TronWeekly

Crypto World News

You are here: Home / All Posts

All Posts

Crypto market game changers for 2019 Q1

by

As you surely know already the current year has been a carnage for the cryptocurrency markets. Since last December’s mania phase, things have been going steadily down, and mid-November was even worse.

But if you know that, you also know that these fluctuations have happened before in crypto and, every time, the market comes back with a vengeance. It’s only a matter of time before a new bullish run hits the market and prices soar. When will that happen? We don’t really know, but it could be on next year’s Q1, and it could happen because of the developments we’ll detail for you in this article.

Nasdaq, Fidelity, and ErisX

Most of the cryptocurrency market is supported by retail investors simply because institutional investors (like Wall Street) have been distrustful of Bitcoin and the cryptosphere from the very beginning, so they’ve kept themselves away.

But the next bullish run could be supported by money injected by institutional players, and here’s one example. Nasdaq and Fidelity, who are giant financial players in the traditional financial markets are working together to launch and support a new crypto exchange (which would be designed precisely to be Wall-Street friendly) called ErisX.

“With increasing financial support from leading-edge firms, ErisX stands to provide the most robust, secure and regulated digital asset offering available to both institutional and individual participants,” according to Thomas Chiapas, the company’s CEO. “Closing this second round of funding enables us to continue building our modern platform and expand our team.”

If Wall Street really starts to take crypto seriously, it will be time to buy.

Bakkt

What is there in common between Microsoft and Starbuck’s beside the fact they’re super rich, dominant in their markets, and based out of Seattle? Well, the answer now is crypto.

Microsoft is joining forces with Starbucks and ICE (the company that owns and operates the New York Stock Exchange and many others in the world) to create Bakkt, which will be a digital platform that will provide financial services for end-users based on digital assets and blockchain technology.

This is not just about paying your espresso using Bitcoin (though it is also about that). It’s about institutional money entering abundantly the cryptomarkets thus reflecting confidence, creating demand for tokens, increasing trade volumes and, in general, making life better for retail investors as well.

The partnership is already announced and the new company will go online soon with a credibility that no other blockchain project can match (except for IBM since it partnered up with Stellar Lumens).

And that’s just the beginning

Bakkt and ErisX are just the most spectacular examples of things to come in crypto in the short term. But there’s a lot more in the works. Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan have been considering to enter crypto for months, and they will. They’ll also bring institutional money that will pump things up. Swiss financial institutions are also interested as well as a list of important South Korean investors.

So while there is no doubt that the market remains bullish, things are about to change because the big boys in finance are getting ready to jump in. Pay attention to that news, as they will probably signal the beginning of a new bullish run that will outperform all others.

Image courtesy of Pixabay.

BeatzCoin Begins Tron Super Rep Campaign!

by

Changing the landscape of the music industry is a huge undertaking, but it is one that can bring mass adoption into the crypto space and help with Justin Sun’s mission of decentralizing the internet. By voting for BeatzCoin as an SR, you will be helping us with that mission.

The following is a detailed road map of our SR campaign and how your votes will not only earn you extra TRX and BeatzCoin but also assist in the future success of Vibravid & BeatzCoin which in turn will bring the needed shift with Artist and content creators.

Phase 1 – Becoming an SR and celebrating the accomplishment.

– Until January 31st we will be giving 100% TRX rewards and 100% BTZC rewards to our voters. This means for every TRX you earn you will get 5 BTZC. Once we reach the top 27, those rewards become significantly higher.

Upon reaching the top 27, we will take a snapshot of our loyal voters who started with us and reward all of them with an airdrop of BTZC*. (*Amount of AirDrop TBD)

Phase 2 – Taking the Vibravid platform a step ahead.

– At this time our reward structure will change to 50% TRX and 100% Btzc.

Our beta version of Vibravid will be launched by then, and the rewards we earn will be put back into developing the platform and brand. It’s imperative to understand that community driven projects need funds to grow and flourish.

With the current price of TRX, it’s important to realize that the growth of Vibravid will be much more rewarding than chasing pennies with voting rewards. Because lets be honest… that’s exactly what you are doing if you are moving your votes for 100% TRX rewards.

*if there is any significant move to the price of TRX we will always have the community in mind and make needed changes to the reward structure that benefits everyone*

  •  Reward funds will be used for:
    * Technology development
    * Artist endorsements
    * Funding music projects (such as videos/promos/albums)
    * Marketing promotions

Phase 3 – Continued community growth and rewarding the loyal voters and incorporation of LONE token

  •  50% TRX 50% BTZC 10% LONE
  • + BeatzCoin loyalty rewards (+50% bonus to those who maintain 100K + BeatzCoin)

WhatsApp Image 2018 12 06 at 10.06.17 PM

Keep in mind that compared to many other coins, our supply is pretty low (3 billion MAX SUPPLY). When we start to reach our goal of mass adoption the supply will seem relatively low for a widely used Audio/Video platform. That is why we might decrease the BTZC bonus since we expect its value to climb significantly. It will give us more flexibility to reinvest in the Tech and Brand.

Info on LONE token:
The L1 Crew, the distributor of the LONE coin, is heavily involved in supporting developer projects, artists, as well as limited brick and mortar establishments through token purchases and direct funding. As a holder of the LONE coin, you are supporting a multitude of projects and stand to reap the benefits when the projects come to fruition.
————————-
Returns
The LONE coin shares. When profits or rewards are available, airdrops will occur. The success of the investment will determine the frequency and amount.
————————–
Security
The LONE coin is not given freely. Any airdropped or bonus LONE coin was paid for in full by the distributing party.

Please keep in mind that this is not set in stone. Our team is very dedicated to TRON and the Community. We realize that without you we wouldn’t be in the position we are. Therefore, we are always willing to hear out the community if circumstances change and a revision needs to be made to our reward structure.

Our goal is to be a firm pillar in the Tron network indefinitely and be along the likes of great community SR’s such as Sesameseed and Tron Spark. We understand the ultimate goal and will try our best to balance the best interest of TRON, Vibravid and the community.

Thank you, everyone, for your support! I look forward to keeping in touch with many of you in the Tron Community. Please check out the official Beatzcoin Podcast at www.blubrry.com/BeatzCoin where we talk about Tron, Crypto, and Music!

Sincerely,

Alex Guerra and the BeatzCoin Team

Tron (TRX) shows up at one of the biggest universities in China, PKU

by

Peking University (PKU) is one of the most important and prestigious universities in China, a country that has invested great amounts of money in improving its university system. A few days ago, it held an event sponsored by Tron called “TRON to The Future, Blockchain Technology and Ecosystem” co-organized by DOGI which is a global blockchain game crowd-funded incubator platform. More than 200 students attended the event and received it sympathetically.

The current year has been contrasting for the crypto community. The market has been a nightmare. And nevertheless, the blockchain industry has grown more than any other year in its young history. Adoption is near for many currencies.

But most of the public remains unaware of the technology and its consequences and implications. That’s why Tron held this event at Pekin University. Mass adoption will never happen before mass awareness, and these kind of events are all about bridging that gap.

Many of the blockchain’s industry’s opinion leaders showed up to share their visions for the future and the blockchain’s possibilities. Among these personalities were: Cong Li, TRON’s developer community VP; Yongquan Xiao, founder of DOGI, a global blockchain game crowd-selling platform; Binsheng Wang, special-term tutor for finance at the Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences; Quan Li, partner of Evolution Capital; Yufei Ding from Huobi Research Institute; Xiao Wu, the producer of Cell Evolution; and the blockchain research team of Peking University — Junyan Chen, a 2007-class PhD student, as well as Kunpeng Ren, a Master student and lead of blockchain research group at Peking University.

Tron’s VP for the developer community, Mr. Cong Li, explained the unique features developers can find in Tron’s ecosystem and talked as well about the project’s development history.

Mr. Li also talked about Tron’s Project Atlas which is all about the way in which the BitTorrent network (the world’s largest decentralized P2P network) will be integrated into Tron’s blockchain. He was very clear in that the average BitTorrent user will be greatly benefited as BT joins the blockchain.

Also at the event was Binsheng Wang who serves as a special-term tutor for the Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. He talked about the social changes that the investment logic in the blockchain market can bring about.

He said that the outbreak of blockchain campaigns in the contemporary world in which we are entering an “era where information transmission requires almost 0 cost”, “the popularity of blockchain has transformed the traditional information Internet into a valued Internet.”

Empowerment was also at the heart of Yongquan Xiao’s presentation, as DOGI’s director for blockchain games “blockchain has established a set of stable and transparent rules. The rules themselves set up concrete constraints on the number of items in the game, the production mechanism, the growth mechanism of players and the gameplay mechanism.

These rules are becoming the rules that players can truly trust and rely on.” DOGI is always practicing and exploring innovative methods as a blockchain game crowd-selling platform. It’s evolving and finding a balance between domestic and foreign game projects.

Then came the time for a roundtable. The participants were Felix Li (Tron’s ecosystem director), Quan Li (Evolution Capital), Ran Wei (8 Decimal capital) and Yufei Ding (Huobi Research Institute). They talked about reshaping the blockchain’s applications and value.

The second half focused on practical applications. Xiao Wu, who is a very well-known blockchain game developer, used “Cell Evolution,” his first work, and Tron’s first dApp (called “The last Trip”) as examples on blockchain games that are both spirited and games.

A Ph.D. student at the university, Junyan Chen, talked about other innovative options for the blockchain (slide-chain and pan-blockchain ecosystems). Another student, Kunpeng Ren, shared his thoughts about the public chain dApp development.

As the event finished, Tron announced a $100 investment in the next three years to bring momentum into the development of blockchain games. Tron’s contest for decentralized application developments officially started a couple of days ago, and it will be open until next January 9th.

Image courtesy of Pixabay.

Tron (TRX) to hit gigantic South-East Asia trading platform MBAex

by

Mbaex, “master in blockchain trading”, according to its publicity is a cryptocurrency trading and exchange platform which takes advantage of blockchain technology to manage digital currency transactions.

It’s established in Cyprus (which is becoming, with Malta, one of the most important countries in the world regarding cryptocurrencies and blockchain projects). The platform allows users and customers to conduct trading in several popular digital currencies, even among themselves and without fees.

The company boasts a group of professional employees from Europe, Southeast Asia an China with deep backgrounds in the Forex trade, the banking industry, blockchain asset management, and the fintech industry.

While the firm is incorporated in Cyprus, it does business mainly in Southeast Asia. In this region of the world, it’s the biggest blockchain assets trading platform. It features a full-fledged forex brokerage system and a standardized banking system. It’s a cryptocurrency trading platform with all the features you can find in traditional forex trading houses. This combination of characteristics allows for huge volumes in transaction and tradings. It’s very compliant with anti-money laundering laws in all jurisdictions.

And now, the company has announced it will be supporting Tron’s Tronix digital asset (TRX) starting next Friday at noon, Singapore time. TRX deposits will be accepted since the day before at noon, Singapore time, and withdrawals will start on December 21st.

https://twitter.com/MBAexOfficial/status/1069872553311711233

The coin will be available in three trading pairs against Bitcoin, the US Dollar, and MDP.

The biggest piece of news here is the TRX/USD pair because that’s quite unusual. Most exchanges featuring TRX do not support a pairing against any fiat currency but against Bitcoin. This has made TRX’s performance rather frustrating throughout the year because Bitcoin has had a terrible year, as everybody knows, and TRX’s pegging with it has made it very difficult to take off in price even as the project has had nothing but great news to report for months.

As we write this article, Tron’s price is at $0.014184 USD and trading in red numbers against the USD but in green numbers against Bitcoin. Its market capitalization (938 million USD) gives it the eleventh place at coinmarketcap.com.

Tron was founded last year, on September, by Justin Sun, a close friend of Alibaba’s founder and CEO, Jack Ma. It’s a very ambitious third generation blockchain project which aims to decentralize the web using the blockchain so that power over content remains in the hands of content producers instead of central authorities such as Google, Youtube, Amazon, Facebook, and all the other usual suspects. Tron is already the world’s largest decentralized network because it now owns BitTorrent (which already supports the TRX token).

Mr. Sun’s project keeps accumulating good news in market conditions that are not that promising for anybody. Every new listing in new exchanges is important because it increases trade volumes the world over, and that becomes relevant regarding technical analysis. Higher trading volumes breed confidence and demand, and those two things make a coin’s price go up.

It will be worth it to keep an eye on Tron. The token is still very cheap but forget the price for now. This is a blockchain project that has some very real value because of its high performance, great technology and versatility. It will take off, sooner or later.

Image courtesy of Pixabay.

The Bitcoin Oracle has spoken: Crypto winter is here

by

Vinny Lingham is a cryptocurrency expert, especially when it comes to Bitcoin. He became involved with it five years ago after a long and successful entrepreneurial career in his native South Africa.

He’s been founder and CEO of several projects. Civic, Gyft (sold to First Data Corp), SilconCape (an initiative to turn Cape Town into a tech hub), and incuBeta. He was considered one of the world’s top 500 CEO’s in 2015. And, yes, he’s got credibility when it comes to Bitcoin as he sits in the Bitcoin’s Foundation board.

Fast Money, a CNBC show calls Mr. Lingham “The Bitcoin Oracle” and interviews him occasionally to gain insight into the cryptocurrency market. The latest interview happened just yesterday. The show’s anchor asked Mr. Lingham for his opinion about the current market conditions for Bitcoin and future prospects.

Mr. Lingham was very clear and to the point. He said he expects Bitcoin to remain bouncing between the $3k and $3.5k levels for a few more months. But if no bull run materializes in about six months and the coin remains stuck, then it will break the $3k support level to go downwards.

He explained further that a problem in the current market is that too many investors are guided by price instead of paying attention to the fundamentals, and that’s what’s been driving the price down.

In Mr. Lingham’s view, Bitcoin is not ready to be a means to store wealth. That’s painfully clear to anybody who bought bitcoins when the price was above USD 10,000. On the other hand, Bitcoin is a very successful payment network that is moving almost as much money as MasterCard on a daily basis.

On reasons to be positive, the Bitcoin Oracle was rather scant. He believes Bitcoin to be too much of a risk as things stand. The great risk is the only way to rip great rewards, as he pointed out, but he was very clear in that it would be so much safer to buy bitcoins when the level goes back up to USD 6,000.

While we don’t believe that this, or any other expert, is an actual Oracle, we do agree with some of his points. The cryptocurrency market would surely be better off if the fundamental analysis was used more than technical analysis.

In other words, if crypto enthusiasts were more interested in coins with real value instead of following speculative trends to make quick money. Let’s remember that Bitcoin is still the same whether the price is high or low. The price doesn’t change its usefulness and value, and the same goes for every cryptocurrency.

As we probably mentioned in this site many times already, Bitcoin, XRP, Tron, XLM, ETN, and a few other digital assets are slowly but surely showing the planet that some real-world problems have no better solution than cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies. That is making the assets useful in many ways; it’s giving them a competitive advantage which will lead to mass adoption as time keeps progressing.

Adoption will change the game for everybody because those few useful coins will have great demand, and the market price will respond to value in the real world and realistic economic forces instead of sheer speculation, which is the main force behind the current market. But until that happens, winter is here indeed.

Image courtesy of Pixabay.

Tron (TRX)’s Justin Sun and Ethereum’s Vitalik Buterin go at it again; Twitter saga continues

by

The feud between Tron [TRX]’s Justin Sun and Ethereum’s Vitalik Buterin seems to have escalated with the two bigwigs of the cryptoverse going at it at on Twitter. The latest retorts were initiated by Sun when he had called out Buterin by tweeting:

Justin Sun has always made the news with his comments on Ethereum [ETH], with the CEO urging users multiple times to ditch the ETH network and switch to Tron.

The Tron Foundation official based his comments on Vitalik’s earlier comments when had stated in an interview that the next wave of crypto adoption is not going to be built on hype. He had said:

“Every time I come here, the space definitely keeps growing, and at this point, it’s looking like it’s just huge, you know. There’s just people in all of the different universities get interested in the technology, seeing the interest from just all the sheer number of companies that are based here.”

Sun’s direct collision with the Ethereum was not left unnoticed by Vitalik, who called Sun a “self identified shill” and even added that Sun was not worth listening to. Sun, who is very active on Twitter did not take the comments lying down, rebutting:

“We can talk about the dollar sign after the day #ETH reaches 2 million Txs per day, which I think will never happen. 😊#TRON”

The war of words between the two have long been an eye-catching engagement for users and holders in the cryptocurrency space. Sun never fails to mention Tron’s achievement and makes it a point to inform users that Tron has surpassed Ethereum in terms of daily transactions.

Tron had also received a boost recently when it enjoyed a sudden bullish spike of 6%, threatening to overtake Monero on the cryptocurrency charts. The rise came in the wake of Justin Sun’s comments on the framework of the company. He had said:

“BitTorrent is popular in 138 countries. So its very important that we find a solution like a payment channel that all the country it’s the same. Right now, the banking system and all this payment channel is fragile.”

Image courtesy of Pixabay.

 

The Tron (TRX) Accelerator is here now!

by

The Tron Accelerator initiative is live now and waiting for applications.

It’s a project supported by Tron, aimed at empowering developers and bring about innovation in the blockchain industry, more specifically, using Tron’s third generation blockchain technology.

Since last December 1st, developers are invited to send their decentralized application scheme, built upon Tron’s main net, and participate in one of the most exciting hackathons ever hosted.

There are a million dollars in the line in total ($200,000 for the first prize). There will also be eight special prices in 8 categories:

— Excellent Blockchain Game
— Excellent Application Tool
— Excellent Decentralized Exchange
— Excellent UI Design
— Excellent Innovation
— Excellent User Experience
— Most Influential DApp
— Most Onchain Activity DApp

Fifty-six projects will be rewarded in total, with significant prices. The deadline to submit a project closes next year, on January 4th, and judging will begin the next day.

Who will be the judges? Several personalities in the cryptosphere Starting with Justin Sun, who needs no introduction as Tron’s Founder and CEO. But just for the sake of completeness, Mr. Sun was Ripple’s Chief Representative and Advisor and founded Peiwo in 2013 which has become China’s most used messaging mobile phone app. He studied under Alibaba’s founder, Jack Ma, at Hupan University as well as the University of Pennsylvania.

Then there’s Mr. Cong Lee, the US Head of Tron Protocol,  who worked at Google for a decade as a leader for backend projects, data pipelines, frontend, and other projects. He then moved to Airbnb to build the company’s third generation financial data process starting from scratch.

There’s also Vincent Niu. Mr. Niu is DappReview’s founder, which he started this year, in March, which is the largest and most influential decentralized application platform in China. DappReview provides observers with accurate decentralized applications data, user insights and market analytics in all kind of blockchains which include Tron, ETH, EOS, NAS, and many more.

Mr. Niu’s experience in dApps is extensive, and he’s written many reviews on the subject for his project. He’s a graduate from Stanford University and is a game enthusiast.

Alex Wern co-founded Aurora (he serves as its CEO now), and he’s been through Amazon, Adobe and IBM. He prioritizes security and user-friendliness.

Other judges include Daniel Fernández, Haozhi Chen, Dio Lanakiara, Discus Fish, Juliun Brabon and the man known simply as Nick. They are all characters in the blockchain technology industry.

Tron is obviously a superior blockchain platform that so far lacks enough decentralized apps to seriously compete with “old” giants as Ethereum. This effort is part of Tron’s drive to make the platform way more relevant in the cryptosphere by finding new applications, use cases, usability, and usefulness.

This is a global competition which is only limited by language (English or simplified Chinese). This contest is different from others because the developing team will win the prize but also retain ownership of their own project, which is not the rule in software contests.

The winners will be invited to Tron’s niTROn Summit in San Francisco, next year, with all expenses paid by the Tron Foundation up to $5,000 USD.

Image courtesy of Pixabay.

Zebitex adopts Ripple’s XRP paired against the Euro

by

Zebitex is a French cryptocurrency exchange based in Toulouse. It’s the most important French digital exchange and it’s prioritized to offer several crypto coins paired against the Euro. It’s latest digital asset offered in a Euro pairing is none other than Ripple’s XRP.

Among the cryptocurrencies offered by this platform are Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and Monero.

This platform has been involved in crypto since 2014 (which is a very long time by cryptosphere standards), it sells itself as a very secure environment (protected against DDoS attacks, full data encryption, compliant with PCI DSS standards), it supports cold wallet systems, it has a competitive commissions model (simple, transparent, no extra management fees), advanced charting tools so you can use all that technical analysis you’ve learned since you bought your first altcoin, and good customer support (fast and friendly).

This is a good development for Ripple’s XRP. It’s the first time that XRP will be available for crypto investors directly through the Euro fiat currency. XRP has become increasingly available in local fiat currencies the world over (Indian Rupees, Canadian Dollars, US Dollars, and now Euros).

XRP is becoming a very strong coin in terms of profitability, stability, and value. It beat the legendary Ethereum token for the second spot in terms of market capitalization and it’s the one token that’s remained relatively stable when most others have been losing value at insane rates. Why is that?

It’s because XRP is useful. Ripple’s fought very hard for XRP’s main use case to be successful. That use case is using XRP as a mediating coin that banks and remittances services can use to settle international transfers.

That’s been Ripple’s game all along, and it caused it to be quite unpopular in the cryptoverse. Why? The whole point in Bitcoin (and in cryptocurrencies, in general) according to the mythical cyber-hero, Satoshi Nakamoto, is to get rid of fiat currencies and the traditional financial system.

Ripple is trying to use its currency (XRP) and its blockchain technology to help it instead of destroying it. That’s anathema regarding Satoshi’s original intention. But it’s working in terms of usefulness and it’s rendering the token stable.

XRP was last year’s most profitable coin, it outdid even Bitcoin. After last December, it’s the one coin that’s held its ground in a market that’s been seriously dominated by an intense and protracted bearish run. Over the last eleven months, most coins have had losses that need two figures to be written while XRP has resisted at single digits. It’s even managed to grow compared to the rest.

Zebitex’s decision to list XRP paired against the Euro is meaningful because it’s the first time that this coin is going to be directly available in Western Europe using the local fiat currency. The new pairing lines up with Zebitex’s priority to offer several coins using the Euro, but also with Ripple’s which is always looking to find new markets and use cases for the XRP currency.

The new development will create additional trading volume for XRP in a market that was more or less virgin until now. That will pump up the coin’s prices and stability.

Image courtesy of Pixabay.

Tron (TRX): Predictions in cryptocurrencies for next year

by

The cryptocurrency sector changes very quickly and next year it will be no different. It’s been dominated almost completely by speculative forces but, it’s slowly maturing and at some point in the future, the fundamentals of a crypto coin will become more important in determining value than sheer speculation. Some digital assets will manage this transition better than others. The two factors that will facilitate that will be adoption and usefulness.

In the investor’s view, a business is typically valued in terms of some very time-honored methods such as price to earnings or price to book ratios, PEG calculations, and dividend yields. But you can’t apply these formulas directly to the cryptosphere.

Cryptocurrencies are new assets that are not even ten years old and that, as such, they need new tools to assess their value. But those tools are only starting to come into existence. This has created confusion among investors who don’t know how to estimate a coin’s value. That’s one of the main reasons behind the market’s wild volatility.

In this article, we will explain to you the fundamentals of a rather new blockchain 3.0 project called Tron. It’s barely a year old, but it’s already one of the stars in the cryptoverse. We’ve chosen Tron because it’s solid in its fundamentals, so it has a very good chance to become valuable in the future. We’re not trying to persuade you to invest in Tron or to buy TRX tokens, just to keep it in in your watch list.

The Tron Blockchain: Turning the page

The Tron network includes a native token called Tronix (TRX). It’s one of the most controversial subjects in the crypto world. The fans think that it’s a revolutionary force that will change the internet (especially the web) for good.

Detractors, on the other hand, are quite skeptic and give all the merit in the project’s market value to adept PR and marketing. You’ll have a very hard time finding a balanced, dispassionate analysis of Tron, but that’s what we’ll try to give you.

The protracted bearish run that has plagued the crypto market for more than eleven months now is an opportunity for the new players, like Tron. Tokens like TRX have a chance to drive the market’s next bullish run because of their intrinsic fundamental value instead of speculation.

A viable use case for the Tron foundation is soon to be launched in the forms of the monetized torrent protocol, an eager community that is confident about the project’s future, a brand new smart-contract that allows for the development and deployment of decentralized apps, TRC-20 tokens, and ICOs. Tron’s backers come to the table with a wealth of lessons learned from other blockchain projects and a host of new tools that will make all the difference when the bears in the market finally go to hibernate.

A tale of Tron

Tron’s highest price happened this year, in early January. It’s fallen by about 96% since then and it’s currently trading at $0.014. As it often happens in the market, the fall hasn’t been straightforward but rather sinuous with many highs and lows.

TRX went from $0.028 to $0.045 between 19/03 and 26/03 (60% increment). That rise happened because the project’s final testnet (called Odyssey) was launched and it created lots of excitement and expectations as the community anticipated the Main Net’s arrival in May. The buying pressure we saw during that period ratified the community’s trust in the timely delivery of the new Main Net (which was exactly what happened). When the brand new net came online, the price rose from 0.03 to 0.092 in a single day

By creating an autonomous Main Net, Tron left the Ethereum blockchain and moved to its own which had been on the works for more than a year. It followed Ethereum’s example by adopting the open-source philosophy that is easier to improve by community involvement. It also accumulated a juicy war chest to hire developers and buy decentralized projects that could extend its capacities.

A lot of hype surrounded the launch. The project’s charismatic and maverick leader, Justin Sun did his part to create expectations and several other crypto social media influencers helped as well. They managed to make believers out of many crypto enthusiasts. Suddenly it became clear for some that Tron’s platform could really give Ethereum a run for its money as the cryosphere’s network of choice when it comes to smart contracts and decentralized apps.

Other factors also intensified the hype and speculation. Tron was among the first few well-funded projects that went away from the Ethereum network and the ERC-20 token standard (EOS did the same, more or less at the same time). The lack of precedents for this scenario added interest.

The “The Ethereum killer” thing died out rather quickly. About a week before the main net’s release, the bears visited the TRX market. The price is yet to recover from that.

“Build something great and they will come” is something of an ethos that rings true in the technology industry. Tron’s strategy (and that of many other players in the blockchain) would be better conveyed by a phrase like “make them come, and let them wait while we build something great”

But the market isn’t waiting and it’s been driving TRX market capitalization down since last May.

The case for Tron (TRX) in 2019

Tron’s blockchain is in a transition period. It’s finding its way to become a legitimate cryptographic asset platform, but it’s struggling and it’s not walking very gracefully towards that goal. On the other hand, it boasts a number of formidable projects in the works that hold a potential to be like nothing seen before in crypto.

Project Atlas is one of those projects, probably the most interesting one. It’s about bringing the BitTorrent decentralized network (the planet’s biggest decentralized network with 45 million daily active users, and 170 active users monthly) into Tron’s blockchain. The move became possible after Tron bought BitTorrent last June. Only a few BitTorrent’s users will be aware of or interact directly with the Tron network, but sudden access to such a gargantuan pool of potential users is nothing to sneer at.

The main feature in Project Atlas is expected to be a TRX reward program for BitTorrent seeders. In BitTorrent “seeding” happens when a user that has successfully downloaded a file from the network keeps it available for other users to download. This maintains the network active because, being a P2P protocol, there is no central server from which users can download content.

As things stand right now in BitTorrent, there’s no reason for sacrificing bandwidth by seeding other than altruism or a libertarian sensibility. An incentive system based in TRX, seeders will be literally paid in altcoins to host their content for longer periods of time. Theoretically, that would improve the torrent network functionality as more content will be available and seeders will be happier.

The BitTorrent protocol allows to upload and download of all kinds of files, especially of large media files (audio and video) and it’s already a decentralized network. In this regard, it lines up very well with Tron’s mission which is to use blockchain technology to decentralize the web so a global free content entertainment system substitutes the current central authorities in the online entertainment industry.

BitTorrent includes a brand new web platform that allows for partial video and audio files to be played while they’re still downloading. Yesterday, the company started to accept digital assets (TRX, BTC, and BNB) as a means of payment for their premium software. That boosted the TRX price by around 30% in less than a day.

BitTorrent’s transformation into one of Tron’s decentralized apps that includes token rewards for seeders will be a huge milestone for Tron. But no date has been announced for Project Atlas to come online yet.

A different (and very publicized) use case for TRX is its adoption by PornHub, one of the globe’s largest providers of adult entertainment content. The video platform is now accepting TRX tokens as payment for its premium services. This is another huge pool of potential users as the site was visited 28.5 billion times last year. PornHub’s monthly membership is at 832 TRX which is about $10 USD.

But there’s a catch for both the BitTorrent and the PornHub use cases. Most of the content in both networks is free, so either paying for the premium membership or getting TRX for seeding is hardly going to attract too many users.

Only 1% out of $81.5 million daily users visit PornHub’s premium section, according to the website’s own data. Only a fraction of that one percent are new subscribers and even fewer will be willing (or able) to pay with TRX or Zen (the other crypto payment option supported by Pornhub). That being said, the partnership has brought Tron closer to the mainstream.

Partnerships and community

Tron is attaching itself to well-known brands, organizations, and individuals. Kobe Bryant, the NBA superstar player, will be the keynote speaker at niTRON, the project’s annual conference which will take place next January in San Francisco.

A basketball player is maybe not the most intuitive choice for a blockchain conference, but Byant is not your run-of-the-mill star athlete. He is a partner at Bryant Stibel, a venture capital firm with a strong interest in technology ventures. Among those ventures, there are sports websites, sales platforms, and mobile game publishers, to name just a few.

So Mr. Bryant is indeed experienced in investment strategies and fund management, so chances are that the keynote will be substantial and not just all about PR. And yet, PR will be Tron’s main achievement as it will create buzz and attention from the mainstream (and from crypto) by securing a household name like Kobe Bryant.

Ripple tried something similar at their last Swell conference by having former US President Bill Clinton delivering the event’s keynote last October.

The excitement surrounding the event, together with upgrades to Ripple’s xRapid platform made XRP rise in price. It happened while the cryptocurrency market was relatively quiet, and it made XRP stand out very clearly.

In the cryptocurrency market’s short history (it will be ten years old next January), good marketing and public relations have a proven track record as tools that create buying interest among retail investors. Yes, that’s somehow childish and the market would be better off if most retail investors were experts chasing value. But things are what they are, and retail investors are more important in crypto than in most other industries because institutional investors remain very reluctant to join the cryptosphere. That is why Justin Sun’s masterful marketing tactics have created a lot of noise and had given Tron’s price much of its past momentum.

The retail effect is intensified in the periods of high volatility in which speculative pressure is the main force behind changes in price at the exchanges that support TRX.

Tron’s historical data reveals that the project’s Github activity is not exactly great. On the other hand, it has a very strong presence in all social media where it’s been able to attract lots of followers very easily. The Tron Foundation alone has 353,106 followers alone. It’s grown by almost 30% over the last eight months. Justin Sun, the leader and founder boasts more than 593,000 followers.

Solume.io is a service that provides social volume metrics. It measures the mentions a given token gets on the relevant spaces in Twitter and Reddit, and it analyzes them into positive and negative mentions. Tron’s mentions are mostly on the positive side of the social volume. Even when the token’s price is moving sideways, the project remains able to develop positive social traction. Over the last 90 days, it’s been mainly negative only once, and that happened in a day that saw 15% losses.

Even the latest price drop (which came about some twelve days ago) didn’t change this trend as positive mentions are still considerably more frequent than negative ones. The tweeting activity by community members shows that they support the project with fanatical fervor and that they remain bullish about the token even when the market’s sentiment is the opposite.

This community behavior is in stark contrast with most others in the crypto environment. Monero, for instance. It has basically the same market capitalization as Tron (Monero is 11th, Tron is 12th) but its social media presence is quite scant by any measure available. Also, Monero’s positive social activity is basically flat when the price is flat. Tron’s keeps rising even as the price is stuck, and even when it goes down.

This ability to inspire a community and provide it with HODL fuel is not a random thing. The Tron Foundation and the project’s leaders are constantly reaching out to the community and cultivating their relationship. Advertising of the high production value kind, several yearly events available in live streams, monthly updates in many different languages.

Not the Ethereum Killer after all… so far.

Tron’s network is up and running as you read this. It verifies transactions using an innovative consensus algorithm called Proof of Authority which has the advantage of not being disruptive. In this consensus model, block publishers are selected by community voting.

But there is something that still seems to be missing, namely, the genuine developer activity or use cases for the coin apart of speculative trading.

Tron’s platform includes the TRC-20 technology, which is an alternative to Ethereum’s ETC-20. It allows for Tron users to create their own Tron-based cryptocurrencies and launch ICOs. The most referenced among Tron’s tokens is Tron Market Watch (TWM). It’s meant to be a payment tool for Tron’s own decentralized cryptocurrency exchange that includes all the tradeable TRC-20 tokens such as TRWJ. 14 coins are listed there so far.

The project managed to achieve a soft cap level of $310,000 but it fell very short of the $5,000,000 hard-cap goal and, by the time the raise ended, it was less than $1,000,000. The IGG token, which is the most successful in the TRC-20 family also failed to raise much money ($110,000)

Most of the tokens available at Tron’s DEX seem rather basic, a little too abstract (concrete information is lacking), and they don’t have backing or funds.

Tron’s current state has nothing to do with the way in which Ethereum exploded in 2016 and 2017.

It’s no secret that the current sentiment about crypto is bearish. And it’s even worse when it comes to ICOs. Yet SYLO, which held an ICO over Ethereum is currently valued in more than 10 million dollars. So no, Tron is not about to threaten Ethereum’s position as the king of smart contracts any time soon.

Decentralized applications.

Tron’s dApp store has 14 dApps currently listed. Most of them are gambling games and many have limited transaction volume (or users).

Comparing Tron’s utility and activity with Ethereum’s is very complicated with so few apps available. The latter has a much bigger and manifold dApp catalog that includes decentralized betting, crypto collectibles, and distributed data storage. All in working order and running on the network. Yet both blockchains have similar metrics of volume and activity and Tron’s casino has become very popular very quickly in the last few weeks.

Vulnerability to regulatory risk

The US securities laws leave some room for interpretation as they’re based on philosophical principles rather than in rigid rules. It’s very hard to determine the true usefulness and nature of a fledgling token such as Tron.

Token transactions could easily be considered “investment contracts” as defined by the Howey Test. This would make TRX a security within the United States and not a commodity or a currency. If that should be the case, it would have to comply with the tighter constraints of the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934.

That is something that no cryptocurrency in the market wants because it means enhanced investor protection, and TRX would need to trade on secondary markets. That would bring about fines and would cut some trading channels.

The spectacular value drops of 90% or more that we’ve seen this year in TRX and many other digital assets make it more urgent for SEC to step in and start regulating ICOs and foundations. Projects like Airtoken (AIR) and Paragon (PRG) were already ordered to give their investors their money back as they failed to comply with the securities law.

“Any profit comes from the efforts of a promoter or third party” is the way in which the Howey test fourth rule defines a transaction as an investment contract. Tron is probably not sufficiently decentralized to avoid it.

As things stand today, TRX’s market capitalization, price, and trading interest result mainly from the Tron Foundation’s activities. It was this organization who launched the first ICO and it still provides leadership for the project as a whole. TRX is not really useful yet because user participation is still very limited. But as dApp activity and ICOs keep moving forward, that could change.

It’s anybody’s guess what SEC will decide about Tron. It’s a well-capitalized project that has the resources to challenge any charges so SEC is more likely to go after smaller projects that won’t offer that much resistance. It also happens that Tron and Justing Sun are non-American. They operate out of Beijing, China, so that could also make it difficult for SEC to enforce the law on them in the near future.

Conclusion

Tron is capitalized at almost a billion dollars and it’s supported by many exchanges on the planet. The charismatic maverick and founder, Justin Sun is very famous and respected in Asia. His activity in social media has been impervious to negative market developments during the last year. Through BitTorrent and PornHub they have access to 120 million potential users a year, and it’s now a fully autonomous blockchain that runs its own main net. Those are Tron’s pros.

And now, for the cons. There are too few dApps and ICOs on the platform. And it could be exposed to disruption by regulators if SEC construes TRX as a security instead of a utility token.

Image courtesy of Pixabay

Tron making it to the top 3 blockchains by usage was pretty much on the cards

by

How much is a cryptocurrency worth? Which cryptocurrency? Well not just Tron (TRX), any. Before you answer, please read the question carefully, we’re not asking you for a token’s price but for its value. Confused? Ok, let us explain.

Value and price are not the same things at all. The first one is about how much something should cost; the second one tells you what the market is willing to pay for it. There are valuable things that can be underpriced or overpriced, and there is also expensive junk.

The financial world has known this for centuries which is why it’s developed ways to analyze any market from both points of view. There is something called fundamental analysis. This discipline focuses on assessing the real value of any asset, company, or product. It’s not about price, but about potential, usefulness, chances of mass adoption.

This isn’t the most popular way of doing things because it needs an in-depth study and understanding of any market you want to join, but those who do it correctly (this has been Warren Buffet’s strategy all along) make a killing.

It takes discipline, patience, and knowledge. In crypto, there’s an interesting example of this. XRP is trading at 0.363 USD as we write this, which is very cheap.

Yet, a fundamental analysis carried out recently by a crypto think tank concluded that XRP’s actual value is of 1.7 USD. The reason the market is not willing to pay that much for it (yet) is that it hasn’t understood the technology and use cases that support the value. And there’s another reason too.

The other way to see the market is to focus on price only. That’s called technical analysis. This has nothing to do with value; it’s all about using a set of tools and rules, supported by historical data, that will allow you to surf the market. The objective here is to identify trends, and then ride the wave while it’s there. Then, you get out in time before everything goes down and you drown.

The point is to use price information to make money, and it doesn’t matter if you understand the technology, the product, or the company as long as you have reliable historical data you can use in charts and apply the typical technical analysis tools. This is the dominant way of doing business in crypto, and one of the reasons why speculation runs rampant.

So we will paraphrase our opening question: what makes a cryptocurrency valuable? This is, of course, open to debate and we could argue about it until the cows come home. But for this article’s purposes, we will posit that digital assets are no different than any other thing you can buy. They’re as valuable as they’re useful.

The next pertinent question is how do you measure usefulness? This can be a very subjective question, but, fortunately, in the blockchain world, we have an objective measure for this: activity. The most useful blockchain projects have the most users and the most activity which can be quantified regarding the number of operations completed daily.

Ok, after this rather protracted introduction we proceed to give you the day’s news when it comes to completed operations in the world’s blockchains: Tron made it to the top three.

And why does that matter? Because a blockchain that has that many users doing that many operations can only be useful, which translates to intrinsic value, which sooner or later also translates into rising prices.

Tron is trading at $0.014 as we write this article, and alongside all the major coins, it’s in red numbers to the tune of 7.67%, so maybe the market has yet to see it.

Tron is a valuable project that should not be underestimated because of the token’s low price, and this is not an opinion anymore. The number of completed daily operations doesn’t lie.

Image courtesy of Pixabay.