Prerna Sengupta Monday, 02 December 2019, 08:44 EST Modified date: Monday, 02 December 2019, 08:44 EST

Japans second-largest cryptocurrency XRP has been added to the Japanese cryptocurrency exchange, BitFlyer. XRP is second only to Bitcoin (BTC) in terms of trading volumes in japan. This marks XRPs presence in the Japanese Altcoin Market. It is their first addition of new virtual currency in almost 2 years.

Bitflyer is a Japan-based bitcoin exchange open 24 hours a day. It is one of the most active exchanges especially known for its JPY/BTC pair. They also allow BTC/ETH trading. In fact, they are recognized as one of the ten exchanges with real trading volumes.

Japanese users of BitFlyer can now buy and sell Ripples XRP using their web platform or through their bitFlyer Wallet app (iOS and Android). However, this facility is only available on BitFlyer Japan and not on the U.S. or Europe versions.

Andy Bryant, the co-head and COO of BitFlyer Europe says that they intend to create a global platform for traders the world over. They are, therefore, offering more options for their international customers.

For example, in September BitFlyer Europe added trading support for bitcoin cash (BCH), ether classic (ETC), litecoin (LTC), Lisk (LSK) and monacoin (MONA), while BitFlyer U.S. added support for BCH, ETH and LTC.

Interestingly, to commemorate the launch of a new cryptocurrency in almost two years, i.e., XRP, BitFlyer has also started a campaign in which 10 customers will get 100,000 yen who would trade at least a total of 5,000 JPY worth of XRP during the campaign which is scheduled to end on December 26, 2019.

Go here to see the original:
XRP Added to Japanese Altcoin Market by BitFlyer - The Coin Republic

The big crypto boom of late 2017 is a long distant memory today. Pretty much every altcoin out there was surging by ridiculous proportions as the wave of FOMO swept the scene. Today the majority of crypto currencies are melting down and many simply will not survive another winter.

Total crypto market capitalization today is around $200 billion. It blasted through this level in November 2018 on its way up to top $800 billion but tumbled through it again in November 2018 in a dump to $100 billion. Another push this year sent total cap up to $380 billion but it has since collapsed 50% again as the altcoins begin to die off.

Very few of them have held on to their gains this year and some have collapsed back to levels before the big pump two years ago. Looking at the current scene it appears very unlikely that this will ever happen again. The only positive thing at the moment is that total cap is up 60% since the beginning of the year but that is virtually all Bitcoins doing.

Taking anonymous crypto Zcash as an example, trader DonAlt has pointed out that it has virtually collapsed to zero compared to prices at token launch.

If you invested 10 000 BTC into ZEC at the open of the 2nd trading day (God forbid) youd be left with less than two today.

ZEC is not the only altcoin that has dumped over 90%. Ripples XRP token is also in a bad way despite a number of partnerships and solid fundamentals from the San Francisco based fintech firm. It seems that the crypto community doesnt want to invest in a centralized token that the company can manipulate.

XRP is currently trading at $0.225 and its market cap has dumped below $10 billion. The cross border payments token has not been this low since before the big pump in November 2017. It spent most of that year hovering around $0.20 and appears to be heading back there. Since its peak XRP has dumped 94%.

Bitcoin Cash it another altcoin that has failed to gain any momentum despite constant efforts to pump it by project leaders. BCH market cap is now under $4 billion and it too has dumped 94% since its giddy height of $4,000 in December 2017.

Other 90 percent plus losers include Stellar, Tron, NEO, Iota, Dash, VeChain, Ethereum Classic, Ontology, NEM, Qtum, Augur, Nano, Bitcoin Gold and even more further down the coin cap list.

There are only a handful of crypto currencies that have only lost 60 percent or so and Bitcoin is among them. According to Livecoinwatch others include Binance Coin, Bitcoin SV, Cardano, Cosmos, LEO, Chainlink, and Huobi Token. Three of those are exchange based crypto assets.

There has been no altseason this year or last, and the future for the majority of them is not looking too good. Many of the top altcoins are still being actively developed but investors just dont seem that interested at the moment as another crypto winter looms.

See the rest here:
Altcoin Apocalypse: The Number of Dying Crypto Currencies Is Rising - newsBTC

Beyond the cusp of the crypto markets are powerful computing devices (nodes) that maintain the integrity of the cryptocurrency network by ensuring that transactions are processed seamlessly

A masternode forms part of the governing hub of a cryptocurrency network and presents an income-earning opportunity that many in the crypto world do not even know about.

In this exclusive interview, Coinfomania gets the thoughts of Iakov Levin, regarding the masternodes investment ecosystem, and Bitcoin.

Iakov, more fondly known as Trevor, is the founder of Midas.Investments, a platform that makes it possible for anyone to invest in and earn on masternodes powering various cryptocurrency networks.

Trevor explained masternode as just an algorithm that is similar to proof-of-stake (PoS), where holders of specific cryptocurrencies receive rewards for staking them over a specified period.

However, because of our platforms like Midas, investors are not required to buy the whole masternode to make a profit from it. Instead, they can focus on precisely choosing what masternodes and altcoins they want to buy, with little attention on diversification.

Trevor noted why diversification is not a good strategy when it comes to masternode investments.

The main diversification rule does not work here because there is only around one project in 20 that can actually make money for you. There is a dream of passive income, but this dream is highly correlated with the projects you pick.

He then recommended that new investors bear in mind that while there are still a lot of projects that do not get a lot of attention, 80% of masternode projects are basically a scam.

That figure was even higher during the altcoin boom as 95% of the masternode projects were scammy, although investors could still make money on them.

The current market, however, is a little bit more favorable as only the most dedicated teams that are doing real products stayed through the bear market and have launched actual products.

Before investing in masternode, Trevor suggests digging deeper into the projects and not throwing money into every listed project.

You need to get the part of your masternode portfolio low in this current state of the market because there is no new cash flow into Bitcoin, which will result in Bitcoin growth, and there will be no spare money for altcoins, he said in the interview.

Asking questions such as what is the team doing, does there project has any meaning in the long term, and can their product onboard users, should help masternode investors analyze their portfolio carefully.

Meanwhile, a pro-tip shared by Trevor is that masternodes whose tokens do not have sufficient liquidity are most likely to fail.

For the ones with real utility, however, he predicts that if they survive to the next altcoin market (altcoin rise), launch their products, and grow their user based, then holders would receive all the rewards.

Despite having a background in development, science, and finance. Trevor noted that his first encounter with Bitcoin came in June 2017 when 1BTC was priced around $3400.

I just had earned some money and I was searching for different ways of investing. So I came up with Bitcoin and started to buy into this.

He also narrated his altcoin involvement, where it was only the markets extensive growth (not knowledge) that allowed him to get his investments back and make lots of profits.

He then moved into masternodes when the market came and was able to grow his portfolio by 15x with two months starting from Nov 2017. He then invested the proceeds in the development of the Midas platform, which we asked him about next.

We started as a shared masternode service, with Google Sheets as the platform, so there was a lot of manual work, Trevor began.

However, I just wanted to create something that I saw potential in and I came up with two groundbreaking features at that moment, the first one called instant share. The market of shared masternodes platforms before this was only starting to develop.

Among the barriers to masternode investments was that investors needed to reserve a seat, from 5% of the masternode and also send their coins to the validator of the shared platform, and then waiting for other positions to be filled.

There was no room for instant withdraw or deposits.

Midass instant share features solved this problem by rewarding investors instantly for deposits. Such immediate reward is possible as the investors are awarded a percentage of working masternodes and can also withdraw immediately, and eventually, other big masternode platforms now use the instant share mechanism.

Trevor also explained that the instant share feature represents Midas prominent monetization strategy. Before a coin is listed, the developer had to give a masternode, which Midas sales some rewards from it to help finance development and marketing.

The other feature was Reinvestment which meant that investors no longer had to withdraw all the rewards from shared platforms before reinvesting.

With Instant share, you could choose if you want to reinvest your profits, which means it adds compound interest rate on your income for the masternodes. It allows users to increase their mid-term income, the Midas founder explained.

He also highlighted that the reinvestment features It helped Midas become one of the top platforms in two or three months, and the team started to develop the platform itself instead of using Google Documents to keep all the balances straight.

Notably, Midas is now preparing to launch an exchange alongside its masternode hosting features, which made it the first and only platform that allows free masternode hosting by locking coins.

The new exchange purportedly will allow users to trade and mine coins at the same time, rather than selling their investment profits on third-party exchanges.

In the long-term, within one year, we want to move from the masternode market to the big POS coins like Cosmos, and Tezos [], and those coins will be added as mineable on our platform, Trevor explained on their long-term objectives.

The team also wants to create a nice and interesting investment instrument that is not bound to only masternode PoS.

Tokens such as the Midas coin, which powers the teams investment platform reported, has enormous potential for investors with Trevor saying in the interview that Midas boasts an open team, a real product, a development plan really low market cap.

Trevor sees a correlation between masternode coins and startups and recommends investing in projects that have products.

The product should be relevant to the crypto market. If you invest in some random startup (productive app, marketplace using utility token) with a little token, it will most likely not work, he said.

Investors would also need to analyze many things in the long-term, including the team, product, and the usage of the token. However, he singled out projects such as the Celsius and Binance as some that have a real utility token because theyre related to crypto.

Another tip for choosing the right masternode coin is asking questions to the team or its representatives directly, and also investing at a time when such high potential projects are at their lows.

Trevor believes it is hard to predict how crucial masternode investments will become in the long-term, although he sees a future for already established utility tokens like Dash and Pivx.

Masternodes market will grow up in nature, not capitalization. Every rule on the altcoin market should apply to the masternode market.

He specifically recommended staying Bitcoin or masternodes (altcoins) proved by time.

Bitcoin is digital gold because it is not money as many think it is. It is the instrument of accumulation of wealth. Each time there will be some crisis in the real economy, there will be growth for Bitcoin because it doesnt belong to anyone, Trevor said.

He also highlighted the fact that Bitcoin holders know the exact amount of inflation as depicted by the upcoming halving, which will bring inflation lower. He also recommends playing with the whales as they only focus on accumulating bitcoins in the short term by influencing prices.

The main issue of crypto being popularized according to Trevor is that the average guy doesnt think about Bitcoin as money or digital gold, and must dive deep to understand its essence.

While fiat currencies are fragile and suffer from crises, inflation, government, and human mistakes, he noted that Bitcoin gains from chaos and could thus be considered anti-fragile.

On the success of the entire industry, Trevor said,

Infrastructure around Bitcoin such as altcoins will most likely die out. Projects like Ethereum will reward their investors really hard by becoming a winner and taking their part on this establishing market.

Iakov Trevor Levin Bitcoin prediction?

I would say bearish is like $20,000, like in 2023. The most bullish is like I think it can reach something like $100k-200k. In 2021, $50000 on average.

Original post:
Learn The Basics of Masternode Investments: An Exclusive Interview with Iakov Trevor Levin of Midas - Coinfomania

Richard Ells, CEO and Founder Electroneum, held a 40 minute AMA session with Mike Almiroudis, Electroneum Reddit Senior Moderator. And here is the summary of this enthusiastic conversation where Richard answered some long-pending community questions.

Electroneum is dreaming big. And it enjoys the support of its robust community. Make sure to read these takeaways.

Q: What is the status of AnyTask?

Q: Why is there a service fee associated with AnyTask but no option to pay in Electroneum?

A: AnyTask will charge a nominal service fee for usage so that the product does not cost to the company.

The payments can be made using credit cards and that part is live right now. Electroneum payments are not integrated on purpose. And that is to avoid crypto complications. To state a few:

Crypto has turned into a regulatory nightmare. Supporting payments in Electroneum means offering task buyer/seller anonymity. This way, the buyers would avoid KYC and unlawful buyers might try to buy tasks. By not using Electroneum, effectively users are being protected.

Q: How is does the end of the year look for Electroneum?

Q: What is the status of the Instant Payment System? What is left now?

A: To enter the league of Google Pay and Apple Pay, it is necessary to make sure that the transfer of value is near-instant for even the street vendor. And this requires a fairly large change.

IPS must offer 99.999% instant speed and that makes it quite a heavy project. And Developers Chris Harrison and Andre Patta are working aggressively to scale it up.

Q: What about the Mass Marketing plans?

A: Offering API integrations, advertising, attending blockchain conferences, building relations with exchanges and finding utilities is already happening. Close to $150K has been spent on Digital Marketing. And sufficient statistical analysis to establish what marketing technique works for Electroneum has been done.

To create a sustainable ecosystem, it is important to get 90-150 million users to the products and that is the target. Every aspect of marketing like Facebook, YouTube, press releases and blockchain conferences have been researched well. And by Q1 of 2020, a full blow marketing campaign will be out.

Q: How about the ledger support? When will that roll out?

A: Ledger integration is quite complicated stuff. It requires to handle low-level mathematical stuff. Electroneum is one of the most complex blockchains that makes it an even more challenging task.

Monero is supporting ledger integration but right now both the blockchains have turned out to be quite different. What works for Monero does not work for Electroneum.

Q: How are the mobile top-ups performing?

A: Since mobile top-ups entered Brazil, they have secured as much as$28,000. It may sound very sort of impressive to some. However, it definitely indicates adoption. The whole thing justneeds some more time. In the last 1 month, the number of top-ups happening went up by 21%.

Q: Are there are monster deals coming up?

A: There are lots of things on the table right now. But the only deterrent is that institutions and organizations are not ready to take a risk. Talks are going on with the national bank of a country and some NGOs.

2020 is going to be a big year. Once one project goes out and proves its value, there will be a domino effect and then Electroneum will have a long list to pick and choose associations.

Q: Are there any exchange listings on the way?

A: AnyTask interests a lot of exchanges. Binance was about to list Electroneum and the community votes were doing pretty well. But they lost twice because someone thought the votes were being faked.

Electroneum even tried the DEX route to get listed on Binance but thats a little more challenging. It is easy to list an ERC20 token as compared to a completely new blockchain. And it seems Binance is doing the right work as it is only listing good projects.

Q: When will Electroneum moon?

A: Team has been never been so confident about the projects success in the last two years as it is now. And at a current pace, Electroneum is destined to be massively successful and not dribble.

Read more:
Massively Successful: That is What Electroneum Wants To Be - Spotlight - Altcoin Buzz

IntoTheBlock has documented what percent of each cryptocurrency is held in the richest addresses. What they found shouldnt surprise anyone.

Its difficult to assess the extent of inequality within cryptocurrency ecosystems. After all, they could be exchanges or custodial groupsbut, in some cases, a few whales really do own a large portion of the circulating supply of some cryptocurrencies.

IntoTheBlock (@intotheblock) decided to do some digging and find the actual numbers. Heres what they found.

Concentrations of ownership over cryptocurrencies are not surprising. In a decentralized system, some will get advantages and hold more. However, there are limits to how sustainable extreme concentrations of wealth are in a decentralized system. These are the numbers for some of the top altcoins and how concentrated they are.

The standouts in IntoTheBlocks findings are Litecoin and Tether. Both seem to have higher concentrations of wealth than the rest of the cryptocurrency industry. How this will impact the trajectory of these projects remains open to debate.

Some people may scoff at the insinuation that high concentrations of cryptocurrency assets in just a few addresses is even a problem. After all, if you are using a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin Cash, it may not even matter. This is because Bitcoin Cash and other proof-of-work currencies do not have a governance model.

Ethereum and Cardano, on the other hand,do.So, concentrations of wealth could very well end up impacting the ecosystem at largeand may even lead to decisions against the majority of Ethereum users.

So, the impact of high concentrations of assets depends on the respective cryptocurrencys ecosystem. Governance can seldom work if there is oligarchic-like control of a large portion of a decentralized system. Its an issue that developers will have to keep in mind as theyre building these governance models. We cant let cryptocurrencies fall into the same issues that currently plague traditional fiat marketplacesthese concentrations of wealth should definitely be up for discussion.

Images are courtesy of Twitter, Shutterstock.

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Link:
Heres How Much of Each Major Altcoin Is Owned by Whales - BeInCrypto