull and a bear. They both want what’s best for you, but only one is right! Just go along with it Some people simply can’t accept the reality: if bitcoin’s price stays above $15,600, crypto’s been in a bull market for over a year. If that’s you, no worries! What you’re feeling is normal during the disbelief stage of the market cycle, just before hope returns. This is a psychological phenomenon best illustrated by the Wall Street Cheat Sheet, an image that captures the emotions you will feel as you ride the crypto rollercoaster. Take a look: Can you apply that to bitcoin’s price chart? Here it is: You don’t have to believe what you see. You may, however, want to suspend your disbelief. Excuses, excuses Since the start of the year, every upswing has ended with a downswing. You get your hopes up, only to be let down. Priya in the Park insists the end is near, and she’s called every crypto bear market—sometimes more than three years in advance! She’s always right! Billy the Neighbor just bought back the Tesla stock he sold at the 2022 bottom but he’s not hitting you up for altcoin recommendations anymore crypto because “it’s dead” and “I don’t see why it’s valuable.” Your family thinks you lost all of your money. Conspiracy theorists tell you Tether, HTX, and [fill-in-the-blank crypto entity] will collapse from regulators, insolvency, central banks, law enforcement, quantum computers, and whatever else the social media algorithms slip into their feeds. Insolvent exchanges are dumping their customers’ cryptos to raise money. Think of all the excuses you’ve had to keep money out of crypto this year. Curve.Fi gets hacked and seems on the verge of imploding DeFi, so you keep your money out of the market. Death crosses and bull market support bands say you can't buy yet. You haven’t found a narrative that will bring new money into crypto, let alone a narrative that fits what you’re looking for, so you sit on your hands waiting for the altcoin capitulation or some news to get you hyped up again. China has an economic crisis. Supposedly, Europe’s in the middle of one (they don’t know it yet). Canada’s about to collapse. As a result, your mind simply can’t convince you that this market could ever recover. Yet, crypto goes up. Embrace uncertainty You think crypto should collapse, but nothing’s collapsing. Regulators seem to lose or settle every anti-crypto case. Wall Street’s preparing to take over the space. Crypto is not going away. Circumstantial evidence and on-chain behavior suggest stackers and HODLers have settled in for the long haul, and they control the largest portion of the market since 2016. Key sentiment indicators remain in a healthy equilibrium. Key metrics show strong market conditions. China’s stimulus has started to enter the market. Other Asian countries have taken back market share from the US. I could give you a dozen charts that make the future seem hopeless. https://twitter.com/MarkHelfman/status/1705780363040010437?embedable=true Despite all the gloom, the crypto market has turned a corner on every conceivable metric I look at. Bitcoin’s returns beat almost every asset that people like you and me can buy. Hard to believe, I know. Don’t try to believe it. Just try to suspend your disbelief. If you do that, maybe you’ll see a reality you never knew about. This post is also available as a collectible NFT at . https://mirror.xyz https://mirror.xyz/0x9a6600c7B40801dda9A0Fa4E8DE7b1B99FE524a7/ZPqrswR2QxFUPqP0Rng6Gl226NQDpG0nrYNFqx9-gfk?embedable=true Mark Helfman publishes the newsletter. He is also the author of three books and a top Bitcoin writer on and . Learn more about him in his and connect with him on or . Crypto is Easy Medium Hacker Noon bio Superpeer Tealfeed

The Crypto Market Demands You Suspend Your Disbelief

On AI Winters and What it Means for the Future

এআই উইন্টারস এবং ভবিষ্যতের জন্য এর অর্থ কী

Über KI-Winter und was sie für die Zukunft bedeuten

De AI Winters y lo que significa para el futuro

Des hivers de l'IA et de ce que cela signifie pour l'avenir

एआई विंटर्स और भविष्य के लिए इसका क्या अर्थ है

AI の冬とそれが将来に何を意味するか

AI Winters와 그것이 미래에 의미하는 바

Sobre AI Winters e o que isso significa para o futuro

Yapay Zeka Kışları ve Bunun Gelecek İçin Ne İfade Ettiği Üzerine

Về mùa đông AI và ý nghĩa của nó đối với tương lai

人工智能的冬天及其对未来意味着什么

In 2023, one of the oldest blockchain ecosystems will begin to deliver on its original promise at the scale many have hoped for. Ethereum introduced the initial concept of smart contracts and, as such, has had a big head start against rival blockchains, being the most developed DeFi ecosystem. However, other blockchains have been taking back market share, each coming forth with its own unique value propositions and use cases in an attempt to build community and, in turn, attract developers and users. One such blockchain is Cosmos, where Comdex exists. For those new to Cosmos, it can be thought of as an ecosystem of interconnected blockchains, like a hub-and-spoke, with Cosmos Hub at the center. Applications on Ethereum benefit from its Proof-of-Stake security but suffer from certain trade-offs, such as less potential for project-specific customization and less interoperability with other blockchains. With Cosmos, each application can be its own unique Proof-of-Stake blockchain, opening up the potential for an internet of custom-purpose blockchains in the future. Despite having a very strong developer ecosystem, Cosmos DeFi itself has, to date, lagged behind other blockchains, in part due to a lack of available stablecoins. This is changing with the announcement of and the rise in crypto-collateralized stablecoins, covered in detail native USDC coming to Cosmos here. There are several reasons why Cosmos is well-suited for a strong DeFi ecosystem These include: : as each Cosmos application is its own blockchain, they are unaffected by the network congestion as is common with Ethereum. Throughput : blockchain functionality and validator sets can be custom-purposed depending on individual needs. For example, dYdX will have its custom validator set to manage transactions off-chain in order to reduce network congestion. Customizability : projects may build vertically, horizontally, or however they see fit. Teams might wish to make their own core technological changes or introduce a new feature. Control : as more projects build upon Cosmos, network effects grow. Each blockchain will be able to communicate seamlessly and securely with one another using the Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) protocol. Interoperability : gas fees are now paid in the native token of the protocol, meaning that value accrues to their token rather than to another blockchain network such as Ethereum. Gas Fees has also gained widespread attention, and if successful, may lead to others following suit. All in all, as stablecoins become more widely available within Cosmos and more projects begin to see the benefits of building there, the future may be well-poised for future growth. dYdX’s recent move over to Cosmos The Path Forward for Cosmos DeFi Our goal is to democratize finance by building an infrastructure layer optimized for aggregating cross-chain liquidity with a suite of cutting-edge DeFi products. The primary means of doing this is by providing modules built on the core primitives of finance, allowing builders to utilize them to launch DeFi applications. Builders can now benefit from Comdex’s customizable modules, whether that be primitives for functionalities such as liquidations, lending, oracles, vaults, assets, or much more. This will be extremely relevant as more and more projects come to Cosmos in the future, requiring reliable and customizable infrastructure that’s interoperable with the rest of the Cosmos ecosystem. On the consumer side, Comdex is building out a suite of services such as: CMST: our crypto collateralized stablecoin, mintable through . Harbor Protocol : our decentralized exchange. C-Swap : our borrowing and lending market. Commodo Ethereum projects including Curve, Aave, and Frax have been racing to provide all three of the above solutions. For example, Curve is introducing its own stablecoin, while Frax has introduced its own AMM and borrowing/lending market. Comdex already has all of the above, which can be used by other projects wishing to deploy. With the Comdex chain, builders have access to a stack of modules that allow smoother go-to-market for any dApp launching in Cosmos. The Comdex chain, therefore, acts as the de facto infrastructure layer of interchain DeFi. Also published here. About Siddarth Patil Comdex Co-founder and COO. Before co-founding Comdex, Siddarth’s professional endeavors centered on finance, with working experience in wealth management and investment banking. He began building Comdex in 2018 as a blockchain-based solution to digitize the commodity supply chain industry. Along with the Comdex team, Siddarth launched Comdex chain in 2021 as a DeFi infrastructure layer to power a multi-chain ecosystem. About Comdex A DeFi infrastructure layer for the Cosmos ecosystem. A layer-1 infrastructure for seamless deployment of DeFi applications in the Cosmos ecosystem, powering DeFi in the multi-chain future. The Comdex chain is built to enable the bridging of capital to assets across the DeFi and CeFi ecosystems. A truly decentralized ecosystem of solutions enables limitless access to global liquidity in finance. Comdex aims to deliver a robust infrastructure layer that supports the seamless creation and deployment of DeFi applications in the Cosmos ecosystem. The Comdex chain enhances investors’ access to a broad range of assets that help investors diversify and generate yield on their investments.

The Cosmos We’ve All Been Waiting For

El cosmos que todos hemos estado esperando

Le cosmos que nous attendions tous

जिस ब्रह्मांड का हम सब इंतजार कर रहे हैं

待望のコスモス

O cosmos que todos esperávamos

Vũ trụ mà tất cả chúng ta đang chờ đợi

我们一直在等待的宇宙

What’s up, hackers 👋 Q1 2022 has been, as Michael Scott would have put it, “a big one,” for our product team. In 2022 Q1, we added lines of code and deleted lines of code to our primary repositories, totaling new lines of code. 203,627 125,804 77,823 All of this with the intent of making the experience of readers, writers, editors and sponsors better (in some cases, radically different). Without further adieu, let us dive right into it! For Our Beloved Readers This quarter, we really doubled down on making it easier and more useful than ever to own a reader account on HackerNoon. These top 6 features, from signing up with an Ethereum wallet, to getting a handy little “favorite” history on your profile page, are designed to do just that. Number 1: Signup or Login to HackerNoon with Your Crypto Wallet Now, when creating a account, all users can choose whether they want to use a Web 1.0 identity (email), a Web 2.0 identity (social media), or Web 3.0 identity (Ethereum wallet). HackerNoon Beyond letting the user control their identity, the first practical use is distributing the NFTs to ! Noonies winners We wrote ’s first smart contract to mint these :-) HackerNoon will make it easy for writers to receive the many cash prizes via , and to mint and distribute more community earned NFTs like we did for . Adding a wallet to your HackerNoon account Writing Contests Noonies Now, you can also use that same wallet to sign up or log in to ! Check out our annoucement post . HackerNoon here “ You can link your Metamask, Coinbase, or any other ERC-20 wallet that you use to store your crypto! If it can hold Ethereum, Polygon, Chainlink or USDC, it will work on HackerNoon!” Deployed early March, this feature is loudly & proudly our first (major) official foray into web3. Watch this space 😉🚀 Number 2: A New and Improved Search Feature (Algolia integration) Searching for your favorite content has never been more beautiful… or 😉 instant Based on aggregate readership trends, we’ve improved our recommended stories tremendously, and expanded our search results to not only include stories, but also people, subject matter, and companies. You can now discover anything on our site when you enter a word or phrase into the top left corner of hackernoon.com. A relevant list of Stories, , or People will appear immediately, as you type. Hit enter, and you will be directed to the familiar . Tags search page Number 3: Your ‘Favorites History’ On Your Profile Page Creating a just became a lot more appealing. Reader Account Previously, your reader profile is typically blank unless you have written a story (and become a writer instead). Now, it will be populated with all the stories you have ever reacted to 🎉. This allows for a reader profile to showcase their curation and reading expertise, like a GoodReads profile page. Want to go back to that amazing article you saw but can’t remember the exact title? And forgot to bookmark it? As long as you’ve reacted to it, you’ll now be able to find it! Simply visit your profile, and click on the favorites tab. HackerNoon While there, why not check out all of your bookmarks and published stories as well? Number 4: #StandwithUkraine added to Choose Your Color feature We added a simple__ __ as a option. - and we hope this simple act shows solidarity and support for the people of Ukraine in a concrete way, as a tech publication 🇺🇦 #StandwithUkraine Choose Your Color Action speaks louder than words Number 5: Signup or Login with Magic Link We deployed a little ✨magic✨. The magic link as a function as a login/signup option has run rampant through the SaaS world, and if you want only email to be your primary identity, we want to make that moment as smooth as possible. Magic link allows users to or without a password. Visitors wishing to create an account – whether it be writers, readers, or brands can simply use the magic link and be on their way. signup login Number 6: Action-Based Notifications on Site We’ve finally communicated with you with something rather than emails 😆 Simply click on the yellow bell at the top right corner of the screen to learn the latest & hottest updates from HackerNoon, as well as personalized messages whenever you perform an action on the site, such as submitting a story. Log in to your profile and visit your brand new notification center . And, watch this space for more notifications to come 💚 here For Our Brainy Writers This quarter, we’ve spent a lot of time iterating on the writers’ experience on . These are the features that have been launched in the past, made better 💪 HackerNoon Number 7: New Design of the Dashboard for When You Create a New Draft There are many ways to write or contribute to HackerNoon. Writers rejoice! The verdict is in: writers largely prefer (with Markdown support and ) to (our oldest text editor to date, which we continue to support too). We made :-) Editor 3.0 Notion-like UX Editor 2.0 the Editor 3.0 NPMJS package publicly available So - we made it much easier for writers to choose Editor 3.0 when . creating a new draft Number 8:  Import Stories Speaking of a new design for New Draft, you can now import your own story from another URL directly to Editor 3.0! When you , simply click 'import story' and insert the link into the 'paste URL here' popup box. This feature preserves URLs, images, headings, bullet lists, and even tables! You may still need to do some minor reformatting but it will save you a lot of time. start a new draft Side Note: editorially, HackerNoon does prioritize original content over republished stories. See for more details. The Pros and Cons of Import Story Function Number 9:  See Your Notes History We launched this handy back in August last year as a way for editors and writers to communicate with each other in-app on specific stories. Writer / Editor Notes feature Since launch, editors have started using this feature to educate writers on writing best practices, while writers use it to communicate their doubts or concerns, or in some cases, eagerness to be published. All in all, communication has been streamlined more than ever. Now, all users also have access to the entire history of their notes by simply logging in to their account and clicking on “Notes” (or ) https://app.hackernoon.com/my-notes Watch this space as we will develop the feature further to include ability to sort and search through notes. Number 10: View Those Who Reacted to Your Stories Curious to know who is giving your stories that sweet emoji support? Now you can! Go to your published content, and click on the number beside the emojis, and even check out the profile of your (not very) secret admirers 💚 For Our Iconic Brands These are the features deployed to make the life of (that make HackerNoon possible for users) easier. our 1000+ sponsors Number 11: Audio Sponsorships On , you can always count on 1 of 4 robots (Dr.One, Ms. Hacker, Madam Beckham, and Ali Mohat) to read any particular story. HackerNoon Readers love this feature (it gets about 500 clicks a day); and now, sponsors get to enjoy it too. Sponsors simply need to provide us with a simple ad, link, logo, and leave the rest for our sponsor team (and the robots) 🎉 If you are an interested sponsor: Preview the current story audio ad under any published story, or to learn more about this advertising option. book a meeting Number 12: Tech Company News Pages for Startups of the Year Winners Over 1000 tech pages were created for the winners of Startups. You can see region-specific winners . We also open sourced the data so that others can use . here this information to better learn where startups trend Besides Business Overview, Mentions around the web, and Stories on HackerNoon, for Startups of the Year winners also feature a neat little one-liner that links to their win on the main Startups site, like demonstrated below. Tech Company News Pages Six More Features to Note : a SEO best practice, our site map is now auto-generated to ensure all stories and pages are updated automatically and get noticed by web crawlers instantaneously. Improved Site Map : besides instant search, we’ve been training Algolia’s AI to improve the accuracy of related stories’ algorithms. Learn more Training Algolia . here a more accurate and useful view of the editorial dashboard is now available for our staff editors. It includes numbers of stories submitted, edited, scheduled, and rejected per week, by each individual editor, completed with a weekly log that is downloadable as a CSV. Editor Stats 2.0: visit and you can now see the total impressions generated by your profile and . While there, you can also download the AI-powered audio of each of your stories. Updated Writer Stats: https://app.hackernoon.com/stats about page : scroll down a little on homepage, below the top 5 stories, and you can see who just reacted to a recent story. Live Reactions on Homepage annoyed easily by how small and cluttered those fields in story settings can feel? Now you can extend Story Settings to a Full Page and type in notes, meta descriptions, TL;DR, or search tags at ease. This feature is subtle so be sure to look for the little expansion icon in the top left corner of the Story Settings. Full Page Feature on Story Settings: Upcoming WIP Functionalities We Are Excited About: Coin pages that track prices with stories and histories of all cryptocurrencies with a $1B+ market cap. Site-wide comments!!! A new brand dashboard with Stripe-integration for all sponsorship options. A new backup system for all pages (hooray!) Performance improvements, performance improvements, performance improvements. And more! As always - watch this space for more frequent and smaller updates from now on. If you have questions or suggestions about any of our features, feel free to @ us on social, or shoot us an email on ! yes-reply@hackernoon.com See you next time! The Product Team HackerNoon

TOP 12 Latest, Hottest Product Features Deployed in Q1 2022: for HackerNoon Users With Love

Las 12 funciones de productos más recientes y más populares implementadas en el primer trimestre de 2022: para usuarios de HackerNoon con amor

शीर्ष 12 नवीनतम, सबसे हॉट उत्पाद सुविधाएँ Q1 2022 में तैनात: HackerNoon उपयोगकर्ताओं के लिए प्यार के साथ

I wrote this article for Stable Report back in September 2019. I am reposting now since it is a good primer for where we are, and I will be posting a update that will reference this article soon. Please note, that the Digital Euro was not live when I first write this article, but China's CBDC is already functional, and the Digital Euro is expected to go live in the coming few years. In a quest to decentralize the globe, entrepreneurs have strived to create a new status quo for the world. Money, and the functions money serve, have been the main target of innovation. In the half decade past, the industry has blossomed tremendously, with projects like Ethereum, R3’s Corda, Hyperledger and more, becoming platforms for a new generation of high tech solutions facilitated by Blockchain and cryptography. These innovations, although initially supported by small teams working on relatively fringe projects, has now reached highs that seems impossible a few years back. Market behemoths, like JP Morgan Chase, Facebook, Walmart, and more, have all become involved in the space with their own blockchain projects. Although Stable Report focusing on stablecoins, and we see the introduction of large corporates as validation of the potential of this market, we recognize that private corporation are not the only players entering the space. Central Banks and their Digital Currency projects are very real, and will enter the market sooner rather than later. The introduction on Facebook’s Libra (read Stable Report’s article on ) has been a wakeup call for Central Banks around the world. The People’s Bank of China has been leading the way, and the industry media are buzzing with updates on their upcoming plans. But what are Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), and how do they function? Who are the key players in the market, which Central Banks will act first, and what is the expected timeline of CBDCs? Is Bitcoin dead again? Libra here Types and Functions of CBDCs: Through a Bank of International Settlements’(BIS) paper on , a breakdown of money types was presented. The “Money Tree”, a Venn-like diagram the divided money characteristics into four separate categories, is presented below. These characteristics are a) digital, b) central bank issued, c) token/value-based, and d) widely accessible. Central Bank Digital Currency The Money Tree, which should be familiar to researchers of CBDCs, is a good tool for differentiating cryptocurrencies, traditional bank deposits and CBDCs from each other. In this diagram, three separate CBDC categories emerge: a) Central bank, account-based CBDCs, b) Token-based CBDCs for commercial banks, and c) Token-based CBDCs for general use. The differences between the two token-based models is slight but important, since the proposed use of the two models focuses on different users. The commercial bank token model is focused on maintaining the Bank’s reserve targets and alleviating the settlement delays between the central bank and commercial banks. This solves pain points like overnight loans, cross-back payments, and more. The general purpose token-based CBDC model, however, would expand these uses to everyday transactions within the market – something like a central bank-sponsored Venmo, PayPal or CashApp using CBDC tokens. The benefit of this model would be the continuation of existing banking practices with little deviation from today’s banking state of affairs. The third option, Account-based CBDCs, however, would expand the functions of central banks in way not seen in the past. This CBDC model would allow citizens and CBDC users to hold their funds in central bank-based accounts, potentially cutting into the market share of commercial banks. As presented in the BIS survey on CBDCs, the potential for users to shift funds from commercial bank accounts and into CBDC accounts can be quite high in certain occasions. There are a lot of other factors a Central Bank needs to be mindful of before issuing a CBDC, but in many ways, selecting which of the above models a central bank will develop is the most important determinant to how significant a CBDC will be to the banking sector and the future of monetary policy. Key Projects and Players in CBDCs: So which Central Banks are exploring CBDCs, and how close are they to being officially issued? As mentioned above, the interest towards CBDCs skyrocketed when the People’s Bank of China announced that it is expediting the launch of their own project; a decision which in turn was fueled by Facebook’s Libra stablecoin. Media coverage seems to suggest that the CBDC will be launching in late 2019, namely around November, and specifically before the launch of Libra in 2020. Official designs for The People’s Bank of China’s CBDC are still not public, but reports dictate that it will be a two-tier system, with tokens being issued to banks and large telecommunication companies directly from the central bank, and through a private blockchain. The second tier system, from banks and telecom business to users, is still no known, although the PBoC aims for a transaction rate of around 300.000 per second. A more in depth analysis can be found in . Binance Research’s dedicated segment on the topic Although PBoC’s CBDC is the world’s leading CBDC project, with research starting all the way back in 2014, you will find, unsurprisingly, multiple other banks extensively researching CBDCs. In the aforementioned BIS survey indicates that out of the 63 central banks which partook into their research, a whopping 70% (or 44 central banks) are currently, or soon to be, engaged in serious CBDC research. In fact, the first consumer-based pilot CBDC program was launched by the Bank of Uruguay in late 2017. The program, otherwise known as the e-Peso, was an effort to increase financial inclusion in the country, and 20m e-Pesos were minted and distributed to businesses and individuals. The fund transfers were instant and peer-to-peer, either through text messages or through a dedicated e-Peso mobile app. The pilot was a success and was concluded in April of 2018. No further trials or plans are public as of yet. An additional CBDC pilot project is underway in Sweden, however no official date is set as of yet. With the ever falling use of cash throughout Sweden, Sveriges Riksbank is exploring a e-Krona CBDC as a digital cash alternative. For Sveriges Riksbank, the rise of private payment providers, namely Swish - and app that has achieved near 60% market penetration by 2018 – brings with it unwanted third party risk, and the e-Krona could be a more secure solution as money enters the digital age. However, the number of projects being researched and tested are plentiful and quite diverse. Accenture’s Global Blockchain Technology division has been particularly invested in CBDC research and implementation. Their reports and do a great job exploring the technical setup and social need for smart CBDC development by central banks. (R)evolution of Money (R)evolution of Money II (R)evolution of Money II lists a myriad of projects Accenture has been a part of. Often times in partnership with R3, Accenture has been instrumental in leading Project Jasper, Project Jasper-Ubin, Project Stella and more, paving the way for CBDC experimentation and proving that the technology is mature enough to handle the volumes of transactions expected by CBDCs. This report mentions the exploratory work on CBDCs by the Bank of England, the Bank of Canada, the European Central Bank, the Riksbank, the Bank of Japan, the Monetary Authority of Singapore, and the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank; and is highly recommended reading for anyone that wants to learn more about CBDCs. This piece would be amiss if it didn’t mention the work being conducted by the Bank of Russia, the Bank of Iran, and Venezuela’s Petro. Although the aforementioned projects are under development, little is known about the structure of Iran’s and Russia’s CBDCs, except that both have been touted as responses to US-imposed financial sanctions. Venezuela’s Petro, although state-sponsored, has more characteristics similar to a traditional asset-backed stable cryptocurrency than a CBDC, and has been highly controversial and mistrusted. On a final note, CBDC exploration does not end there, with multiple other Central Banks reviewing the technology and gradually moving forward with it. The Hackernoon article “ ” is a good resource for anyone seeking to explore country-specific projects. CBCD: 19 Countries Creating or Researching the Issuance of a Digital Decentralized Currency The expected timeline for globe-wide CBDC development is yet unknown, but the space in heating up. China, which is leading the way, is expected to launch before 2020, but the timeline for CBDC issuance by western central banks still seems far away. Expected Timeline of CBDC Launch: In conference, the topic of CBDCs was discussed. Michael Warner, strategist for the San Francisco Fed, argued that a FedCoin is still at least a decade way, and that the Fed will be the last institution to explore CBDCs since the US Dollar is already leading the traditional global financial market. IBM’s Think 2019 In the Europe front, the ECB has mentioned that Wholesale CBDCs are a viable option for the future. In most cases, wholesale CBDCs between commercial banks and central banks seem to be the technology that central banks are most excited to explore. All signs show that these will lead the way. Therefore, it seems safe to say that the 2020s might be the decade of financial innovation on money, cryptocurrencies, stablecoins and CBDCs. Everything seems to align with this trajectory, and money is due to change forever. Get ready. Conclusions and Other Thoughts So, where do we stand? CBDCs seem to be becoming a reality sooner rather than later; at least in the East and in emerging markets. What is holding their development back, and are CBDCs a threat to cryptocurrencies? What about stablecoins? The answers are not yet known, but with the information available, let’s try to speculate. For most cases, CBDCs will start through wholesale, with Central Banks issuing token to commercial banks long before you, the end user, gets a hold of them. Why is that? Well, mostly because the technology can help elevate pain points in the settlement process between banks and central banks. Will general purpose, token-based CBDCs enter the retail market? Yes, but probably after wholesale CBDCs become the norm in the back-end of intra-bank and cross-bank transaction. Commercial bank account (or an alternative) will be needed to access these CBDCs when they come. What about the third option? CBDC accounts in the Central Banks for general purposes? The future for such project is unknown, but it seems to bring an unnecessary risk with their implementation. It will be a financial innovation that commercial banks won’t be ready for, since Central Bank accounts will inherently be less risky; and of course less profitable, with no interest returns offered to account holders. But will a meager interest rate counter the uncertainty of keeping your money in commercial bank accounts? Not in times of economic downturn, nor when interest rates are in near historic lows, like today. In most cases, account-based CBDCs will interfere with fractional reserve banking, and I expect them to be the last CBDC version to be explored, and only in countries where financial uncertainty is at its peak. What about Stablecoin competition? CBDCs might just be the main competitor to fiat-backed stablecoins as long as high trust toward the Central Banks exist. However, the cryptocurrency industry was built as a hedge to the whole industry, and decentralized stablecoins will provide exposure to an asset that is theoretically uncorrelated to CBDCs. Would you trust your money with the Central Bank of Greece during the early 2010s financial crisis if they had a CBDC, for example? What about Bitcoin and other pure cryptocurrencies? CBDCs are simply a different beast altogether. No one can offer the privacy protection of Monero, Z-Cash and Dash, and Bitcoin’s value is proven to be uncorrelated to traditional markets and will lead the price of the rest of the blockchain industry. Virtual Machine platforms, like Ethereum, EOS and Cardano, are also significantly different to non-smart contract capable CBDCs, and it looks unlikely that any of the CBDCs researched as the moment will aim to create the smart contract functionality Ethereum or stablecoins like Libra and Terra are focusing on. Lastly, non-backed, algorithmic stablecoins are multi-coin systems that aim to stabilize their price by expanding and contracting the supply of their token. Isn’t that similar to what central banks do since the end of Bretton Woods? It seems that highly innovative projects, like said algorithmic stablecoin, will only flourish when trust and ever expanding usage of their system is established. For that to be the case, it is very likely that a central bank will have to support it – which does beat the purpose initially, but these systems can then be tested accurately, iterated upon securely, and decentralized later on. Does this seem like an impossibility? Well, surprisingly no! Outgoing head of the IMF, Christine Lagarde, has brought up the possibility of as they enter the mainstream financial markets. Of course, existing regulations will need to apply to these companies before any such formal action takes place. But as Ms. Lagarde takes the helm of the European Central Bank, the world will follow closely and monitor the way she handles an industry created to leave her out of a job. Until November 1st, when she takes over the ECB, the IMF paper on is a must-read for anyone interested in the topic. Central Banks acting as a lender of last resort to blockchain businesses the Rise of Digital Money As a final word, the world of money is changing, and the efforts of cryptocurrency entrepreneurs seems to have been successful in pushing the status quo in ways that seemed impossible a few years back. CBDCs, in retrospect, seem like an inevitable response to Bitcoin and Stablecoins. Now is the time. Let’s see what these entrepreneurs can accomplish, and how CBDCs will affect their projects’ future. Editorial note: Since the creation of this article, a number of key steps have been taken. First of all, the Digital Euro seems well on its way in Europe. Libra has intentionally reissued it's whitepaper and rebranded into Diem, and Algorithmic Stablecoins has started to remerge as potentially viable money alternatives. This was Xenofon Kontouris. To follow up on my work on Stabelcoins, CBDCs and Crypto, please follow me on Twitter at @XenofonOfAthens

A Primer on Central Bank Digital Currency – What’s going on? 

Are your sales coming too slowly? Maybe you’re spending some money on Marketing, just to realize that you are not getting a return on your investment… Ugh, that feeling of powerlessness is painful. Right? If your startup is gonna have any chance of survival, you HAVE to grow. There is no way around that. No investors want to invest in a stagnating startup. As a previous VC investor, I can share an insider benchmark: if you want to raise more than $1M, you need to grow at least 10 % per month. Sure, you can bootstrap… But with small revenues, it’s impossible to sustain costs. So even if you bootstrap you absolutely need to grow. So now you’re thinking: But if marketing isn’t working, how the f*** are you supposed to grow? Marketing is the only source to grow, right? Well, then my reaction is Eeehhhh... no not at all! Marketing and sales are of course important, but it is far from the only component to achieve growth. It is only the first step. Let me present UX for startup founders. No, I’m not talking about button design or color schemes. I’m talking about the experience that the user meets from first hearing about you until becoming a loyal customer. That’s a long journey with a lot of steps. As a startup coach, I’ve realized that this is completely overlooked by most startups that I meet. Those who don’t completely overlook this… become the few startups who actually succeed. User Experience is the second component of growth. It’s that missing piece that stands between your market and the success of your startup. You don’t only need to attract the market. You don’t only need to have traffic to your website. You don’t only need to build your list of leads. You also have to convert those people to loyal customers. Users will only convert to loyal customers if the user experience is top-notch. So if your marketing efforts are not generating the growth you hoped, it definitely has something to do with your User Experience. The 2 Frameworks You Need So how do we fix the conversion rate from marketing to growth? To explain this, I would like to present you with 2 frameworks. (If you would rather skip the explanations and move ahead to fill out the template directly, then download the template here) The 1st one is the AAARRR (pronounced arr - pirates not included!) which explains each of the steps that your users need to achieve to become a loyal customer. It stands for-- Awareness 👂: making your market aware of you and getting them to take the first step towards you (for example, click the link of your ad or answer when you’re cold calling them) Acquisition 💥: getting that website visitor or lead to say “yes” a first time, either by downloading your app, book in a demo meeting or starting a trial. This is usually where a marketer considers their job “done”; the rest is up to you as a startup founder. Activation: getting your user to use your product for the first time. If you have a productivity platform it will be to create the first task. If you have a mobile game, activation would be when the user completes the first game. At the activation step, the user should feel “Aha! This is really great”. When does that happen with your product? Retention: returning users coming back using your product over and over again. If achieved, it is proof that you create value for your users. If they keep on coming back it means that your product is needed and loved. Revenue 💰: monetizing on your customers--if you create large value for them, they should be ready to pay you for the service you offer. Referral: word of mouth, getting your very happy customer to spread awareness about your startup. If you nail this step, you don’t need to depend on paid advertising. Very few startups actually manage this, and many can succeed anyhow. You’ve probably seen this structure before but in the shape of a funnel. Maybe you’ve even seen this in a marketing or growth hacking course. This is awesome, you’re off to a great start to improve that User Experience! It is important to define these steps because then you can start measuring them. When you know how many of your users have done each of these steps - you can start measuring the conversion rates. The conversion rates tell you how well you’re doing at your user experience. Higher conversion rates = better user experience! But that is not all. Since you’re a startup and innovating a new technology or business model, you’re not like a normal business. As an innovative startup, YOU also need a second framework. The reason why someone converts is that they feel like what you communicate and how you communicate resonates with them. So in short, to increase that conversion rate, you need to create something that resonates with your users. But… it’s absolutely impossible to create something that resonates with EVERYONE. To improve that connection with your users and create something that resonates, you need to limit ourselves to a smaller target group. To figure out our target group, we need to figure out the 3Ws, which our AAARRR framework is then built on top of. The 3Ws stand for Who, What, and Why. This is to be clear on who your customer is, what they want to buy, and why they would want to buy. The 3Ws stand for Who, What, and Why. This is to be clear on who your customer is, what they want to buy, and why they would want to buy. To answer WHO your customers are, you need to define their exact profile and how you will segment the market to identify them. To answer WHAT your customers want, you need to look at the difference between what you’re selling and what they think they’re buying. To answer WHY your customers buy, you need to find the difference why they think they’re buying and their deep underlying motivations for buying. It’s not enough to just explain the 3Ws in a sentence. You need to go to a very granular level. This also means that you can’t be too broad when defining your target market. Imagine that you are going after a subset of a sub-market. Don’t tell yourself that you’re going after coffee shops, that’s too broad. You’ll never be able to create a user experience that is top-notch compelling for ALL types of coffee shops. A better target market would be, coffee shops in London owned by a small business with a founder below 40 years of age, who have already set up their Google Maps profile. How the Frameworks Will Boost Your Success To make your AAARRR effective, you’ll need to be extremely well-informed about your 3Ws. As an example: if you know why the user downloaded your app and what the user is looking for, it will be much easier to successfully onboard and activate that user. If you don’t figure out your 3Ws, your AAARRR will fall apart: When a user is exploring a new product, that might help solve a problem for them, they are looking for proof that your solution is right for them. If you don’t know exactly in detail, who your user is, what and why they want to buy from you -- how are you supposed to successfully convince the user that your solution is right for them? Sounds impossible, right? When these two frameworks are successfully applied and combined with marketing - your success will skyrocket. Then, you acquire new users and you keep them on your platform… and that is how you really achieve growth! Do you see the power in this?! From my own network, I have seen startups such as Backmarket (Fr), Meero (Fr), and Karma App (Swe) succeed with this combination of marketing + user experience. Now it’s up to you to make this happen for your startup! To help you get started, I’ve created multiple free templates for you, you can download the free templates here. Are your sales coming too slowly? Maybe you’re spending some money on Marketing, just to realize that you are not getting a return on your investment… Ugh, that feeling of powerlessness is painful. Right? If your startup is gonna have any chance of survival, you HAVE to grow . There is no way around that. No investors want to invest in a stagnating startup. As a previous VC investor, I can share an insider benchmark: if you want to raise more than $1M, you need to grow at least 10 % per month . you HAVE to grow you need to grow at least 10 % per month Sure, you can bootstrap… But with small revenues, it’s impossible to sustain costs. So even if you bootstrap you absolutely need to grow. So now you’re thinking: But if marketing isn’t working, how the f*** are you supposed to grow? Marketing is the only source to grow, right? Well, then my reaction is Eeehhhh... no not at all! my reaction is Eeehhhh... no not at all! Marketing and sales are of course important, but it is far from the only component to achieve growth. It is only the first step. Let me present UX for startup founders. No, I’m not talking about button design or color schemes. I’m talking about the experience that the user meets from first hearing about you until becoming a loyal customer. That’s a long journey with a lot of steps. As a startup coach, I’ve realized that this is completely overlooked by most startups that I meet. Those who don’t completely overlook this… become the few startups who actually succeed. Those who don’t completely overlook this… become the few startups who actually succeed. User Experience is the second component of growth. It’s that missing piece that stands between your market and the success of your startup. You don’t only need to attract the market. You don’t only need to have traffic to your website. You don’t only need to build your list of leads. You also have to convert those people to loyal customers. Users will only convert to loyal customers if the user experience is top-notch. Users will only convert to loyal customers if the user experience is top-notch. So if your marketing efforts are not generating the growth you hoped, it definitely has something to do with your User Experience. The 2 Frameworks You Need So how do we fix the conversion rate from marketing to growth? To explain this, I would like to present you with 2 frameworks. (If you would rather skip the explanations and move ahead to fill out the template directly, then download the template here ) download the template here download the template here The 1st one is the AAARRR (pronounced arr - pirates not included!) which explains each of the steps that your users need to achieve to become a loyal customer. It stands for-- It stands for-- Awareness 👂: making your market aware of you and getting them to take the first step towards you (for example, click the link of your ad or answer when you’re cold calling them) Awareness Acquisition 💥 : getting that website visitor or lead to say “yes” a first time, either by downloading your app, book in a demo meeting or starting a trial. This is usually where a marketer considers their job “done”; the rest is up to you as a startup founder. Acquisition 💥 Activation : getting your user to use your product for the first time. If you have a productivity platform it will be to create the first task. If you have a mobile game, activation would be when the user completes the first game. At the activation step, the user should feel “Aha! This is really great”. When does that happen with your product? Activation Retention : returning users coming back using your product over and over again. If achieved, it is proof that you create value for your users. If they keep on coming back it means that your product is needed and loved. Retention Revenue 💰: monetizing on your customers--if you create large value for them, they should be ready to pay you for the service you offer. Revenue Referral : word of mouth, getting your very happy customer to spread awareness about your startup. If you nail this step, you don’t need to depend on paid advertising. Very few startups actually manage this, and many can succeed anyhow. Referral You’ve probably seen this structure before but in the shape of a funnel. Maybe you’ve even seen this in a marketing or growth hacking course. This is awesome, you’re off to a great start to improve that User Experience! It is important to define these steps because then you can start measuring them. When you know how many of your users have done each of these steps - you can start measuring the conversion rates. The conversion rates tell you how well you’re doing at your user experience. Higher conversion rates = better user experience! But that is not all. Since you’re a startup and innovating a new technology or business model, you’re not like a normal business. As an innovative startup, YOU also need a second framework. As an innovative startup, YOU also need a second framework. The reason why someone converts is that they feel like what you communicate and how you communicate resonates with them. So in short, to increase that conversion rate, you need to create something that resonates with your users. So in short, to increase that conversion rate, you need to create something that resonates with your users. But… it’s absolutely impossible to create something that resonates with EVERYONE. To improve that connection with your users and create something that resonates, you need to limit ourselves to a smaller target group. To figure out our target group, we need to figure out the 3Ws, which our AAARRR framework is then built on top of. The 3Ws stand for Who, What, and Why. This is to be clear on who your customer is, what they want to buy, and why they would want to buy. The 3Ws stand for Who, What, and Why. This is to be clear on who your customer is, what they want to buy, and why they would want to buy. To answer WHO your customers are, you need to define their exact profile and how you will segment the market to identify them. WHO To answer WHAT your customers want, you need to look at the difference between what you’re selling and what they think they’re buying. WHAT To answer WHY your customers buy, you need to find the difference why they think they’re buying and their deep underlying motivations for buying. WHY It’s not enough to just explain the 3Ws in a sentence. You need to go to a very granular level. This also means that you can’t be too broad when defining your target market . Imagine that you are going after a subset of a sub-market. Don’t tell yourself that you’re going after coffee shops, that’s too broad. You’ll never be able to create a user experience that is top-notch compelling for ALL types of coffee shops. you can’t be too broad when defining your target market A better target market would be, coffee shops in London owned by a small business with a founder below 40 years of age, who have already set up their Google Maps profile. How the Frameworks Will Boost Your Success To make your AAARRR effective, you’ll need to be extremely well-informed about your 3Ws. As an example: if you know why the user downloaded your app and what the user is looking for, it will be much easier to successfully onboard and activate that user. If you don’t figure out your 3Ws, your AAARRR will fall apart: When a user is exploring a new product, that might help solve a problem for them, they are looking for proof that your solution is right for them. might If you don’t know exactly in detail, who your user is, what and why they want to buy from you -- how are you supposed to successfully convince the user that your solution is right for them? Sounds impossible, right? When these two frameworks are successfully applied and combined with marketing - your success will skyrocket. Then, you acquire new users and you keep them on your platform… and that is how you really achieve growth! you acquire new users and you keep them on your platform… really Do you see the power in this?! From my own network, I have seen startups such as Backmarket (Fr), Meero (Fr), and Karma App (Swe) succeed with this combination of marketing + user experience . succeed with this combination of marketing + user experience Now it’s up to you to make this happen for your startup! To help you get started, I’ve created multiple free templates for you, you can download the free templates here . you can download the free templates here you can download the free templates here

UX For Startup Founders: How to Grow Faster With Less Marketing Spend

Bitcoin and Altcoins trading is like a raging river. It is a non-stop, rapidly changing process, more often than not accompanied by significant consequential events. If you swim against the current, you might disappear completely. In order to improve trading skills and market understanding, it is best to learn from other’s mistakes. The following article was written based on major experience in the crypto field and after having thousands of crypto trade positions over the past years. And of course, mistakes were made along the way. Shall we begin? The order book — How to place commands properly Let’s discuss the correct way of using the order book. A coin’s value is determined by the last executed transaction, at the junction between buyers and sellers, or according to the supply and demand forces. Those supply and demand commands are arranged in a table, better known as the order book. In crypto, it’s all about volatility. Thus, and following the previous tips given in our , when you enter a position it is recommended that you set the sell level to take profits. Alternatively, while aspiring to make it simultaneously, set a stop loss to minimize losses. But how will we know exactly where to place these commands? To identify both resistance and support areas, we start by analyzing the graph at the most basic level. A beginner’s article will assist with this task. We identify points where we want to take profit (resistance levels) and simultaneously identify support levels. By referring to the order book we will find the optimal levels at which we will actually place these commands. Note that if support levels break down it is time to cut the losses. crypto trading article technical analysis Identifying sell levels to take profit: Using the order book we identify the areas of resistance that we previously analyzed. It is likely that being resistant, massive supply (a “wall” of sell commands) is present around these spots. The trick is to place our sell commands precisely one step ahead, at a slightly lower price, so in case the demands start to eat away the supply wall — our command has already been placed and sold to profit. Identifying stop loss levels to minimize losses: In the order book we identify the points of support that we also analyzed before. It is likely that being supportive, massive demand (a “wall” of buyers) is present around those spots. This is the best zone to place the stop loss command, although it should be placed a little lower than the high demand zone. They will only get to our command if the sellers manage to lower the price and the “wall” of buyers breaks. The “wall” of buyers works as a sort of protection level for our command. Is it possible to place a ‘take profit’ and a ‘stop loss’ command simultaneously? As of the time of writing, excluding some leveraged trading exchanges, such as , current trading exchanges do not support the placement of the two commands simultaneously. In a perfect world, we could have set both stop loss for trade and levels of profit taking, lowering the chance of substantially loss. Until that happens, we will settle for what we have — I usually set take profit levels for some part of the position, while setting a stop loss level for the other ones. Bitmex Graph analysis — Altcoins vs Bitcoin and vs Dollar Major Altcoins have the most volume traded again the USD. Thus, analyzing graphs of those Altcoins should be done whilst comparing them to their Bitcoin graph and their dollar value graph. Here on CryptoPotato we make sure we do that for our weekly market reports. If we were solely analyzing the Bitcoin value chart, we would surely miss the accumulation period of Ethereum by roughly $300 (recall $300 of Bitcoin accumulation back in 2015?). At the time of writing Ethereum is trading a month later, for more than $1000 for one Ether. Ethereum is accumulated around 300$ (yellow area of the graph) until sky rocketing. I’m targeting your emotions An unbreakable rule in trading says that you should never involve your emotions in trading. This is a basic rule for anyone who trades over any term, but especially for the ones who trade for the short term. Imagine buying Bitcoin according to the : Let’s say the Bitcoin price had crashed by 40% in three days. Now what? Obviously it is the time to buy a second portion of the coin (according to DCA) and average the initial trading entry price. But instead, almost everyone I know got “cold feet” exactly at the “terrifying” moment of decrease and had not completed the purchase of the second share. Why does it happen to us? One word — emotion. Emotions, in this case — fear of loss, affects us and completely disturbs our plan of action. If you are one of those (yes, the majority) who won’t buy the second share in the example above — you should consider your future as a trader, a crypto trader in particular. Getting over your emotions is also important after an unsuccessful trade or after you have sold a coin which is sky rocketing just after you sold it (FOMO). To sum up, don’t regret profit you’ve missed and don’t feel guilty about lost trades. Set yourselves a plan of action together with a set of goals, and act accordingly — as if you were a pre-programmed computer. Human beings are not rational creatures. DCA strategy Recommendation for such a plan: After placing target sell commands, and given the coin has reached its first goal, you need to close out half your position. Meanwhile, increase the stop loss to the initial entry level (so you won’t lose at all). At the second target level you should close out an additional quarter of the position. Now, it is likely you will stay in the position with a quarter of it, although with the profits alone — once you got the fund’s money back “home”. At this point the profit game becomes unlimited. Coins that pump up 2,000% in two weeks are not a rare sight in the crypto world. When you are only playing your profits — you are on the safe side and it becomes a lot easier. What goes down — does not necessarily go up again An additional common mistake is searching for crashed coins, in accordance to their value against the Bitcoin, hoping they will return to their glory prices. So newsflash — there are coins which are light years away from their peak levels. Take Aurora for example; in March 2014 an all-time high price of 0.14 Bitcoin for one Aurora was recorded. As of the time of writing, Aurora trades at a 99.9% discount — 0.00014 Bitcoins. Could the (damned) Aurora make a move upwards 1000x? You’ll never know. You surely can’t assume a coin being lower than its peak price is an opportunity rather than a falling knife. There are also coins which disappeared and slowly got out of continuous trading — a scenario defiantly worth considering (especially with the low-cap and volume altcoins). Time is money A week in the crypto market is equivalent to three months in the traditional capital stock exchange, in terms of events and occurrences. One who wants to jump right into the deep water of crypto trading has to follow it not just on a daily basis, but on an hourly basis. It’s not everyone that can play this game. Nevertheless you need to consider the amount of time invested in the process. Sometimes it pays off to be a long-term investor, rather than a daily trader. By the way, as a daily trader it does not necessarily mean you are bound to buy and sell and trade every single day. Trades can reach their destination within minutes, as well as within months. Think about the time you are willing to invest in studying and tracking the market. Remember your time has marginal cost, or in other words — your time has a price tag. If you have decided to put your time and effort into trading on a daily basis, it is better to start with small doses and examine the performance prior to increasing invested amounts. This is yet an additional benefit of crypto — the possibility of trading on micro-transactions. Unlike the capital market, where if you put an eye on Apple stock, you would need to buy a minimum share equivalent to a couple thousand bucks, in crypto you can perform transactions of a few cents. First mistake: I buy Ripple as its price is relatively cheap compared to Ethereum’s A common beginners’ mistake is to look at the coin’s price rather than the market cap. Just as you asses a company by its market cap performance, which is calculated by multiplying the number of shares times a single share’s price, the same is done for Altcoins. The number of existing coins in circulation times the coin’s price. For a low price coin, such as Ripple, there is solely a psychological influence on the buyers. There is no difference whether one Ripple equals one dollar, and there are a billion Ripples out, or if one Ripple equals a thousand dollars and there are million units of Ripple. Therefore, from now on, when examining coins for investment on CoinMarketCap, look mainly at the more substantial figure, which is the market cap, and focus less on the price for one coin. Second mistake: Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket Crypto is really unpredictable. While reaping profits of hundreds of percent, the section withstands now and will continue getting dozens of billions of dollars erased flat out in the future. When Bitcoin loses its value against the US dollar Altcoins usually go through the same process. Simple math shows that even holding a part of the portfolio in Altcoins, such as Ethereum and Litecoin, is usually not enough to avoid getting a big chunk of the portfolio’s USD worth wiped out following a Bitcoin dump. In 2015 and the beginning of 2016, when Bitcoin held solid — as solid as Bitcoin can be — shuffling around $300 per one BTC, the game was trading Altcoins in order to gain more Bitcoin. It was expected that Bitcoin would grow higher in the future (the Pygmalion effect). Having a rather volatile base asset, such as Bitcoin, raises our need to compare our portfolio performance both in terms of its Bitcoin’s value and its dollar’s value. Many traders decreased the number of Bitcoin they are holding during the past year (hey, and it wasn’t hard when Ethereum got cut 70% from its Bitcoin all-time high…) although it had a nice dollar yield. Bitcoin’s growth made a lot of money for the crypto market, causing its total market cap to increase 30 times during the last year! As traders, it is important to keep Bitcoin as your base asset, but also not to forget the dollar value, and to take profit sometimes. You should always see the bigger picture — crypto is only one tier of your investment options. There are also the stock markets, real estate, bonds and many more investment opportunities. It is important to spread the risks among the crypto portfolio, as well as in the whole household investment portfolio. Third mistake: Bitcoin has increased a lot, so I’ll buy Litecoin As was mentioned above, there are two ways to examine investment in Altcoins — vs Bitcoin and vs the US dollar. This is a common mistake amongst those who missed the Bitcoin train, and are looking to cash in on the other altcoins. Those investors have to examine the investment dollar-wise, since they exchange US dollars or out FIAT in order to buy crypto (instead of buying with the Bitcoins they already have). What’s the catch here? Take a look at the following Litecoin chart, showing its performance from March to December 2017: The yellow line represents Litecoin’s price in Bitcoin’s value, green represent US dollar price of Litecoin, blue line represents total market cap of LTC in USD. Bitcoin-wise, the first assumption that Altcoins’ value decrease when Bitcoin value increases is correct. A side note: it’s not true all of the time; When China outlawed the crypto exchanges, money flew out from all of the cryptos — Bitcoin declined and Altcoins declined even more. Dollar-wise, as you can see — Litecoin’s price has increased along with Bitcoin (but less). A reminder about the majority of those quoting “Bitcoin has increased greatly, I’ll buy Litecoin”, buy Litecoin with FIAT (or by converting to Bitcoin, then to Litecoin right after — which is the same). Therefore, learning from the graph yet maintaining the same behavior, when Bitcoin’s value drops, Altcoins’ USD value will drop as well (although as a percentage it will probably be less, but it will still go down). In conclusion Good traders acknowledge their mistakes, and more importantly — analyze and learn from them, thus improving their skills for understanding the market. , and you are welcome to share this article with whoever you see as relevant. So which kind of trader are you? Did you find yourself somewhere in the article? We would love to hear on the comments section below You are also welcome to continue reading the previous article — . 8 must read tips for trading Bitcoin and Altcoins Originally published at cryptopotato.com on January 9, 2018.

7 Crypto trading tips and common mistakes

Manipulating Cryptocurrency Market manipulation, according to Investopedia, is defined as: “The act of artificially inflating or deflating the price of a security or otherwise influencing the behavior of the market for personal gain.” Do we see this type of artificial movement happen often in the cryptocurrency markets? You better believe it. In fact, due to the deregulated nature of both cryptocurrency and their markets, . Since the value of cryptocurrencies are very sensitive to sentiment, emotion, and publicity, many are tempted to drive unnatural price movement and profit off of the loss of others. And unfortunately, many can actually succeed in doing so without any regulatory ramifications. manipulation is more rampant in the cryptocurrency markets than virtually anything else you can trade Bitcoin’s value often gets moved by those who can manipulate it the best… whether we like it or not. new automated market makers know fully well that market manipulation can come in many forms, and the more it catches the rest of us off guard, the more successful it can be. For starters, . Anyone can make buys and sells with their own fiat or crypto, and anyone can trade coins without the rest of the world blinking an eye. So why does this matter? Jesse Powell, CEO of the Kraken cryptocurrency exchange, recently Level’s cryptocurrency is designed around anonymity addressed the question of why his and other exchanges don’t impose more regulations: “Assumptions we make about how traditional markets work don’t apply to crypto markets and therefore we need to try to remember why we imposed a specific requirement in the first place, before we unnecessarily impose it on the crypto markets.” As of late May, the . But is there anything that can really be done? And if prices are prone to false movement and historically have been manipulated in both directions, Well little of the market noise may be of major interest to super long-term investors who are salivating over the potential prices of and Ethereum in the year 2050. But much of the trading in crypto involves investors who focus on the price of various currencies on a much shorter time scale, and the artificial volatility can very much effect their ability to remain in the space. Many of these short-term investors depend on margin investing (responsibly or not), and thanks to the massive volatility of crypto, these investments often end up getting . US Justice Department is in the midst of a criminal probe pertaining to crypto manipulation does it really matter in the long run? Bitcoin margin called A growing Twitter account dedicated to documenting any any instance of a short seller getting manipulated on the popular crypto exchange, Bitmex. It can be difficult to gauge just how much regulation should be instilled into cryptocurrency trading, because the lack thereof is exactly why a lot of people have entered into the asset class. The crypto space needs to maintain its deregulatory nature while still minimizing the vulnerabilities of the investors. According to Gabriela Giancola at CoinJournal, “Like everything, there are pros and cons as to why cryptocurrencies should be subject to increased scrutiny. However, too much red tape can stifle creativity and we cannot afford to let this happen to a rapidly growing industry. Regulations are here to help build the whole space. They are not against the space, but part of the solution to create a long-term and crypto space.” blockchain Manipulative Tactics So many of us have heard accusations of market manipulation in one form or another in investing, but how does one (or many) actually skew a cryptocurrency industry with a currently $300 billion market cap in their favor? There are several “techniques” and “strategies” that can and have been used to shift the value of Bitcoin and others in unnatural directions : without any recourse due to inconspicuousness of trades — buying and selling with one’s own funds with themselves in order to create the perception that there is more market activity than is actually occuring Wash Trading — artificially buying an excessive amount of a coin, usually in groups to gather capital, and selling for profit to unsuspecting traders Pump and Dumps large capital investors trading with one another outside of standard exchanges in order to avoid . Dark Pool Trading — slippage Artificially generating false hype and excitement for a coin, generally for personal gain or an exchange of payment from another party Shilling — Using tools like , traders with larger capital than most are able to push prices in the direction they favor, or alternatively prevent prices straying away from where they prefer Whale Trades — buy and sell walls When we take an overall look at the entire overall historic value of Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency in terms of both volume and market capital, what kinds of things do we notice? Do these day to day and week to week pumps translate to an overall aggregate pump and dump of the entire coin? The price clearly has gone through some major volatility and grown exponentially, particularly in 2017, before crashing over 70% in the first half of 2018. Can we be certain that a crash of this magnitude is just a healthy correction, or could this be calculated price manipulation being made by whales, pump and dump groups, or governments? (looking at you, North Korea) The reality is that the price of Bitcoin, under healthy growth conditions, would probably never have rocketed from if not for external factors manipulating its price. Yes, this really was the range of Bitcoin’s value in 2017, and those who owned it throughout the year likely went through some serious peaks and valleys of emotion, just like BTC’s worth. Despite the fact that there is no real intrinsic value to cryptocurrency (yet), there can still be a healthy growth rate it could thrive under as more and more of the world adopts it and wants to obtain it. a low of below $780 to a high of above $19,700 in one calendar year To get into specific and direct market manipulation tactics, one example I referenced is a “strategy” known as wash trading. The basic concept is to create buys and sells simultaneously on exchanges to give the illusion that there is a higher volume in a given time period than their actually is. As a result, unknowing investors are given the impression that volume is picking up, perhaps after a long dormant period, and ended up buying or selling their own coins under false pretense. Pump and dump groups are another form of market manipulation. Though they are not exclusive to the crypto world, there are less legal downsides within the specific crypto space, and more market impact to capitalize on. This is why the crypto markets are so ripe with these groups. Pump and dumps are organized groups of people on a mission together to buy large quantities of one particular coin simultaneously in order to push up the price of it in a very short timeframe. Source: microcapclub.com/2014/12/hard-mailer-pump-and-dump-performance-part-10/ As a result of the rapid price jump of the pumps, the hope is that other unsuspecting investors will see the movement and begin to purchase these coins and “ just as this same group begins dumping their artificially inflated coins to the unknowing traders who find themselves holding near-empty bags in the end. These groups are organizing on a daily basis to make these trades, and ironically, most of the individuals in these pump and dump groups tend to lose money themselves, simply under the guise that they “sold too late” after being part of the initial pump. In reality, only the organizers and second tier members of the group benefit because they set the timings of the buys and are generally the first to sell while their own members are still in buy mode. jump on the ride to moonsville” That’s Just the Way it is… For Now There is really only one true way the price of Bitcoin could inflate over 2,500% times its value in under a year, then be followed by a deflation of 70% in just a month and a half. Without any semblance of market manipulation being a major factor, this is just unrealistic without some premeditation. If something was fundamentally altered in the value of the asset, there could be a case made for drastic highs and lows in a currency most consider to still be in its infancy. However, Bitcoin’s potential and ability to change the world is the same now as it was back in 2011, when the value had brief parity with the price of one US dollar. Now it sits at 7,000 times the value of the US dollar. There is simply more consciousness and awareness of the blockchain’s existence, more Bitcoins available to cycle from one hand to another, more diversification in types of coins available, and more excitement and optimism in regard to its future ability to change the world and currency as we know it. So with the understanding that Bitcoin’s value should be growing in a more linear fashion than it has up to this point, there are quite a few reasons why it has yet to receive the stability that could bring in more conservative investors: . And in an asset class where value is completely based on market perception, you can sure bet that media has an impact. Would this be considered market manipulation? Absolutely. Whether media outlets intend to bring up or push down prices is debatable, but their discussions of the latest Bitcoin swing absolutely has market consequences. There is no doubt that a breaking news story on CNBC about Kim Jong Un’s latest Bitcoin heist is going to rock the markets. More importantly, when the for the 5th time in a year, this directly props up individual coins, often at the expense of other coins that are deserving of the attention. The amount of good and bad press cryptocurrency gets directly correlates to the market’s perception of it CEO of Ripple is brought on to “Fast Money” As actual means of transferring value from person to person, cryptocurrency is built to be an incredible phenomenon that can change the world in this regard. But when it comes to an actual store of value, there is a . Matt Ward at Hackernoon argues, Bitcoin and other coins generally have constantly changing viewpoints in their perceived values, and a lot of it depends on where its price currently sits. strong case that can be made against the viability of it “There is literally no reason to have a “store of value.” In a scenario where one (or more) cryptocurrencies become actual currencies, ie begin being used for commerce and penetrate the mass market, there has to be relatively stable pricing. When supply and demand are relatively consistent, prices hardly fluctuate.” We see all sorts of stories of new hacks of individual wallets or cryptocurrency exchanges on a fairly regular basis. The truth is that there are a lot of people who want to simply purchase Bitcoin and hold it safely somewhere, but don’t want to hold it in a wallet they don’t understand or on an exchange that is . Security concerns are a major hurdle holding back cryptocurrency from stabilizing as well. unregulated and not FDIC insured Yes, the wild, wild west of crypto markets is still very much in effect in 2018. Percentage swings can happen in coin values in a day that would . And until cryptocurrency is more widely adopted and investments become more liquid, they will still be very susceptible to manipulated prices from individual buys and sells that may even have a ton of dollar value behind them. take the S&P a month or even a year to replicate This, along with having some general sanity, are the reasons that I personally have never invested more than I could afford to lose. Sweating the massive daily swings of a sector that isn’t regulated is not something I will ever want to put 80% of my life savings on, despite the fact that I am confident that blockchain technology will change the world one day. It requires a very strong will to stay sane investing in anything this volatile and blatantly pulled in premeditated directions every minute. I simply ask my readers to research how Bitcoin and other altcoins with particular use cases can eventually impact the world, and as hard as it is, try to avoid the noise and instability of prices. One must stay strong in their belief that coin prices will coincide with the true value they should reach with all of the potential in cryptocurrency, no matter how wobbly their path is to get there. I write in depth cryptocurrency analysis at Level , the passive investing tool for crypto. See what we’re doing at Lvl.co and see our other analysis at our magazine . If you love what you see, give this article 50 claps! If you hate it, show your displeasure with 49. This article and related content is for informational purposes only. It should not be considered investment advice, and you should consult a financial advisor and do your own research and due diligence prior to making any investments. Where securities or commodities are referenced, it is only for illustrative purposes only, and does not imply any position on securities or commodities classification. To the extent that Level services are offered or discussed, those services are available only for Level whitelisted assets only.

The Mysterious Manipulation of Crypto Markets and How to Manage

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