Cryptocurrency is a legitimate asset class that belongs to every investment portfolio.

MrCoin

Weekly Crypto Recap

“Bitcoin is the awakened sleeping giant because it has fundamentally and forever changed money and, more importantly, money's seat of power.” ~ Charlie Shrem, founder of bitcoinfoundation.org

Market State

BTC: €5,600.06 | -0.90% since last week

ETH: €174.22 | -2.39% since last week

BCH: €381.46 | -1.87% since last week

LTC: €45.14 | -2.82% since last week

Last week started with a big price action due to Tether’s instability. The stablecoin Tether that is meant to be stable around $1 fell to a low of $0.85 on some exchanges. As a result people panic sold their Tether and converted to Bitcoin which temporarily drove the price of Bitcoin. However Tether quickly bounced back as traders started to buy back at a discounted price. Currently Tether is trading 2% below its peg at $0.98. The price of Bitcoin went back to €5,600, the range we have seen it trading since September. The overall market fell by 2.57% to €181,67 billion. Bitcoin trading volume is at a new yearly low. Low volume indicates no interest to buy and no interest to sell at the moment. No interest to sell shows cryptocurrency hodlers are strong and confident for the future. Larger institutional investors such as Fidelity are joining cryptocurrency market which shows that cryptocurrency is a legitimate asset class that belongs to every investment portfolio.

Quiz of the week

What is UTXO?

Unspent Transaction Output
United Transaction Outcomes
United Transaction Office

Scroll down to see the answer at the end of the newsletter.

Top stories of the week

Monero Becomes Bulletproof

Monero became the first coin to implement Bulletproofs on their blockchain. Bulletproofs is a privacy innovation that hides the amount of a transaction. In addition to that, it significantly reduces transaction size and lowers fees. Thanks to Bulletproofs an average Monero transaction size has dropped approximately by 80% thus the transaction fees have plummeted by 80% as well. Monero developers are strongly urging users to upgrade their wallets and nodes. Bulletproofs can be implemented on already working blockchains like Bitcoin and Litecoin. Initially, Bulletproofs was created for Bitcoin to enable confidential transactions. Now Bitcoin can benefit from Monero’s testing of Bulletproofs.

Litecoin to Lower Its Fees

Litecoin transaction fees are about to get reduced by ten times with the next Core release. Litecoin Core is an open source software that serves as a Litecoin node and provides a Litecoin wallet which verifies transactions. The average transaction fee on the Litecoin network is Ł0.001 per KB which is about $0.05. The upcoming Litecoin Core launch will make the fees Ł0.0001 per KB or approximately $0.005, half a cent. During late 2017 price surge when Litecoin reached its ATH (All Time High) at $320 the transaction fees often went up over $0.1 peaking at over $1. In response to it, Litecoin developers decided to lower the fees to encourage more adoption and usage of Litecoin.

Ethereum Foundation Awarded $3M in Grants

Ethereum Foundation awarded nearly $3 million in grants to 20 different individuals and groups. Ethereum grant initiative began in 2018 to motivate scalability research for Ethereum Network. The foundation revealed the recipients of its fourth wave of grants. Status and Prysmatic Labs each received the largest grant, amounting to $500,000 respectively. Both companies are working hard to set up Ethereum 2.0 ecosystem. Recipients were chosen based on certain parameters according to their contribution to the development of Ethereum namely usability, scalability and security. The Foundation thanked all the community members for their fantastic job and promised to continue to involve more community members in the decision-making process.

Crypto Job Market On The Rise

A new study by Glassdoor, an online job market website revealed that cryptocurrency and blockchain related jobs have risen by 300% percent since last year this time in the US. Despite the price volatility and uncertainty in the market, the employment data suggest that the crypto market is here to stay. The trend is also growing in Asia. According to recruitment firm Robert Walters, job postings for blockchain and cryptocurrency experts have increased 50% since last year in Asia. Software engineer is the most common job openings among start-ups and corporations. Even the People's Bank of China is looking to recruit blockchain tech and legal experts, who will be responsible for developing a yuan-linked digital currency software.

Fidelity Investments Launches Crypto Platform

Fidelity Investments, the third largest asset manager in the world, announced that it would launch a separate company called Fidelity Digital Asset Services, which will handle cryptocurrency custody and trade execution for institutional investors. Fidelity manages $7.2 trillion in customer assets and has 27 million customers and spends $2.5 billion on technology every year. Abigail Johnson, CEO of Fidelity Investments said "Our goal is to make digitally native assets, such as Bitcoin, more accessible to investors. We expect to continue investing and experimenting, over the long-term, with ways to make this emerging asset class easier for our clients to understand and use."

US Tariff to Impact Mining Hardware

Bitmain, the Chinese mining hardware manufacturer is significantly affected by the Trump administration’s imposed tariff war on Chinese producers. The US changed the classification of the mining hardware from “data processing machines” to “electrical machinery” which is subject to 2.6% tariff. Chinese goods are subject to an additional 25% tariff. This makes a total tariff of 27.6% for Chinese mining rig manufacturers on their US shipments. Bitmain is the world’s largest mining equipment manufacturer and half of its revenue comes from overseas. The new tariffs sharply raised the import cost thus making Chinese mining hardware less competitive than rival products made in other countries.

Tweet of the week

Meme of the week

Crypto word of the week

Bulletproofs is a new efficient form of “zero knowledge proof”. Zero knowledge proof is a method of proving that a certain statement is true without revealing anything about the statement itself. You have zero information about the statement except that it is true. Monero is a privacy coin where the amount of a transaction and the transactors are private. Bulletproofs in Monero ensures that no new Moneros are created. The amount of Monero goes into a transaction must be the same as the amount that goes out of the transaction. The benefit of Bulletproofs is that it reduces the size of a private transaction by up to 80%. As transaction fees depend on the size of a transaction bulletproofs significantly reduces transaction fees.

Quiz answer

What is UTXO?

The correct answer is : “A”

UTXO stands for unspent transaction outputs. All Bitcoin exists in “outputs", which is building a block of a Bitcoin transaction. When your wallet receives Bitcoin it means that you now have a spendable or unspent output. Your wallet balance is the sum of all UTXO that your wallet can spend.

Thank you for reading :)

Have a great day!

MrCoin

MrCoin

96 Kensington High Street, London, W8 4SG, UK

+36 1 812 22 50

MrCoin will be more than happy to answer your questions at hello@mrcoin.eu

Privacy