Time For Bitcoin Bull Run?

Bitcoin is currently riding towards a three month low and has been sent downward in the past few days by fear surrounding a hack of a small exchange in Korea, along with sentiment from US government that ICOs will be labeled securities moving forward. BTC is the digital father of cryptocurrencies, and altcoins are swift to follow it’s price movements (Often with 10-20% greater amplitude than that of BTC).

While the SEC made their stance clear that initial coin offerings and tokens will be labeled securities(and thus face more stringent regulation), they were also clear that Bitcoin is not a security. BTC will remain a commodity and this is definitely positive news for. China has recently shown signs that the BTC ban may be repealed, which would be a tremendous boost of confidence to the Bitcoin markets. While the ICO environment may be uncertain in the coming months, Bitcoin should see a resurgence in market cap domination as well as price in the months to come. BTC is currently trading at $6,766 on Bittrex, Binance, and Coinbase.

The opinions expressed on Crypto Bull are in no way financial advice and are only opinions. We are not responsible for any losses incurred as a result of reading our blog.

Four Reasons to be Bullish on NEO

NEO is a project that most of you are probably familiar with by this point, and it is often referred to as the ‘Chinese Ethereum.’ This is a fair high-level comparison, but NEO operates utilizing the Delegated Byzantine Fault Tolerance (DBFT) algorithm - which is a consensus mechanism (as opposed to proof of work/stake) that allows distributed systems to operate effectively and efficiently in the event of a failed component. NEO has traded as high as $180 USD in early 2018, but has since slumped heavily. It now trades around $68 USD on Binance today and has really lagged behind the recent market rally of coins like Bitcoin and Ethereum. There are many reasons that outlook remains bullish on NEO, and below we’ll go through a few:

1. Adoption - The NEO platform already has 19 projects deployed and running, these are issued in NEP5 format and offer advantages to the ERC20 format of Ethereum. Some NEP5 tokens include Ontology, RedPulse, KuCoin, and DeepBrainChain. They have one of the largest crypto Reddit communities(r/NEO) at over 90,000 subscribers.

2. Partnerships - The NEO team has announced they are working with the Chinese Government Authorities around integrating real-world assets and smart contracts. NEO is also a part of the G3 alliance, alongside Bitmain(largest Bitcoin mining pool in China) and Elastos (decentralized internet project).

3. Ecosystem - NEO is positioning itself on a larger scale to become the public cloud of China, offering a full suite of tools such as NeoX (cross-chain contract execution), NeoFS (decentralized storage), and NeoQ (quantum-resistant cryptography).

4. Leadership - Da Hongfei is a tremendously established and well-respected crypto leader in the world! Check out Coin Central’s spotlight bio to learn more about him.

The opinions expressed on Crypto Bull are in no way financial advice and are only opinions. We are not responsible for any losses incurred as a result of reading our blog.

Top 3 Advantages of Litecoin versus Bitcoin

Litecoin has gained a lot of attention over the past year, and for good reason. The coin was created by former Google employee Charlie Lee in 2013 and was forked from the Bitcoin Core client. Lee is still at the helm and the Litecoin Foundation now features 6 full-time core developers and a large and growing community. LTC offers some prime advantages over BTC, and there is certainly much space for both of the coins in the future of the crypto world. Here are three key benefits of Litecoin:

1. Faster transaction confirmation time (4x faster than BTC) 
2. Increased storage efficiency due to scrypt usage in LTC proof-of-work algorithm  
3. More coins to reward miners (84mn to be distributed total compared to 21mn BTC). 

These factors make Litecoin an appealing transactional cryptocurrency, and hundreds of e-commerce stores have already adopted accepting payments in the form of LTC, including Overstock.com! Litecoin's website even lays out methods and instructions for merchants to easily implement LTC payment acceptance on their websites.

In the last month, 30% of total LTC purchased was in USD - with 50% of the total buys coming from Coinbase. This seems to be a good indicator that more people are discovering Litecoin, and it’s many benefits. After the coin has been beaten up in the bear market over the past few months, it is up 14% on the week and currently trades at $131.91 on popular cryptocurrency exchanges including Coinbase, Bittrex, and Binance.

Top Reasons Ethereum is Prime for a Run

Over the past four months the cryptocurrency markets have been in a bear market, but let’s take a moment to put this in perspective. One year ago today, the total market cap of all cryptocurrencies was $25 billion USD, right now it is currently $245 billion USD - this is almost a 10x increase still. The run up in December was bound to come with a correction and no one is sure how long it will last, but here are some reasons that make Ethereum an enticing coin to hold right now.

Often times, people have referred to the market cap of Ethereum exceeding that of Bitcoin as ‘the flippening’, but this has not happened to date. When looking at the total market cap as a percentage of the entire market, we see some interesting divergences between Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Graph from coinmarketcap

ETH experienced a massive rise to a price of $390 USD in June of 2017, where it reached its closest to surpassing BTC as the largest market cap as a percentage of the entire market. Since that time, BTC continued to assert dominance in the market as it rose to a massive price peak of over $19,000 in December of 2017. Through April of 2018, ETH and BTC have both taken price hits, but the dominance in the market cap percentage has been rising for BTC, while it has been steadily decreasing for ETH. This is interesting considering the growing number of Ethereum dapps...

Ethereum dapps, which are many of the projects that you have seen ICO using ERC20 tokens, actually make up an astounding 85% of all crypto assets that have been issued under existing blockchains. All of these run on ETH as their ‘gas’ and rely on it to successfully operate, making Ethereum’s value crucial in the scope of smart contract projects. Because of Ethereum’s unique ability to cultivate and support deployment of crypto projects, it is in a great position to continue to thrive in this space. While there are cryptocurrencies that are building very similar functionality and even claim to have advantages over ETH, such as EOS and Cardano (ADA) - they have no working products at the moment. It will be important to keep an eye on projects like these, but ETH talks the talk and walks the walk.

While BTC is certainly the king of crypto today, ETH is the king of dapps. You can view all Ethereum projects, including 515 that are live and actively earning profits at State of the dapps. This increasing dapp support, along with the recent slide in market cap dominance, could be an indicator of an Ethereum run to come when the bear market subsides. ETH trades at $363 USD today on just about all crypto platforms such as Bittrex, Coinbase, Gemini and Binance.

The opinions expressed on Crypto Bull are in no way financial advice and are only opinions. We are not responsible for any losses incurred as a result of reading our blog.

Hot Coins 🔥 Bitcoin and IOTA

BTC (Bitcoin) - Bitcoin has taken a hit over the past few weeks as the bear market has creeped in, but this is not the end of the king. BTC is the staple cryptocurrency that has a devoted developer following, and proven effectiveness. Concerns over longer transaction times and higher fees will continue to subside as Lightning Network develops further, directly addressing these concerns in the process. Satoshi's vision is very much alive in Bitcoin and when the time comes for the next bull market, Bitcoin usually leads the surge ahead of Altcoins. It trades at $8,158 USD on Bittrex and Binance today.

IOTA (IOTA) - IOTA is a revolutionary, next generation public distributed ledger that utilizes a novel invention, called a “Tangle”, at its core. The Tangle is a new data structure based on a Directed Acyclic Graph. Three big advantages of IOTA are that it offers a network that is extremely scalable, has no fees, and is quantum-proof (something that is extremely valuable as we look towards the future of computing). Another aspect that has many excited is that transactions are self validating and do not require miners. IOTA is trading down at just $1.67 on Binance today and looks like a solid hold for the long term.

The opinions expressed on Crypto Bull are in no way financial advice and are only opinions. We are not responsible for any losses incurred as a result of reading our blog.

Hot Coins 🔥 Verge, Civic and Lisk

Week of December 24th, 2017

XVG (Verge) - Verge is a project that has been around since 2014 and aims to bring user privacy to the masses while keeping the original vision of Bitcoin alive by providing user privacy in a public ledger. Privacy enabling coins will be a crucial part of the cryptocurrency space moving towards the future.  Recently, Verge has seen a lot of deserved attention, with mentions from Forbes, Bloomberg and The Chicago Tribune; and it’s gaining more traction with further wallet improvements to be released in the near future. There is a strong developer community around the coin, and it trades at just $0.22 on Binance at the moment.

CVC (Civic) - Despite the benefits of privacy enabling cryptocurrencies, there is a large concern around Identity protection, and Civic is addressing this head on. Civic’s platform enables people to build a digital identification, and their unique product offering allows real-time authentication of identity data verified by Civic or a Civic Identity Partner, such as a government entity, financial institution, or employer.  Their development of an ecosystem that is designed to facilitate on-demand, secure, low-cost access to identity-verification services via the blockchain will prove to be of growing importance as our current world integrates with blockchain services. With just 347mn coins in circulation, and a current market cap ranking of 69, there is much room for growth in such a valuable project. CVC trades at $0.70 USD on Bittrex at the time being, and has seen steady growth over the last month.

LSK (Lisk) - Lisk is a decentralized network that is building towards enabling teams/developers to create, distribute and manage decentralized Blockchain applications by deploying their own sidechain linked to the Lisk network, including a custom token. It is unique because Lisk is written entirely in Javascript, allowing for a Blockchain framework which accelerates and simplifies development. Lisk has jumped over the past couple of weeks but is dipping a bit now, and with a rebrand and increased marketing efforts on the helm for 2018 - the future looks bright for Lisk! It trades at $17.90 USD on Binance currently.

The opinions expressed on Crypto Bull are in no way financial advice and are only opinions. We are not responsible for any losses incurred as a result of reading our blog.

Hot Coins 🔥 RaiBlocks, Komodo, Bitcoin & Litecoin

Week of Dec 10th, 2017

XRB (RaiBlocks) - We've seen interest in XRB increase dramatically in the past few days, driven by recognition of IOTA (a very similar cryptocurrency). Although while IOTA target Machine to Machine transactions for the Internet of things, XRB target Person 2 Person transaction and is designed as a store of value for micro-payments. Instant transactions, no fees, infinitely scalable, and utilizing a Proof of Stake consensus method, we see XRB as finally getting the recognition it deserves.  The coin is expected to list on a fourth exchange in December, has a new iOS developer working on an iPhone app, and is still a relative newcomer to the top 100 coin charts. 1/20th the total coin supply of IOTA, but only 25% of the price, and with a new whitepaper/community guide written in the past few days. RaiBlocks seems to be undervalued in the short and medium term, trading at $1.15 at the moment on BitGrail.

BTC (Bitcoin) - Bitcoin has been down trending the past few days after a mega surge. With futures going live on NY exchanges this week, I'm not sure anyone knows exactly what happens - but I know traders like to 'buy the dip'. Furthermore, BTC is the grand daddy of crypto at this point and is worth allocating some of your portfolio to in any scenario.

LTC (LiteCoin) - After dropping off the past week, LTC has surged in the past few days, and it wouldn't surprise us to see it continue. What differentiates LiteCoin from Bitcoin is SPEED, while BTC takes 10 minutes to process a block, LTC network takes just a tad over 2 minutes. Another big factor is that Litecoin has the capability to produce a total of 84 million units, compared to Bitcoin's 21 million. Even thought the potential circulation of LTC is 4 times that of BTC, it is valued at 1/150th of the price at $95 right now.... If that isn't enough to convince you, did you forget it's way faster than Bitcoin?

KMD (Komodo) - Komodo draws comparisons to Monero, a project to build private and untraceable networks. Monero is focusing on its status as a privacy-based cryptocurrency, whereas Komodo is focus on establishing an open-source blockchain ecosystem, and it includes built-in privacy options. Komodo It's a bit of a long shot but has a lot of room to run if they deliver on some upcoming road map, and trades at $3.24 on Binance.

The opinions expressed on Crypto Bull are in no way financial advice and are only opinions. We are not responsible for any losses incurred as a result of reading our blog.

Hot Coins 🔥 Waltonchain, NEO and Cardano

Week of Dec 3, 2017

WTC (Waltonchain) - Walton has been on a ripper and it appears people have caught on to the value in the project. WTC is building an RFID blockchain that will empower micro chips to better track everything from clothing to drones. The team is strong and they already have backing from large corporations and the Chinese government. After a 100% run up in price this week, there will likely be a pullback, but crazier things have happened in crypto, and its trading at $9.10 on Binance.

NEO (NEO) has been fairly steady these past few weeks, but continue to have one of the strongest developer communities out there. NEO trades at $42 at the moment, but is extremely well established and any network positioned to be the premier blockchain ecosystem in China is definitely worth having in the portfolio.

ADA (Cardano) - Cardano has also seen a large burst in volume and a bit of a moon pump.  The market cap is now in the top 10 and it will be interesting to see what happens this week. The network promises unmatched privacy and is written in Haskell, which is enables code to be written in a more secure matter. The network also intends to issue an ADA debit card. Considering it was created by an Ethereum founder, it's worth considering. It currently trades at $0.10 on Bittrex.

The opinions expressed on Crypto Bull are in no way financial advice and are only opinions. We are not responsible for any losses incurred as a result of reading our blog.