Monero, Dash и Zcash staged a bullish rally
During this period, the privacy coins Monero (XMR), Dash (DASH), and Zcash (ZEC) have bucked up significantly. Obviously, the current bullish mood in the crypto market drives tokens that have been in the shadows for some time. Of these three coins, Dash showed the largest increase. In 7 days, the token rose by 125% to $318. It is followed by Zcash, which jumped by 70%, and Monero with a growth rate of more than 50%.
Despite a recent delisting by several exchanges, Monero is holding up pretty well. Once again, the coin has demonstrated the ability not only to restore positions but also to increase its quotes. According to technical charts, Monero is in the ascending channel and, according to analysts, the bulls may push the coin to the level of $300 shortly. But in this price region, the coin may face serious resistance from bears, followed by a short-term correction. At the time of writing, Monero was trading at $277.
In general, this is typical of the crypto market, when one coin from a segment begins to appreciate, other coins tighten and also go up. In addition to these anonymous cryptocurrencies, a similar correlation is often observed between Dogecoin (DOGE), Stellar’s Lumen (XLM), and XRP.
Buterin announced the first Ethereum 2.0 hard fork
On February 15, Vitalik Buterin presented the roadmap for the first Ethereum 2.0 hard fork, tentatively codenamed HF1. According to the plan, key updates will relate to the integration of support for light wallets, the modernization of the mechanism for penalizing validators, and the elimination of protocol vulnerabilities.
One of the most important changes is support for light clients – nodes with minimal resource requirements, with the ability to work on mobile devices. Thus, the developers expect to create an ecosystem of light wallets that can verify the blockchain themselves, instead of relying on external service providers.
To implement this decision, special “sync committees” will be created. These are groups of randomly selected validators with the authority to create special signatures that make it easier to determine the correct version of the chain. Every 27 hours, the composition of the validator group is reelected from a randomly selected 1024 validators.
Also, a hard fork implies a change in the mechanism for calculating penalties for validators in case of their inactivity. It is great news, especially for stakers who, due to problems with the Internet connection, received fines on an equal footing with those who deliberately disconnected. Now force majeure events such as unstable internet connection or power outages will be taken into account.
What will it look like in practice? For example, if one validator is disconnected 10 times for 6 minutes, which in total equals 1 hour, it will lose only 0.1% of its balance. If a validator has been inactive for a full hour continuously, it loses 1% of its balance. Thus, adopting a more flexible approach to inaction leakage can make life much easier for many stakers.
Cryptocurrency and American presidents
At a time when Bitcoin and Ethereum continue to set new price records and do not leave news feeds with loud forecasts, on the network new materials appear on the attitude of opinion leaders to cryptocurrency. In particular, our attention was drawn to a study on how the valuation of cryptocurrency has changed in the highest political circles of the US.
Back in 2016, the news that entrepreneur Matthew Roszak gave Bitcoins to former President Bill Clinton caused a great resonance. Many crypto enthusiasts expected that after such a step, Clinton would comment on his attitude towards digital currencies and, possibly, give a “blessing” to the blockchain. But that didn’t happen.
The 44th president of the US, Barack Obama, was also extremely careful in his statements about cryptocurrency, which, of course, cannot be said about Donald Trump. Recently stepped down as president, Trump did not stand on ceremony in his comments on the cryptocurrency. He has repeatedly stated that he is not a fan of Bitcoin, does not consider cryptocurrency to be full-fledged money. It was exactly during the presidency of Trump when a wave of claims and lawsuits from the Securities Commission rolled on some blockchain projects.
It is too early to conclude the attitude of the Biden administration to the crypt. His political team includes both open opponents of the cryptocurrency and its adherents. In any case, in government circles, the issue of cryptocurrency regulation has been hanging in the air for a long time, and it will no longer be possible to delay its decision.
Ethereum-based domain names go mainstream
Unstoppable Domains, an Ethereum-based project and the main provider of blockchain domains, has delighted crypto enthusiasts with a new collaboration. The company announced the integration with the Cloudflare DNS service. Now users will be able to access sites with the .crypto domain extension through any browser.
Previously, sites with a “.crypto” URL were only accessible through browsers that integrated the extension themselves. In particular, back in March 2020, the Opera web browser joined the support for the “.crypto” domain name. This was the first time that a major web browser targeting the traditional DNS model has moved away from the “centralized path” and gave the green light to decentralized domains.
Unlike traditional ones, blockchain domains are stored by the owner in a dedicated wallet, not by a domain registrar like GoDaddy. Thus, the domain is under the control of the user, he does not need to pay an annual renewal fee. Also, this extension allows you to close the problem of user data leakage. As practice shows, traditional sites are guilty of this issue, since they cannot provide complete protection and confidentiality.
According to the CEO of Unstoppable Domains, “Ethereum-based solutions can completely change the old Internet.” As of today, nearly half a million domain names with “.crypto” have been registered. Well, perhaps the era of Web 3.0 isn’t that far from us.
Investing in Bitcoin does not slow down
More than 5% of CFOs of large companies announced their readiness to invest in Bitcoin by the end of 2021. Another 11% of corporations plan to add cryptocurrency to their balance within the next 3 years. Such data was provided by the analytical company Gartner.
The poll showed that some large companies are still sticking to a wait-and-see strategy. About 70% of respondents indicated that they are closely watching the sentiment in the financial market and those players who have already boarded the crypto train or are about to do so.
When asked why companies are delaying buying cryptocurrency while others are making multimillion-dollar investments, respondents said they expect clear steps from regulators.
According to ARK Invest’s assumption, if “all companies from the S&P 500 set aside 1% of their money” in BTC, the price of the flagship cryptocurrency would rise by about $40,000 and thus get as close as possible to $90,000.
Elon Musk commented on the attitude towards Bitcoin and DOGE
The recent high-profile statements by Elon Musk about Dogecoin do not give rest to major players in the financial market. Especially when you consider the fact that the tweets about DOGE as a popular cryptocurrency coincided with Tesla’s decision to invest $1.5 billion in Bitcoin.
Specifically, Binance CEO Changepeng Zhao, in an interview with Bloomberg, expressed his surprise at Musk’s “obscure and fanatical” claims about Dogecoin. Of course, Musk could not help commenting on this interview with his inherent note of sarcasm.
To reaffirm his “love for DOGE,” Musk intrigued Twitter followers over the weekend. He posted a note saying that he “set up several mining farms to mine DOGE with the kids.” Great toys, aren’t they?)