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Ethereum Continues to Rely on Bitcoin as Implied-Volatility Levels Reach Yearly-Lows

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At the start of 2020, Ethereum was one of the best performing digital assets in the industry.

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Between January 1st to February 14th, Ethereum registered a growth of 124.55 percent as its price hiked from a lowly range of $128, all the way up to $287. Since then, it has been all downhill for the largest altcoin.

After the market crash on 13th, ETH suffered one of the worst pullbacks in the industry and concluded Q1 at a low valuation under $135.

During its initial spike, Ethereum increasingly de-coupled away from Bitcoin as its correlation index dropped significantly and it continued to shed away from Bitcoin’s impact.

Now, the tables had completely turned, as according to Skew analytics, Ethereum-Bitcoin implied volatility spread over for a 6-month period was incurring its lowest level for 2020.

Implied volatility is the expectation of the BTC market on how volatile the asset is going to be over a specific period of time.

skew ethbtc 6m atm implied vol spread 1

According to the above chart, the ETH-BTC 6-month Implied Volatility Spread was down to 9 percent on 5th April after registering a high of 27 percent on the 23rd of February.

The continued compression of the implied volatility spread indicated that Ethereum’s valuation was more tied to Bitcoin than ever in 2020. However, the current turmoil in the mainstream financial market could be due to the economic fallout from the COVID-19 spread.

However, in spite of the global economic crisis, over the past week, the prices of digital assets have more than stabilized at a specific range hence a relative drop in the correlation between Ethereum and Bitcoin should have been achieved in the charts.

A decrease in implied volatility does not indicate any further direction in the charts in terms of a bullish or bearish trend, but it does improve the probability of sideways movement in the current price range.

skew ethbtc realized correlation 2

The realized correlation index between Bitcoin and Ethereu also pictured a similar trend however the correlation was observed to be at its highest levels in 2020, on all time periods.

The correlation index between ETH-BTC was above 90 percent on 1-month, 3-month, and 6-month time length, which suggested that the early year un-correlation between the assets had completely diminished at press time.

Lukk Strijers, Chief Operating Officer at Deribit recently stated that the increase in investor’s interest in Ethereum back in February was due to the rise in Ether-Bitcoin implied volatility spread. Potential investors identified this as an opportunity to move ahead with the market with Ethereum, which continued to be the 2nd largest asset in the industry.

However, with the current market scenario, it looks increasingly difficult for Ethereum to move away from Bitcoin’s dictation, as the largest asset continues to call the shots for the token fiddling in the second place.

Charles Hoskinson discusses how Cardano will up its Marketing Game Soon

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On 4th April, Charles Hoskinson the founder and face of Cardano tweeted about how he had a conversation with McCann today and was pretty impressed with the presentation the company put up for new marketing and branding tactics. 

McCann is a world-famous global advertising and marketing agency that runs in over 120 countries. Back in December 2019, Cardano disclosed how the protocol company was working with the global advertising agency, as its brand strategy and design agency. The announcement directed how McCann would be tasked with realigning the Cardano brand with the company’s mission.

A couple of hours after the tweet Charles Hoskinson went live on YouTube to talk about COVID-19 and the development of Cardano. 

Charles said, that the marketing of Cardano and the PR of Cardano, the vision behind Cardano is a really big endeavor. There are a lot of different entities that are involved in the commercialization, presentation, and explanation which is why the protocol company wants to be transparent and talk about the roadmap of where Cardano is going and who all are involved.

Elaborating the marketing side of Cardano, Charles talks about the different divisions in the company such as Media Relations Specialists, Communications Specialists, Product Marketeers, Campaign Marketing and Community Managers. In addition to this, there are three external firms that work with commercialization in marketing. 

Additionally, he spoke about how PwC has been helping out Cardano IOHK to hold several workshops recently one of which was held in London before the pandemic broke out. 

Hoskinson even spoke about how the company discussed branding colors to campaign ideas indicating that the output of the presentation by McCann was productive.

He even spoke about how the presentation helped them launch Shelley at the same time as they launch the “Cardano rebranding card”. Adding that the most significant asset during the launch would be Cardano.org website. 

Under the hood, a big team is working across all three organizations [ Cardano, Cardano Org, and IOHK] with external vendors to completely rebuild the Cardano.org website as the entry point into the Cardano ecosystem. The entry point works for people from all the sectors be it investment, development or governance.

In addition to this, the upcoming ORG. The website of Cardano will also move around rich content in terms of static, dynamic and interactive material. 

The branding refresh will be taking an additional 6-8 weeks of work along with other activities that they’re pushing forward in addition to the product marketing of Cardano Ouroboros – their new Proof-of-Stake algorithm and more. 

For more information, you can check out Charles Hoskinson’s video here:

YouTube video

 

 

 

 

Chainlink for DeFi – The Official Oracle for Numerous Dapps on Cosmos

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On 25th March, Kava Labs announced its long term partnership with Chainlink as it will be integrating Chainlink’s oracles to strengthen its own DeFi ecosystem. 

Kava built on Cosmos blockchain uses the world’s first cross-blockchain to deal with multiple digital assets as CDP [Collateralized Debt Position] in one product. Using the platform, hodlers collateralize various cryptocurrencies in exchange for loans. 

Reports suggest Chainlink to be one of the biggest collectors of secure and decentralized on-chain price reference data. The data is composed of security reviews, Sybil resistance and independent nodes that create a shared global resource. 

Kava Labs believe that “Chainlink greatly exceeds every other oracle mechanism across all parameters” and has integrated its oracles to bolster decentralized finance with secured real-time price data.

“Chainlink’s Price Reference Contracts are not only decentralized using many of the same high quality node operators that power Kava, but are also uniquely hardened against various manipulation attacks that are not as well known or even understood by oracle mechanisms other than Chainlink. Chainlink provides our USDX with a battle tested oracle that is resistant to various attack vectors.”

Chainlink has been one of the most popular cryptocurrencies in 2020. It is a distributed oracle network that connects smart contracts on the blockchain to external resources including real-world data, web APIs, real-world events and payment networks.

A decentralized oracle network that connects smart contracts with off-chain data, events, and payments known as the LINK network is the heart of the protocol.

But why Chainlink, what stands out in their oracle mechanism?

Smart contracts aren’t as smart as they sound. There are pure instructions of code that are only executed when oracles feed data to them. For instance, if some kind of malicious data is fed, the smart contract processes the data as it is. This is also called the “oracle problem” in the tech world.

This is where Chainlink gets into the entire problem-solving statement. It is a decentralized blockchain that bridges the gap between smart contracts and oracles. The nodes on Chainlink’s network act as smart contracts, each node has a job to perform; a particular, independent decentralized computation to validate the authenticity and accuracy of the data that the smart contracts intake.

Apart from this a couple of points why companies like Kava choose Chainlink are:-

  • Higher quality data from credential/premium APIs as compared to current market players
  • A rigorous security review process for data, reducing the attack surface area of the oracle mechanism 
  • Most decentralized Oracle mechanism with hundreds of nodes worldwide and feasible scalability.
  • Proven track record of servicing smart contracts live on the mainnet. Protocols and companies dealing with millions of dollars rely on its secure and reliable data.

 

Ripple Partner Siam Commercial Bank Continues to Drive Innovation in Thailand with a Focus on Customer Growth

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Thailand has been a growing force in the digital market with several innovations taking place within the confines of the country. The nation’s upward growth was a result of careful planning and urging companies to use new and cutting edge technology.

One of the stalwarts in the Thai financial market is the Siam Commerical Market [SCB], which, after its alliance with Ripple, saw substantial growth in transactions across borders. In a recent conversation with the bank’s SVP Arthit Sriumporn about Ripple Insights, he spoke about how the partnership between the companies had grown to create an ecosystem.

One reason for SCB’s growth could be the fact that Thailand was the leader in mobile banking users. With significant help from its user base, the SCB has played an important role in establishing that status. Ripple’s interest in SCB may stem from the intention to tap into the burgeoning mobile economy in Thailand.

The SCB SVP reiterated that being part of the RippleNet had various advantages. He said:

“Siam Commercial Bank is more than 100 years old and is Thailand’s largest bank with more than 1,000 branches across the nation. We support a wide range of customers from retail to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and corporations. Our focus is always on enriching the customer experience and RippleNet has helped us to do this with remittances.”

SCB has brought users to its ecosystem by making its mobile application completely free of transaction fees. This move has encouraged a large group of people to adapt to mobile technology, taking Thailand to where it is today. Mr. Sriumporn added that customers preferred the ease of use of a mobile application rather than sitting in a bank and filling out forms.

To ensure that the mobile application does not fail its users, SCB took the help of Ripple. SCB Easy runs on Ripple’s framework, where the cryptocurrency company will help in improving customers’ demands for cross border transactions. After Thailand, the company also plans to expand to countries such as Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and Vietnam.

Using SCB Easy, users can perform transactions that occur in real-time but are still cheaper than a multi-day banking process. RippleNet is used to connect multiple banking partners around the world, which in turn opens up more corridors. Sources revealed that the bank is now working on a QR code-based application that will allow tourists to use their native banking services.

People visiting Thailand will be able to scan the QR code and pay for any product instantly. This removes the hassle of currency exchange and transaction settlement times. Although a release date has not been disclosed, the SCB official believed that the application will change Thailand’s financial landscape forever.

The Siam Commerical Bank has set its sight on landscapes other than Southeast Asia. Ripple’s influence across the globe will allow the bank to explore multiple avenues and establish payment gateways in areas required. Twenty-twenty is also set to be the year when the SCB will offer cross border payments to business customers.

Least Authority Reveals Details About Ethereum 2.0 After Latest Audit

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During its launch, Ethereum set itself the goal of becoming the leading altcoin in the cryptocurrency industry. Since then, the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency has faced both its network as well as its price difficulties.

The Ethereum Foundation decided to launch Ethereum 2.0 to ensure the network can be scaled to fit use cases. Multiple setbacks have threatened the new version but it finally looks like things were looking up.

Just recently, the Least Authority stated that the phase0 audit of the Ethereum 2.0 specifications had been completed. Ethereum 2.0 claims to be a significant upgrade to the current network. The upgrade will take place in three segments, phase 0 taking care of the Beacon Chain, while phase 1 focuses on the shard chains. Phase 2 will take care of executive environments where Ethereum is actually going to be tested.

According to Least Authority:

” It is one of the first Proof of Stake (PoS) / sharded protocol projects planned for production. As a result, there has been minimal opportunity to study the impacts of design decisions on real-world uses of such blockchain implementations, and none on the same scale. The long term stability of PoS blockchains is an area of active research that will need to be monitored over time as they are used in production.”

The audit was conducted by Dylan Lott and Hind Kurhan to ensure that Ethereum 2.0 runs properly across all applications. Since no other large-scale implementations of a Proof of Stake (PoS) system currently exist in the industry, auditing Ethereum 2.0 was an entirely new task. The team revealed that the Ethereum 2.0 specifications were “well thought out and comprehensive”

Network analysis highlighted the strong emphasis on protection across the board, as the cryptocurrency industry was vulnerable to numerous attacks. Although most aspects of the network were efficient, some areas were also found to be lacking. The team identified seven issues and suggested three best practices that could be adopted by Ethereum 2.0.

The two major areas that deserved further review was the Peer-to-peer networking layer and the ENR system. Both were chosen because laying the foundation of a strong network layer was paramount during Phase 0. One part of the network that had issues was the block proposer system.

Least Authority identified two different issues with the block proposer system during the audit. There was an information leak within the system that was later patched up. Since it was fixed, the block proposer system remains protected without additional computational energy.

The second problem was noticed in the Peer-to-peer networking system with the audit team reiterating that a deeper analysis needs to be conducted later. Developers noticed attack vectors through the P2P messaging systems that would come under scrutiny later on.

Stablecoins Transfer Value Went up to 444.2 Million After the Market Crash on 12th March

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Stablecoins have been a large of the industry since making its introduction in the space back in 2015. Tether was the first stable asset in the digital currency medium and currently, it is the largest and most used stablecoin coin in the space.

However, stablecoins’ impact on the digital asset space may only increase over the next few months.

According to a recent report by Coinmetrics, it has been observed that the supply of stablecoins has drastically spiked since the COVID-19 became a global pandemic.

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The chart above clearly indicated that the growth of stablecoins has been increasing over the past week since Bitcoin’s massive drop.

Amidst the turmoil, the network value of stablecoin went off the charts as well. According to the report, the collective digital assets all-the-high transfer value was achieved on March 13th, incurring a total transfer of 444.2 million for all the stable assets combined.

A lot of capital has continued to flow into the ecosystem following the market crash, as it was assumed that investors were looking to protect their assets. In their efforts to find a stability among stable coins, USDC has been a lucrative prospect with the coin attaining the largest percentage-wise change over the past 30-days.

The stable coin backed by Coinbase registered a market increase of over 50 percent in the past month, verifying the significant capital movement in the industry.

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Although USDC is mostly used on Coinbase, MakerDAO recently announced its addition to the list of collaterals that can be used among various DeFi applications.

Surprisingly, the announcement to add USDC as a part of the collateral list, after the valuation of their parent stable asset DAI, was on 12th March.

Following the crash, DAI’s stabilization mechanism led to a mass MakerDAO collateral liquidation and DAI’s valuation dropped from $1.06 to $1.02, as observed on March 22nd.

In spite of USDC’s growth, Tether continued to reign over the stablecoin space as its market valuation increased by a whopping $660 million since March 10th.

At press time, USDT registered a total market cap of $4.64 billion while accounting for more than 50 percent of the total stablecoin present in the current digital asset industry.

Korean Firm Believes Ripple is the Key to Unlocking a Whole New World for Migrants

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South Korea has emerged as one of the most exciting countries in the world of cryptocurrencies, with multiple updates and developments happening within its borders. Cryptocurrency organizations in the country have also taken on the responsibility of improving the social standards and financial structure of their citizens.

Sentbe was one such cryptocurrency company that planned to transform the financial landscape by partnering with SBI Ripple Asia. The project will work in tandem with Ripple and SBI Holdings to improve processes related to traditional banks and services.

The Brad Garlinghouse led Ripple has been a stalwart in the cross border transaction department with multiple partnerships across the board. The company has partnered with several startups across the world to provide a better infrastructure to payment corridors untapped by the financial market.

According to Sentbe, traditional financial methods have remained ineffective since its inception. J Young Lee, the co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Sentbe stated that there was a large group of people who were left in the lurch due to outdated banking methods. He said:

“Cross-border payments are typically expensive and time-consuming.but with RippleNet’s help we’ve made them faster, cheaper, more convenient. Now we want every hard-working migrant in Korea to know about and have the ability to access this better way of sending money home to their families.We are interested in expanding to any area where RippleNet can take us as the ease of integration makes any new corridor instantly valuable”

RippleNet has enabled organizations with their cross border transaction needs since 2018. Ripple‘s latest partnership with MoneyTap was another example of this growing demand for faster transfers in payment borders. For Sentbe, improving remittances meant overcoming four major challenges faced by migrant workers. These included factors like transparency, speed, convenience and cost of individual transactions.

Lee stated that many times, low-income workers did not know about hidden costs and transaction charges. On top of this, remittances were slow and usually took about 2-3 days to settle. Families of these workers usually find it very difficult to receive payments due to outages and a lack of transparency, stated Lee. The lower financial strata have usually flocked to digital assets in times of need, a test case being Venezuela.

Sentbe Archives has shown that they first planned to use Ripple’s XRP back in 2017, but that it was stopped because of Korea’s regulatory authority. The initial plan was to use XRP as a liquidity settlement solution. After that, the company turned to use Ripple‘s technology, such as the RippleNet, for its speed and convenience. This straightforward approach resulted in users saving more than $25 million in transaction fees.

With the RippleNet partnership, Sentbe becomes part of a wide network of banks and financial institutions. At the moment, Korean customers have the option of sending money to 25 payment corridors across the regions. Sources close to the company said that there were also plans to set up partnerships in the Latin American corridor. The need of the hour was financial inclusion and migrants also needed to be a part of this, remarked Lee.

 

Moneygram’s 11.3 Million Pay-Day from Ripple, Could Only Improve with Probable IPO Plans on The Horizon 

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The partnership of Ripple and Moneygram was a major talking point in the past year.

Moneygram, which is one of the largest remittance companies in the world entered a partnership alongside Ripple in order to expand its services around the world.

According to Moneygram’s recent report to the SEC, it has been a profitable venture for the organization. The filing suggested that Moneygram has already received on a whopping 11.3 million in revenue as a result of their partnership.

Is Ripple steadily entering remittance services?

It is no secret that the growth of XRP is directly related to Ripple’s growth. The fact that Ripple publicly entertains the use of XRP for remittances has been reaching global corridors now.

Moneygram’s partnership is a prime example.

 

The American remittances company’s total revenue for the last few months has been declining, but the partnership with Ripple, to embrace RippleNet’s On-Demand Liquidity, has been fruitful to the present day.

The report stated,

“The Company is compensated by Ripple in XRP for developing and bringing liquidity to foreign exchange markets, facilitated by the ODL platform, and providing a reliable level of foreign exchange trading activity.”

 

The Ripple network has continued to grow over the last year and these numbers of over 11 million in revenue for Moneygram are likely to go higher in 2020.

The length of the contract between Ripple and Moneygram is also a long term understanding until 2023, which indicated that Ripple was adamant to get major financial institutions to use RippleNet’s services or the long term.

With Ripple aggressively working towards bringing more financial institutions to utilize blockchain assets, the partnership with Moneygram can be taken as the first step towards a larger paradigm shift in the global financial system.

 

Ripple’s IPO- to be or not to be?

During the World Economic Forum in Davos this year, Brad Garlinghouse stirred the speculation pot and suggested that IPO’s could the next big thing in crypto/blockchain.

With those words escaping his speech, it was only a natural reaction that the community started weighing in on the prospect of Ripple launching its own IPO. However, before cultivating a plan towards an IPO, Ripple still had to settle their matters with the SEC to prove that XRP is a digital asset and not a security.

With many people confusing ICO and IPO in the space, it is important to take note that an IPO for a crypto-supportive organization is far complicated then it seems.

An organization has to substantiate its profitability beforehand, rather than raising funds based on future prospects, which was basically an ICO.

A digital asset bearing the narrative of an IPO will be carrying and projecting the idea of crypto into the mainstream industry. The root reason for any investor to invest in an IPO would be solely based on profitability. Hence, the likelihood of a Ripple IPO in 2020 is practically weak, considering the global financial system is currently threading through a meltdown due to the COVID-19 impact.

An IPO down the line can have significant implications on XRP’s future as well. XRP would be directly launched into the larger remittances industry and its face value will improve meteorically.

 

Albeit these speculations, Ripple needs to prove XRP’s crypto credentials to the SEC before the idea of an IPO could take a flight.

 

IOTA’s Influence on the Internet of Things to Help Widespread Lidbot Sensor Usage

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The integration of the Internet of Things into new products has been the marker for an industry elevation. With the advent of cryptocurrency markets, it was easier for new-age inventions to leap forward in updates.

IOTA, the cryptocurrency based on the Internet of Things had a decent 2019 with the development team citing new features in the pipeline. One of the first releases in that roster was the partnership with Lidbot, a sensor that uses IOTA-Tangle for intelligent waste management. 

The company claimed that the Lidbot sensor was one of the most intelligent sensors in the market for both solids and liquids. According to sources, the system will be based on IOTA-Tangle and was sold out in four days. IOTA’s latest technology was a way to improve waste collection systems in urban areas.

IOTA stated that the sensor will combine with the hardware to measure the level of waste bins in real-time and send the data to its Tangle system. The decentralized waste management system receives the information and then empties the trash according to commands.

Lidbot’s features can command the entire waste management system to create time slots for taking the trash out. The Crunchbase listing for Lidbot said:

” Lidbot is an IOT sensor that sticks to any waste/recycling bin and turns it into a smart one. In the background, these sensors also create a digital twin. The twin consists of location, fill-level, type of waste and owner. We believe this is the first step towards an accountable and transparent waste future.”

People close to the project have realized that the product will have a lot of use cases. With the Lidbot sensor, truck drivers will be able to save hours of their time not driving to unfilled trash cans.

This process also brings down the costs for both personnel and vehicle fleets. The Lidbot sensor is expected to become a more popular choice for integration because of its facilities.

IOTA-Tangle utilizes the Distributed Ledger Technology which maintains high scalability and opens the market to better economic aspects. The Lidbot sensor was developed in such a way that it will use MIOTA to communicate with the Internet of Things.

Each waste item is given a unique identity that will be managed by the TangleID app. Tangle ID will function as a platform for the drivers to know the pickup points, waste quantities, and disposal stations.

Each Lidbot sensor is equipped with a global SIM card to piggyback on the roaming technology of Japanese firm Soracom. IOTA claimed that the Soracom’s low-cost roaming technology enables Lidbot sensors to work seamlessly across industries. All the smart contracts that run on the decentralized ledger will make use of dedicated energy meters that communicate with one another. \

Cryptocurrency proponents were excited to see this integration as it opened up real-world use cases for cryptocurrencies. Waste management in developing countries has always been a tricky operation and Lidbot may be the answer to solve their problems.

Facebook Libra on Hold, New Competitor Cello Alliance with Similar Goals

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House Democrats have given an official notice to Facebook to hold up its Libra development. A move that blown Facebook’s hopes of launching the project this May. A clasp on the Calibra the digital wallet of the libra was also indicated in the Directive.  In the meantime, Congress asked the Libra Hiatus to analyze the potential risks of the cryptocurrency and its implications after the roll-out.

Meanwhile, during the project launch, the Chairwoman of the Financial Services Committee gave a prior hint on such an action. Maxine Waters (D-CA) sent an open letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, Chief Operating Officer, and David Marcus, President of the Libra.

Also note that it’s not just the House Democrats who sent a letter to Libra. But even Senate Banking Chair Mike Crapo set up a July 16 hearing with Marcus on the project’s vulnerability and data privacy risk. Waters ‘ committee is also expected to hold a hearing on the same on the next day.

Nevertheless, a spokesperson for Libra told reporters that they looked forward to sitting down with lawmakers. The spokesman insisted that they are willing to answer any queries from the House Financial Services Committee, as ever.

In fact, Facebook doesn’t seem to be shocked by the regulatory scrutiny barrel; as they realize that Facebook is in the hands of at least half of the world’s population. The spokesperson for Facebook said it was also imperative that Facebook cease with its implementation plans immediately. A delay that will take as long as Congress and regulators find an opportunity to evaluate the risks of the projects and take the necessary actions.

The news came just a few days after Libra had promised to rethink its plans for the Libra. On March 4, Facebook announced its consideration of reviewing the Libra system and providing digital versions of existing proven currencies. Leading and globalized currencies like the Euro and the Dollar. The report noted that the association would continue its project and also promised to launch the digital wallet of social media by the autumn of 2020.

Libra Head of Policy and Communications Dante Disparte, however, said that they had not changed the association’s goal of building a compliant global payment platform. None of them has changed the basic design principles of the project, which support the goal. Following the bloodshed of some of its partners, such as Mastercard and Visa, Libra is currently in partnership with Shopify, Spotify, and Lyft, among others.

Silicon Valley Startup CLabs is currently working to build a payment platform similar to Libra. With similar goals and a partnership with some of Libra’s members.  However, alongside dozens of partners, the company is launching a blockchain for commerce affiliation. The partners include Coinbase Ventures, Bison Trails, Andreessen Horowitz and Anchorage.

  Rene Reinsberg, the C Labs Founder said:

“The Alliance will use blockchain experience to reimagine the future of money and create inclusive financial devices,” 

The blockchain will remain on cross-border transfers of money and donations to humanitarian groups, as well as attempting to ascertain the money doesn’t go through middlemen.