Category: Company News

PARSIQ, an enterprise blockchain solutions provider has stepped into the DeFi space by announcing its IQ Protocol launch. Currently, on an Ethereum-based testnet, IQ Protocol is a DeFi solution for the SaaS market that tokenizes subscriptions and creates a circular economy, complete with staking, lending, and borrowing features.

The launch of IQ Protocol enables PARSIQ to introduce the concept of DeFi to a $160 billion industry segment and encourage cooperative development in the space. The testnet phase will allow the company to create a stable offering while noting the industry requirements for further development. If everything goes according to the plan, PARSIQ will be deploying IQ Protocol on Ethereum mainnet before the end of Q2 2021.

PARSIQ Grows Beyond Blockchain Analytics to Enter DeFi Space

Originally a blockchain analytics platform, PARSIQ has outgrown its early form to include custom blockchain-backed automation and DeFi solutions as a part of its offering. With PARSIQ, users can monitor and map the activities of off-chain devices and applications to any supported blockchain and create custom real-time event triggers for automation.

With IQ, PARSIQ will also provide the world’s first risk-free, collateral-less DeFi protocol to its clients looking to integrate DeFi solutions into their offerings. The completely trustless, open-source IQ Protocol has already garnered interest from many DeFi projects looking forward to benefiting from its unique tokenomics and participation requirements.

PARSIQ Re’DeFi’nes DeFi by Getting Rid of Collateral Requirement

Like several other blockchain projects, IQ Protocol is fuelled by PARSIQ’s native PRQ token. The On-Chain Subscription model on IQ Protocol decides the eligibility of token holders to access services and features based on their token holding pattern, rewarding longer-term holders. Moreover, IQ Protocol introduces the concept of Power Tokens, which, unlike conventional utility tokens, generate utility over time in what is akin to a utility subscription model. These tokens are organized into “Power Enterprises”, a collection of smart contracts which manage their functionality. This includes proposal funding, governance, and voting rights, as well as the ability to mint new Power Tokens.

Alternatively, users can choose to borrow or rent PRQ from IQ Protocol for a fee without any collateral to access the services. The collateral-free lending of PRQ is nowhere seen before in a DeFi setting and is unique to IQ Protocol.

Meanwhile, PARSIQ’s existing integrations with Solana, Ocean Protocol, Binance Smart Chain among many more, will allow IQ-based DeFi projects to efficiently consume various market-related data streams and trigger appropriate events necessary using PARSIQ’s Smart Trigger feature. Moreover, these integrations will minimize the adverse effects of rising transaction fees on the Ethereum blockchain.

Stay updated on PARSIQ’s integrations by checking out their blog.

Everything DeFi Needs in a Single Package

IQ Protocol is a one-stop-shop for DeFi needs in the making. It combines the best of DeFi with the flexibility of SaaS to offer an easily accessible solution for individuals and businesses alike. The rising demand for DeFi projects and the need for DeFi-like features in a more traditional setting puts PARSIQ in an ideal position to cater to a broader market.

Learn more about PARSIQ at – https://www.parsiq.net/

 

Blockchain and DeFi protocols are only as strong as their weakest link

With today’s ever-growing blockchain landscape, token economies are bigger and more active than ever. When it comes to DeFi (decentralized finance) in particular, there is nearly $44 billion locked in decentralized finance protocols, with users around the globe forming part of various innovative decentralized economies that are disrupting traditional finance.

The countless thousands of ecosystem participants that support these protocols and platforms, although kept safe by blockchain’s inherently secure infrastructure, also rely on what are mostly very capable project teams and treasury managers to efficiently manage token unlocks and distributions that take place after token sales, airdrops and other events. But this highlights an important issue, one that is often not spoken about alongside blockchain’s otherwise decentralized mechanics: human reliance within token economies is often a bomb waiting to go off and, as long as this human component exists within cryptocurrency and DeFi ecosystems, the space will not be fully decentralized.

Polkalokr, a new and highly customisable escrow platform built on the Polkadot blockchain, looks to offer a solution to this problem with governance-as-a-service and a model that takes token distribution out of the hands of projects teams. The team behind the protocol recently announced the closing of a successful private sale round, one that included prominent funds such as Moonrock Capital, AU21 Capital and LD Capital.

Bad actors and human error: Current token economies

The rapid evolution of blockchain technology and DeFi has seen some truly amazing solutions emerge in recent years that can tackle and replace wholly outdated frameworks across a plethora of industries in a decentralized manner. This being said, the complex token economies that underpin these projects can still arguably be viewed as centralized; project teams are more often than not the responsible party when it comes to token management and, with millions of dollars pouring into token sales at the height of crypto mania, this can lead to some troubling results.

Simply searching for the keywords “crypto scam” will net plenty of results that serve to illustrate the pitfalls accompanying centralized token holding models. Almost $2 billion in user funds from across the cryptocurrency landscape was reportedly stolen in 2020 alone, with incidents ranging from poor private key management by project teams, to full-on exit scams by the founders themselves. These incidents all highlight the change in approach and overall token economy redesign that is required if blockchain’s promise of true decentralization is to be fulfilled.

Even when taking bad actors out of the equation, token treasuries are still not fully safe in the hands of project teams, as poor security practices or simply a lapse in judgment can result in millions of dollars of user funds being lost, locked or burned forever. The processes that run within smart contracts are complicated and unforgiving, with even the smartest of minds able to make a costly mistake at the touch of a button.

Putting the power back into participation

Headed up by a UK-based team with a strong background in computer programming and infrastructure project management, Polkalokr offers project developers a suite of modular building blocks enabling them to create trustless escrow payout options for a wide variety of use cases. The protocol’s versatile, multi-chain solution suits any token locking requirement and presents both projects and users with a myriad of new opportunities, including fully-customizable event-based token unlocks and monetization of locked tokens.

Polkalokr consists of Lokr and Swapr, with the latter product offering users cross-chain atomic swaps of any tokenized digital asset with privacy & multi-sig options. Functionality and useability is at the forefront of the protocol’s design and implementation; Polkalokr aims to give both projects and their participants access to a one-stop-shop with comprehensive locking, distribution, monetization, swapping and even insuring of the tokens that glue today’s blockchain ecosystems together.

Building natively on Polkadot, the Polkalokr team boasts a dedicated Rust developer that will deliver beyond the promises of many Polkadot-based projects, many of which have had to rely on Ethereum bridges alone so far due to a lack of qualified Rust and Solidity programmers in the blockchain space. Plans for a public token sale are to be announced in the coming weeks.

 

Image by Buffik from Pixabay

HARD Protocol Version 2 introduces significant changes and enhancements to the HARD cross-chain money market. Catering to the needs of institutional players will take DeFi to the next level of mainstream adoption.

HARD Protocol is a decentralized money market built on the Kava platform and enables lending and borrowing of cross-chain assets. In the Version 2 upgrade, several enhancements will become accessible to financial institutions looking to explore the decentralized finance industry. Providing an option for the companies that hold the largest currencies in the world including Bitcoin to earn +25% APY without counterparty risk is a gamechanger for decentralized finance.

The Kava 5.1 public testnet launch event is taking place until March 31, 202. When the event concludes, Kava 5.1 will launch on the mainnet, as does the HARD Protocol V2 upgrade. The technology to expand Kava’s appeal and the HARD money market confirms the team’s vision to bring cross-chain DeFi solutions to a global audience.

With HARD Protocol Version 2, borrowing with variable interest rates will become available to all users. Additionally, the upgrade introduces support for distributing the HARD token, the governance token of the HARD Protocol to both suppliers and borrowers of assets which further improves the effective yields offered to lenders on the platform and ensures all users, lenders and borrowers alike, get a say in the ongoing governance and evolution of the platform.

As part of the HARD Protocol Version 2 upgrade, developers and end-users across of a wide range of cryptocurrency asset types will now for the first time have the ability to earn interest denominated in their native asset.

Additionally, the HARD Governance model will undergo some changes and enhancements. The HARD community of token holders have the power to update protocol parameters, add money markets for additional crypto asset types, and update allocations of HARD token rewards in each money market to drive demand and usage through the built-in governance processes. Not only will this help grow the appeal of the HARD money market, but it will also empower our users further.

HARD Protocol continues to flexibly adapt to how retail users and financial institutions use the cross-chain money market to earn superior yields on digital assets. Enhanced governance by the community plays a crucial role in those proceedings as we seek to optimize the system even further. Hard Protocol will continue to evolve, upgrade, and make future changes through its decentralized governance process to ensure it will always suit the needs of its growing user base.

More details about HARD Protocol can be found at https://www.kava.io/hard-protocol

You may have heard the murmurs about AIOZ Tube, the new streaming site backed by blockchain disruptors at Innovion and the PAID Network. If you’ve gone further, and had an opportunity to check out the platform, you’ll have seen the top-tier crypto, trading, investment and personal finance videos, or seen some of its user-created content pop up on your social feed.

Maybe you’ve picked up some snippets about its decentralized streaming model, which delivers videos faster, and with higher visual and audio quality, by incentivizing node operators to participate. Or perhaps you’ve simply heard that AIOZ promises a new business model for content streaming, in which users actually earn income by watching videos.

(And if you’ve yet to discover AIOZ – jump over to watch a few videos on the platform, earn yourself a few coins in the process, then come back for the rest of this article. Go ahead. We’ll wait.)

Whatever you’ve heard, AIOZ is even more impressive once you put the full story together.

Unpacking the Tech and Team Behind AIOZ Tube

The team at AIOZ Tube has put together a Layer 1 blockchain-based Content Delivery Network (CDN) that matches or beats the establishment services like YouTube or Vimeo while offering all participants and stakeholders a share of the profits.

In essence, not only do you get a better content streaming service, but you’re also rewarded and incentivized to participate as a content creator, viewer, advertiser, or node operator.

AIOZ Tube is a content streaming platform that empowers users to earn coins by watching their favorite videos and content makers. A portion of advertising revenue that goes through the platform is directed to users; when you watch a video with an advertisement, you earn a reward. If you don’t want to watch an advertisement and don’t care about a reward, simply skip it.

It’s a deceptively simple idea, but a powerful one. The platform’s users reclaim the value that they provide and are compensated for their time and attention, while advertisers benefit from a more engaged, targeted audience.

That up-ends the traditional content streaming business model, in which viewers are turned off by the obstacle (advertisement) that prevents them from accessing the content that they want, and advertisers are paying for useless traffic while actively damaging their brand.

For content creators, AIOZ is a compelling proposition. It’s no secret that musicians, vloggers, and content creators of all stripes are constantly complaining about streaming platforms’ opaque and unfair revenue-sharing models, censorship, and other forms of poor treatment. Everyone from Taylor Swift to Logan Paul has had a run-in with YouTube, Spotify, or another legacy streaming platform. But until now, there have been few alternatives.

Today, however, content creators on AIOZ can access a fairer revenue share, more control of their content, and better infrastructure for distribution.

What’s the Big Picture?

The entire AIOZ Tube platform is powered by a blockchain-based decentralized CDN, which means that all the information storage and processing is handled by node operators. These node operators are everyday network participants who run the AIOZ app in the background on their home computer (and get paid for their spare computing capacity and bandwidth). The AIOZ Network means no more buffering videos or sluggish servers, no more ridiculous charges from the big CDN operators, and no more censorship.

Cisco has predicted that video streaming and telemeetings will make up 82% of internet traffic by 2022 (although that prediction was made before COVID-19 put streaming into overdrive). But the vast majority of that traffic is funneled through just three big CDNs –  Cloudflare, Amazon Web Services, and Akamai.

Video streaming has become essential to the worlds’ entertainment, education, and employment, and squeezing it through a couple of centralized legacy companies has any number of risks and drawbacks. For a start, it’s terrible value for money: distributed infrastructure is faster, cheaper, more efficient and more agile than relying on a handful of big data centers.

It’s also safer to spread out information centres and distribution pathways. A decentralized CDN has many more attack vectors, but also much more redundancy than a centralized one. To put it plainly, a decentralized CDN like AIOZ is much more difficult to hack, censor, shut down, or simply overwhelm. That means less downtime and greater privacy and security for the end-users.

But the biggest benefit of AIOZ’ decentralized CDN is that it’s simply fairer. There’s no reason why a couple of mega-corporations should command so much of the internet, and collect so much of its profit, simply by virtue of sitting in an entrenched position.

AIOZ Network is offering a framework for disrupting and democratizing the internet, handing back true control (and a profit share) to the content creators and viewers who actually use it. If they can pull it off, it’s a revolutionary proposition – and for those who get in early, potentially a very lucrative one.

What’s Next for AIOZ?

In 2021, the AIOZ ecosystem will be fleshed out with fungible and non-fungible tokens, smart contracts and a decentralized exchange. Further down the pipelines, developer kits and an API should enable distributed apps (dApps) like over-the-top media services, as well as live-streaming. In short, there’s plenty more on the way from AIOZ, which promises to reimagine content streaming from the ground up.

 

Image by StockSnap from Pixabay

Few things have survived for as long as gold, and few likely will. Ever since the dawn of history, humans have been drawn to the precious metal to store value, transact, and even hold religious ceremonies in (alleged) communication with deities.

Evolving with the times

Technology takes things to unexpected places, and even something as perennial as gold hasn’t been immune to these changes. We do not transact with gold anymore, although we continue to recognize its value (and even, in some cases, start to suspect that we should go back to using it as currency). And, moving from gold to ones and zeros on a screen, we tried just about everything.

However, nothing seemed to be as good a fit for us as gold.

Gold has many unique characteristics, positive and negative, although the former outstand the latter. It’s divisible, durable, fungible, has proven itself through time, and can hardly (and not reliably) be faked. Fiat or even paper money cannot compete with this. Although gold is hard to transport, not completely liquid, and non-portable, it has continued to beat inflation simply because of its intrinsic value.

Then, crypto came along

Cryptocurrency’s greatest strength is that it can succeed, through programming, to replicate gold’s natural advantages. In the right settings and under the right conditions, we can even use it to represent physical gold ownership. And, by combining both types of super-assets, gold can become easy to transact with, store, and incredibly liquid.

V999, a cryptocurrency created by experts in precious metals, is a perfect example of this. Thanks to its founders’ expertise in international trade and blockchain technology, V999 is setting a new standard for what asset-backed tokens are supposed to be. Every V999 token is backed by 0.1 grams of gold at London’s fix price. It can also be divided up to 1/1000th of a token, creating a friendly system for even the smallest of users.

But, where’s the revolutionary part?

2020 saw crypto’s (well overdue) explosion of growth under the success of DeFi and apps like Uniswap. Suddenly, the ecosystem seemed to realize that programmable money also involved a myriad of different ways to program, automate, and grow its tremendous potential.

Thanks to this paradigm change, many, including V999, are making a change in the way we think of business models, seasoning them in the spirit of the crypto community’s values. V999 aims to create an ecosystem where retail investors and corporations, even governments, can benefit from each other’s transactions besides investing in valuable assets. Therefore, it introduces a profit-sharing system that rewards small users for using V999 to make transactions with gold while sharing similar benefits for its top players. V999 also aims to generate enterprise-level adoption with a dedicated team specialized in tailoring solutions to fit companies’ needs. The network uses the Stellar blockchain to guarantee the speed of transactions.

The times are changing.

It’s always refreshing to see technology bringing positive change along with it. With new tools come new solutions and unique philosophies, and V999 can undoubtedly be an example of how business models are reinventing themselves as we enter the Blockchain era. We sure hope we will continue to see reinventions of popular concepts come around, always with a twist that favors the retail investor!

FireProtocol, a next-generation protocol known for being the first infrastructure to use Huobi Eco Chain, has decided to migrate its DeFi products over to Polkadot to allow for better scalability and long-term growth.

The decision comes as FireProtocol has already enjoyed a great year in terms of market adoption and continues to grow its user base. As quoted by the FireProtocol team, “we made this decision out of serious considerations for the long-term development and sustainable growth of the FireProtocol ecosystem.”

Breaking Through Limitations

After a successful token sale in December, FireProtocol got off to a good start using Huobi Eco Chain, which does have some advantages according to the FireProtocol team. However, after weighing the advantages and the disadvantages, the team decided that it was best to migrate over to a more scalable and sustainable solution.

For starters, the FireProtocol team felt that Huobi’s platform does not yet have sufficient ecosystem support, and this would likely lead to a low level of adoption. Further, they cited limits on developer tools and functionality, performance limitations, as well as a lack of governance guarantees and sustainable upgradability.

Polkadot, on the other hand, offers much higher throughput, cross-chain functionality with the ability to integrate outside protocols, more development freedom, and easier upgrades. All these benefits were too much for the FireProtocol team to ignore, and with their community in mind, they decided to migrate to help ensure the best experience possible.

Built Around Versatility

FileProtocol is quite diverse as it establishes bridging services, includes an AMM-style decentralized exchange, and a lending platform for digital assets. The Loan Platform supports a variety of assets, giving traders the ability to access a wide range of credit types easily and efficiently, and the decentralized exchange provides fast and secure trading of digital assets.

FireProtocol’s governance token, FIRE, is used to power economic incentive mechanisms and help support community proposals and voting.  Users benefit from low fees and massive flexibility as the token can be used for liquidity farming on Uniswap, for example, cross-chain wrapping, and for lending and borrowing among other things.

FireProtocol’s Long-Term Vision

With a community of strong supporters, credible backers including x21 Digital, and a highly strong team with experience working for successful DeFi projects like Celcius and others, FireProtocol’s future looks extremely bright.

The platform was developed to sit at the cutting edge of innovation, and their roadmap is proof of that. Starting in Q1 the project has offered a loan platform, followed by the listing of the FIRE token, and a Uniswap liquidity mining program. Q2 follows with a brand new staking platform, where users can stake a range of assets and earn passive income, and also easily navigate between all of FireProtocol’s services.

The second half of 2021 will bring in exciting products like cross-chain loans and derivatives trading among other features users will appreciate. All things considered, the move to Polkadot appears to be a judicious one that will strengthen FireProtocol’s core value proposition, placing it amidst the burgeoning DeFi scene that’s forming around Gavin Wood’s blockchain of blockchains.

Bitgesell, the evolutionary successor of Bitcoin, has recently concluded its halving event, today March 28th, 2021. Triggered by the blockchain hitting block 52500, the first annual halving event on Bitgesell ecosystem has reduced the block reward from the previous 200 BGL to 100 BGL as the blockchain moves ever closer toward becoming an ideal store of value in the crypto world.

The Bitgesell halving event marks a significant step towards achieving an efficient deflationary economic model compared to its parent — Bitcoin. Created by Emma Wu in 2020, the Bitgesell project takes the best elements of Bitcoin and marries it with new features that put it years ahead of the flagship cryptocurrency.

What Makes Bitgesell the New Digital Gold?

Bitcoin and Bitgesell’s similarities are limited to the POW consensus algorithm and the shared maximum token supply of 21 million. Beyond that, Bitgesell is a completely different beast with features aimed at improving usability, environmental friendliness, and increasing the value of BGL exponentially.

The BGL ecosystem has tweaked the intrinsic asset model of Bitcoin to accelerate progress by a factor of 4. The project started with an emission rate 4 times higher than Bitcoin, i.e., 200 BGL per block, and reward halving on an annual basis compared to the 4-year interval with Bitcoin. At this rate, the last BGL will be mined in 2054 as against 2140 for BTC. Not to mention, it is much easier to mine BGL than BTC as it uses an energy-efficient advanced SHA-3 based Keccak hashing algorithm with 0.4MB block size instead of SHA-2 standards.

Furthermore, the Bitgesell ecosystem comes with SegWit implementation right out of the box, along with a token burn mechanism that permanently removes 90% of transaction fees from circulation. As a result, the supply of BGL will continue to become scarcer every day, which translates to increased demand and a higher token valuation.

Thanks to the Deflationary Model, Bitgesell Takes a Shot at Mars!

The intrinsic asset model implemented by Bitgesell makes it a highly deflationary mainstream cryptocurrency. Working in its favor is the limited supply, annual halving, and the token burn process. As a result, the overall supply of BGL will progressively reduce to less than 21 million.

Bitgesell’s deflationary model directly correlates with participation, as any increase in BGL adoption or transactions will contribute towards scarcity, making it an ideal asset for long-term hodlers. If BTC’s performance over the years is any indication, BGL will be outperforming it by many times in the future.

When it comes to deflationary assets, crypto market dynamics indicate that halving and token burn events positively affect the token value. The price movement of BTC post-halving, BNB, and more recently CRO following token burn events, prove the point. Listing on major exchanges and trading platforms will also play a crucial role in driving BGL prices. Currently, users can trade BGL on DigiFinex, on HotBit and on Crex24.

Birth of an Idea: Silvio Gesell’s Economic Theory Meets Satoshi Nakamoto’s Digital Gold

The creator of Bitgesell, Emma Wu, draws inspiration from the German theoretical economist and entrepreneur Johann Silvio Gesell who championed the idea of “Freigeld.” Gesell believed that the answer to global economic problems was to use money as an instrument of exchange and not a store of wealth. If money were to come with an expiry date, people would not hoard; instead, will put it to use by spending or lending it to others at no extra cost. Wu has combined the concept of Freigeld with digital gold and supported it with a highly deflationary mechanism to create a true store of value in the crypto space.

Learn more about Bitgesell at – https://bitgesell.ca/

How to Earn Cryptocurrency in 2021: 5 Popular Ways Compared

Are you looking to earn cryptocurrency in 2021?

You are in the perfect place!

2020 has been an excellent year for crypto, and the industry has been booming in 2021 as well, reaching an almost $1 trillion market cap by the end of January.

Since the space has gone through major changes recently, users can earn digital assets in numerous ways in 2021.

In this article, we have selected and compared the best methods to earn bitcoin this year and completed our calculations to determine the most profitable ones.

As a result, you will be able to pick the right method by the time you reach the end of this guide.

Let’s dive in!

Disclaimer: All our tests are theoretical and based on historical and projected market data. For all our examples, we will use a $10,000 investment and calculate how much we can make off it with each method.

What Is the Best Way to Earn Crypto in 2021?

Based on our tests, the most profitable methods to earn crypto rank in the following order:

1. Hodling: 1900% ROI with moderate risks and easy difficulty
2. Staking: 124.79% ROI with moderate risks and easy difficulty
3. Trading: 16.19% ROI with low risks and moderate difficulty
4. Lending: 6.98% ROI with low risks and easy difficulty
5. Mining: -11.11% ROI with moderate risks and high difficulty

If you are willing to take some risks, holding cryptocurrency for longer periods is an excellent choice, along with staking. As it’s easy to get started, both staking and crypto hodling are beginner-friendly ways to earn digital assets.

For those looking for decreased risks, cryptocurrency trading – without risking too much capital and using stop orders to protect their positions (like in our example) – and lending are excellent strategies.

On the other hand, Bitcoin mining is only worth considering for those with access to cheap electricity or the necessary capital to set up a mining farm.

Based on our results, we believe that holding coins, lending on DeFi platforms, as well as digital asset trading – with a shift to social- and copy-trading, and simplification – will experience increased popularity in 2021.

While staking will remain a favorable option to earn cryptocurrency among users, we expect it to become less popular in the future.

On the other hand, due to the negative and very limited potential for profits as well as the high difficulty to get started, cryptocurrency mining won’t be so popular as before in 2021 and beyond.

In the meantime, we recommend taking a look at Nominex to get started with cryptocurrency trading, holding NMX coins, and digital asset staking.

1.      Bitcoin Mining

Risks: Medium
Earning Potential: Very low
Difficulty: Hard

Bitcoin mining is one of the oldest ways to earn crypto.

Cryptocurrencies based on the Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus mechanism use decentralized blockchain networks in which miners leverage their computing power to maintain the ecosystem.

In exchange for verifying transactions and adding new blocks to the chain, Bitcoin miners receive block rewards and a share of transfer fees.

Bitcoin mining has been a lucrative business model to earn crypto in the past, but its profitability has decreased significantly in recent years.

The mining space has been dominated by large farms that have access to cheap electricity and loans to bulk-order new generation hardware.

Furthermore, the BTC hashrate has been hitting record-high levels lately (which indicates an intense competition between miners), while May’s halvening decreased the rewards from each newly mined block from 12.5 BTC to 6.25 BTC.

For that reason, Bitcoin mining has moderate risks while it can be difficult to get started for new users (as they have to learn how to set up and operate their equipment).

With that said, let’s see how much you can earn from mining Bitcoin in a year.

How to start mining?

To start out, we need to cover some upfront costs to purchase mining hardware. For our example, we will use Bitmain’s Antminer S19 Pro ASIC miner, which has a 110 TH/s hashrate, consumes 3,250 W, and costs $2,684 at the current market price.

Based on our budget of $10,000, we could buy nearly four S19 Pro miners.

Since that would cost $10,736, which exceeds our budget, we will adjust the hashrate and the power consumption to reflect the $10,000 investment (the last rig will have a hashrate of 80 TH/s while consuming 2,360 W for $1,948).

In addition to our rig, we also have to take the following expenses into account:

• Electricity costs: The costs of the electricity the mining equipment uses when running. We will use the world average of $0.14/kWh for our example.
• Mining pool fees: The fees mining pools charge for their service. We will use a 2% fee here, which we will deduct from our total revenue.

For our example, we will use BTC.com’s mining calculator.

As a side note, we will utilize the current Bitcoin price to calculate our projected earnings and a difficulty increase of 2% every two weeks.

We used the average for all our rigs’ statistics and inputted them in the calculator (e.g., one miner costs $2,500 on average).

As you can see, we only made $16.95 in 365 days without even deducting the mining pool’s fees, which will provide us with a $-280.5 ($14,571.2 – $14851.70) result.

Furthermore, we didn’t take our mining rig’s costs into account. As new hardware models appear on the market every day, our equipment’s value will decrease over time. Let’s say we are lucky and we can sell each for $1,500 ($6,000 in total) after a year of use.

As a result, our mining operation would provide us with a $2,572 loss and a Return on Investment (ROI) of -11.11% ($20,571 revenue vs. $23,143 expense).

However, if we could operate our mining farm from a place with cheap electricity prices, our business could potentially become profitable. For example, with electricity costing $0.08/kWh, we could make a $3,793 profit ($20,571 revenue vs. $16,778 expense) with a 22.6% ROI.

Earn crypto with Trading

Risks: Varies (low in the case of our example)
Earning Potential: Medium
Difficulty: Medium

Cryptocurrency trading refers to the practice in which traders enter into quick, short-term positions to profit on digital asset price movements.

Crypto trading has been around since the industry’s early stages, with excellent products and services built over the years to benefit traders.

As a result, there are plenty of cryptocurrency exchanges where users can trade digital assets.

With that said, we recommend checking out the cryptocurrency trading platform Nominex that allows both beginner and veteran traders to make (potential) profits on the rising digital asset market.

The platform offers demo accounts where users can test their skills and expand their knowledge of the cryptocurrency market, while also providing 10 beginner-friendly video lessons in the Cryptotrading Camp.

Furthermore, users can earn a total of 1,120 USDT and 109 NMX tokens each day by participating in demo trading tournaments without any risks.

The risk level for cryptocurrency trading is based on the strategy users utilize. In our test, we will use only a small part of our capital for each position with stop orders in place to limit our risks. Also, we will only trade on the spot market without any leverage.

Since it’s very hard to predict the ROI of cryptocurrency trading, we will use a fixed model to calculate how much we can earn while trading crypto. For that reason, we have to take the following into account:

• Win/loss ratio: The proportion of trades we win. In this example, we will win 50% and lose the other half of our trades.
• Risk/reward ratio: It shows the potential rewards for every dollar we risk. Here, we will use a 3:1 ratio, meaning that we will gain $3 for every $1 we risk. With every winning trade, we will make 3% and lose 1% for every position where our strategies didn’t work out as expected (before deducting exchange fees).
• Exchange fees: The fees the cryptocurrency exchange charges for each trade we make on the platform. It’s important to note that service providers deduct this cost instantly after entering into a position or exiting one.
• Trading frequency: This refers to how often we make trades. Let’s place 30 trades a month (360 a year).
• Average position size: The average amount we use to enter into a position. Let’s keep this at $500 (5% of our initial capital).

With the above factors, we can calculate our average profits and losses, as well as our total revenue, expenses, and ROI.

Comparing trading fees on exchanges

Compared throughout three different crypto exchanges (Nominex, Binance, Huobi), you can see the results in the following table:

 

	Nominex	Binance	Huobi
Trading fees (taker)	0.1%	0.1%	0.2%
Average trading fees per winning trade	$1.015	$1.015	$2.03
Average trading fees per lost trade	$0.995	$0.995	$1.99
Average profits per winning trade	$13.985	$13.985	$12.97
Average losses per lost trade	$5.995	$5.995	$6.99
Total income	$2,517.3	$2,517.3	$2,334.6
Total expense	$1,079.1	$1,079.1	$1,258.2
Total profit	$1,438.2	$1,438.2	$1,076.4
ROI	14.38%	14.38%	10.76%

Trading the native tokens of exchanges

Now let’s see how much we would make when holding the native tokens of each exchange (NMX, BNB, HT) and using them to cover our trading fees (for Huobi, we will hold 500 HT).

 

	Nominex	Binance	Huobi
Trading fees (taker)	0.050%	0.075%	0.12%
Average trading fees per winning trade	$0.5075	$0.7612	$1.218
Average trading fees per lost trade	$0.4975	$0.7462	$1.194
Average profits per winning trade	$14.4925	$14.2388	$13.782
Average losses per lost trade	$5.4975	$5.7462	$6.194
Total income	$2,608.65	$2,562.98	$2,480.76
Total expense	$989.55	$1,034.32	$1,114.92
Total profit	$1,619.1	$1,528.66	$1,365.84
ROI	16.19%	15.29%	13.66%

As you can see, while Huobi provided us the most discounts (since their fees are the highest among the three exchanges), we generated the most profits and the best ROI on Nominex.

Also if you obtain partner level ‘MAX’, Nominex grants the opportunity to trade with 0 commission, which means that ROI will increase even further.

To predict future earnings more precisely as well as expand your skills and knowledge, we recommend testing and implementing multiple trading strategies with Nominex’s demo account.

Since you can use up to 10,000 virtual USDT to trade cryptocurrencies, there are no risks involved.

If you are up for the challenge, be sure to participate in either a demo or a real trading tournament to win USDT and NMX tokens every day.

Hodling Crypto

Risks: Medium
Earning Potential: High
Difficulty: Easy

Similar to the previous methods, “holding” crypto is among the oldest and most popular ways to earn digital assets.

While cryptocurrency trading refers to quick, frequent, and short-term buys and sells, holding or investing in digital assets means a longer commitment for users (ranging from a few months to several years).

With this method, you purchase a cryptocurrency and hold it inside your wallet for moderate to longer periods before selling it.

It’s important to mention that digital assets can be subject to intensive price swings, which can increase the volatility and the risks for investors.

As we can’t provide a precise prediction on future digital asset prices, we will take the historical values of the cryptocurrencies we analyze into account.

In this section, we will show potential earnings ($10,000 investment) for Bitcoin (BTC) and two exchange tokens: Binance Coin (BNB) and Huobi Token (HT).

As a bonus, we will also show some example calculations for Nominex’s native NMX token, which is being distributed to investors and traders at the moment.

	Bitcoin	Binance Coin	Huobi Token
Initial price (December 2, 2019)	$7,303	$15.23	$2.88
Final price (December 2, 2020)	$19,180	$30.65	$4.03
ROI	162.63%	101.25%	39.93%
Total profits	$16,263	$10,124	$3,993

The table above clearly shows excellent profits for all three coins, with Bitcoin taking the lead and BNB and HT closely following the cryptocurrency in terms of earnings.

Now let’s see how NMX has performed for early investors in terms of price.

Nominex started the official distribution of NMX in February with an initial value of 0.1 USDT. By now, the cryptocurrency’s price has increased to around 2 USDT, which means a 1900% ROI and $190 000 in profits for early adopters who invested $10,000 in the coin in the beginning.

As a result, NMX’s gains outrank the other three cryptocurrencies we have analyzed earlier (in terms of investing).

To learn more about the rewards and potential earnings for holding NMX, we recommend taking a look at the following page on Nominex’s website.

Staking

Risks: Medium
Earning Potential: High
Difficulty: Easy

The Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism is becoming increasingly popular among cryptocurrency projects, especially with the launch of Ethereum 2.0.

Unlike the PoW model, PoS and its variants don’t require validators to leverage their computational power via mining rigs to maintain the blockchain.

Instead, validators lock up a specific amount of their tokens to verify transactions and add new blocks to the chain in a process called staking.

In exchange, stakeholders get rewards on their coins, which allows them to make a passive income (similar to DeFi lending) with the cryptocurrency they hold.

To maximize their chances, stakeholders can join staking pools and services where users combine their tokens to share the profits.

However, contrary to lending stablecoins, staking comes with higher risks for investors as the cryptocurrencies they lock up can be subject to increased price swings and inflation.

For the same reason, crypto enthusiasts have more earning potential with staking as their coins could increase in value while they are locked up.

In our example, we will use TRX for staking, the native token of the highly-scalable, DPoS-based (Delegated Proof-of-Stake) TRON crypto project, which has been widely popular among stakeholders.

Compare staking efficiency

We will compare earnings from TRX staking across three platforms: Nominex, Atomic Wallet, and Staked.

To calculate the projected profits from staking, we have to take the following factors into account:

• APY: The annual interest stakeholders earn on the coins they lock up. This is 9% for Nominex (based on our results from the calculator on the crypto exchange’s website), 5% for Atomic, and 7.9% for Staked.
• Price movements: The increase or decrease in the value of the digital assets users stake. We will base this one on the TRON price changes between December 2, 2019 and December 2, 2020.
• Pool fees: Pools usually charge a percentage-based fee, which they deduct from the profits stakeholders earn. While there are no fees for staking on Atomic, Staked charges a 10% fee, and Nominex uses tiered commissions for its staking service based on the number of NMX coins users hold. For Nominex, we will compare three different fee rates, Starter (10%), Pro (6%), and VIP (3%).

Now let’s see the results!

 

	Staked	Atomic	Nominex Starter	Nominex Pro	Nominex VIP
Fees	10%	0%	10%	6%	3%
APY	7.9%	5%	9%	9%	9%
TRX price change (one year)	+100%	+100%	+100%	+100%	+100%
Total profit	$21,422	$21,000	$21,620	$21,692	$21,746
Staking ROI	114.22%	110%	116.2%	116.92%	117.46%

As you can see in the above table, despite that it charges no fees for staking TRX, Atomic ranks at the last place in terms of profitability.

On the other hand, Staked secures a second place among service providers, while Nominex offers the best ROI for stakeholders, especially for VIP users.

In addition to all that, Nominex users can obtain rewards for team farming in the referral program and rewards for providing liquidity to the pool by staking NMX LP.

DeFi Lending

Risks: Low
Earning Potential: High
Difficulty: Easy

With the rise of the DeFi industry, cryptocurrency lending has become a reality.

By lending digital assets on DeFi services, users provide liquidity to the platform. In exchange, lenders generate a passive income on the coins they lend.

DeFi lending has gained widespread popularity in the crypto space due to the fact that it comes with minimal risks (especially if one lends stablecoins) while offering much better interests than traditional finance solutions (e.g., savings accounts, government bonds).

In our example, we will compare crypto lending on Compound, Aave, and dYdX for the DAI and USDC stablecoins, using the 30-day average of lending rates to predict our earnings for a one-year investment.

To predict how much we can earn, we have to look at the Annual Percentage Yield (APY) for each coin we lend, which indicates the real rate of return on our investment (ROI).

 

	Compound	Aave	dYdX
APY/ROI (DAI)	3.05%	4.23%	6.86%
APY/ROI (USDC)	3.67%	4.87%	6.98%
Total profits (DAI)	$305	$423	$686
Total profits (USDC)	$367	$487	$698

Providing a nearly 7% ROI to investors, dYdX is the clear winner for both DAI and USDC lending while Aave secures second place and Compound ranks third.

Disclaimer: We would like to emphasize that our examples and tests included in this article are based on simple predictions, and real-world strategies might provide different results. For that reason, we recommend everyone to do their own diligence and keep their risks at a minimum to earn crypto successfully in 2021 and beyond.

Passive ways to earn cryptocurrency in 2021!

Cryptocurrency technology invented several new roles and technical positions such as master nodes, lightning nodes, and even mining nodes that are capable of earning cryptocurrency passively and have an almost regular income. Additionally, in recent years several types of affiliate programs are introduced that users can join to monetize their funds passively, like lending or staking, which are discussed above.

In this section passive ways by which cryptocurrency investors can earn crypto and have a regular income would be introduced. These ways include:

–          Mining (discussed above in detail)
–          Staking (also discussed above)
–          Lending (also discussed above)
–          Running a Lightning Node
–          Affiliate programs
–          Running Masternode
–          Taking advantages of forks
–          Developing trading bots

Running a lightning network

In recent years several solutions are introduced for the problem of scalability in Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other major cryptocurrencies. Lightning networks include networks of transactions that are not directly applied to the main blockchain, so they are way faster than regular transactions. These networks provide bidirectional channels by which regular daily transactions could be accomplished faster than ordinary payments because they are stored on blockchain layer 2, and not mainnet.

However, this is a technical opportunity for people to run a network of transactions on another layer of blockchain, which provides liquidity as well as receiving transaction fees. What is amazing about this type of earn cryptocurrency is that you don’t even need to look at market news to make money from cryptocurrencies by occupying this status.

Affiliate Programs

Another technical event that offered new opportunities to earn cryptocurrency passively in recent years was the development of new major cryptocurrency exchanges. These enterprises have to manage to join a highly competitive market in which their competitors offered several types of advantages and technical improvements in advance. So new cryptocurrency exchanges try to offer affiliate programs by which they accelerate their growth in various regions of the world. People, social network influencers, and cryptocurrency content networks and communities are potential partners of these exchanges which are targeted by their affiliate programs.

While traders and those who are playing with their funds in the cryptocurrency market should have an active situation against market news and fall or peak of price, cryptocurrency exchanges and individuals joined to their affiliate programs can earn cryptocurrency without directly being under the effects of price changes. Users in these programs are only required to add some new users to the exchange network. However, in many cases, other requirements are having a network of cryptocurrency users with more than 2,000 users and/or being an influencer on social media networks with at least 5,000 followers/subscribers.

However, affiliate programs help those people who are active in various crypto forums and groups to make money by adding new members to a certain exchange customer database. Some of these programs, unlike what you can find on major exchanges like Binance and OKEx, are designed to be easy. While OKEx requires at least $100 purchase from all 10 invited persons to activate an affiliate program for a user, and Binance requires an already existing subscribers channel, Nominex users with only 30USDT can enjoy its affiliate program and earn cryptocurrency passively.

Running Masternode

Decentralized networks require some nodes that act somehow like a server: providing access to the network. These nodes are known as masternodes and are incentivized by various cryptocurrency networks to earn cryptocurrency passively only by providing technical resources for the network’s activity. However, to run a masternode users need to have a large technical investment.

However, with the development of cryptocurrency networks and the emergence of large technical facilities, the masternodes market is becoming harder and harder to join. Since it requires large technical investment and deep knowledge about crypto networks, it is not recommended for all users, particularly newcomers and beginners.

Taking Advantage of Forks

When a hard fork occurs in a traditional cryptocurrency network, users of the old blockchain receive identical amounts of cryptocurrency on the new blockchain. This passive earn cryptocurrency only occurs once in a few years but could provide a relatively large amount of passive income. As you might know, in recent years Bitcoin Cash hard fork provides such an opportunity for Bitcoin users.

To take advantage of this type of event, users should have large amounts of cryptocurrency on the old network before the hard fork takes place. That means only users with enough funds in the right time and place can make the most out of this type of passive earn cryptocurrency. But just consider those whales with thousands of Bitcoins in their wallets when they realized that luckily they own the same amount of Bitcoin Cash to understand how this type of passive income could be sweet!

Developing Trading Bots

Another type of providing passive income that is used by large firms and financial institutions includes developing trading bots that take advantage of many events in the cryptocurrency market. However, it requires a deep knowledge of both technical analysis and financial market mechanisms as well as programming and computer science, which are very unlikely to be found in a single person. Trading bots are simply online software that monitors the market and finds trading opportunities and executes trades according to profitable algorithms. While they sound just like a great opportunity for many programmers and technical analysts to employ such trading bots, their technical details are not so easy and they remain almost exclusively in the hands of large firms with professional technical teams.

However, trading bots are capable of making frequent trades and algorithmic trades with low profits, since they are capable of making more than hundreds and thousands of profitable trades in a single day.

Closing Thoughts

The cryptocurrency market is a new financial market that in the recent decade showed it is not a temporary trend and could be considered as a technical development that will develop in the course of time. Like any other market, the cryptocurrency market provides trading opportunities by which users can earn cryptocurrency and make profits. But it is not the end of the story as several types of roles and statuses are required to run cryptocurrency networks that are incentivized by earning cryptocurrency passively, without the need to participate in market tradings.

In this article of Nominex various types of earning cryptocurrency are explained in detail and evaluated by their different factors. Nominex is a new cryptocurrency exchange platform that provides many opportunities to earn cryptocurrency for its users in different forms. Users can join different types of affiliate programs to enjoy earning cryptocurrency passively.

 

 

Image by Miloslav Hamřík from Pixabay

The high cost of gas fees has become a financial nightmare for regular users in the web3 space.

Basically, the wide range of use cases within the Ethereum network serves as a key driver for the issue of scalability. According to ycharts report, the Ethereum average gas price is at a level of 141.12 Gwei as of the time of writing.  Meanwhile, the recent upsurge in ethereum gas fee has negatively affected ERC-20 projects in the aspect of running microtransaction payments on the Ethereum network. Moreover, any interaction with the Ethereum blockchain requires users to pay a gas fee which is measured in units of ETH called Gwei (1 billion Gwei = 1 ETH). And as such, the more complex a transaction is, the more Gwei required to execute it.

With the ever-expanding DeFi movement, users have had to pay miners higher transaction or gas prices due to the inherent complexity of the DeFi decentralized applications, thereby making interaction with decentralized applications uneconomical for regular users. Recently, the web3 applications have encountered some major roadblocks at the crypto transactional layer such as the necessity to pay a gas fee for Decentralized Applications (DApp), long complicated onboarding process, complex blockchain technicalities, volatile and high gas fee, pending and stuck transactions, and more. Consequently, this has resulted in poor user onboarding and transaction experience in the web3 space, thereby decreasing user adoption. Well, thanks to the ingenious blockchain solution — Biconomy, it is simplifying the web3 experiences by transforming decentralized applications (DApp) for everyday users.

Simplifying web3 experiences

Biconomy is a multichain transaction platform that empowers Dapps by using the concept of meta transactions to provide a simplified onboarding and transaction experience for Web3 projects on blockchain and crypto networks. The developer-friendly platform employs powerful and easy-to-use SDK/APIs to delight users by eliminating blockchain complexities through gas-efficient meta-transactions. More so, Biconomy infrastructure enables developers to grow their user base by implementing the perfect experience for crypto savvy and crypto noobs in order to decrease drop-offs and drive higher conversion.

Additionally, with the developer-friendly infrastructure, there’s no need for metamask and crypto proficiency as it aims to simplify transactions by handling blockchain-related complexities under the hood, thereby making web3 products as intuitive and easy to use as legacy web2 products. Meanwhile, here are some of the glaring features of Biconomy that’s distinguishing them from others.

• Non-Custodial & Trustless: Biconomy system is trustless by design and as such cannot tamper with user’s data.
• Gas Optimization: Helps users to reduce gas costs on Ethereum by up to 50%.
• No Stuck Transactions: Ensures that users transactions do not get stuck and they are validated on time at the optimal gas price.
• End-User Friendly: Facilitates gasless transactions for users by allowing them to easily pay gas in ERC20 tokens.
• Platform Agnostic: Allows participants to integrate Biconomy using Javascript SDK via npm or CDN as well as applying the platform’s APIs on any other platform.
• Developer Friendly: Easy plug and play solution with minimal code changes required. Compatible with existing systems and major Web3 Wallets.
• Blockchain Agnostic: Platform’s architecture is built from the ground up to be blockchain agnostic.
• Scalable Relayer Infrastructure: A dynamic relayer infrastructure that can scale horizontally and vertically as users DApp and transactions scale.

In a big leap to blockchain ingenuity, the Biconomy ecosystem has recently launched Forward Swap, the first use case built on Biconomy’s new launch. Interestingly, the Biconomy Forward helps to save gas even further by providing developers with simple APIs that allow users to pay gas in ERC20 tokens. Additionally, it ensures no failed or stuck transactions, as this can be really frustrating for anyone especially new crypto users.

The decentralized exchange — Forward Swap, sources its liquidity from Uniswap, but accepts gas fees in various stablecoins. Consequently, this will facilitate a better user experience for both crypto newbies & seasoned traders. Today, developers can leverage Biconomy Forward Swap to build different use cases in the web3 space such as:

1. DeFi protocols and wallets can improve their user experience by allowing their end-users to do everything without having to own ETH.
2. All decentralized applications can onboard new users in seconds by giving a sign-up bonus of their own tokens.
3. Financial applications can allow users to pay gas in stablecoins. This will delight their users who want to save up their ETH and would rather pay gas in DAI, USDT, USDC etc.
4. Blockchain games can improve their crypto-economic model by allowing users to pay fees in their own tokens.

Therefore, it’s crystal clear that the Biconomy infrastructure is on the path to simplify the web3 experience in order to drive mass adoption.

Tether is in some bother with the SEC. It has the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets, an organization composed of the SEC, the CFTC, The Fed and The US Treasury announcing late last year that stablecoins, which include Tether should be considered as securities.  If Tether is indeed classified by the SEC as a security, then it could be sued by them for not registering its USDT as such.

Couple that with another threat from the Stable Act which recommends stablecoin issuers having to comply with a US banking charter, in order to “protect consumers from the risks posed by emerging digital payment instruments” and you have a potential catastrophe on the line for Tether and other major stablecoins. If Tether does get a fatal blow on the head from these two threats, then this could have an impact on the cryptocurrency market at large and certainly on the other stablecoins.

The Stable act seeks to make 4 major reforms, all with the goal of cracking down on stablecoins and other cryptos. These include:

• Any issuer of a stablecoin must first obtain a banking charter;
• Companies proffering stablecoin services to comply with necessary banking regulations under the current regulatory jurisdictions;
• Any issuer of a stablecoin gets permission from the Fed, the FDIC, and the appropriate banking agency six months ahead of issuing and to conduct ongoing risk and impact analysis.
• All stable coin issuers have FDIC insurance to keep reserves at the Fed to ensure that all stablecoins can be instantly exchanged for USD.

What Are Stablecoins?

This is a type of cryptocurrency that is more stable than a classic cryptocurrency as its value is tied to an outside asset like the USD or even gold which helps to keep the price less volatile and more stable.

What do these new threats mean for the other stablecoins?

Well, if these rulings and acts do come into play, then this is likely to equally affect all non-regulated stablecoins, giving more than a fighting chance for the financially regulated ones to outshine the likes of Tether.

One example is the USDC, which has been issued specifically by regulated financial institutions and backed by fully reserved assets, which makes it redeemable on a 1:1 basis to the US dollar.  The USDC is governed by the Centre, which is a membership-based group that sets standards for stablecoins. As such, the USDC has quickly become the largest stablecoin ecosystem anywhere, with many companies and protocols using USDC as its standard stablecoin. A gleaming example of what can be accomplished in murky waters.

If this is the case, then we are likely to see more coins like the USDC coming into play. The other use case where stablecoins can still be used given the above potential restrictions is for a token like CHIP, which rather than being a tradable asset that could be classed as a security, is rather a transactional token for enterprise use cases.  These include industries like online gaming, esports, and gambling – three areas that have seen an explosive influx of users during the coronavirus lockdowns. These operators then would not need to create their own tokens nor hold their own reserves against other stablecoins, the CHIP does it for them. The CHIP token is issued on ERC20 Ethereum and it is tracked by the BXTB token to generate actual yield for the holders. Perhaps with solutions like these, there is some wiggle room for new innovative stablecoins that slip under the regulators’ radar.

 

Cryptos are rarely out of the news these days, but no more so than Ethereum, which is burning up the news headlines, as quickly as it can burn up the gas (mostly for NFTs, which are having a moment, and for its exorbitant transaction fees), and then, of course, there’s the king of crypto, Bitcoin which is making headlines for its astonishing price gains, and now also for the effect it is having on the environment. The same is true for Ethereum.

A recent Bank of America report shows that Bitcoin mining uses more energy than American Airlines in transporting 200 million-plus passengers each year. In fact, it emits more carbon than pretty much every other sector, on a level with major firms like carmakers and even the US federal government. It is not alone though, as Ethereum is rarely out of the news for its extraordinary usage of energy.

Both Bitcoin and Ethereum’s carbon footprint are intrinsically linked to their price. So the higher the price goes, the more miners start mining, thus increasing emissions. In turn, this means Bitcoin and Ethereum must become ever more complex to cope with the increased demand, which then necessitates more hash power, which means even more consumption of energy.

According to the BOA, Bitcoin is coveting as much energy as a small, developed country such as Greece, which populates over 10 million people. This comes at a time when firms and countries are trying to reach targets to lower their emissions.

The Bank of America said, “Given the relatively linear relationship between bitcoin prices and bitcoin energy use, it is perhaps no surprise that bitcoin’s estimated energy consumption has grown over 200% in the past two years”.

NFTs Are Hot Right Now

NFTs are the hot topic right now in the cryptosphere, but they are also hot because they are burning up energy at a rapid pace. “Space Cat” is a well-known NFT, a simple gif of a cat on his way to the moon. Sounds cute? Not if you consider that this cat’s carbon footprint is the same as a person from the EU’s electricity usage for 2 months. And that’s even before the rocket heads for the moon. According to the founder of cryptoart.wtf, a site that lets users analyze the carbon footprint of many NFTs, the average NFT uses more energy than a month’s electricity for an EU resident. The problem is that many of the marketplaces or websites that mint the art are based on the Ethereum blockchain, which has been built to be very ineffective and costly in terms of both money and energy.

Tezos is a smart contract chain that is helping to bring a solution to this problem. It is an open-source platform for assets and applications that is reaping the rewards from the focus being directed at Ethereum’s energy bill.  Many NFT artists have decided to avoid the backlash that comes with the energy consumption related to their work by choosing to launch on Tezos, which is a Proof-of-Stake chain, which promises to be more friendly to the environment than Proof-of-Work chains.

How Much Less is The Environmental Impact?

According to the University of Cambridge calculation, quite substantial. Whereas Bitcoin consumes around 130TWh of energy and Ethereum’s of 26TWh, Tezos is around 60MWh. These numbers show a huge difference, with Tezos drawing 200 million times less.

One digital artist Mike Tyka has opted for the Tezos route for his NFT collection. He says that: “Minting NFTs using Ethereum would wipe out years of trying to reduce my personal climate footprint at the click of a button,”

“After discovering some recommended alternatives, I felt that if I’m going to enter this space, I want to support what I see as the only practical and ethical future of NFTs.”

As more developers and artists seek to escape the rising fees and energy consumption of Ethereum, they will surely be moving across from the Proof-of-Work networks, to the Proof-of-Stake Networks like Tezos to hopefully do their part to counter environmental challenges and to benefit from lower fees too.

 

 

Image source: Depositphotos.com

OKEx, the global crypto exchange and trading platform is introducing a new experience to its trading community with a Unified Account. As the name suggests, Unified Account is one place from which OKEx users can execute trades across all instruments and manage their portfolios throughout the ecosystem.

The OKEx Unified Account, also known as Portfolio Margin, is a unique offering in the crypto ecosystem. So far, its use was limited to few brokerages and banks catering to high-net-worth individuals with adequate capital and trading expertise. For OKEx users, the implementation of Unified Account means, they can execute any spot, margin, futures, perpetual swaps and options trades from one place which retaining access to their entire portfolio, trading tools, risk management settings and more.

According to OKEx, the Unified Account will be made available to its userbase in a phased manner starting March 25, 2021. It will feature three different account modes designed to satisfy the requirements of retail as well as institutional traders irrespective of their experience levels.

1. Simple Mode – Designed for spot traders and options buyers
2. Single-currency Margin Mode – Ideal for margin and derivatives traders who wish to optimize their capital across multiple trading instruments. Users on this mode will be able to opt for cross-margin or isolated-margin with their open positions.
3. Multi-currency Margin and Portfolio Margin Mode – Meant for those proficient in trading, this mode is well suited for professional and institutional traders. It offers them the ability to leverage all their asset holdings on the platform as collateral, irrespective of the denomination to trade all supported instruments. This mode is also available for OKEx API users.

During the launch, OKEx CEO Jay Hao said, “We want all traders to have the best experience when trading on our platform, whether they are new to crypto trading or already battle hardened. With this new feature, each account mode is customizable and suits varying degrees of experience, allowing for trading with different appetites for risk. We have invested significant resources into providing a sophisticated and flexible product and look forward to meeting the needs of our growing number of users. “

One of the concerns regarding the implementation and use of such a unified system is the amplification of risks, as users could end up locking their funds in too many places and run into huge losses if the market does not respond favorably. In addition, the implementation of such a product in a complex digital exchange with various product offerings could a disaster if the system fails to handle the volumes.

Addressing these issues, OKEx uses a state-of-the-art risk management system to improve operational and margin efficiency while enabling margin sharing across multiple trading instruments. So, as long as one has enough funds in their OKEx account they can trade any crypto-asset without having to exchange it for any one of the assets supported by the trading pair.

The introduction of Unified Account with advanced risk management logic will help users experience seamless trading on OKEx without worrying about switching from one trading platform to another or swapping one crypto to another.

 

Once popular, Dogecoin (DOGE) has witnessed a revival in the past few months after influential personalities like Elon Musk, Snoop Dogg, and others openly supported the cryptocurrency on social media. A sudden interest in the almost forgotten cryptocurrency created a huge demand among the crypto community as traders and investors started looking for reliable platforms to start trading.

Phemex Steps In

As demand continued to increase, Phemex – a popular crypto exchange and futures trading platform, announced support for DOGE at the beginning of this month. Starting March 1^st, users on the platform gained access to DOGE/USD trading pair for contract trading with up to 20X leverage. The DOGE/USD trading pair launch was accompanied by a fortnight-long 1 million Dogecoin giveaway campaign where each new user signing up on Phemex during the campaign period could earn $10 worth of Dogecoin (approx. 200 DOGE) by completing two simple tasks.

The introduction of DOGE/USD contract trading was soon followed by the launch of DOGE/USDT spot trading on March 13^th, further expanding the platform’s offering to the DOGE community.

Phemex Garners a Lot of Interest

The DOGE trading pairs on Phemex have come at the right time. The Dogecoin giveaway program received an overwhelming response, which even caught the platform by surprise. According to Phemex, the platform was expecting around 5000 new sign-ups throughout the entire promo duration. But the number of new registrations witnessed by the platform within the first 24 hours of DOGE listing surpassed 24,000, causing it to cut short the promo to just 8 days.

By the time the promo ended, the number of new registrations stood at 46,000. With more users joining the platform during that period than anticipated, Phemex increased the giveaway allocation by 4. In the end, Phemex distributed a total of 4 million DOGE among all the eligible participants, which was found to be around 27032 during the selection and distribution process. The whole process was successfully concluded on March 17^th.

Phemex will run many more similar promotions and giveaways as a part of its commitment to meet the crypto community’s needs. Apart from DOGE, the community can also expect the platform to introduce new trading products and services.

Learn more about the fastest Cryptocurrency and Futures Trading Platform.

 

Image by Marcel Heidemann from Pixabay

After some heightened exposure and interest that rallied behind SaTT integration with Binance Smart Chain and its deployment and listing on PancakeSwap, the blockchain-based advertising project is on another streak of accomplishing yet another novel milestone that signals its token listing on HitBTC with BTC & USDT pairs, one of the leading global crypto exchange.

This adds to its long list of CEX token listings aimed at coupling unmatched liquidity for the SaTT ecosystem both in the short and long-term. According to SaTT CEO Gauthier bros, this development is considered primed as it is aimed at bringing the needed exposures to the entire SaTT ecosystem:

“As one of the largest globally available exchanges with billions of trading volume, we are ecstatic about this partnership and all it has in stock for the SaTT community. This listing further reinstates our commitment towards making SaTT advertising solutions and its range of products available on a global scale. Our commitment towards value creation remains firm”

These past weeks have been eventful for SaTT as the advertising firm remains devoted to providing unmatched value for its community. SaTT integration with Binance Smart Chain whose purpose is on par towards providing fast, low cost, and efficient advertising transactions for users of the SaTT platform.

At present, SaTT runs seamlessly on two compatible blockchains: Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain, bringing high-end value and easy access to the SaTT community.

How HitBTC Exchange-listing Can Impact SaTT

HitBTC is a crypto exchange that at present has over 800 trading pairs. The platform was created in 2013 and provides exchange, custodial, and other related crypto services. The platform UI was developed to meet the needs of the most demanding and sophisticated traders.

According to coin aggregator site, Coingecko, HitBTC is ranked among the top 12 crypto exchanges in terms of 24-hour trading volume which makes it one of the leading global crypto exchanges which boast of little data-access latency which is sustained by its LD4 Data Center in London. User security is reportedly secure via stringent security procedures, including cold storage and encryption technology.

This cutting-edge feature matches up to provide an ambient trading environment for the SaTT community, delivering unending liquidity through its advance order book matching engine.

Additionally, this is the biggest exchange listing for the SaTT token and could unarguably impact its token value from the short and long-term perspective. This signals a positive narrative for the blockchain-based advertising firm who has been gaining increased social mentions and adoption since they debuted.

SaTT Takes On Blockchain-based Advertising To A Whole New Level

SaTT which is short for Smart Advertising Transaction Token is the native token that powers the SaTT ecosystem DApp and a medium through which all transactions are completed within the platform. SaTT which originally launched on the Ethereum blockchain is also available on Binance Smart Chain and is currently trading on Probit, Coinsbit, BW.com, and leading DEXes like Uniswap, Binance DEX, and PancakeSwap.

Early last year, SaTT integrated its decentralized advertising solution with the top social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, and Twitter. Allowing advertisers to promote their products and services through influential marketing strategies.

With the help of decentralized smart contract oracle, SaTT connects advertisers to publishers (social media influencers) together, allowing publishers to create content via these social media channels and in turn get paid for their effort based on the level of engagement derived (number of views, shares, likes, comments of the publication).

Next big step for SaTT according to their roadmap, the proof of concept of the solution on the BSC. An event that we will follow closely and that will determine the interest of the solution within the advertising ecosystem!

 

Beyond Finance, a decentralized platform for creating and trading synthetic financial products has announced a $7.5-million round of fundraising from leading blockchain funds, including Moonwhale Ventures, A195, DuckDAO, Cryptomeria Capital, Blocksync, X21 Digital, Rarestone Capital, Master Ventures, Consensus Capital, and more. The announcement comes after the company raised the funds simply by word of mouth over the past few weeks, without any advertising in the lead-up to its initial DEX offering scheduled for early April.

Beyond Finance is building a robust decentralized platform and protocol dedicated to helping institutions, small and medium-sized enterprises, and individuals to create and trade synthetic products. Using Beyond Finance, users can use the company’s synthetic product trading platform to get access to a wide range of traditional assets — all in a transparent and decentralized user experience. Users will be able to access synthetic products by staking Beyond’s native token, BYN, investing directly in the assets, trading other synthetic assets, and loaning Ether (ETH) in exchange for synthetic tokens.

Dorji Rabten, head of operations at Beyond, said: “We are excited to share our vision of creating an easy-to-use and democratized synthetic product ecosystem with some of the best investors in the industry. Currently, accessing synthetic products can be challenging, and many offerings have critical flaws that create trust issues within various ecosystems. Beyond is looking to solve this by offering the same institutional-grade solutions and access for everyone.”

With a team comprising alumni from top companies, such as  Goldman Sachs, Barclays, Deutsche Bank, Franklin Templeton, Credit Suisse, Citi, and more. Beyond’s mission is to bring decentralized finance and synthetic assets to a global population who currently does not have access and or does not know how to use these products. The potential of converting a fraction of this population implies the possibility of onboarding millions of new people into the DeFi ecosystem, as well as billions of dollars of new capital.

The team plans on using the funds raised to scale the platform, onboard new developers, and provide support for the upcoming BYN token launch, which will help incentivize and attract users to the platform. Beyond’s IDO is tentatively scheduled for early April, which will allow community members to participate in the company’s public token sale. More details will be released closer to the date on Beyond’s official channels.

About Beyond Finance

Beyond is a decentralized platform for creating and trading synthetic financial products designed to suit the needs of the synthetic creator. These synthetic products can be made to track prices of underlying assets, such as currencies, commodities, stocks, exchange-traded funds and more. Each synthetic product can be made to represent $1 or more complex products, such as leveraged/inverse ETFs.

These synthetic products are governed by the Beyond protocol and collateralized by BYN tokens. Deep liquidity is created for synthetic products through our automated market maker that is built on our protocol. Bid/ask orders can also be used on the trading interface for controlled trading orders. BYN token holders are incentivized to stake and provide liquidity to the synthetic products, as it allows the token holders to be rewarded with additional BYN tokens.

 

The rollercoaster of cryptocurrency prices started off on a wild ride in 2021, exceeding records previously set and abating the significant losses crypto investors had to endure ever since 2017. After its tumble at the end of 2017, Bitcoin broke records, reaching its greatest ever highs in March of 2021, topping the $62,000 mark.

And though the asset has retreated to $57,000, many analysts suggest Bitcoin can and will resume its rally with new targets set at $100,000, $150,000 and even $200,000 by year-end. Such predictions are positive signs for those seeking to invest in Bitcoin. But despite their growing pricing and limited emission, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies remain high-risk. Yet, investors still have a chance of multiplying their capital by relying on new solutions that can negate most of the risks involved and ensure the security of crypto investments.

A Sober Look

Bitcoin has proven to be the most volatile of all instruments ever to grace the financial market and has outstripped the value-storing capacities of gold many times over based on statistical and monetary parameters. Though Bitcoin has eased its charge to new price milestones, the prospects of its growth are still there on the technical analysis charts.

As the market mulls Bitcoin’s next moves, those who have not yet bought the asset are pondering the risks involved in making market entry. The fears of stepping into a bubble or suffering losses like in 2017 are real and are making investors, both new and existing, uneasy about whether it is time to increase their shares of portfolios with new digital assets.

But while private investors are hesitating, large companies are already working with cryptocurrencies and investing in Bitcoin. PayPal launched its Bitcoin acceptance channel in mid-2020, Elon Musk’s Tesla invested $1.5 billion in Bitcoin in early February 2021, and  MasterCard has announced its decision to start accepting Bitcoin mere days later.

Given the growing levels of adoption and interest towards Bitcoin, the opportunities and channels for purchasing them are open. But those who prefer guarantees and stability have several interesting new investment products based on Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies that can be considered.

New solutions on the market allow investors to minimize risks and ensure the safety of their crypto investments. Among such instruments is Gekkoin, which hedges risks using advanced approaches, allowing new users to enter the cryptocurrency market.

The Gekkoin Solution

Gekkoin is an investment platform consisting of a host of instruments, which include a multicurrency crypto wallet, an exchange, payment services, and investment options. All of the instruments operate based on the internal EURG token pegged to the Euro that allows users to manage cryptocurrency assets and earn profits on digital assets using financial structured products.

The integrated Gekkoin wallet gives users access to such coins as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Monero, and offers standard options like storage, exchange, and transfers. All of the ecosystem’s main functions are available through the EURG internal cryptocurrency at a fixed 1 to 1 ratio to the Euro.

The main instruments for investors offered on Gekkoin are its structured deposits that allow users to generate returns at higher rates than those offered on bank deposits. The product gives access to several strategies guaranteeing a yield of up to 4% annually. The deposit system is designed to suit any class of users with adjustable levels of risk.

The safe strategy provides guaranteed returns of 2% to 4% per annum even in terms of the falling cryptocurrency market, but users can also gain from 16% to 20% of value growth from a selected cryptocurrency.

The structured deposits maintain the original investments with loss protection, while users can adjust risk levels and receive from 20% to 25% of the increase in the value of the selected cryptocurrency in case of price changes.

Price fluctuation protection is also integrated into Gekkoin solutions and is applicable to the main strategies on offer. The balanced strategy allows users to negate any losses while retaining initial investments in case of negative price dynamics, or minimize loss to 3-5% of the portfolio, while positive price changes lead to 20-35% gains. The dynamic strategy is riskier with chances of losing 10-30% of initial investments during price drops, or grants 30-50% gains in case of price increases.

Market Outlook

The cryptocurrency market is in perpetual motion and that makes it exciting and profitable. It is never too late to experience its potential, the only question is which solution to select to minimize risks. Gekkoin offers a comprehensive approach that combines the best of the traditional financial market with the innovation of DeFi.

 

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Dvision Network, the blockchain-based virtual reality (VR) content ecosystem, has announced the introduction of five limited-edition NFT characters, to be auctioned later this month. These NFTs are the first among many unique tokens to be introduced by the project as it continues to enhance the VR industry.

The limited-edition NFTs will be auctioned on OpenSea – a leading decentralized NFT trading and auction platform to mark Dvision’s own primary NFT marketplace’s upcoming launch. Those successfully bidding at the auction to acquire these valuable crypto assets will also become eligible for certain privileges within the Dvision ecosystem, including access to NFTs from other limited-edition series and DVI token incentives. One of the five limited-edition NFT designs is the avatar prototype of celebrities in the crypto world, which has become the centerpiece of the entire exercise.

“We intend to supply these sorts of unique NFT items to the prospective Dvision Network users in order to add the fun elements to their gamified metaverse ecosystem experience, and to let them play joyfully, surfing across the virtual reality and open-world via the usage of the celebrity characters,” said JungHyun Eom, CEO of Dvision Network

The auctioned NFTs can be used within the Dvision metaverse and traded on primary and secondary NFT markets.

Dvision’s Vision for Virtual Reality

Dvision is one among a handful of crypto projects in the VR segment. The project aims to improve the space by addressing the existing challenges surrounding content quality, customization, market expansion, and copyright protection in the VR content market. The three primary services on the Dvision network making it possible include:

• VR-City – a public space within the virtual world for users to visit and experience a diverse range of VR content.
• VR-Space – a feature that enables individuals and businesses to create their own custom virtual space
• VR-Market – a public platform for users to trade their VR items

While the use of blockchain technology makes tracing and enforcing copyright protections easier, the availability of other resources in an open, readily accessible platform encourages community participation in the virtual reality space. The collaborative environment offered by Dvision Network will help individual developers, studios, businesses, advertisers and end-users join forces to create and consume quality virtual reality content.

Dvision Network is establishing a strong partner network to make its ecosystem secure, user-friendly and easily accessible. It has already joined forces with Chainlink, Blockchain Game Alliance, Blockwater Capital, Matic, Arkane Network, Coinbase Custody, Upbit Safe and more.

DVI in Dvision Network

The Dvision blockchain network is built on Ethereum protocol and fueled by DVI utility token. DVI is also the preferred payment method within the Dvision ecosystem where users, developers and advertisers can buy and sell digital content, promote their businesses, and even acquire their own space in the virtual world by staking.

In another milestone, Bithumb Korea has listed the DVI/BTC trading pair on the platform. Soon, it will include DVI/KRW following the project’s performance in the recently concluded “BTC Open” event. Other exchanges listing DVI include CoinOne, Uniswap and Hoo.

The limited-edition NFT auction will help in further adoption of the Dvision Network. It offers the community an opportunity to acquire a unique digital asset and receive additional perpetual benefits within the ecosystem.

 

Image by dongpung from Pixabay

Over the course of the last 10 years, the blockchain industry has grown and expanded into a fully-fledged behemoth, worth trillions of dollars, boasting corporations, medium-sized projects and newly founded startups. And somewhere along this development, the bitcoin ad networks appeared, completely changing the rules of the game. From poorly designed banners on bitcointalk.com, they took it to well-designed banners and a global distribution across all possible websites and publications, in turn giving an incremental boost to the adoption of blockchain.

But just how well do these ad platforms work and which platform is most effective?

If you happen to be puzzled by the same question then you are in the right place, because we have conducted an in-depth experiment across three major bitcoin ad networks in a bid to find the most productive and effective ad network on the market.

The experiment

For the purposes of this experiment, we have set out a $250 budget that will be spent on each ad network to advertise our third-party project. It is an up-and-coming startup that operates in the blockchain microfinance industry. Given its domain, such projects don’t have many options in terms of conventional marketing platforms that supply ads to similarly regular publications and hence it becomes a perfect guinea pig for us to test on. As for the bitcoin ad networks, our key marketing industry players selected for the test are:

• Bitmedia
• Coinzilla
• Cointraffic

This experiment will concentrate on what is truly important. The outcome a typical blockchain project gets when investing into display ads in search of traffic, conversions and real users that generate revenue! Furthermore, we will keep a score to see which network performs best in each of the following categories:

• Sources/Publications they display banners on
• GEO and other targeting options
• Campaign types
• Campaign bids and Minimum Spend
• Banner types
• Account funding
• Ad campaign result
• Summary

Bitcoin ad networks overview

Before indulging in the discussion of conversions that our crypto marketing campaign has generated, it is important to note that the first differences between the platforms started to appear as early as the campaign setup stage. Bitmedia, Cointraffic and Coinzilla provide advertisers with a chance to get exposure and attract new users to their crypto product or service but this is where similarities end and here are the major differences between the three…

Traffic Sources

Crypto ad networks specialize in ad distribution. This implies being connected to a wide range of online publications as in the end it is these publications that will become home to the banners that advertisers launch. Is it important to know what these publications are? Some would definitely agree, although, for us, the main index of the campaign success is the final number of users gained by the service our marketing campaigns intended to promote.

Sources, is where Cointraffic beats its competition since it is the only ad network that gives you access to at least some of the publications it has access to. Hardly a game-changer but this piece of information can definitely add to peace of mind when contemplating whether your campaign is displayed on the right websites. Perhaps the ones you would like to be associated with, in the first place. We are confident that both Bitmedia and Coinzilla would have happily disclosed their publishers to us too, if only we were to ask but it is something they don’t have readily available and therefore it is only fair to state that they do not openly share their sources.

Cointraffic – 1
Bitmedia – 0
Coinzilla – 0

GEO and other targeting options

Blockchain companies and projects are always global. Nevertheless, a critical factor of a successful marketing campaign is when a brand can quickly adapt to the regions where most of the demand comes from and it is where the flexibility of GEO targeting becomes the heavyweight advantage. In general, all platforms boast quite a similar list of countries, but it is the way you access them, that puts these platforms miles apart.

This is where Bitmedia takes the lead with its simplicity of geo setup and whitelisting feature that is not present on any other bitcoin advertising platform we are experimenting with. In layman’s terms, whitelisting allows you to tell the algorithms what countries are of key importance to you, dedicating your budget primarily towards the outlined countries. Blacklisting preset works in the opposite manner, excluding specified countries from the distribution plan, which adds extra detail to the targeting options. The network allows you to select either the whole region or particular countries one by one, which is the industry standard when it comes to conventional advertising platforms. Finally, Bitmedia strikes again with device segregation, the broad options of which delve deeper than generalized mobile and desktop presets, going as far as an operating system specification that the audiences use.

Bitmedia offers:

• GEO targeting by countries and regions
• Ad Groups
• Whitelist countries
• Blacklist countries
• In-depth device targeting

Coinzilla’s geo-targeting is also straightforward and simple. It allows you to select either an entire region or specific countries within this region but this is where the game ends since the whitelisting feature is nowhere to be found. Straightforward and simple also applies to its device targeting setup, although this time it is hardly a compliment, with mobile and desktop being the only options an advertiser can choose from. The campaign setup page greets you with two, peculiar campaign options. Premium traffic and Brand awareness traffic. There is no logical explanation as to what the difference between these options is, but one may assume that Premium traffic stands for good conversions, whilst the latter is dedicated to traffic that most likely won’t result in real traction.

Coinzilla offers:

• GEO targeting by countries and regions
• Blacklisting of websites
• Basic device targeting

 

Unfortunately for Cointraffic, geos is where its lead, gained with the openly accessible list of sources disappears and a nightmare of a geo-targeting setup sets the tone for the rest of the experience on this bitcoin ad platform. The targeting menu does not allow you to select a geographical region and therefore if, for example, Europe is your target area, be prepared to input all European countries one by one. Furthermore, lack of device segregation, whitelisting and a very limited blacklist feature only adds to the negative first impression.

Cointraffic offers:

• GEO targeting by countries
• Blacklist countries (only if you opt for global distribution)

Cointraffic – 1
Bitmedia – 1
Coinzilla – 1

Campaign Types

Campaign types usually come in two flavors. The CPM, where you pay for 100 impressions your banner receives and CPC, where you pay for each click your banner attracts. Former bitcoin ad distribution option is considered to be the main tool behind improving the awareness that your brand gets, whilst CPC is all about final user acquisition, a stage that usually comes in force once brand awareness is achieved.

Besides having similar names, both Coinzilla and Cointraffic boast only one ad campaign type and it is the CPM. Bitmedia on the other hand offers CPM and CPC, which means that it is a bitcoin ad platform that can accommodate not only the initial stages of your marketing endeavors but also the next, similar to what you would get on conventional market-leading display ad networks.

Cointraffic – 1
Bitmedia – 2
Coinzilla – 1

Campaign Bids and Minimum Spend

When it comes to bids, Coinzilla offers two types of traffic, which in turn dictates the pricing policy. The aforementioned Premium and Brand Awareness traffic types show quite a widespread in cost, being 3EUR and 0.2EUR respectively. Coinzilla’s minimum daily budget spend is 50EUR.

Cointraffic follows suit with a single traffic type and the CPM bid size valued at 3.50EUR, making it the most expensive bitcoin ad network among other contenders. The targeting menu does not provide any reasoning to such a high price level. Still, for the time being, we will assume that this extraordinary spike is to result in a similarly extraordinary number of attracted leads. The minimum daily spend on the platform is 20EUR.

Finally, Bitmedia steps in with CPM and CPC bid levels starting from just 0.30USD and 0.25USD respectively, making it the cheapest platform you can start your crypto marketing campaign on. Minimum daily spend limit only ads to it since there is no preset amount you are bound to.

Cointraffic – 1
Bitmedia – 3
Coinzilla – 1

Banner Types

Banner type is another significant part of any ad campaign since banners are the primary interface that audiences communicate with, or vice versa. Unfortunately for Bitmedia, it is where it does not show the solid performance it has already become known for throughout the first part of our testing. This bitcoin ad network is limited to text ads, image ads, responsive ads and HTML5 ads, although it does boast a wide variety of available sizes: 728×90, 468×60, 125×125, 200×200, 250×250, 300×250, 300×100, 250×100, 336×280, 160×600, 120×240, 120×600, 180×150, 300×600, 320×50, 320×100, 468×90 & 970×90.

Disparate to the above, Cointraffic offers text ads, native ads and pop-under ads that prompt your target link to be launched in a new browser tab. The latter can be displayed in the following forms: popunder desktop & mobile, slide desktop & mobile, in-page desktop & mobile, sticky desktop & mobile. Might not be the best option for conversions but definitely adds more options to choose from. Ad sizes on the other hand are not as broad in range as to what Bitmedia offers, being: 728×90, 300×250, 320×100, 160×600, 468×60, 300×600, 970×250.

Coinzilla is very similar to Cointraffic in terms of banner types, offering all the same options but lagging behind in terms of the variety of available pop-under ads. Available sizes are: 300×250, 728×90, 160×600, 320×100, 300×600, 320×50.

Cointraffic – 2
Bitmedia – 3
Coinzilla – 2

Account Funding

Before launching your ad campaign our crypto ad networks require users to fund their accounts. All three contenders boast a plethora of options that can be mainly generalized by crypto and fiat funding possibilities.

Coinzilla accepts SEPA payments (takes from 1 to 15 days), direct cryptocurrency deposits (BTC, ETH, LTC, USDT) and instant Crypto.com transfers. The latter option is very similar to direct crypto deposits and works with all the same cryptocurrencies (apart from CRO) that are already available as direct crypto transactions. Minimum deposits depend on the currency type and seem to vary with every option, although if done via Coinbase as a connected gateway, it equals 300EUR, which in turn is the smallest amount across all other currencies.

Coinzilla funding:

• Crypto (BTC, ETH, LTC, USDT)
• FIAT (EUR)
• Coinbase
• Minimum transfer: Depends on transaction currency

Similar to Coinzilla, Bitmedia also has an option of either crypto or fiat account funding, although crypto transactions are strictly limited to BTC, ETH and USDT. Nevertheless, Bitmedia’s fiat module connected to Stripe seems to accept all major fiat currencies (credit cards), whilst your balance gets instantly updated with the transferred amount. This is a class-leading advantage, especially if you find yourself with a quickly depleting budget and need to add more funds to your bitcoin ad campaign. Last but not least, Google Pay payments are also available on the platform.

Bitmedia funding:

• Crypto (BTC, ETH, USDT)
• FIAT (All major currencies)
• Google Pay
• Minimum transfer: No minimums

Compared to the above platforms, Cointraffic secures its place as the leader in account funding options. Its crypto transfers are all done via Coingate, which means the platform accepts payments in over 50 cryptocurrencies, whilst fiat transactions can be executed either via a bank transfer or credit card payment. Still, a bitter part of the Cointraffic’s variety of payment options is unfortunately the commission that is tied to all types of payments. More so, given that our experiment implied a budget of only $250, the 500EUR minimum deposit meant that it is this amount that we need to transfer and consequently pay the incurred fees on. Needless to say that this ended up in increased costs of our ad campaign.

Cointraffic funding:

• Crypto (50+ cryptocurrencies)
• FIAT (EUR)
• Minimum transfer: 500EUR

Cointraffic – 3
Bitmedia – 4
Coinzilla – 3

Crypto ad campaign results

Once we have set targeting to be identical on all three platforms, the only thing left was to wait for distribution magic to come in full force. And a couple of days later, the results were in…

Based on the numbers that we gathered from our crypto ad networks, Bitmedia shows the most effective distribution of the campaign’s budget, delivering twice as many impressions to the users compared to the other two contenders. However, Coinzilla shows twice the performance of Bitmedia in terms of CTR which stipulates, perhaps, a higher quality of publications that in turn managed to attract experiment-leading conversion. Despite all of this, it is Cointraffic that has managed to pull in more registrations than Coinzilla, nodding towards a more effective distribution network. Finally, we have Bitmedia, with the highest number of registrations, which are most likely derived from a much greater impressions count.

Top bitcoin ad network

To summarise the experiment, all three bitcoin ad networks have performed well and attracted users who registered on the microfinance service. Furthermore, the $250 spent on each marketing campaign resulted in satisfactory conversions but it is the way these conversions have been achieved that differentiates the crypto ad platforms in question. They are all very similar but at the same time are miles apart, which became apparent once we made a plunge into the categories’ study. Even once the campaign was over, we returned to these platforms only to find additional distinguishing features. Availability of Ad Groups is one of them and it is a service that only Bitmedia provides. Hence, there is simply no way for Cointraffic and Coinzilla users to set up multiple display ads with different creatives under one marketing campaign, consequently allowing for further tests of the best performing path to audience acquisition.

It is now down to you which platform to choose for your blockchain project’s marketing campaign, based on the findings we reached with our bitcoin ad network experiment. All three contenders have generated traffic and all three delivered exposure. The only difference is the final numbers this exposure transformed into and the final score of course…

Cointraffic – 3
Bitmedia – 4
Coinzilla – 3

 

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

 

Risk coverage is one of the most identifiable use cases that decentralized finance enables, paving the way for a multi-billion dollar industry based on the widespread hacking and fraud that takes place within the blockchain market. Insured Finance introduces a platform to mitigate these losses once and for all, enabling anyone to take out or fund a decentralized insurance policy as protection against rug pulls, stablecoin devaluation, cryptocurrency exchange hacks, and smart contract manipulation. This first-of-its-kind platform will innovate across the entire industry, allowing anyone to interact with new or potentially compromisable projects without having to worry about a potential loss of funds.

Gearing Up for Launch

Since the announcement of this highly ambitious project, Insured Finance has had its nose to the grindstone, working on bringing decentralized risk coverage to all. Following a highly oversubscribed IDO, the development team has made huge strides since its inception, and is now preparing for the launch of the platform’s testnet. With this release, platform users will be able to begin experimenting directly with on network, testing its capabilities to make sure it can smoothly provide its promised services when Insured Finance launches its mainnet.

On this highly usable blockchain-agnostic network, Insured Finance provides an intuitive and easily navigable dashboard for its users to begin their insurance journey. Since these offerings will most likely be very highly sought after, Insured Finance has made its dashboard as user-friendly as possible, eliminating technical barriers that could scare away non-technical users. The dashboard will initially offer two opportunities for users to capitalize on, taking out coverage and providing liquidity, with more features planned down the pipeline.

Since Insured Finance will mirror the traditional insurance industry’s capabilities, it will provide its users the option to facilitate both ends of the insurance transaction. The first sector, called ‘My cover”, enables any user to take out insurance coverage against an exchange hack, rug pull, stablecoin decoupling, or smart contract vulnerability, with the dashboard presenting the type of asset the user took coverage out on and the total value of the coverage in case the event occurs.

An excerpt from a test version of the application showing a screen from “My Cover”

 

The second section is labeled “My liquidity’ and allows users to provide risk coverage to others. This segment shows the user the amount of the value they have staked on the platform to actively provide coverage and the percentage yield they receive by providing this risk coverage liquidity. In the case of a triggered risk coverage event, the platform can instantaneously pay out insurance claims once validated since the coverage liquidity is always staked on the network.

An excerpt from a test version of the application showing a screen from “My Liquidity”

Providing Value Via a New Industry Sector

The launch of the Insured Finance platform will be one of the first of its kind, allowing anyone to easily and safely navigate the speculative and novel aspects of the cryptocurrency market without fear of losing their hard-earned value. There are so many new and interesting projects in the distributed ledger market, but since it is still highly unregulated, there is a propensity for fraud. Insured Finance ushers in a new era where users can interact with any application without the threat of substantiated loss. This powerful new tool is sure to change users’ outlooks and interactions within the space, providing a safety net for anyone who requires one.

We’ve all done it. We’ve let incredible opportunities pass us by because we were too busy, too tired, or simply not attentive enough to take them up.

What we would give for a chance to turn back the clock to scoop up some of today’s biggest projects at an earlier stage in their development. The Ethereums, Cardanos, and Polkadots of yesteryear.

But until we work out how to build a functional time machine, the best we can do is look at some of today’s projects with as yet untapped upside potential to potentially make up for lost ground.

Metaverse

Every year or so, a blockchain platform comes along with the potential to shake up the cryptocurrency industry as we know it. Metaverse is one of these platforms.

It’s designed to provide a powerful smart-contract capable backbone for decentralized smart properties and applications.

Built on the incredibly powerful Substrate framework, Metaverse is set to solve some of the major frictions that come with using blockchain platforms today; including high transaction fees, latency, and cross-chain compatibility. Instead, it offers powerful smart contracts that operate at just a fraction of the cost of competing platforms thanks to its hybrid consensus architecture — while maintaining compatibility with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM).

This will help break down barriers for both users and developers, who have struggled with congestion issues and a lack of cross-chain support on other blockchains for close to a year.

Beyond this, Metaverse’s smart assets capabilities might be set to kick up a storm. Digital assets (smart assets) on Metaverse are somewhat similar to Ethereum’s ERC-20 tokens — albeit far more capable since they can represent practically anything, including physical assets, derivatives, tokens from other blockchains, and more.

 

The native token of Metaverse’s new blockchain is known simple as Entropy (ETP). Just like Ethereum’s ‘Gas’, ETP is used for incentivizing miners, securing the blockchain, and paying for transaction execution fees. But here’s where it gets interesting; ETP can also be used for creating digital assets and digital identities.

Metaverse is currently slated to fully deploy its Hyperspace mainnet in the coming weeks, bringing with it the mainnet version of the ETP token. With this, Metaverse will become a force to be reckoned with.

Convergence

Right now, the digital asset landscape is largely comprised of cryptocurrencies with no direct connection to the real world. Practically all cryptocurrencies exist as isolated digital elements that represent units of intangible value — whether that be a general store of value like Bitcoin or utility value as with the numerous utility tokens.

But that might soon be about to change with the advent of Convergence; a platform that looks set to unlock the liquidity and accessibility of tokenized securities.

Through the Convergence protocol, practically anything can be wrapped up and traded as a ‘Wrapped Security Tokens’ or WSTs — such as pre-IPO shares or real estate — on the Convergence Automated Market Maker (AMM) platform.

Image: Convergence

It’s like the Uniswap for WSTs.

Since these are wrapped tokens and not actual securities, these will be accessible to anybody (not just accredited investors), helping to blend the $100 trillion securities market with the burgeoning world of decentralized finance. For the first time, users will be able to stake their WSTs as collateral on the powerful convergence open lending protocol, unlocking the liquidity of potentially previously illiquid asset classes.

Just last month, Convergence secured $2 million in a funding round led by South Korean crypto fund #Hashed — and received strategic investments from prominent funds including the likes of Alameda Research, DuckDAO, and Genesis Block Ventures.

The platform is currently in its early stages of development and is set to conduct its final raise via a Polkastarter IDO, following which the native utility token ($CONV) will launch.

There is currently no fixed date for the platform launch.

My Neighbor Alice

The intersection of blockchain and gaming has long been argued to be one of the most promising routes to achieving mass adoption.

In the last three years, there have been several somewhat successful attempts at achieving this; ranging from the massively popular 2017 hit CryptoKitties to Decentraland — a game that merged virtual reality, with a clever mechanic surrounding unique non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

But now, there’s a game on the horizon that looks set to really appeal to a mainstream audience: My Neighbor Alice — a multiplayer builder game that centers around decorating unique plots of land with a range of houses, animals, and more — much like Animal Crossing.

 

The game is unique in that the in-game currency ‘ALICE’ is also represented as an ERC-20 token — giving it real-world value. The ALICE token can be used to purchase land and the massive variety of other NFTs used in the game via the My Neighbor Alice marketplace.

My Neighbor Alice introduces the concept of NFT lending, which allows users to generate a yield from any idle NFTs (including land, cosmetics, and characters) safely through a smart contract.

The ALICE token recently launched in the Binance Innovation Zone and became the 18th project listed as a Binance Launchpool — allowing users to stake their Binance Coin (BNB), Binance USD (BUSD), and Chromia (CHR) to earn tokens.

And here’s the kicker. My Neighbor Alice will be launching as an early access Steam title in July — potentially bringing crypto and NFTs to its 120 million active users.