Category: cardano

The rising demand for altcoins and DeFi

On By mehranmuslimiblogIn Altcoins, cardano, DeFiLeave a comment

One of the effects that DeFi had had on the cryptocurrency market is to increase investor interest in altcoins, or as some are calling them, “next-gen tokens”.  As the sector matures, and as crypto buyers understand more about the market, there is not so much a movement away from Bitcoin, as a growing belief in the altcoins.

Altcoins have finally emerged as an important element of the market at large. According to Cointelegraph, “ quick look at data available on Google Trends shows us that searches related to the term “Ethereum killer” have been soaring over the past 90 days,” indicating a growing interest in altcoins, especially those that support DeFi functions and smart contracts.

Examples of the more sought after altcoins are Cardano (ADA), Solana (SOL), Polkadot (DOT) and Terra (Luna). Solana had a particularly good run recently, with it managing to withstand a substantial market sell-off. In more recent days, Solana experience a 17-hour outage, which the network attributed to a denial-of-service attack carried out by bots. Its price went bearish since posting an all-time high of $213 on 9th September, but SOL had pulled back by 39% to sit at $128.87 on 22nd September. Cardano has also been able to record substantial profits, posting numbers of +70% and +1,200% over the last 90 and 180 days, respectively. Obviously nearly all cryptos have taken a knock this week, but the YTD numbers still look great for those who have owned any of these altocins for a while.

Antoni Trenchev, managing partner and co-founder of lending platform Nexo, believes there is a growing institutional demand for coins such as SOL and LUNA. The evidence to back this up is there: both coins have been able to make their way into the list of top 15 cryptocurrencies by total market capitalization.  Trenchev told Cointelegraph:

“This is a reflection of companies going deeper into crypto. Over the first two months of 2021, major institutions like BlackRock, Square and MicroStrategy were only just dipping their toes into Bitcoin. Now they’ve tasted its benefits and are looking to harness the untapped potential of up-and-coming blockchains and DeFi coins that could yield higher returns.”

He also suggested that while the crypto market may currently be in the midst of an alt-season, there is something different this time round, and that is the fact that there is more stability in the price of Bitcoin and Ethereum. As Cointelegraph points out, institutional traders flocked to SOL as demand for BTC and ETH appeared to plateau. As a result, at the beginning of September, “SOL-centric investment products represented a whopping 86.6% of the total weekly inflows into the crypto investment market.”

Furthermore, SOL’s combined investment products witnessed inflows in excess of $49.4 million between 6-10 Setember, and SOL enjoyed a 275% week-over-week increase in its value. And for the fourth consecutive week, demand for different altcoins has quite easily exceeded that of BTC products.

Kadan Stadelmann, chief technical officer of end-to-end blockchain infrastructure solutions provider Komodo, commented that rising demand for undiscovered projects is nothing new for the crypto market. However, what separates the present from previous cycles is the sheer amount of capital flowing in from institutions. 

Stadelmann had another interesting point to make: “Hundreds of DeFi projects are flying under the radar. Many of these projects have solid technology and can gain upward price momentum once institutions recognize their potential.” That’s good news for fintechs using DeFi!

Is this Cardano’s big breakout year?

On By mehranmuslimiblogIn cardano, Smart ContractsLeave a comment

2021 is a year of optimism for Cardano (ADA) holders. In a recent Forbes article, Billy Bambrough quotes Nigel Green, the CEO of the deVere financial advisory group as saying, “Cardano is now just behind the major headline grabbers Bitcoin and Ethereum. I believe that the price of Cardano will reach all-time highs in the next month, hitting more than $3.”

The drivers of Cardano’s price

Green points to what he believes are the “three main drivers” pushing the Cardano price higher. These are the “broader crypto market rally,” a September upgrade that will give the Cardano smart contract a functionality similar to Ethereum’s, and Cardano’s green energy credentials compared to Bitcoin.

At the time of writing, Coinmarketcap lists Cardano’s price at $2.82, with a high of $2.94 in the last 24 hours and a place ranking of #3. Back on the 13th May 2021, Cardano’s token ADA broke an important all-time-high by hitting the $2 mark.  Plus, it was the only top-ten cryptocurrency rising in value during a historic sell-off period. Remarkably, given its price, it is the fourth most valuable token in the world.

Cardano is the new Ethereum

Isaiah McCall writes, “I’m confident it will be the next Ethereum and have a massive role in web 3.0,” and if he is correct, it may be a good time to add Cardano to your portfolio before the price rises even more.

Cardano community members believe that one day ADA will reach $100. To do that, it would need a market cap of $3 trillion. That’s an issue, as Bitcoin’s market cap has a 1 trillion market cap and has been around since 2009. To put this in perspective, Cardano is 4-years-old and has a current market cap of $61 million.

Cardano’s battle will not really be with Bitcoin, which serves an entirely different purpose. Instead it will be with Ethereum, and Cardano has already positioned itself as the ‘Ethereum killer’ (or its fans have). This does make it sound as if it is a heavyweight boxer looking for a title fight.

Both Ethereum and Cardano are smart contract platforms, and McCall says they “stand to become crypto-Google (and maybe crypto-Yahoo).” Google’s market cap is $1.5 trillion, but McCall suggests that the smart contract platforms can double that.

However, here is what you need if you fancy becoming a Cardano (ADA) millionaire. Based on ADA reaching $100, (it’s just under $2 at the moment) you would need to buy anywhere between $15,000 to $20,000 worth of Cardano to become a millionaire. It will take several years to get to this point – McCall says about four to five years – but Cardano is using some interesting tactics to speed this up.

Cardano’s CEO gives his view

Charles Hoskinson is Cardano’s CEO and founder of IOHK. He is also the man who cleaverly named Cardano “the Ethereum killer., even though he was also a co-founder of the Ethereum blockchain project. Hoskinson has pointed out that although Cardano (ADA) and Ethereum(ETH) have a lot in common – both are types of digital currencies that also function as programmable ecosystems, which means other tokens and applications can be built on their networks – they are taking very different routes.

Hoskinson said in a recent interview, “Vitalik’s project Ethereum has done a phenomenal job with what they have built. They’ve built a great community and a great cryptocurrency. I just happen to disagree about business philosophy and you see those disagreements in Cardano. We are following a very different path.”

He also commented on Bitcoin, saying “Bitcoin was worthless in 2009 and then it was worth a lot in 2013.” However, he said, “You can’t do much with it, you can only push the value, you can issue token. However, you can’t do smart contracts, you can’t do anything. Similar to the earliest days of the internet, with the web browser- you could only look at the static pages.”

IOHK/Cardano in Africa

Cardano meanwhile has an impressive pedigree and a long-term vision for its blockchain and cryptocurrency. In particular its work in Africa attracted attention, as covered recently, IOHK’s “Africa strategy” aimed to foster Cardano adoption in Africa for everyday people and businesses. This included goals such as engaging with local stakeholders to deliver projects that solve real issues in the market, as well as to train and educate local developers to create solutions for local problems. For example, with IOHK’s Ethiopian Blockchain Deal, Ethiopian schools will use the Cardano blockchain to track student performance.

At the time, Hoskinson said that Cardano was “at the cusp” of deals and initiatives” through public-private partnerships in certain nations in Africa. Thus making way for “millions of users” to enter the Cardano ecosystem this year. According to him, if the Cardano team is able to achieve these goals, it will enable “a new economy” of over “5 trillion dollars of wealth.” He also said he believed that Africa is not a poor continent, and argued that the only challenge was that “real wealth” was “inaccessible due to bad systems.”

The sentiment is bullish for Cardano

Analyst and trader Benjamin Cowen in a recent video projects ADA’s potential to hit $20, this bull cycle, outperforming Bitcoin. Meanwhile, data from Google Trends depicted that interest in the search term “Buy Cardano” has hit a three-month high.

There is a lot of excitement on Twitter as well. One fan tweeted, “Smart contracts on Cardano only weeks away, who’s excited?!” Certainly its followers are feeling fairly pumped about September for Cardano, and believe it will flip ETH, especially in the NFT market, with one believing Cardano will own the space because of its lower gas fees. Another user called COTI tweeted, “The NFT auction platform which we developed with Cardano is LIVE. We are excited to have a key role in launching NFT auctions with Wolfram Blockchain Labs and Cardano.”

Which brings us back to Nigel Green at deVere: “I’ve been bullish on Cardano for a long time, amongst other cryptocurrencies.  But there’s a now real sense it is about to break out.”

The cost of becoming a Cardano millionaire

On By mehranmuslimiblogIn cardano, cryptoLeave a comment

On 13th May 2021, Cardano’s token ADA broke an important all-time-high by hitting the $2 mark.  Plus, it was the only top-ten cryptocurrency rising in value during a historic sell-off period. Remarkably, given its price, it is the fourth most valuable token in the world.

Isaiah McCall writes, “I’m confident it will be the next Ethereum and have a massive role in web 3.0,” and if he is correct, it may be a good time to ad Cardano to your portfolio before the price rises even more.

Cardano community members believe that one day ADA will reach $100. To do that, it would need a market cap of $3 trillion. That’s an issue, as Bitcoin’s market cap has a 1 trillion market cap and has been around since 2009. To put this in perspective, Cardano is 4-years-old and has a current market cap of $61 million.

Cardano’s battle will not really be with Bitcoin, which serves an entirely different purpose. Instead it will be with Ethereum, and Cardano has already positioned itself as the ‘Ethereum killer’ (or its fans have). This does make it sound as if it is a heavyweight boxer looking for a title fight.

Both Ethereum and Cardano are smart contract platforms, and McCall says they “stand to become crypto-Google (and maybe crypto-Yahoo).” Google’s market cap is $1.5 trillion, but McCall suggests that the smart contract platforms can double that.

However, here is what you need if you fancy becoming a Cardano (ADA) millionaire. Based on ADA reaching $100, (it’s just under $2 at the moment) you would need to buy anywhere between $15,000 to $20,000 worth of Cardano to become a millionaire. It will take several years to get to this point – McCall says about four to five years – but Cardano is using some interesting tactics to speed this up.

Cardano’s founder Charles Hoskinson invited Elon Musk to tea and a chat about ADA and Tesla on 13th May, and it could be that Musk will see the value in this particular blockchain. McCall says, “Cardano is an institutional investor’s wet dream. It’s available on every mainstream exchange, doesn’t have any SEC allegations against it, unlike XRP.” It is also a more stable blockchain.

You don’t need to be Elon Musk to benefit from a Cardano investment, although as with every market there is risk involved, so please don’t invest money you can’t afford to lose. Its proof-of-stake protocol means transactions are much more fluid by not rewarding miners with a block reward but with the transaction fee.

Furthermore, there are massive amounts of on-chain liquidity on Cardano’s blockchain. Around $16 billion ADA is circulating around the network and $22.2 billion is staked on the Cardano blockchain. According to the stats, Cardano is also the second most staked blockchain, coming in just after Polkadot.

While Ethereum has the first mover advantage on smart contracts, Cardano arguably has it on POS. although Ethereum is transitioning to POS this year. What it does need, and it is something that Etheruem has, is “institutional support and an ecosystem of dApps to become the next Ethereum.”

But it is still worth taking a punt on Cardano, even if it has a relatively small share of your crypto portfolio, and certainly while its price remains in single digits.