Posted by AGORACOM-JC
at 5:26 PM on Monday, December 23rd, 2019
Announce that it has acquired 3,000,000 units of St-Georges Eco-Mining Corp. at a price of $0.10 per Unit
In consideration, the Company has issued an aggregate of 5,000,000 common shares of the Company at a deemed price of $0.05 per common share and made a cash payment in the amount of $50,000.
TORONTO, Dec. 23, 2019 – ThreeD Capital Inc. (the “Companyâ€) (CSE:IDK), a Canadian-based venture capital firm focused on investments in promising, early stage companies and ICOs with disruptive capabilities, is pleased to announce that it has acquired 3,000,000 units (the “Unitsâ€) of St-Georges Eco-Mining Corp. (“St-Georgesâ€) at a price of $0.10 per Unit. In consideration, the Company has issued an aggregate of 5,000,000 common shares of the Company at a deemed price of $0.05 per common share (the “Offeringâ€) and made a cash payment in the amount of $50,000. Each Unit of St-Georges consists of one common share (the “Shareâ€) of St-Georges and one share purchase warrant (the “Warrantâ€) of St-Georges, with each Warrant being exercisable to acquire one additional Share at an exercise price of C$0.185 for a period of 9 months following the date of issuance.
“ThreeD is very pleased to deepen its relationship with St-Georges,â€
said ThreeD Capital’s Founder, Chairman and CEO Sheldon Inwentash.
“We are pleased to have the continuous support of ThreeD in our
financing efforts. The company has been a supportive partner helping us
expand our different business silos and making valuable introductions,â€
commented Mark Billings, Chairman of St-Georges.
All securities issued and issuable in connection with the Offering
are subject to a statutory hold period expiring on April 24, 2020.
About ThreeD Capital Inc.
ThreeD is a publicly-traded Canadian-based venture capital firm
focused on opportunistic investments in companies in the Junior
Resources, Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain sectors. ThreeD seeks
to invest in early stage, promising companies and ICOs where it may be
the lead investor and can additionally provide investees with advisory
services, mentoring and access to the Company’s ecosystem.
Posted by AGORACOM-JC
at 3:32 PM on Monday, December 23rd, 2019
SPONSOR:ThreeD Capital Inc. (IDK:CSE)
Led by legendary financier, Sheldon Inwentash, ThreeD is a
Canadian-based venture capital firm that only invests in best of breed
small-cap companies which are both defensible and mass scalable. More
than just lip service, Inwentash has financed many of Canada’s biggest
small-cap exits. Click Here For More Information.
Institutional Investment in Crypto: Top 10 Takeaways of 2019
By: Scott Army
This post is part of CoinDesk’s 2019 Year in Review, a collection
of 100+ op-eds, interviews and takes on the state of blockchain and the
world. Scott Army is the founder and CEO of digital asset manager
Vision Hill Group. The following is a summary of the report: “An Institutional Take on the 2019/2020 Digital Asset Marketâ€.
No. 1: There’s bitcoin, and then there’s everything else.
The industry is currently segmented into two main categories: Bitcoin
and everything else. “Everything else†includes: Web3 innovation,
Decentralized Finance (“DeFiâ€), Decentralized Autonomous Organizations,
smart contract platforms, security tokens, digital identity, data
privacy, gaming, enterprise blockchain or distributed ledger technology,
and much more.
Non-crypto natives are seldom aware that there are multiple
blockchains. Bitcoin, by virtue of it being the first blockchain network
brought into the mainstream and by being the largest digital asset by
market capitalization, is often the first stop for many newcomers and
likely will continue to be for the foreseeable future.
No. 2: Bitcoin is perhaps market beta, for now.
In traditional equity markets, beta is defined as a measure of
volatility, or unsystematic risk an individual stock possesses relative
to the systematic risk of the market as a whole. The difficulty in
defining “market beta†in a space like digital assets is that there is
no consensus for a market proxy like the S&P 500 or Dow Jones.
Since the space is still very early in its development, and bitcoin has
dominant market share (~68 percent at the time of writing), bitcoin is
often viewed as the obvious choice for beta, despite the drawbacks of defining “market beta†as a single asset with idiosyncratic tendencies.
Bitcoin’s size and its institutionalization (futures, options,
custody, and clear regulatory status as a commodity), have enabled it to
be an attractive first step for allocators looking to get exposure
(both long and short) to the digital asset market, suggesting that
bitcoin is perhaps positioned to be digital asset market beta, for now.
No. 3: Despite slow conversion, substantial progress was made on growing institutional investor interest in 2019.
Education, education, education. Blockchain technology and digital
assets represent an extraordinarily complex asset class – one that
requires a non-trivial time commitment to undergo a proper learning
curve. While handfuls of institutions have already started to invest in
the space, a very small amount of institutional capital has actually
made it in (relative to the broader institutional landscape), gauged by
the size of the asset class and the public market trading volumes. This
has led many to repeatedly ask: “when will the herd actually come?â€
The reality is that institutional investors are still learning –
slowly getting comfortable – and this process will continue to take
time. Despite educational progress through 2019, some institutions are
wondering if it’s too early to be investing in this space, and whether
they can potentially get involved in investing in digital assets in the
future and still generate positive returns, but in ways that are
de-risked relative to today.
Despite a few other challenges imposed on larger institutional
allocators with respect to investing in digital assets, true believers
inside these large organizations are emerging, and the processes for
forming a digital asset strategy are either getting started or already
underway.
No. 4: Long simplicity, short complexity
Another trend we observed emerge this year was a shift away from
complexity and toward simplicity. We saw significant growth in simple,
passive, low-cost structures to capture beta. With the lowest-friction
investor adoption focused on the largest liquid asset in the space –
bitcoin – the proliferation of single asset vehicles has increased.
These private vehicles are a result of delayed approval of an official
bitcoin ETF by the SEC.
In addition to the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, other bitcoin-focused products this year include the launch of Bakkt, the launch of Galaxy Digital’s two new bitcoin funds, Fidelity’s bitcoin product rollout, TD Ameritrade’s bitcoin trading service on Nasdaq via its brokerage platform, 3iQ’s recent favorable ruling for a bitcoin fund and Stone Ridge Asset Management’s recent SEC approval for its NYDIG Bitcoin Strategy Fund, based on cash-settled bitcoin futures.
We also observed a growing institutional appetite for simpler hedge
fund and venture fund structures. For the last several years, many
fundamental-focused crypto-native hedge funds operated hybrid structures
with the use of side-pockets that enabled a barbell strategy approach
to investing in both the public and private digital asset markets.
These hedge funds tend to have longer lock-up periods – typically two or
three years – and low liquidity. While this may be attractive from an
opportunistic perspective, the reality is it’s quite complicated from an
institutional perspective for reporting purposes.
No. 5: Active management’s been challenged, but differentiated sources of alpha are emerging.
For the year-to-date period ended Q3 2019,
active managers were collectively up 30 percent on an absolute return
basis according to our tracking of approximately 50
institutional-quality funds, compared to bitcoin being up 122 percent
over the same time period.
Bitcoin’s performance this year, particularly in Q2 2019, has made it
clear that its parabolic ascents challenge the ability of active
managers to outperform bitcoin during the windows they occur. Active
managers generally need to justify the fees they charge investors by
outperforming their benchmark(s), which are often beta proxies, yet at
the same time they need to avoid imprudent risk behavior that can
potentially have swift and sizable negative effects on their
portfolios.
Interestingly, active management performance from the beginning of
2018 consistently outperformed passively holding bitcoin (with the
exception of “opportunistic†managers who also take advantage of yield
and staking opportunities, as of May 2019). This is largely due to
various risk management techniques used to mitigate the negative
performance drawdowns experienced throughout the extended market
sell-off in 2018.
Source: Vision Hill Group
Although 2019 has challenged the large-scale success of these alpha
strategies, they are nonetheless in the process of proving themselves
out through various market cycles, and we expect this to be a growing
theme in 2020.
No. 6: Token value accrual: Transitioning from subjective to objective
At the end of Q3 2019, according to dapp.com,
there were 1,721 decentralized applications built on top of ethereum,
with 604 of them actively used – more than any other blockchain.
Ethereum also had 1.8 million total unique users, with just under
400,000 of them active – also more than any other blockchain. Yet,
despite all this growing network activity, the value of ETH has remained
largely flat throughout most of 2019 and is on track to end the year
down approximately 10 percent at the time of writing (by comparison, BTC
has nearly doubled in value over the same period). This begs the
question: is ETH adequately capturing the economic value of the ethereum
network’s activity, and DeFi in particular?
A new fundamental metric was introduced earlier this year by Chris Burniske
– the Network Value to Token Value (“NVTVâ€) ratio – to ascertain
whether the value of all assets anchored into a platform can be greater
than the value of the base platform’s asset.
The ETH NVTV ratio has steadily declined
throughout the last few years. There are likely to be several reasons
for this, but I think one theory summarizes it best: most applications
and tokens built and issued atop ethereum may be parasitic. ETH token
holders are paying for the security of all these applications and
tokens, via the inflation rate that is currently given to the miners –
dilution for ETH holders, but not for holders of ethereum-based tokens.
This is not a bullish or bearish statement on ETH; rather it is an
observation of early signs of network stack value capture in the space.
No. 7: Money or not, software-powered collateral economies are here
Another trend we observed this year is a larger migration away from
“cryptocurrencies†in an ideological currency (e.g., money/payment and a
means of exchange) sense, and toward digital assets for financial
applications and economic utility. A form of economic utility that took
the stage this year is the notion of software-powered collateral
economies. People generally want to hold assets with disinflationary or
deflationary supply curves, because part of their promise is that they
should store value well. Smart contracts enable us to program the
characteristics of any asset, thus it is not irrational to assume that
it’s only a matter of time until traditional collateral assets get
digitized and put to economic use on blockchain networks.
The benefit of digital collateral is that it can be liquid and
economically productive in its nature while at the same time serving its
primary purpose (to collateralize another asset), yet without
possessing the risks of traditional rehypothecation. If assets can be
allocated for multiple purposes simultaneously, with the risks
appropriately managed, we should see more liquidity, lower cost of
borrowing, and more effective allocation of capital in ways the
traditional world may not be able to compete with.
No. 8: Network lifecycles: An established supply side meets a quiet but emerging demand side.
Supply side services in digital asset networks are services provided
by a third party to a decentralized network in exchange for compensation
allocated by that network. Examples include mining, staking,
validation, bonding, curation, node operation and more, done to help
bootstrap and grow these networks. Incentivizing the supply side is
important in digital assets to facilitate their growth early in their
lifecycles, from initial fundraising and distribution through the
bootstrapping phase to eventual mainnet launches.
While there has been significant growth of this supply side of
the equation in 2019 from funds, companies, and developers, the open
question is how and when demand for these services will pick up. Our
view is that as developer infrastructure continues to mature and
activity begins to move “up the stack†toward the application layer,
more obvious manifestations of product-market fit are likely to emerge
with cleaner and simpler interfaces that will attract high volumes of
users in the process. In essence, it is important to build the necessary
infrastructure first (the supply side) to enable buy-in from the end
users of those services (the demand side).
No. 9: We are in the late innings of the smart contract wars.
While ethereum leads the space on adoption and moves closer to
executing on its scalability initiatives, dozens of smart contract
competitors fundraised in the market throughout 2018 and 2019 in an
attempt to dethrone ethereum. A handful have formally launched their
chains and operate in mainnet as of the end of 2019, while many others
remain in testnet or have stalled in development.
What’s been particularly interesting to observe is the accelerative
pace of innovation – not just technologically, but economically
(incentive mechanisms) and socially (community building) as well. We
expect many more smart contract competitors operating privately as of Q4
2019 to launch their mainnets in 2020. Thus, given the incoming
magnitude of publicly observable experimentations throughout 2020, if a
smart contract platform does not launch in 2020, it is likely to become
disadvantageously positioned relative to the rest of the landscape as it
relates to capturing substantial developer mindshare and future users
and creating defensible network effects.
No. 10: Product-market fit is coming, if not already here
We don’t think human and financial capital would have continued
pouring into the digital asset space in such great magnitude over the
last several years if there wasn’t a focus on solving at least one very
clear problem. The questionable sustainability of modern monetary theory
is one of them, and Ray Dalio of Bridgerwater Associates has been quite vocal
about it. Big Tech centralization is another. There are also growing
global concerns related to data privacy and identity. And let’s not
forget cybersecurity. The list goes on. We are at the tip of the iceberg
as it relates to the products and applications blockchain technology
enables, and mainstream users will come with growing manifestations of
product-market fit. As more time and attention gets spent on diagnosing
problems and working on solutions, the industry will begin to achieve
its full potential. Facebook’s Libra and Twitter’s Bluesky initiative
confirm that as an industry we are heading in the right direction.
A 2020 look ahead
We see 2020 shaping up to be one of the brightest years on record for
the digital asset industry. To be clear, this is not a price forecast;
if we exclusively measured the health of the industry from a fundamental
progress perspective, by various accounts and measures we should have
been in a raging bull market for the last two years, and that has not
been the case. Rather, we expect 2020 to be a year of accelerated
industry maturation.
Source: Vision Hill Group
Digital assets are still an emerging asset class with many quickly
evolving narratives, trends, and investment strategies. It is important
to note, that not all strategies are suitable for all investors. The
size of allocations to each category will and should vary depending on
the specific allocator’s type, risk tolerance, return expectations,
liquidity needs, time horizon and other factors. What is encouraging is
that as the asset class continues to grow and mature, the opacity slowly
dissipates and clearly defined frameworks for evaluation will continue
to emerge. This will hopefully lead to more informed investment
decisions across the space. The future is bright for 2020 and beyond.
Posted by AGORACOM-JC
at 12:00 PM on Friday, December 20th, 2019
SPONSOR:ThreeD Capital Inc. (IDK:CSE)
Led by legendary financier, Sheldon Inwentash, ThreeD is a
Canadian-based venture capital firm that only invests in best of breed
small-cap companies which are both defensible and mass scalable. More
than just lip service, Inwentash has financed many of Canada’s biggest
small-cap exits. Click Here For More Information.
How To Keep Your Crypto Safe Against Exchange Hackers
Exchange hacks appear to be one of the critical problems without any kind of a solution in sight.
This year alone, there have been several high-profile attacks.
Despite all the developments and innovations in the cryptocurrency
space over recent years, exchange hacks appear to be one of the
critical problems without any kind of a solution in sight. These days,
cryptocurrencies are far more distributed across hundreds of exchanges
than they were back in 2014 when Mt.Gox was hit, derailing the price of Bitcoin overnight. Nevertheless, exchanges remain prime targets for hackers.
This year alone, there have been several high-profile attacks.
Cryptopia was one of the first, subject two separate incidents that
ultimately crippled the New Zealand-based exchange, causing it to close
its doors for good.
After that, Singaporean DragonEx and
Korean Bithumb were both targeted, before trading behemoth Binance was
hit in May this year. Although the company was quick to reassure users
that their account balances were protected by its insurance fund, the
attack left a smear on Binance’s previously unblemished record of
security.
The latest exchange to fall prey to hackers is Upbit, which lost $50 million worth of ETH in late November.
So, what are crypto users to do, to
keep their funds safe? In light of the ongoing hacking issues, many
exchanges are now starting to sell themselves on their enhanced security
measures.
Going the Extra Mile to Prevent Attacks
For a while, two-factor
authentication was the established means of ensuring user account.
However, many exchanges are now taking additional measures, such as IP
binding. This means that you can restrict access to your exchange
accounts to only a single IP address. If someone attempts to log in from
another machine than your own, you’ll be notified.
Singaporean exchange ecxx
is one example of an exchange following this practice, along with other
measures to help keep your funds safe from theft. The exchange keeps
user funds in cold wallets, requiring multiple signatures from the
company to access.
Earlier this year, QuadrigaCX users found their funds had gone missing after the exchange founder died abroad
as the only person holding the private keys to access his company’s
wallet. Multi-signature wallets are a way of protecting against this
risk.
Furthermore, ecxx has integrated with MyInfo,
the government of Singapore’s user portal. It enables Singaporean
citizens and residents to interact with government agencies and private
companies online. The integration offers local users in Singapore a
trusted means of logging on to the ecxx platform with their existing
MyInfo credentials.
For institutions, ecxx has also partnered with Ledger,
one of the global leaders in digital asset cold storage. Professional
traders and investors can choose to have their funds stored in a Ledger
Vault, meaning that ecxx doesn’t take custody of funds at all.
Decentralized Exchanges – a Non-Custodial Solution
Another option for exchanging tokens
without incurring the security risks of hacking is to use a
decentralized exchange (DEX.) A DEX generally doesn’t take custody of
your accounts, meaning that you’re solely responsible for fund
security.
At this point in the evolution of
cryptocurrency, users have their pick of DEXs, with various different
models for enabling trading. However, a critical challenge of
peer-to-peer DEXs is that many are underused, meaning they suffer from
low liquidity. Unless you’re trading Bitcoin
or one of the major alts, you may find your trade left hanging while
the matching engine searches for a counterpart with whom to trade.
Therefore, it makes sense to find a DEX with high liquidity.
IDEX
is one of the more popular DEXs, meaning that liquidity is less of a
challenge. Users manage their funds via the platform’s Ethereum-based
smart contract. Users can access the smart contract via four methods – a
Metamask wallet, a Ledger Nano S cold storage wallet, a Keystore file,
or a manual private key entry.
Another safe option is to use a
liquidity protocol, which is a kind of DEX using a third token to enable
swaps between a wide variety of tokens. Bancor and Uniswap are both examples of liquidity protocols.
Wallets
If you do prefer to stick with
centralized exchanges, then conventional wisdom says that you should
only keep your funds in your exchange account when you’re actively
trading. Therefore, if you’re planning on keeping your investments in crypto, get yourself a wallet. Hot storage wallets such as Atomic or Edge are very easy to get started using only a smartphone app.
An even safer option for long-term
HODLers is to use a cold storage wallet such as a Ledger Nano S or
Trezor. Just make sure you have a safe method of storing your recovery
seed.
Posted by AGORACOM-JC
at 4:29 PM on Thursday, December 19th, 2019
SPONSOR:ThreeD Capital Inc. (IDK:CSE)
Led by legendary financier, Sheldon Inwentash, ThreeD is a
Canadian-based venture capital firm that only invests in best of breed
small-cap companies which are both defensible and mass scalable. More
than just lip service, Inwentash has financed many of Canada’s biggest
small-cap exits. Click Here For More Information.
Gaming Is Key to the Mass Adoption of Crypto
A whole new exciting world of value is being coded into life right now by gamers
While it may be a far cry from the lofty ideals of banking the unbanked and taking down the global banking system, gaming is gearing up to be a massive force in the crypto space
A whole new exciting world of value is being coded into life right
now by gamers. While it may be a far cry from the lofty ideals of
banking the unbanked and taking down the global banking system, gaming
is gearing up to be a massive force in the crypto space.
Addictively fun games will draw a whole new base of users into the
crypto economy. Gamers are an excellent target market for adoption
because many gamers are a touch more tech savvy than the average
internet user and tend to be a bit more open to new ideas.
Just imagine this — a gamer beating a monster, picking up a rare item, selling that item for Ether (ETH)
on a secondary market, and then using that Ether to buy a new hat
online. This creates a whole new network of value that is liquid, fast
and global — and most importantly, taps into gamers’ existing behavior:
playing games.
But for this exciting future to transpire, games need to be fun…
addictively fun. Up until now, most crypto games have been little more
than retro 1980s throwbacks — with very simple graphics and limited
playability — which is nice for nostalgia but will not add anything
significant to the crypto economy. However, a new class of games is
changing this scenario and is set to take crypto games into the leagues
of the truly great online games.
NFTs pave the way
Before looking at some examples, it is important to note that all of
this has been enabled by nonfungible token technology, which allows for
the proliferation of in-game digital assets on public blockchains.
Gaming could possibly be one of the major contributors to the crypto
economy, with game developers making new token standards and technical
developments that benefit the entire ecosystem — as well as the players
of these games generating significant on-chain activity that helps to
feed the miners. So, let us not make the mistake of thinking that crypto
games are not lifting their weight in terms of ecosystem development.
Here are a couple of examples of what is being built and played.
Gods Unchained is bringing the wonder and excitement of a collectible
card game like Magic: The Gathering to Ethereum. Gods Unchained is
graphically enticing and has a great in-game flow of animations that
keep the action rolling. The game has already attracted thousands of players
to tournaments and continues to find a growing community of
enthusiasts. Under the hood, players own the cards that they play with,
storing the unique nonfungible tokens in their Ethereum wallet. Rarity
is provable on-chain, and swaps on the secondary market are seamless. In
February, a card sold for $62,000, which is astonishing for such a new game and really underlines the excitement building around crypto games.
Then, there is the Enjinverse, which is a growing multi-game
experience that allows for in-game items to be used and moved seamlessly
between dozens of games. Enjin itself is one of the most important
cryptocurrencies in the gaming realm. One of the most interesting games
in the Enjinverse is Age of Rust, which is a post-apocalyptic sci-fi
adventure with stunning graphics and an enticing story. Looking at the
popularity of games like Dead Space or Fallout, it becomes clear that
Age of Rust stands a good chance of gaining significant popularity.
While the game itself is exciting, it is the underlying tech that
really makes Age of Rust stand out: Not only are Enjin assets
interoperable between games, but they also have value baked into them.
So, regardless of the long-term outcome of the game itself, the items
you acquire in the game all are forged with Enjin tokens melted into the
in-game asset. These assets can be melted back down at any time,
enabling you to claim the tokens underpinning the value of the item — as
well as creating increased scarcity for the item class, as once it is
melted, that item it gone forever.
Here are some major players to watch. Enjin is working closely with
Unity, which accounts for nearly half of all game developers globally.
Cocos has 1.4 million game developers using its engine, and the launch
of its blockchain is likely to bring many of those developers over. Loom
is focused on interchain operability and on enabling fun, user-facing
games that will draw more users into crypto — with such titles as Neon
District, which is a Blade Runner-esque RPG.
According to the recent research
conducted by a gaming and e-sport analytics provider, the gaming
industry as a whole is expected to be worth $180 billion by 2021, so the
opportunity for crypto gaming is massive. For players, there will be
better experiences; for developers, there will be more tools to attract
players to their games; and for investors, there will be the ability to
own the cryptos that will be at the forefront of a major trend — but
that has not yet taken off.
Posted by AGORACOM-JC
at 3:15 PM on Friday, December 13th, 2019
SPONSOR:ThreeD Capital Inc. (IDK:CSE)
Led by legendary financier, Sheldon Inwentash, ThreeD is a
Canadian-based venture capital firm that only invests in best of breed
small-cap companies which are both defensible and mass scalable. More
than just lip service, Inwentash has financed many of Canada’s biggest
small-cap exits. Click Here For More Information.
Dutch Bank ING Reportedly Working on Crypto Custody Tech
Netherlands-based banking multinational ING is developing technology for the custody of crypto assets, according to Reuters.
By: Daniel Palmer
The news agency said in a report on Wednesday that sources “familiar with the matter” indicated the ultimate aim of the initiative is to provide secure crypto storage facilities for the bank’s customers.
The tech, though still in the early stages, is apparently being built by a team based in Amsterdam.
Responding to Reuters in a statement, ING said it “sees increasing
opportunities with regard to digital assets on both asset backed and
native security tokens,†and is taking a particular focus on developing
blockchain technology to open up the sector for clients.
ING is already involved in a number of blockchain initiatives, with its dedicated development team saying in April that it’s working on privacy technology called “bulletproofs” to potentially conceal client data.
If ING now moves into custodianship of crypto assets, it will be one
of very few traditional finance institutions to have done so.
Fidelity’s digital assets arm launched custody services earlier this year, as did Bakkt,
the bitcoin derivatives subsidiary of Intercontinental Exchange. A plan
by Japanese bank Nomura to offer institutional-grade custody for
digital assets was delayed till 2020 in spring.
Otherwise, only a few smaller banks such as Julius Baer and Arab Bank’s Swiss arm have moved to offer the service in a bid to attract clients.
Posted by AGORACOM-JC
at 10:33 AM on Thursday, December 12th, 2019
SPONSOR:ThreeD Capital Inc. (IDK:CSE)
Led by legendary financier, Sheldon Inwentash, ThreeD is a
Canadian-based venture capital firm that only invests in best of breed
small-cap companies which are both defensible and mass scalable. More
than just lip service, Inwentash has financed many of Canada’s biggest
small-cap exits. Click Here For More Information.
The cryptocurrency world has more than its fair share of
self-proclaimed clairvoyants. Whether it’s traders predicting great
things for a digital token that’s set to launch, or a journalist touting
the next groundbreaking Web3 project, future-gazing is a popular
pastime.
With so many crypto projects in the offing, and so many supposed
psychics pulling you in different directions, it can be tough to know
who or what to believe. Even studious observers of the cryptoeconomy
have difficulty reaching consensus on the next sure thing. If 2019 has
been any indication, however, the following projects are likely to
generate even bigger waves in 2020
Saga
Saga is a highly ambitious monetary
venture which seeks to position its digital token, SGA, as a truly
global currency. The UK-based company has been tirelessly working on
perfecting and polishing its monetary and governance models for the past
two years ahead of the ERC20 token launch on December 10. Initially
backed by a basket of national currencies replicating the IMF’s SDR, the
idea is that, as user trust in SGA grows, reliance upon reserves will
decrease and SGA will, as it were, stand on its own two feet.
The industry experience of the Saga team certainly nourishes the
perception that the project may launch into the stratosphere. Its
advisory board includes Professor Jacob A. Frenkel, PhD, chairman of
JPMorgan Chase International and former governor of the Bank of Israel,
and Professor Myron Scholes, Nobel Laureate in Economic Sciences and
Professor Emeritus at Stanford University. With such economic
heavyweights behind it, Saga has already attracted $30m of seed funding
from a collective of partners including Vertex Ventures. Watch this
space.
Fetch.ai
An AI-powered blockchain that launched in 2019, Fetch
allows organizations to pose questions about datasets residing on other
companies’ servers; payments, meanwhile, will be made with digital
tokens. In the Fetch model, Autonomous Economic Agents (AEA) are
utilized to connect IoT devices and algorithms, with the net result a
form of collective super-intelligence built atop a decentralized
economic internet. Got that?
Fetch recently set to work developing a decentralized metals exchange
with several Turkish steelmakers. The new DEX will integrate
AI-accelerated blockchain solutions to facilitate greater participation
and improved liquidity in the trading of steel, base metals and other
commodities. It’s yet another example of blockchain/AI tech feeding into
traditional industries, and when you consider that Fetch’s goal is to
bring smart cities from concept to reality – improving infrastructure
like energy utility grids in the process – you can’t help but think 2020
is going to be a massive year for the crypto project.
RSK
RSK is an open-source, Bitcoin-backed
smart contract platform. Encompassing multiple components including the
Root Infrastructure Framework Token (RIF Token), RIF Open Standard
(RIFOS), and Smart Bitcoin (RBTC), the second-layer protocol seeks to
become a key player in the development of Bitcoin-anchored decentralized
finance, permitting smart contracts and dApps to utilize the
ecosystem’s renowned security.
Its parent company, IOV Labs, also acquired Latin America’s biggest
social media platform Taringa, and it’ll be fascinating to see what
implementations are introduced in the next 12 months. With 30 million
users, Taringa has a ready made community for experiencing the benefits
of decentralized finance, including open access and trustless trade,
wrapped in a user-friendly interface courtesy of RSK’s smart contract
solution.
QAN
The threat of quantum computing is certain to intensify in the years
ahead. Hell, Google says they’ve already reached quantum supremacy in
2019. In any case, quantum-proof blockchain platform QAN
stands in a good position to capitalize. It uses sophisticated Lattice
cryptography to future-proof against quantum cyber attacks which could
break existing blockchain platforms like Ethereum. The result is a
highly scalable, developer-friendly platform that can run smart
contracts in all major programming languages.
QAN uses a Proof-of-Randomness (PoR) consensus to ensure low energy
consumption and is 100x quicker than Ethereum, with a TPS of 97k for
enterprise (POA) chains. The team has been busy shouting about QAN’s
many benefits at various crypto events throughout 2019, so expect more
of the same in 2020. Particularly since QAN’s IEO is due to commence
soon on BitBay exchange, bringing its token to a wider audience of
traders and developers.
There you have it: four innovative projects making plenty of noise in
the cryptosphere, and unlikely to lower their pitch in 2020. You’d do
well to keep tabs on all of them.
Posted by AGORACOM-JC
at 3:50 PM on Tuesday, December 10th, 2019
SPONSOR:ThreeD Capital Inc. (IDK:CSE)
Led by legendary financier, Sheldon Inwentash, ThreeD is a
Canadian-based venture capital firm that only invests in best of breed
small-cap companies which are both defensible and mass scalable. More
than just lip service, Inwentash has financed many of Canada’s biggest
small-cap exits. Click Here For More Information.
London Startup Aurus Launches Gold-Backed Crypto Token, Possibly Opening The Gold Market To New Investors
Stablecoins offer the potential for crypto to be used as day-to-day payments because their value is pegged to an underlying asset, where price stability is more consistent.Â
Still, the middleman sitting in-between buyer and seller exists to exchange digital assets into traditional fiat currency
The idea that crypto coins can be used for everyday goods and
services is not a reality, yet. Stablecoins offer the potential for
crypto to be used as day-to-day payments because their value is pegged
to an underlying asset, where price stability is more consistent. Still,
the middleman sitting in-between buyer and seller exists to exchange
digital assets into traditional fiat currency. Typically, stablecoins,
like Paxos or USDT, are used in the crypto market as hedging instruments
or as value stores. Payment pipelines for everyday purchases are
essential, and only when seamless integration is a reality can the
public reap the benefits of a more streamlined infrastructure, as some
blockchain purists promise. When we examine what is under the hood of
our payment systems, we can see where blockchain innovation could
transform older infrastructure into something better.
If we look at the evolution of stablecoins as an innovation in
payments, how they are regulated and hold value creates new risks for
investors. Stablecoins have been criticized over the past year as
potentially not being as price stable as believed. However, the market
for this type of security has grown significantly and is becoming more
crowded with new coins. Are stablecoins something worth integrating into
our economy? How does the crypto industry design a way where
decentralized technology creates an independent and non-controlled
currency that can be used for everyday transactions? Can the reality of
digital gold be achieved and utilized as a form of payment?
Aurus – newly launched – has created a form of tokenized gold, and
represents an actual ownership stake in physical gold. This adaptation
is an innovation from existing stablecoins that could decrease the
middleman footprint and could expand the traditional gold market.
I interviewed Guido Van Stijn, who is the CEO of Aurus. Aurus
is a software company that provides tokenization-as-a-service (TaaS)
that enables the gold market to autonomously tokenize their gold into
AurusGOLD (AWG). Mr. Van Stijn
explained that each AWG token is collateralized and redeemable for 1
gram of physical gold. As described to me, AWG will not be controlled by
a government and exists as an ERC-20 token. The claim being regardless
if Aurus survives as a company, the gold-backed token will survive on as
an asset, just as a gold bar would. This is a unique approach to
tokenization because each coin is traceable to a specific gold bar
registration. Unlike ownership in a gold exchange-traded fund, which is
an equity and does not represent physical gold ownership, AWG states
that it is actual gold ownership.
Using a tokenized asset like a gold-backed token could be a benefit
to the traditional gold buyer. The AWG tokens are sold at just a
fraction above the gold spot price. Mr. Van Stijn explained, “Our
processes are different than other gold-backed projects. All gold-backed
stablecoins currently on the market have a centralized minting process.
Meaning the company itself will, at some point, hold the gold. By
digitally replicating the traditional gold market, Aurus is the first
project to create a self-sustaining ecosystem made up of gold providers,
vaults, and distributors that work together to produce a
semi-decentralized gold-backed cryptocurrency.â€
To allow the self-sustaining ecosystem to exist, Aurus circulates a
second hybrid utility token, AurusCOIN (AWX). Mr. Mark Gesterkamp, the
Business Development Director for Aurus, said, “AWX is limited to a
total supply of 30,000,000 units, deriving transactional fees from the
usage of AWG. AWX offers investors the opportunity to buy into the
future growth of Aurus.†Mr. Van Stijn said, “As people around the world
trade AWG, 70% of all the generated transaction fees are proportionally
distributed across all AWX holders (paid in AWG). The remaining 30% of
the generated fees are allocated towards the ecosystems’ operational
costs as follows: 15% to gold providers, 15% to vault partners.†For the
first time, market participants can generate a passive income stream on
the bullion they sell.
Who wants gold when you can have Bitcoin?
There is nothing special about gold-backed stablecoins in crypto. But
Aurus has created something different that bridges the gap between
traditional gold trading and the crypto world. More importantly, access
to the gold market can be achieved without the need for gold
brokers. The claim made by Mr. Van Stijn is that his method lowers the
barriers of entry for public gold investment.
Tony Dobra, who sits on the Aurus advisory board, formally a general
manager of Baird & Co., believes that AWG is unique. Mr. Dobra said,
“While it is not the only gold on the blockchain, it is the most truly
gold-based trade available in crypto. Via the AWG cryptocurrency,
producers, refiners, and traders can tokenize their gold in multiple
locations of their choice and trade the underlying gold on several
platforms and exchanges. Because there are multiple locations,
providers, and traders, the best price can be obtained. You are not
limited to just one location or one price provider.â€
Aurus expects and is working to achieve a state where AWG will create
more liquidity in the gold market. More importantly, the team at Aurus
explained their main goal is for AWG to be used for everyday
transactions, i.e., have AWG be used like cash for everyday
purchases. While there is a long way to go before this is a reality, the
Aurus project seems to be a shift in the direction of asset-backed
digital currency. If this works, commodity and precious metal trading
could be influenced to follow suit. As for use in payments, stablecoins
like AWG, still require an exchange mechanism at the point of sale. Time
will tell if this style will become publicly adopted.
Posted by AGORACOM-JC
at 12:19 PM on Monday, December 9th, 2019
SPONSOR:ThreeD Capital Inc. (IDK:CSE)
Led by legendary financier, Sheldon Inwentash, ThreeD is a
Canadian-based venture capital firm that only invests in best of breed
small-cap companies which are both defensible and mass scalable. More
than just lip service, Inwentash has financed many of Canada’s biggest
small-cap exits. Click Here For More Information.
5 Crypto Trends that Appeared in 2019
The crypto space evolved in 2019, moving a bit beyond the immediate hype of price action.
While some trends and approaches failed, other developments came into the spotlight, offering new types of earnings opportunities.
The crypto space evolved in 2019, moving a bit beyond the immediate
hype of price action. While some trends and approaches failed, other
developments came into the spotlight, offering new types of earnings
opportunities.
In 2019, the top crypto trends expanded to fill the void of previously defunct models.
Futures Trading: The CME futures trading started
back in 2017. But in 2019, the market had grown significantly. The
launch of Bakkt futures added to the price discovery of Bitcon (BTC) at
the end of 2019. Crypto-to-crypto exchanges also expanded their futures
markets in many directions. Some chose to offer futures for the most
liquid altcoins. OKEx was among the most innovative markets, adding
USDT-settled futures.
The addition of futures also meant that not only BTC owners could
hope to trade based on the price risk of the leading coin. Futures
markets move by a different logic, and do not need to conform to the
expectations of long-term BTC “hodlersâ€, hence pressures to dump the
price are also possible.
Crypto-based Lending: As more altcoins became
inactive, the assets had to find a use case. Lending based on locking up
the assets expanded in 2019. Ethereum (ETH) was the top collateral
asset. Binance, however, became the leader in offering lending products
based on some of the leading altcoins.
Custodial Storage and Staking: Staking coins were
big even years ago, but for most, this required some technical knowledge
and a dedication to keeping an operational wallet online. Now, it is
possible to stake coins while making use of custodial services. Coinbase
and more recently, Binance, are adding more proof-of-stake coins,
redistributing the rewards. The latest asset to be added was Tezos,
which has a relatively complex “baking†process.
Decentralized Finance (DeFi): Part crypto lending,
part staking, DeFi is a separate rendition for the usage of stablecoins.
Usually based on Ethereum (ETH), those services aim to replicate
traditional finance. Maker DAO grew significantly in 2019, finally
releasing its multi-collateral DAI in November. Despite ETH price
volatility, DeFi only suffered relatively minor liquidations, and trust
remained high enough to continue the decentralized lending pattern.
IEOs: Initial Exchange Offerings were the tamer,
curated version of token sales. At the lead, exchanges like Binance and
OKEx offered independent projects. Binance went the extra mile to build
its own Binance Chain and host some of the tokens. Returns from IEOs
varied, and some exchanges rode the trend with shady offerings. Bitfinex
also used the IEO hype to place its own LEO token, which did not hold a
public sale. IEOs were a new opportunity for tokenization and financing
selected projects, but most of the tokens were volatile.
For almost all crypto trends, 2020 may see even stricter regulations.
But financial innovation is happening in the sector, potentially
building new cases for digital assets.
Posted by AGORACOM-JC
at 11:46 AM on Wednesday, December 4th, 2019
SPONSOR:ThreeD Capital Inc. (IDK:CSE)
Led by legendary financier, Sheldon Inwentash, ThreeD is a
Canadian-based venture capital firm that only invests in best of breed
small-cap companies which are both defensible and mass scalable. More
than just lip service, Inwentash has financed many of Canada’s biggest
small-cap exits. Click Here For More Information.
5 Crypto Projects That Crushed It in 2019
Crypto startups that shrugged off bearish market conditions, community apathy and industry in-fighting, and focused on shipping clean code and great products.
There’s a lot of noise in the cryptosphere, but the following projects cut through it like a knife, delivering original solutions with genuine utility.
As 2019 nears its apex, it’s time to take a look back at the projects that crushed it this year. Crypto startups that shrugged off bearish market conditions, community apathy and industry in-fighting, and focused on shipping clean code and great products. There’s a lot of noise in the cryptosphere, but the following projects cut through it like a knife, delivering original solutions with genuine utility. Having killed it all year, you wouldn’t bet against this quintet doing it all over again in 2020.
LiquidApps
EOS scaling project LiquidApps
emerged out of nowhere to garner industry-wide plaudits as 2019 reached
its crescendo. A lot of this was due to the success of its DAPP Network,
which demonstrated that it’s possible to provision off-chain/sidechain
scaling without compromising on decentralization. The DAPP Network’s
vRAM enables EOS dApp developers to access cheap virtual storage, giving
them the ability to scale their decentralized applications without
being stung by prohibitive resource costs. That alone would be enough to
sustain most crypto projects for a year, but LiquidApps accompanied
this breakthrough with a tool for seamlessly onboarding new dApp users, another for linking blockchains into a single dApp, and an oracle service. Impressive stuff.
Remme
Distributed Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) project Remme
boasts one of the hardest working teams in crypto. After realizing that
its PKI-enabled blockchain simply wouldn’t cut it on Hyperledger
Sawtooth, the Remme team made the difficult decision to switch chains
deep into the project, transitioning to the EOSIO codebase and rolling
out its testnet.
Rather than letting this throw them off their stride, Remme has charged
ahead with its mainnet launch, taking time out to propose improvements
to EOSIO where errors were encountered in the codebase, and fine-tuning
the workings of its custom Block Producer program.
This year, Remme also succeeded in onboarding hundreds of enterprises to Keyhub,
its all-in-one platform for managing SSL/TLS certificates. With its
mainnet just weeks away, 2020 is shaping up to be a big year for the
Ukrainian blockchain startup.
Matic Network
It would be impossible to review 2019’s biggest breakout successes without including Matic.
While the meteoric rise of its token in recent weeks, following its
April IEO on Binance, has kept investors happy, that’s merely a symptom
of its success in becoming the industry’s blockchain scaling solution of
choice.
While Ethereum remains mired in ETH problems, Matic has emerged as a
genuinely scalable and production-ready chain that can take the strain.
Its adaptation of Plasma enables instant on-chain payments and
transactions, making it suitable for everything from dApps to DEXs.
Dozens of crypto projects have announced their migration to Matic
Network including a number specializing in NFTs such as Battle Racers.
In 2020, expect this trickle to transform into a torrent as crypto
projects migrate en masse.
Chainlink
If there’s any token, outside of exchange tokens, that investors wish they’d stacked up on in January, it’s LINK.
Up 570% in 12 months, LINK will go down as one of 2019’s best buys. As
with Matic, however, focusing on price misses out on the broader story.
Much of Chainlink’s success comes down to mastering the other P –
partnerships. This year, crypto and non-crypto businesses alike rushed
to team up with Chainlink, utilizing
the smart contract and oracle network for connecting off-chain data
feeds and enabling tamper-proof inputs and outputs.
With names such as SWIFT, Google, Gartner, and IC3 all working with
Chainlink, the project founded by Sergey Nazarov has become the first
crypto startup to transcend the industry and embed itself in the broader
business world.
Synthetix
Warranting the accolade of most innovative defi project of 2019, Synthetix
is a smart solution whose best is yet to come. Decentralized synthetic
assets have long been the holy grail of many decentralized finance
advocates, unlocking the ability to permissionlessly trade commodities,
forex and cryptocurrency on DEXs. Synthetix is the first project to
realize this goal through its pioneering use of ‘synths,’ tokens that
provide exposure to assets such as gold, TESLA stock, and AAPL, without
liquidity limitations. Up an incredible 1,715% to date, despite being
absent from tier one exchanges, the SNX token looks like it has more
room to grow – as does the Synthetix Network it powers.
Posted by AGORACOM-JC
at 10:46 AM on Monday, December 2nd, 2019
SPONSOR:ThreeD Capital Inc. (IDK:CSE)
Led by legendary financier, Sheldon Inwentash, ThreeD is a
Canadian-based venture capital firm that only invests in best of breed
small-cap companies which are both defensible and mass scalable. More
than just lip service, Inwentash has financed many of Canada’s biggest
small-cap exits. Click Here For More Information.
Why Germany’s Friendly Crypto Bill Is a Big Deal
In November, Germany became the leader of the free world where government acceptance of cryptocurrency is concerned.
In November, Germany became the leader of the free world where government acceptance of cryptocurrency is concerned.
That’s because last week, a bill was pushed forward by the Bundesrat,
the upper house of Germany’s legislature, that would allow German banks
to directly sell and custody cryptocurrencies for their clients as of
January 1st, 2020.
Next up the country’s 16 states will make a final decision on the
bill, though domestic analysts don’t expect resistance to the
legislation at the national level.
That means the way is paved for the bill to officially come into law,
a development that would mark a watershed moment not only for Germany
but also for cryptocurrencies in general.
Crypto Goes Mainstream in Heart of Europe
Germany is one of the largest economies in the world and the EU’s
most influential state. To that end, the country often sets the tone
economically and politically for many nations in Europe.
With its new crypto bill, Germany’s legislators are signaling to
their constituents and to the international stage that cryptocurrencies
are to be embraced, not rejected. This dynamic will make Germany
attractive to crypto projects around the globe who are interested in
having a base in a very pro-crypto country.
“Germany is well on its way to becoming a crypto heaven,†Sven
Hildebrandt, the lead consultant at major consulting firm DLC, said last
week.
In
extension, other European countries and beyond may follow in Germany’s
stead in passing ensuing waves of pro-crypto legislation. If in one
decade’s time more banks than not directly deal with cryptocurrencies,
German banks will have been the trailblazers.
Moreover, it cannot be overstated just how much Germany’s new
friendly crypto bill does to move in the direction of normalizing and
legitimizing cryptocurrencies as another avenue of mainstream finance.
If digital currencies do go on to become widely adopted global financial
tools, one could look back on Germany’s legislation as one of the
important dominoes that dropped along that way.
The passing of the crypto bill comes on the heels of the German government publishing a national blockchain strategy for the first time back in September. The strategy put the country on course toward becoming a hub for blockchain enterprises.
“Germany should be an attractive location for the development of
blockchain applications and investments in their scaling,†two
government ministries said in a joint announcement at the time.
Germany Is Epicenter for “Digital Euro†Movement
Just like the U.S. Federal Reserve and China’s central bank, Europe’s
top financial officials have taken serious notice of the
Facebook-backed Libra stablecoin project.
In response, some European leaders have called for tougher
restrictions on cryptocurrencies in general, though others yet have
argued the European Union should become a hub for crypto innovation.
In that latter camp is the Association of German Banks, a group of
200 private German banks that serve as finance industry lobbyists in the
EU’s biggest economy. Weeks ago, the association argued that Europe’s
major stakeholders to back the development of a digital euro that had smart contract capabilities, saying they would commit to supporting the effort:
“The German private banks will play their part in establishing a
sustainable and innovative monetary system. For this purpose, a
programmable account and crypto-based digital euro should be created and
its interoperability with book money ensured. The condition for this is
establishing a common pan-European payments platform for the
programmable digital euro.â€
The association’s plea for a digital euro came one month after German
Finance Minister Olaf Scholz should create its own public
cryptocurrency.
“We should not leave the field to China, Russia, the US or any private providers,†Scholz said.
