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Third BTT Airdrop of 990,000,000 BTT to TRON (TRX) Holders Underway

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A chance to grasp some free coins knocks at the door. Don’t you love free crypto? Heads up, your chance is here again, you should not miss a free crypto airdrop again.

Third BTT Airdrop Reward Days Away

You may have missed the first and second BitTorrent airdrops, but again losing on the third would be very much unfortunate.

According to a Twitter announcement, Tron’s third BTT airdrop is underway. The network is ready to reward all TRX holders with up to 990,000,000 BTT on coming 11th of April (just a couple more days) at 00:00 UTC. Therefore, if you don’t have some TRX in your account already, you still have some two days to make everything right for this fantastic opportunity, again.

The BitTorrent Token (BTT) Airdrop Series

This is the third time that Tron is stepping up to dole out free BTT to its TRX holders.

Interestingly, the airdrop is a series of airdrops each month until February 2025 with a total of 990 billion tokens with 10.1% of them airdropped to all TRX holders for the next 6 years.

The first airdrop went live on February 11, whereby the reward for TRX holders was 0.11BTT for each TRX held. It’s expected that for the first 12 monthly airdrops, 990 billion BTT tokens would have been distributed to those holding TRX.

Then, starting in February 2020, the next 12 months will see an increase of BTT airdrops by 0.1% each month. The pattern will continue until it hits 1.7% of the total supply come 2025.

Wallets and Exchanges Supporting the Airdrop

Anyone interested to grasp benefits of the airdrop program must have TRX in their wallet. However, not all the wallets or exchanges support the airdrop program. Therefore, one must be aware of scams and hence ensure that the wallet or exchange is officially confirmed to support the airdrops.

The common platforms approved include some like Binance, Huobi, Bithumb, OKEx, Gate.io, CoinEx, and very many others. Once you hold TRX in those supported platforms, you don’t have to do anything once the airdrop starts.

After the previous distribution of the airdrops, there was a rapid increase in new accounts on Tron blockchain, and the number is expected to spike again as the third airdrop is about to take place. Who doesn’t like free cryptos after all? Nevertheless, Tron is slowly but steadily moving closer to mass adoption and every development it undertakes is a boost.

Image courtesy of Pixabay.

Disclaimer: The presented information is subjected to market condition and may include the very own opinion of the author. Please do your ‘very own’ market research before making any investment in cryptocurrencies. Neither the writer nor the publication (TronWeekly.com) holds any responsibility for your financial loss.

Tron keeps sprinting in accounts and Dapps race

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With every passing day Tron, the 11th largest cryptocurrency in the space by market capitalization molds into one of the most popular blockchains in the crypto-mania. Although the current situation in the market cannot be considered as entirely bullish, among few other cryptocurrencies and products, Tron’s backed Dapp platform is continuously making progress encouraging more developers to build their Dapps on the platform’s blockchain.

According to the recent reports on DApps’ activities, it has been noticed that on average $102 worth of TRX are being spent by active users on Dapps running on the Tron network daily. Besides this amount being spent on the decentralized applications, the number of Dapps developed on the Tron platform is continuously increasing.

The activity on Tron backed Dapps does not just stop there, according to the weekly Dapp report published last Friday on the medium platform by the foundation, total Dapps built (so far) on the Tron’s platform are 246 in number, which is 10 more in numbers if we consider the week before previous week’s report.

Justin Sun, the founder of the popular blockchain, recently used the Twitter platform (as usual) for exhibiting his happiness for the crypto’s performance in the Dapps sector by mentioning that the momentum with which Dapps are being built on the platform is still growing up stronger (definitely poses a proud moment for the team working behind 24/7 in making the blockchain such reliable).

His Tweet was:

It was also noted in the tweet that during last week about 2.3 million account numbers had been recorded on the platform confirming the rapid expansion of the Tron ecosystem, which is another milestone achieved by the foundation.

The report also reminiscence about the journey of the past six months where at the start Tron had to invite developers to come to their platform and develop applications and enjoy the platform’s scalability as well as highly effective smart contracts features.

The situation has completely changed now, at the moment developers come to Tron ecosystem voluntarily to deploy their apps on the Tron’s Mainnet. Says a lot about the efforts put by the Tron team and rapid adoption experienced in the past six months by the foundation.

“During the past 6 months of ecosystem development, Tron has moved from inviting developers to develop on us, to a new stage of developers coming to us voluntarily. The Tron ecosystem is becoming more and more mature, with many Dapps launched on Tron’s Mainnet on a daily basis. Tron is ascending to be the No. 1 public chain with a steady pace.”

This news, as one can imagine, brought a great deal of excitement in the community. On Twitter, one member of the community who goes by the name of IN SUK YOON also expressed his opinion about the crypto after this milestone was met that Tron has already established itself and has a great future value. His tweet reads as:

 

Image courtesy of Pixabay.

Disclaimer: The presented information is subjected to market condition and may include the very own opinion of the author. Please do your ‘very own’ market research before making any investment in cryptocurrencies. Neither the writer nor the publication (TronWeekly.com) holds any responsibility for your financial loss.

Tron ponzi schemes: Burn your Tronix (TRX) away the hard way

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The peril

So you want to find a way to make a lot of money quickly and safely. Don’t we all? That’s one of the very reasons why some people become interested in crypto in the first place. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s not even rare.

But if you read any book at all dealing with any kind of investments (the traditional stock market, commodities, forex, and yes, cryptocurrencies) the first piece of information that the author will try very hard to convey to you in the most precise way is this: becoming a trader or an investor is risky.

So the first thing you need to do whenever you get involved in any of those activities is to asses the risk they imply, and figure out how if it’s a good fit for your appetite for risk.

Risk appetite sounds like a very intuitive notion, but it’s actually defined in an HM Treasury paper as the amount of risk that an organization or individual are ready to accept, tolerate or be exposed at any moment. That definition expands in that paper by defining five types of risk appetite.

  • Averse: stays away from risk in all circumstances.
  • Minimalist: plays it safe but accepts a little inherent risk when there’s potential for a limited reward.
  • Cautious: also prefers to play it safe but it’s ready to accept residual risks that may have the potential for a limited reward only.
  • Open: it takes into account every option available and opts for the one with the highest probability to succeed with acceptable reward levels.
  • Hungry: wants to find options of high risk and great reward.

The thing to understand here is that none of those five preferences for risk is right. None is wrong either. Each of those approaches to risk management can be efficient depending on many factors that include the amount invested, the asset you’ve chosen to invest, potential market size, volatility, liquidity, politics, etc.

What we all would like would be a high level of return without any risk at all. And it will never happen. A risk is at the heart of any investment. As a matter of fact, risk and reward levels are very often directly proportional. The safer you are, the fewer you earn. And some risks are not inherent to the asset itself or to the market. There’s the risk of technical failure (your internet goes off just at the moment you were going to place that order and the perfect moment to make a profit, and the moment is lost), the risk of fraud, and things of the sort.

Meet Mr. Chrles Ponzi

Several smart contracts, created by anonymous users, have been popping up around the Tron network over the last few months. They offer high profits with no risk at all. The most popular one promises you 3.33% of daily growth for the amount you invested. And that will keep going on indefinitely (in principle, it could last forever). So, it just goes up all the time. Forever. Whatever the TRX or BTC price is. At that rate, you recover your initial investment in a month flat, and from then on, it’s all profit until Kingdom Come.

Does it sound kosher to you? Maybe you’d instead think that it just seems too good to be true. And you’d be right because that’s the case. This kind of “project” has been known as a “Ponzi Scheme” for more than a century because it was made famous by the notorious criminal Charles Ponzi.

He cheated investors out of his money using the trick that now bears his name. He would promise his victims a 50% return in a month and a half. 100% in three months. As he made people excited and the money came in, he used fresh money from new “investors” to pay the earlier victims off. He kept going on until August 1920. By then he caught The Boston Post’s eye, so the news organization thought it would be interesting to dig a little and do a little research about Mr. Ponzi’s returns. The inquiry stirred the investors and scared them off the scheme. They pulled their money out, and Mr. Ponzi spent 14 years in prison.

As explained previously, a Ponzi scheme promoter pays his first investors back by raising money from new investors. But the potential investor pool is not infinite, to say the least, so sooner or later he will run out of fresh money coming in. At this point, the scheme collapses.

Ponzi schemes are not all that rare, and they keep happening everywhere in the world. And gullible people keep falling for them. And now, this kind of scheme has found its way into the crypto verse in general and, more specifically, into the Tron Main Net. Several smart contracts are programmed to behave in this exact way. How can you tell? Look for the following signs:

  • The promise of high investment returns at a very small or nonexistent risk. This is the third time we mention this and, chances are it won’t be the last because it’s just so important. Risk begets profit, and there’s just no way around that. It’s almost a physical law (actually, it’s not very different from the Second Law of Thermodynamics). Even if you choose the safest possible asset in the world, you will still have to deal with bad days in which things go South. If you really want to have no risk at all (which is understandable), then you will need the resignation of keeping your level of wealth precisely as it is.
  • Excessively uniform returns. Markets are never flat. This is true of every financial market known to man, and the cryptocurrency ecosystem is no different. Things are never dull, things are never consistent permanently. On the contrary, everything is changing all the time which is why it takes skill and knowledge to make a buck. Anything that promises you a permanent 3.33% return every day without exception is just deceptive because it’s unnatural as markets go.
  • Anonymous team. Most clean projects in the world have a team behind it which is not shy about letting you know who they are. That’s because successful legitimate projects help build a team’s reputation so that they can keep developing new projects and getting support from investors and the community. But being vocal about who they are also means that they can be held accountable for any misbehavior. Since the internet and the cryptosphere allow for various degrees of anonymity, it’s no surprise at all that fraudulent operations are run by invisible individuals or teams. Distrust anonymity thoroughly when it comes to giving your money for somebody. Especially in the Tron network.
  • Convoluted or secret investment strategies: never invest in something you don’t understand or somewhere in which the investing process is just a black box in which you can’t look under the hood at all. It’s your money. You have every right (and need) to get every bit of relevant information about how your money will be used. This is particularly important because the Ponzi scheme promoters in the Tron network are merely getting started. More elaborate schemes will appear in the future, and it behooves you to be able to tell them apart from the rest. Those who run these schemes say, of course, it’s no scam at all. But the facts are quite simple when it comes to this. If that’s the only argument they can offer, and if they can only pay back old customers with the money they get from the new ones, then it’s a Ponzi scheme however you want to look at it.
  • Getting payment not straightforward and encouragement to roll over: if getting paid is not quick and painless, be suspicious. Casinos and gambling sites love to get your money, but when you ask for a withdrawal (assuming you’re so good at betting that you actually can win consistently, which is no mean feat), they are quick to pay. Keep also in mind that Ponzi scheme administrators will encourage you very strongly to “roll over” your funds. That way, they don’t need to pay you.
  • But we are in a blockchain network. And blockchains are a technology designed specifically to bridge trust gaps. In any other environment, getting some kinds of information is just impossible unless you’re willing to break the law (which we do not recommend). But in a blockchain such as Tron’s (and this applies even to Bitcoin’s blockchain as well) the transaction information that the network carries out is transparent. So all it takes is a bit of basic research for you to get all the information you need to know if a given smart contract is real or a scam.

Ponzi-like smart contracts: The next generation in financial fraud

P3T Daily Roi seemingly qualifies as the oldest Ponzi scheme running on Tron. It’s a smart contract that allows users to deposit and withdraw TRX each minute. If you leave your tokens there for a full day, you get a 3.33% return on your tokens daily.

We have more to say on this but, before we move on, let’s just do the Math on this. How much is 3.33% really? How much will it yield in a year for you? Well, fortunately, it’s a straightforward calculation to perform. It’s merely 1.0333 to the power of 365. That’s 155828.44.

That means that, if this were true, you’d get 155828.44 for every TRX token you invest, if you just leave it there for a full year. This kind of earnings is unheard of in the real world. Even when stocks such as Yahoo, just to mention one, soared to the stratosphere, they didn’t pay that much back. Maybe even drug dealing can’t get you that kind of returns.

It started slowly as only a few people tried it out. But then, after a little marketing and time, it took off, and people came to the site in high volumes. Put a lot of tokens into it. At its peak, it had around 37 million Tronix coins (which is not very far from a million bucks). This happened a couple of weeks ago only. And then, the P3T encouraged the participants to leave their tokens in the system so they could take advantage of compound interest. What a surprise, huh? Well, most of them did roll over.

By then, those who got in early had “earned” a reward level (compound interest is real, and it grows fast) number of tokens that was more than enough to bring the whole scheme down, should those early adopters chose to withdraw their funds. And they did. To a degree, they started to cash their coins out, and the whole P3T community got panicked. A chain reaction started. People were not so willing to roll over anymore and wanted to get their rewards there and then.

As all that happened, the contract’s value went way down which caused new investors to stay away. In only a week, the “project” had lost more than half of its value (to about 15 million TRX). It’s wholly consumed now. The P3T team tried to get new investors like if their lives depended on it so they could pay back to all the users that were leaving. But the writing was on the wall, and the P3T ship was sinking. It was beyond salvation, and even a vast TRX injection could not prevent the contract to become nill in a few weeks at the most.

But P3T wasn’t unique at all. Other similar smart contracts have popped up around Tron. They wear the camouflage of an honorable project. The improve on durations, sustainability and reward circles. So the makeup is effective in making an ugly thing look pretty, and it makes it harder to tell a fraud when you see it. They do look more respectable, but they’re still Ponzi schemes, make no mistake about it.

Investments vs. Financial Fraud

So what’s the difference between sheer Fraud and a real project? For a start, Ponzi schemes can’t last very long. The pool’s alleged value grows too quickly to be sustained by new investors alone, and because the scheme creates no legitimate revenue at all, it just can’t keep going.

There’s no service or product associated with Ponzi schemes, so these are projects that have no way at all to make money. There’s no innovation, no production, no value is added into anything at all. Only the creating team and the early participants get something out of it.

And that’s different from authentic projects precisely because real projects are designed to behave oppositely. They will use a resource to create something. To come up with a solution to a problem that people actually need to solve.

If it solves said problem conveniently, it will grow naturally and create a sustainable income. Those projects could remain around for years and even thrive, even if they have to deal with losses every now and then. They stay around because they have the fundamentals needed to continue to create revenue.

Financial fraud is a thing!

So you need to know which other smart contracts look like Ponzi schemes? Well, let’s see… 4Days Profit, 12 ROI, FOMO 7, Rising ROI, Rocket Roi Dynamic, Turbo Dynamic ROI, Rocket ROI, 100roi, Turbo ROI, Tron Vault, or TronBank.

Those are the more obvious ones, but there could be more, and the future will bring us lots more of them for sure. Don’t take our word for it, we’re not accusing anybody. Just visit those websites and see what they offer compared with the red flags we gave you earlier in this article so you can make a decision on your own.

But they do meet with all the criteria as far as we can tell. They seem to be acting as Ponzi schemes, and each does it in its very own way. Some will keep 15% of your initial deposit as a fee. Others will promise you a return in a few days, even a few hours. But each and every one of those contracts will end up out of cash, and they will crash down just as P3T did. It’s just a matter of time.

P3T ignited greed in Tron. It began a trend of get-rich-quick mania. It’s seeming success inspired all the other equally fraudulent sites by promising users to make them rich without any risk or effort.

As P3T’s ending begun, there were users depositing hundreds of thousands of TRX tokens in the hopes of profiting. Now that the contract is empty, chances are that many among them lost most of the assets they invested in it.

So what will happen in the future?

We’ve been through the shrimp farm mania, gambling mania, and daily ROI mania. Actually, we’re still stuck on ROI mania. We can and should expect other scam bubbles to appear in the network in the future. This isn’t cynicism or pessimism, but if we’re not aware of them, then we can’t protect ourselves from them.

Maybe the next scheme to become a thing in Tron (and other blockchains) will be the pyramid scheme. It’s been quite successful in the real world for years, and it’s even gained a degree of respectability for something that’s inherently fraudulent.

The pyramid scheme is not a Ponzi scheme, but there are similarities. The pyramid is based on networking and network marketing. The “official” idea is that the profits in sales are shared among all the person in a given thread within the pyramid, all the way to the top.

Much as Ponzi scheme, these models also fail because there’s just not enough people to support the absurd amount of rewards promised by the model. There is such a contract in Tron already. And others will appear as that one becomes successful, at least for a short while.

The Crux

So hereś the beef. You should never get involved in any smart contract that:

  • Guarantees profits while promising high returns.
  • Claims it can’t fail (that there’s no risk).
  • Insists in you rolling over and no cashing out or makes it difficult for you to collect your earnings.
  • Says it has a sophisticated and complicated system to create revenue that we mortals couldn’t possibly understand because we’re not financial gods as the anonymous team behind this project is.
  • Offers no service, sells no product, solves no problem but greed.
  • As things stand right now, Tron community members seem to prefer gambling and get-rich-easy schemes. So it’s fertile ground for con artists. This is terrible news for the individuals that have lost money in the past because of this, and for those who will lose it in the future. But it’s terrible news for Tron and the world’s blockchain community as a whole as well because it discredits a powerful and innovative technology that can be used for good.

This will only change if we the users educate each other, denounce frauds as frauds, and focus on real projects that have real fundamental value. Yeah, that’s much harder. It takes expertise, time, energy and hard work. But that’s great for everybody.

Image courtesy of Pixabay.

Disclaimer: The presented information is subjected to market condition and may include the very own opinion of the author. Please do your ‘very own’ market research before making any investment in cryptocurrencies. Neither the writer nor the publication (TronWeekly.com) holds any responsibility for your financial loss.

Tron-based stablecoin USDT launches tomorrow; Layer 2 Scalability Solution underway

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Tron (TRX) is undoubtedly on the move each day that passes and its founder, Justin Sun is at the heart of all developments. After a few weeks of their Tether partnership announcement with a primary aim of issuing a new USDT coin on the Tron network, now it’s time for the launch.

The New TRC20-based USDT on Tron’s Network

Speaking at the brand new episode of Crypto Chick Podcast, Tron’s CEO and founder Justin Sun revealed the details of the new USDT Tron stablecoin. During the occasion, Sun made the significance of stablecoins known by laying in the fact that they’re tied to fiat majorly, and that they are not exposed to the volatility of the crypto market.

Sun went on to say that the new coin will be launched on April 9th, merely twenty-four hours from the press time. The new TRC20-based USDT will significantly support the ever-growing Tron network of dApps as well as other stuff.

Also, Sun is very confident that stablecoin is the most significant thing regarding the infrastructure and the industry as a whole. Subsequently, he thinks that the new coin will be more reliable, faster as well as cheap going forward for the industry.

Moreover, he pointed out the fact that most investors would not want people to know that they do buy cryptos, their accounts or how much money they have in their accounts. He says that the big investors need the functional stablecoin which will surely make payments as well as trades more stable and seamless.

Besides, based on the TRC20 protocol, the new smart stablecoin will as well support mart contracts and hence introducing a privacy option.

The battle with Ethereum is worth mentioning

It goes without a say that the rivalry between Tron and Ethereum is on a different level, and the fact that Sun mentioned Ethereum here is not a surprise. However, it seemed that he’s taking a distinct notch on this one as he said he’s welcoming the competition of Ethereum with open arms.

Sun believes that the competition between the two for the dApps is good for the production of better products which benefits the whole industry, the dApp developers as well as the users as a whole. He even pointed out that sooner we’ll witness collaboration with Ethereum developers to do something great for the industry.

Get Ready for Layer 2 Scalability Solution

Sun also noted that Tron would soon launch its layer 2 scalability solution specifically in Q2. The launch will, therefore, mean that the scalability will be 100 times more as well as a dramatic decrease in the fees. The developers, as well as users, must well receive the news.

Tron is moving at a pace that none of the cryptos is currently doing; with this pace of developments and consistent announcements, who knows what we might be up to next. Perhaps, one thing is for sure, Tron is taking significant steps to increase its chances of making it to the top 6 soon (Sun has been fighting for that for some time now).

Image courtesy of Pixabay.

Disclaimer: The presented information is subjected to market condition and may include the very own opinion of the author. Please do your ‘very own’ market research before making any investment in cryptocurrencies. Neither the writer nor the publication (TronWeekly.com) holds any responsibility for your financial loss.

The collaboration hint by Justin Sun between Tron and Eth delivers positive results

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When it comes to Ethereum and Tron, nothing comes in mind than the sweet rivalry that has been known to take roots between the founders of the respective cryptocurrencies. However, while speaking recently at Crypto Chick podcast, Justin Sun revealed that a partnership between the two is most likely to go down.

Wait; what?

Ethereum (ETH) Likely to Partner Tron (TRX)

What a partnership this will be!

Tron CEO Justin Sun hinted that a partnership with Vitalik Buterin’s Ethereum would happen even this year. That will be received by surprise by many in the crypto space, but then everyone will long to see it unfold.

Besides, it would be a vast collaboration which will surely make the industry even better. Their networks are already doing great and having them combined with their push on dApps it will only mean a massive network for developers.

https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/1112581840630484993

Both Cryptocurrencies Spike

The hint from Justin Sun may have come merely two days ago, but the prospect of Tron partnering with Ethereum have started to show some signs of an upward trend.

Today, again, both of the cryptocurrencies (Tron and Ethereum) have seen a massive spike. For instance, Ethereum reinstated its position as a top altcoin in the market by shooting up by 7.34%. On the other hand, Tron saw a 7.42% increase in price.

Tron is tasked to get back to its slot in the top 10 cryptos list, and it will have to do whatever it takes to achieve, even if it means collaborating with a close rival.

Currently, the two close rivals are the only coins which have marked the highest increase among the top-20 coin list. The market is firm at over $180 billion, and the giant crypto bitcoin (BTC) is getting even closer to $5,300 mark.

The coins have increased with Ethereum pushing up by 10% to hit around $180. Since the hint, ETH has received a massive increase of about $2 billion and the current market price is at $18.9 billion – closer to its $20 billion which it hit before the November 2018.

For Tron, the price also increased to $0.030 from a previous $0.0268 within hours. Its market cap also followed suit to reach $2 billion.

Clearly, a partnership will improve the user’s experience as well as build the two technologically and the industry at large. If the partnership does happen, 2019 might be the best year for both cryptos since their creation. Perhaps, also we may see an end to the arguments about which one of them is better, and only then will the rivalry come to an end. But until that happens, let the competition roll.

Image courtesy of Pixabay.

Disclaimer: The presented information is subjected to market condition and may include the very own opinion of the author. Please do your ‘very own’ market research before making any investment in cryptocurrencies. Neither the writer nor the publication (TronWeekly.com) holds any responsibility for your financial loss.

Bitcoin in April: What should we expect?

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Chances are we have all thoroughly enjoyed how April started for bitcoin. It’s been exceedingly pleasing even if it could still be quite premature to say that the long-awaited crypto summer has arrived at last. Yeah, don’t be so sure that the bears went to hibernate until some further evidence becomes apparent.

The PrimeXBT trading platform has something to say about all this. According to its analysis, we can expect Bitcoin’s price to go beyond USD 6.000,00. Yes, the USD 1000,00 rise happened too quickly, and it was very fleeting (it all happened inside a single hour, and it hasn’t kept going all that much) and there’s always the chance for a rollback. But the six thousand mark could be breached according to both fundamental and technical analysis.

Blockchain changes as a possible reason for sustained growth

Something has happened in Bitcoin’s history always. It’s a new phenomenon nobody understands at all but, the numbers are there. Every time the block reward gets halved, a bullish Bitcoin cycle begins more or less twelve months before the split. The prior events happened in November 2011, December 2012 and August 2015.

The next change in the blockchain’s policy is scheduled for May 2020, so if the pattern is going to hold, a new bullish run should be just around the corner, or this one could be it.

So how will it all look by April’s end?

Exciting news due for April’s second half could also bolster the market’s growth. Yahoo Japan is about to launch a cryptocurrency exchange there. It will be based on BitARG Exchange Tokyo (which is already owned by Yahoo Japan at the tune of 40%, bought one year ago)

So there are reasons to expect growth in Bitcoin. There’s nothing crazy about hoping the price to go over six thousand. Let’s not forget that many analysts agree on this. The current year is expected to be somewhat noiseless for Bitcoin but pretty hostile for most other blockchain projects.

What about the bears?

The mother and father of all coins failed to get over the $4.185,00 line of late February this year. That was until last Tuesday’s magical 60 minutes which saw the price soar all the way up to 5.000,00. At the current price, the critical support level will be around USD 4.800,00 for the month.

What to expect, then?

We can and should expect a USD 6.000,00 level by month’s end if nothing weird happens. If something goes wrong (but nothing major) it should still close at around USD 5.500,00. It’s almost there already. The token is trading at $5,285.46 with comfortable green numbers so we wouldn’t be terribly surprised if the 6k mark gets broken even earlier than April 30th.

But as good as things look right now, it always pays to be careful. The signs are encouraging, but it would probably be a good idea to keep in mind that all this greenery in the numbers has come about because of a single hour’s worth of trading (that has not been really sustained by the market, even if the price hasn’t gone back down to 4k) while the bear’s hug lasted for sixteen months.

Image courtesy of Pixabay.

Disclaimer: The presented information is subjected to market condition and may include the very own opinion of the author. Please do your ‘very own’ market research before making any investment in cryptocurrencies. Neither the writer nor the publication (TronWeekly.com) holds any responsibility for your financial loss.

New Tron (TRX) trading pairs at Catex crypto exchange

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The Catex cryptocurrency and mining platform launches two new trading pairs: XRP/TRX and EOS/TRX. And it’s holding 75,000 Tronix (TRX) trading competition that will last from April 3rd to April 13th. This is part of a campaign orchestrated along with the Tron Foundation and Justin Sun (Tron’s founder and CEO).

You may ask yourself why this is news, and you’d be right to do so. Well, there are several reasons.

One reason is that Tron keeps getting traded in more and more cryptocurrency exchange platforms all over the world. That means it’s getting easier to acquire Tronix tokens all the time, which is excellent news for Tron’s expansion, success and ability to have new members join the community because owning at least a few tokens is crucial to enjoying the Tron’s network features and benefits.

The actual pairings that are on offer are also newsworthy because they’re quite interesting. They will give analysts an objective way to compare Tronix performance against two quite important currencies. First, there’s the XRP pairing. This pairing matters because XRP has been the crypto verse’s most profitable coin for two years in a row (2017 and 2018) and it could turn out to also be the most profitable one this year.

So having a way to see precisely how TRX does against that kind of coin will be very revealing regarding financial success for the token. Then there’s the EOS pairing which is also quite exciting for different reasons. EOS and Tron are very similar third-generation blockchain projects which are centered about deploying decentralized applications and smart contracts more than a digital asset.

They’re very similar in many ways (they’re both considered the blockchains that are currently challenging Ethereum’s dominance), and they went independent from Ethereum at basically the same time. Tron and EOS are in direct competition when it comes to, and this pairing gives us direct competition in economic terms.

So having both coins paired against each other offers analysts a measure that compares two very similar networks that are fighting tooth and nail amongst them to become the world’s foremost network for dApps. It would be great to have those very pairings available in other exchanges as well.

The contest

And now, the contest.

The point in the contest is to trade in TRX in such a way that its value is maximized against its USDT/BTC/ETC/CATT pairings (CATT is the platform’s native token). There’s a live leaderboard that you can see at all times at https://www.catex.io/report/trx.

The contest winner will be awarded 30k TRX, with 15k for the second best, 5k for the third. Places 4th to 10th will get 20k amongst them, and a lucky guy from those who hit the 11-20 spots will be selected to get 5k Tron.

The Catex platform is unique because it includes a mining component, and it’s not just about trading like, say, Binance. But if you think you have what it takes to make your Tron grow like the champions, then this is a good chance for you to earn a lot of TRX and the bragging rights to say you won a worldwide cryptocurrency contest.

Image courtesy of Pixabay.

Disclaimer: The presented information is subjected to market condition and may include the very own opinion of the author. Please do your ‘very own’ market research before making any investment in cryptocurrencies. Neither the writer nor the publication (TronWeekly.com) holds any responsibility for your financial loss.

Tron (TRX) and Q2 2019: Stirring developments on the list

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TRON, which one of the largest crypto-platforms is planning great developments in the second quarter of the year. The platform intends to add new upgrades and tools to increase the blockchain’s functionality.

Misha Lederman, the CEO of IAmDecentalized highlighted the significant developments that will be coming in the Q2 this year.

As emphasized by Misha Lederman, TRON aims to speed up BitTorrent, boost Institutional-friendly multi-signature & account management, USDT-TRON stablecoin launch on TRX blockchain, and implement a privacy option for transactions. Additionally, a few days ago, TRON announced the launch of TRX’s layer two solutions that will better scale the daily transactions on TRON’s network.

It is worth noting that Lederman who’s well-known to be a great supporter of TRON network revealed that these major developments would be launched in the coming weeks and months of Q2 in 2019.

The Launch of BitTorrent Speed and Multi-Signature Wallets 

TRON acquired BitTorrent in 2018 for $140 million (allegedly), but the platform’s user base may have boosted sporadically as its p2p file-sharing solution now has more than a hundred million users worldwide.

To enhance the existing functionality of BitTorrent and its new token, BTT, TRON aims to launch the “BitTorrent Speed,” which is an app that helps to reward BTT’s network contributors that provide seeding.

The CEO of TRON’s network, Justin Sun, stated on his official Twitter page on Feb 24th that the following updates will be added to TRON’s Version 3.5:

  • Hard-fork upgrade ( which is already done)
  • Multi-signature wallets
  • Significant adjustments to real-time functioning of TRON’s network
  • 50 percent performance efficiency
  • Enhanced safety of TRON’s Virtual Machine

Subsequently, Sun also explained in a video on Twitter concerning Tron’s collaboration with Tether to develop a USDT Token based on TRON’s network which gives “TRX holders a new way of value storage, provides dApp users a new way to play [or access] dApps, and increases legitimacy with institutional investors.”

The Release of Layer 2 Solution – Sun Network

TRON also plans to introduce web 4.0 for scaling up its network process. The main head behind Tron recently tweeted:

One thing is clear: TRON aims to boost its network is in tandem to overtake its contenders in the crypto-space. Before this event, Sun spoke on the development to add more users to TRON’s network, which is part of the new method introduced by TRON to add to BitTorrent. Sun in his words stated this during the integration of BitTorrent.

“We are currently working on a new live/social media app and looking for ways to integrate BTT on it! By doing that we aim to empower a new generation of content creators to distribute their content without a middleman and offer a very authentic channel for the fans to connect with their idols and the content creators with their audience.”

Image courtesy of Pixabay.

Disclaimer: The presented information is subjected to market condition and may include the very own opinion of the author. Please do your ‘very own’ market research before making any investment in cryptocurrencies. Neither the writer nor the publication (TronWeekly.com) holds any responsibility for your financial loss.

An update for India’s big crypto case at the country’s Supreme Court

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India’s Supreme Court has announced a new date for hearing the nation’s case known merely as the “crypto case.” It’s expected to be critical in building the country’s legal framework for the crypto verse. In the most recent hearing, the government was supposed to produce some crypto regulations, but the session was adjourned after a few minutes.

The Crypto Case: What’s New

On last Friday, the Indian Supreme Court’s agenda included an audience in which it would listen to the government’s side concerning cryptocurrency regulations. The same session was also supposed to deal with requests against banking restrictions by the nation’s central bank, the Reserve Bank of India. But the course was adjourned after only a few minutes in which not a lot of progress was achieved.

Jaideep Reddy was there, and he talked to the press last Tuesday. His client is the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) on behalf of Nishith Desai Associates. They stand with a petition against the RBI ban.

A new date is confirmed

“The matter started with a counsel for the respondents asking for a passover of the matter (i.e., for the matter to be heard at the end of the list for the day). However, the Bench stated that the matter should be heard and that a passover would not be entertained,” Reddy said. “The respondents are both the government and the RBI, among others,” he clarified. Regarding the banking restriction, he detailed:

The Senior Advocate for IAMAI, Gopal Subramanium, explained to the bench the relevance of this matter. He asked for it to be heard at length, as the case merits. The respondents’ attorney asked for the case to be heard on a non-miscellaneous day. The Bench agreed to the request, so it ordered the case to be heard on July 23. That is once the court’s summer holiday ends.

Mr. Reddy further said that “Mondays and Fridays are ‘miscellaneous’ days of the supreme court and the present matter is considered to be of a ‘non-miscellaneous’ nature.” A court order released recently from Friday’s hearings reaffirmed the new date. “Upon hearing the counsel, the court made the following order … List the matter on 23rd July 2019,” the order reads.

Crypto remains unregulated, but the RBI ban still holds

The Supreme Court ordered the government to come up with a regulation system for cryptocurrencies within four weeks. That was last February, so the government has had twice as much time already. But the subject didn’t come up at all, according to Mr. Reddy “The hearing only lasted for a few minutes, and this [crypto regulation] did not come up, given that the case was adjourned.”

The Indian regulations are being drafted by a multidisciplinary committee led by Subhash Shandra Garg, the Secretary of the Department of Economic Affairs at the Ministry of Finance. The government’s representatives before the Supreme Court informed the Bench that the committee in question was already in the final stages of deliberations.

India’s regulatory framework for cryptocurrencies is being drafted by an interministerial committee headed by Subhash Chandra Garg, Secretary of the Department of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance. The government’s counsel previously told the supreme court that this committee was in its final stages of deliberations.

In the meantime, the banking restriction effective since last July has taken the Indian cryptocurrency industry into limbo.

Zebpay, which used to be one of the country’s most significant crypto exchanges, had to shut down all exchange operations in India last September because of the banking problem. Unocoin, which was also a significant player, implemented a cash kiosk on October so its users could deposit and withdraw INR. But law enforcement wasn’t able to tell the difference between the machine and an ATM that disobey the RBI ban. So it arrested two of the company’s founders.

Only last Sunday, Coindelta, Indian crypto exchange that’s barely eighteen months old, had to terminate service because of the harm done to its business after half a year’s worth of the banking restriction.

Image courtesy of Pixabay.

Disclaimer: The presented information is subjected to market condition and may include the very own opinion of the author. Please do your ‘very own’ market research before making any investment in cryptocurrencies. Neither the writer nor the publication (TronWeekly.com) holds any responsibility for your financial loss.

What on the earth is happening with Bakkt?

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Bakkt was announced as a project several months ago, and it immediately gained lots of eager fans and supporters that were impatiently waiting for the promised company to become a reality. And who could blame them?

We’re talking about a partnership between Microsoft, Starbuck’s (yeah, the coffee guys are going crypto) and ICE (the firm that owns the New York Stock Exchange) to create a massive cryptocurrency service that would facilitate mass adoption, at last, for Bitcoin and other digital assets.

And it would enable you to pay for your cappuccino using your Bitcoins. But it’s stuck. It’s been stuck for ages as a new problem arises at every step of the way, and that’s making the supporters weary.

See, Bakkt can’t become a real thing without a favorable ruling by the Commodity Future Trading Commission (CFTC), which is slightly weird since digital money is not a commodity at all, but that’s how absurd current regulations are.

The CFTC corroborated last month that it’s reviewing it. But they’re not in a rush to actually do the did (while Bakkt supporters are already quite anxious). Bakkt was supposed to go online during these year’s Q1, which is already gone. And we don’t need to tell you that Bakkt is still offline.

But there’s a hope for an imminent ruling, and it has to do with things happening in other cryptocurrency exchanges, which will be Bakkt’s competition in the fullness of time. This whole situation seems taken out of a novel by Franz Kafka for the eager Bakkt fans who can’t wait for it to go online.

Bakkt?

An elementary idea drives Bakkt: to turn Bitcoin into a legitimate financial instrument. As the world’s main digital asset penetrates the world’s more traditional (and sizeable) financial institutions, the crypto market would change.

It would stop being a market dominated by retail investors which are mainly hobbyists, to become a mainstream market with all the trimmings, much like Forex, the commodities market, stock exchanges and all those financial activities that don’t get the bad rap that the crypto verse has, unfairly, acquired.

As a quick digression, let’s notice that several analysts have said that the retail-driven cryptocurrency market has given us everything it can already.

If crypto is going to grow again, as it has in the past, the only way that will happen is with fresh institutional money from Wall Street, the London’s City, and traditional banks investing in crypto all over the globe. In other words: if a new bullish run is ever going to happen again, it will only be because of corporate money. Bakkt could be the trigger for that.

Bakkt already has a CEO, Kelly Loeffler, who had this to say:

“Bakkt is designed to serve as a scalable on-ramp for institutional, merchant, and consumer participation in digital assets by promoting greater efficiency, security, and utility.”

The main obstacle for this vision is the lack of a reliable process that’s impervious to manipulation. The project is so ambitious, and the system processes so unclearly, that the CFTC could have a hard time making its mind up on this issue because it could find dilemmas and contradictions (at least in traditional financial terms) everywhere in the project.

Future contracts and manipulation

Rumor has it that CFTC is somewhat worried about the possible abuse of Bitcoin future contracts settled in cash. Let’s translate that into plain English. Future contracts become mature at a point in time. That’s when one party has to pay the other one the difference between the spot and the future price. That makes the buyer vulnerable to spot price manipulation.

That being said, Bakkt’s proposal is all about settling futures contracts physically (whatever the heck “physically” means when it comes to digital money). So in Bakkt’s service, buyers would physically get their Bitcoins when the contract matures in such a way that spot price doesn’t come into it at all. But physical settlement contracts do have problems of their own, even if they’re not related to spot prices.

Custodian services by third parties

Third party custodian services make sense for commodity futures exchanges to employ. They minimize the risk of theft and loss. Nonetheless, Bakkt’s idea is to be its own custodian, and that probably won’t make the regulators all that happy because there’s this thing called ” SEC 17 CFR Part 270 – RULES AND REGULATIONS, INVESTMENT COMPANY ACT OF 1940″. It reads like this.

“Currently, investment companies generally must maintain assets relating to these transactions in special accounts with a custodian bank.”

To tangle things even further, it just so happens that regulators already approved one of Bakkt’s parent companies (ICE). Not for cryptocurrency trade but for traditional business, which is to be expected of the New York Stock Exchange’s owners.

That whole context seems to point to a scenario in which CFTC’s decision will hang on its belief about the “reality” of cryptocurrencies as financial instruments. Up until now, the regulatory agency has remained silent as a grave. They explain their reticence by invoking the need to understand the cryptosphere in full before emitting any statements.

The competition

Bakkt is not even online so far, yet it has competition already. And the competitors couldn’t possibly care less about the CFTC’s delay. As a matter of fact, the chances are that they’re enjoying it. Take CoinFLEX. It’s keeping its momentum regarding development.

The UK-based CoinFloor subsidiary can boast support from several crypto celebrities such as Roger Ver (of Bitcoin Cash fame), Mike Komaransky, and the Dragonfly Capital Partners. And they’re receiving a round of fresh money in investments by the Dragonfly Capital Partners and Polychain Capital. These new partners are not only a sign of confidence in CoinFLEX itself but in that the Bitcoin futures business will most likely be approved.

And CoinFLEX is also launching a token of its own, in an attempt to differentiate itself from Bakkt. The coin’s use case would be to reward its customers by decreasing fees and helping to increase liquidity in the exchange. Users will get tokens according to the amount of business they carry out using the platform, especially when it comes to daily volume.

Final remarks

So now you know what’s going on with Bakkt, which is to say, not that much. But the project is still standing, it still has the support of its three parent companies which are the world leaders in their respective niches, and it’s still moving forward. It just so happens that the red tape it needs to cut through is so thick that it probably needs a new pair of scissors.

The most likely scenario is that Bakkt’s launch will remain stuck for quite a bit. Governmental agencies have shown no urgency at all when it comes to dealing with cryptocurrency issues. Just take the SEC and Ripple example: the cryptosphere has waited a very long time for SEC to rule about Ripple’s XRP’s nature. It must decide whether the token is a security or not. It still hasn’t happened and SEC just doesn’t seem to mind about the delay.

SEC’s decisions (as well as CFTC’s) are binding only within the United States. That segment of the market remains influential enough (many of the world’s most influential exchanges are based out of the USA). So even if Asia and Europe are way more active in the cryptosphere, an adverse decision by either agency could send shockwaves all around the crypto world that would start in North America but would affect cryptonauts all around the planet.

Bakkt will happen. It’s unthinkable that Microsoft, Starbucks, and ICE could be stopped if they put their minds (and resources) into a project. Just don’t hold your breath because chances are it will take some more time. Much like the next cryptocurrency bull run.

Image courtesy of Pixabay.

Disclaimer: The presented information is subjected to market condition and may include the very own opinion of the author. Please do your ‘very own’ market research before making any investment in cryptocurrencies. Neither the writer nor the publication (TronWeekly.com) holds any responsibility for your financial loss.