altcoins

Jun 02 2022

Seeing Through the FUD: How the Avalanche Network is Saving the NFT

(Editor’s Note: we’ve let our friend Anthony take the reins for this guest post.)

When FUD is at maximum and the bubble seems to have been thoroughly popped already, learn why the future of crypto looks bright for artists, developers, and users. I’m super bullish on Avax for at least three reasons: subnets, a talented artist community, and the best tokenomics project I have ever seen: Chikn.

As of this writing, the markets have taken mega hits around the world. Fear, uncertainty, and doubt — better known to crypto enthusiasts as FUD — is a term that gets thrown around a lot but it’s representative of how emotionally-driven many crypto investors are and how incredibly wary most are of scams and the completely insane price volatility that crypto is known for. And they have a right to be hesitant since a reported $2.2 billion was stolen via crypto scams only in 2021 — and anyone trading NFTs can tell you that it’s like navigating a minefield sometimes. Those looking for easy money without any due diligence or attention were getting rekt by outrageous APR pump and dump scams, elaborate cash grabs, extreme volatility, and even the recent top 10 coin, Luna, getting obliterated due to a massive exploit with the UST algorithmic stablecoin.

Putting down their bloodshot eyes from their screens for a minute after 48 hours of staring at red candles, the crypto trader of 2022 is a battle-hardened veteran that is being told to go outside and take their minds off the market for a while before they go looney. Not too long ago, they were the green rookies getting into the degenerate world of NFTs and crypto trading. They have seen firsthand just how difficult trading can be — it’s said that 95% of traders lose money.

Often, people have no idea what they’re getting into as their nephew or third cousin or whoever told them to buy a dog coin back in 2017 and maybe they should have (nephew, is it too late to buy the dog coin?) and then wonder why their wallet went to 0 after plugging their metamask seed phrase into a phishing website (wait, I can’t email customer support or the SEC to get my money back?). These stories are far too common, unfortunately, and I barely scratched the surface here.

It’s not just noobs getting destroyed also, but experienced vets that have been scammed and phished by professional, anonymous criminals taking advantage of the wild west unregulated DeFi space. But it’s all quite interesting, isn’t it? We are still here digging in our trenches.

*Insert my affiliate link to a hardware wallet here*. Just kidding, but seriously, look into getting a hardware wallet such as Ledger Nano X. Nobody will be able to make transactions without you physically using your device to approve it, which can prevent malicious code from emptying your wallet of your crypto and NFTs–it is happening all the time.

This is just the tip of the fudding iceberg, and even experienced veterans can get fooled by a professional scammer. Fortunately, there is a light at the end of the tunnel and silver lining to all of this. That light is the limitless ingenuity of the human spirit and how the cooperation of developers and artists on the Avalanche Network are redefining how NFTs are utilized, including pioneering art, tokenomics, community, and Avax Subnets. The silver lining may be that all these shenanigans and growing pains are happening now while crypto is still in its infancy — like my mom said, it’s better to get chickenpox when you’re a kid than when you’re an adult. The future looks good as we learn from expensive lessons and mistakes and build and grow into a more inclusive and safer Web 3.0 experience. Avax is leading the way on this development and I’ll briefly explain why I think this.

Three reasons why I’m bullish on AVAX

1. Avax Subnets

Scaling is a major problem for the most popular networks. Ethereum could be said to be a victim of its own success — with more people using it come the insane eth gas fees we have reluctantly grown accustomed to, with many people using some kind of app to track gas prices and only do their business on off-peak hours — which could still be way too expensive for practical, transactional use. Not to mention that claiming rewards from the node projects right now costs more in Ethereum than they are actually making in claims, effectively killing even the “best” node projects such as Strong Nodes.

Avalanche is helping to solve this problem by building the foundations that create attractive opportunities for project developers. Subnets allow devs to build their own custom chains using their own custom native token as the gas fee. These networks can be optimized based on the needs of the organization or project. At least a few DeFi projects have already utilized subnets, namely DeFi Kingdoms and Crabada, and I know at least DFK is still under constant development despite some recent horrible price action with their token (but I could say that about literally every token right now including Bitcoin — although I shalt not fud as I’m still bullish in the long term). On those projects, gas fees are paid not in Avax, but in that project’s own native token, which basically means the gas is ridiculously cheap.

GameFi is particulary suited to being hosted on its own subnet, as the game tokens can be used to pay for gas fees

Avax subnets are still in the baby stages and there’s so much potential for this tech. Entire blockchains could even be ported over to Avax subnets. You can look here for a “subnet demo” filled with lots of neat statistics and links.

Read the official website for more info about Subnets and why there is such massive potential for this technology.

2. Artists are pioneering the use cases and utility of NFT on Avalanche, with very affordable prices (unlike Eth)

Artists are wisely utilizing the NFT as another primary sales avenue, and for good reason because it is allowing independent artists — especially independent female artists — a chance at making revenue. Historically, artists have always had clients or benefactors and so this is a continuation of that.

However, artists collaborating on NFT projects are changing the game. These are high-powered NFTs that are sometimes breaking technological limitations and changing the idea of what an NFT is and can do.

For example, Swarms is a brilliant art project that gives super-detailed 4K HD bee art as part of an imaginative world that is an analog to our own world and culture, inviting the NFT owner to be a part an interactive artistic experience. There are seven different bee variations, called genotypes, and each bee has six body parts of varying rarity. You can evolve your bee by sacrificing another bee, which levels up your current NFT to “GEN II”. The NFT metadata changes as well as the artwork, giving you a brand new NFT that is based on the “genetic material” of the previous NFTs. It is an awesome blend of tech and co-creative storytelling. Swarms develops collaboratively with the Swarms NFT community, dubbed the Beekeepers.

The awesome lore gives context to the art and makes ownership fun and exciting. The project is clearly just in the early stages with a long and exciting roadmap. You can check out some of the articles I wrote about Swarms for more info — it’s awesome.

Metropius is a new multimedia Dieselpunk project which just launched their first NFT collection a few weeks ago. Minting a Metropius NFT allows one to claim an actual hard copy comic book for each NFT they mint. Years in development, Metropius is an award-winning animation that has expanded to include comic books, GameFi, a board game, merch, four NFT collectables, Augmented Reality (AR) and other perks. It has a long roadmap with neat rewards for holders. The metaverse will eventually be fueled by the $DIESEL native token which will be exchangeable with Avax. You can see my article about it here. There’s lots of active development going on with it.

There’s a lot more going on in the Avax art department, but these two are my favorite art projects right now, and it would be a good introduction to the type of creativity happening on Avalanche. It’s a great blend of pioneering tech and artistic ingenuity.

For the general user, Avax NFTs are also way more affordable – most NFTs are minting for only 1 or 2 Avax. Avax had an all time high of $134, which is considerably less than Ethereum’s high of $4732, with most NFTs minting for a bare minimum of a few hundred dollars and often trading for much more. Right now, you can buy a Swarms NFT for just under $60.

Avax also has a super great community, mostly through Twitter and Discord, and there are often Twitter spaces with giveaways and talks and lots of developments being shared by not only the artists but also developers and other community members such as myself.

3. Stake-to-Earn Tokenomics: Featuring Chikn

When I buy an NFT now, I’m wondering if I will get any benefit from it. Sometimes, sure, I buy one just to support an artist I like, and that’s it. However, more and more NFTs — whether to compete or whatever — are offering various utility and the most popular of this is probably the stake-to-earn tokenomics model, where ‘staking’ your NFT will generate tokens which are then useable within the project’s ecosystem to upgrade the NFT. The token can also be traded for Avax/USDC/other coins (which is the real end game for these projects — people are looking to earn).

One project definitely worth looking into is Chikn.Farm.

Out of every NFT project I’ve encountered that offers utility or earning potential, Chikn is by far my favorite.

It’s really quite simple which makes it so smart and compelling. Chikn NFTs lay $EGG which can then be used to upgrade the Chikn, but EGG is also used for other NFTs in the system including the Farm and Roostr NFT, which all work together to create a neat little game where you can choose to upgrade your NFTs, thereby generating more tokens in the future, or just selling them immediately on a decentralized exchange, or DEX, such as Trader Joe which is the best and most popular Avalanche DEX.

Anyway, super smart projects like Chikn have proven that NFT stake-to-earn projects can have both very interesting art as well as profitable and sustainable Tokenomics. And what’s really great about it is that they are basically passive income nodes that are MUCH easier to liquidate, since the NFT itself is generating daily tokens and there’s no need to lock anything up for long term-if markets go south, you can sell (and in a successful project like Chikn, you will find a buyer — Chikn NFT floor price is currently 32 Avax as of this writing –it minted for 1 Avax each last November).

Bullish on Crypto and Super Bullish on Avax

Although I barely want to glance at my portfolio right now as I’ve been pretty unskilled at catching bottoms recently, I do believe that just buying and holding Avax for the next few years will end up being a profitable investment, regardless of any short term fluctuations. It seems the general sentiment is bullish but we are just being subjected to macroeconomics that takes its toll on everything. In any case, it’s a very interesting space to be involved with. I think once the real potential of subnets are realized, we are going to see a price explosion on Avax similar to Ethereum. If Avax had even just half the market cap of Eth, the price would be around $400–500. As of today we are about $22–25. And remember when Ethereum dipped to $80 and you wished you emptied your savings into it then? NFA at all but just saying….

~ AntCat

Apr 23 2017

Four Coins that Could Quadruple by This Time Next Year

Okay, folks. It’s time. First, the disclaimer:

We don’t provide individual advice. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Seek professional investment, financial, and legal advice before investing in any asset, let alone cryptocurrencies, which are a brand-new, emerging class of assets. Read our recommendations and take them with a grain of salt, do your own research to back up your investments, and be prepared. Use this site at your own risk.

Now that we’ve scared you, here’s our post.

We gotta admit that this is a rather fun universe we’re entering here. Part dot-com boom (before the bubble), part options trading when it was just invented. And part gambling, because, let’s face it, some of these ICOs and emerging cryptocurrencies are like playing the lottery or playing roulette.

That being said, though, the idea of creating an entirely new form of money, based on computing power and solving code and a lot of stuff that’s way over the heads of mere mortals – well, that’s just plain thrilling.

So, as we jumped head-first into the pool with this post, we tried to think of the particulars that could make these coins actually go crazy in the market. Some of this is going to be a little too techno, and some of it is going to be real-world. All of it is mere speculation: I can’t see the future.

But if you take our “BRED Portfolio” post as an example of our ability to be soothsayers, we might be on to something here. (If you had invested in the BRED Portfolio on April 1, you’d be up 12.08% in just three weeks.)

Enough background. Let’s dive in: Four Coins that Could Quadruple By This Time Next Year.

#1: Litecoin

The first-ever #subway restaurant accepting #LTC! And soon there will be more. Make #Litecoin great again! @SUBWAY @SatoshiLite @slushcz @ pic.twitter.com/idpiV5hl8i

— Oldrich Peprla (@OldrichPeprla) April 21, 2017

That does it for me. Seriously, though, once you’re starting to see a coin used side-by-side with Bitcoin, you now know it’s got real-world functionality.

Litecoin (LTC) is about to hit its fourth birthday, and it’s actually well below, on a USDT basis, its all-time high of $50.27 a coin (achieved in November of 2013). It’s that factor first and foremost on our list of reasons why this coin could quadruple by this time next year.

Volume of late has been huge – 9-figures worth traded a couple times in April – but its utility, to the tune of transactions per day in the thousands (more than double the number of Dash transactions, per this chart), tells us that the coin is actually being used out there in the wild.

Over the weekend, the LTC/BTC pair was trading at .01 to .012-to-1 – support kept the price above .01 pretty much all day on Saturday. This is another good sign.

Expect volatility, though – I’d hazard a guess that it may bounce around in the .009 to .01 range for awhile. That’s a good price to jump in at.

Mandatory mention of Segwit here. LTC is moving toward Segwit. Segwit is important. Let’s all talk about Segwit!

Disclosure: We’re long Litecoin at the present moment.

#2: Dogecoin

Yeah, I can’t believe it either. A coin named after an Internet meme…you CANNOT be SERIOUS? Dogecoin. I’m serious.

DOGE had more than 10,000 transactions in the past 24 hours – more than Litecoin; third in the rankings behind Bitcoin and Ethereum – and its market cap is $50m+. So it’s legitimate.

What really jumped out to me? The average transaction value. It’s pretty low ($310 or so) when compared with others; the median transaction of around $3.28 tells me that people are using this coin as a Venmo substitute. (Whether that’s true or not, I don’t know. But I’m guessing fewer lattes are purchased and more random paybacks and IOUs are covered with this one.)

Dogecoin trades around 35-38 Satoshi of late. Its all-time low is 15. I see more mainstream use in its future. I wouldn’t be shocked to see it in the 60s in a month or so.

#3: Digibyte

Did we mention Segwit above? We did. Here’s a link to the latest on Digibyte Segwit activation.

To the layman, this means little, but to those in the know, here’s the general consensus:

Segwit is important; its adoption will drive the price of the coin adopting it higher
It may never happen with Bitcoin, it might happen with Litecoin
It looks imminent with Digibyte.

Place your bets: with a current market capitalization of less than $10m, do you think the bargain hunters will start shopping for the coin that is the first to activate Segwit? Honestly, quadrupling might be a lowball estimate. We’d accumulate anywhere in the low 100 Satoshi range.

Disclosure: we’re long Digibyte right now.

#4: Bitcoin

Didn’t see THAT one coming, did ya?

Let’s assume that Bitcoin stays around $1200 USDT, giving it a market cap of right around $20B. Now, let’s also assume that Bitcoin becomes the word synonymous with all digital currency, crytpocurrency, and altcoins (even though it’s NOT an altcoin), sorta like “Kleenex” brand facial tissue is everyone’s word for facial tissue.

I was going to say that there’s all sorts of crazy economic stuff going on in the world, but heck, I’d focus on two things that should drive the value of Bitcoin way up in the next 12 months:

Brexit
The tenuous state of the EU and the Euro

Now, that might get folks moving toward the US Dollar – which is a fair guess – but if you factor in the dicey nature of the US economy and the role of the Federal Reserve in money printing…do you think the masses will want to start putting their money into the US Dollar? Especially when an infinite supply of dollars could, technically, be printed?

Do you think a $5,000 price point for one Bitcoin is out of the question?

Disclosure: We are currently long Bitcoin.

Additional notes: we do not make any trades in any of the listed coins here for 24 hours after the date we publish this report.

Apr 15 2017

An ICO to Watch: Exscudo (EON)

We must admit: the first thing that got us interested in Exscudo was their “bounty program.” So if you don’t want to read the ins and outs and hear what makes this coin different, just skip to this link and sign up.

(Sidebar: if you are working on an ICO and you want us to know about it, let us know.)

Exscudo Basics

If you read the mission statement, you get the sense that the goal is to bridge the traditional and the digital, maybe serving as “Bitcoin meets SWIFT.” Or as “Ethereum meets Nasdaq.”

Or maybe if one of the crypto exchanges decided to launch its own currency. (Which…well, I’m not sure how a Poloniex currency would work.)

The core of the Exscudo value proposition is their proprietary technology, called EON, which is touted as a “flexible new generation blockchain technology.”

In any event, they might appear to be taking a really big bite out of the crypto economy – and maybe that’s a good thing, maybe it isn’t.

Here’s a bullet-pointed list of everything they’re planning on doing:

An exchange platform
Trading terminals
Wallet
Crypto debit card
Decentralized protected messenger
A merchant system.

If you’re thinking “that sounds like a lot,” you’re right.

So…how will they pull it off?

Let’s go to the videotape…

All told, this is an extremely audacious project.

ICO stats

They plan on issuing 240,000,000 during the ICO, with 150,720,000 available for sale (the rest will be allocated as detailed here; this is a sensible part of any ICO).

They’ve fixed the price of the coins – EONs – at 0.0002 BTC. Current math, then, tells us the following:

1 BTC = $1,200 USD
1 EON = $0.24 USD
ICO raise = $57,600,000

About that bounty…

Again, what really piqued our interest was the bounty program. Here’s where folks – like us, we’re members of this program – can potentially earn tokens. They’ve set aside 1 percent of the overall available for the bounty program – 2,400,000 coins. To earn them, you need to do things like “retweet” (“RT” for the uninitiated) their official tweets about the program, or like their Facebook status, or agree to say nice things about them on Bitcoin Talk.

It remains to be seen how quickly the bounty program will grow; at last writing, tweets were holding steady at around 500 RTs, and they had yet to report what was happening with individual bounty participants.

But we’re patient.

We plan on following this coin throughout its ICO, and beyond. We’ll keep you updated on what we learn.

One last thing…

Anyone else remember the name of Portugal’s pre-Euro currency? Yes, the “Escudo.” Hmmm.

Apr 07 2017

Launching an Altcoin? Write a Manifesto

“Love me a good manifesto.” Actually, we’re struck by how many altcoins HAVE manifestos – and why they feel the need AND they choose the word “manifesto” in the first place.

Corporations have Mission Statements, Vision Statements, Core Values – and they normally put these things in initial caps and plaster them on walls throughout their organization. The thinking is that you get your morning coffee, I guess, and you walk by and read these statements, maybe genuflect, then get on with your day; but they’re always on your mind as you go forth and conquer the business world (likely for the benefit of the owners or shareholders of the company that just gave you your free morning coffee). (What if that coffee ISN’T free? I guess that’s a subject for another day.)

The Manifesto – beware, initial caps about to permeate this article – is an Italian term, and it appears the first Manifesto of note was written in Baghdad in the 11th Century. I, for one, always think of “The Communist Manifesto” as the most dominant manifesto to use “Manifesto” in the title – though it appears that a whole host of other documents – like the Declaration of Independence – can be called “manifestos.”

It sounds like there’s a reason, though, for these documents: you get fed up, or you don’t like the way things are going, or you’re just looking to make some changes and get others on board. So you write a manifesto, nail it to the wall somewhere, and you’re off to the races.

The Bitcoin Manifesto

The cryptocurrency movement started with Satoshi Nakamoto’s original paper, “Bitcoin, a Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System,” which is considered required reading for those who want to understand how Bitcoin works (and, in turn, how all of these other follow-on currencies work).

It’s a simple abstract (if you speak a little bit of programming language). And it started us down this path.

Why do you need a manifesto?

When we Googled “Bitcoin Manifesto,” the above popped up – even though it doesn’t have “manifesto” in the title. And then we Googled “Ethereum Manifesto” and this is what we got: Vitalik Buterin’s white paper, or write-up, or whatever…it, too, is not called a “manifesto.”

What’s interesting here, and what actually prompted this article, is the following chain of events:

April 30, 2016. Ethereum launches its DAO – “Distributed Autonomous Organization” – and it takes off “like a runaway train” (as we learn in this awesome article on Quartz);
June 17, 2016. The DAO is hacked, to the tune of $50m USD in Ether.
July 2016. A “hard fork” is announced; this and subsequent hard fork in November 2016 are actually the third and fourth hard forks.

But somewhere in there, the old school and new school Ether disagreed: thus ETH and ETC. It was the DAO that got folks disagreeing: should it be altered? Should it be left untouched?

Enter PIVX and its manifesto

Honestly, we had heard about PIVX and we had seen a little bit of ticker-symbol chatter on Poloniex. However, since it’s not traded on Poloniex, we weren’t all that familiar with it.

But their manifesto tells us quite a bit about how they feel about the DAO.

“The DAOS are untouchable.” (It should be “DAOs” but we’ll cut them some slack.)

PIVX also feels rather strongly about privacy, it seems. Take a look here at their “tale of the tape,” as they compare their coin to Dash:

Altcoin Manifesto Theatre

Let’s be honest here: we could probably spend all day talking about all sorts of coin manifestos – in fact, someone else did that here and why not just link to their post? – but the point of our post is that PIVX appears to want to hang its hat on a couple key themes: “Privacy” and “Governance” seem to be the two biggies (assuming you use “DAO” and “Governance” interchangeably).

Bringing us to the point of this article, and the key takeaway for you: “What does your coin stand for?” In other words, are you a “me, too” coin, created to take advantage of the fact that this is still the wild West and you can pretty much get funding for just about anything these days? Or are you putting a stake in the ground and saying “this is what we’re about.”

And I guess if you’re the latter…put it in a manifesto.

Mar 22 2017

FOMO, FUD, Pump and Dump, and Other Trading Caveats

Look at that list…so many coins! So many wild mood swings! So much volatility!

Seriously – if you’re new to trading altcoins and crypto and you want to move beyond the mainstream coins with the high market caps and the household names, you might see some of these and think: PROFIT! I can get in and out, make a quick buck, double my money, and keep doing that til I retire as a Bitcoin Millionaire!

Wait. Hold on. Just a second. You’re likely to get taken for a ride – and you might not like the ending of this roller coaster. Here’s what we mean.

ADVERTISEMENT: If you haven’t gotten started with Coinbase yet, here’s a link. Make a qualifying Bitcoin deposit, you’ll get a bonus, and we’ll get a bonus.

FOMO

Of course, “Fear Of Missing Out” is a widely used term these days. If you don’t go out to the bar, you might miss big fun. If you don’t watch the show, you might miss a cultural experience. And, if you don’t invest in the next big altcoin, you’re going to miss out on big profits.

Careful of that last one.

If we’re using the example from this screengrab, Einsteinium, we see a 64% bump in the price – which, crazy enough, is sorta kinda the norm for some of these altcoins. You don’t want to miss out on THAT ACTION, do ya?

But the FOMO danger here is that old saw about trying to time the market. Take a look at this chart, from the past couple days of EMC2.

Oh. Remember to time the market at your own peril.

FUD?

Yes, Elmer. FUD. “Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt.”

In the top screengrab, look immediately above and immediately below the Einsteinium price: STEEM is down almost 12%, Shadow is down more than 7%. You could guess that what drove EMC2 up might be the same thing that drove STEEM and Shadow down. Fear (maybe of missing out, maybe that it’s not the greatest coin on the planet), Uncertainty – because, really, what do we know about ANY of these coins and their long-term prospects? – and Doubt because there’s likely somebody on Reddit who has you convinced that Shadow is toast.

Pump and Dump

This is a classic tactic employed by small-cap stocks; depending upon how it’s done, it’s possibly unethical, possibly illegal in the stock market. Simply put, first a group hypes a stock, creating perceived value, and, they hope, driving up the price. That’s the “Pump.” Once the group gets the stock where they want it to go, they cash out, take their profits, and leave those who bought in high holding the bag.

But this is the wild west, so anything goes in these markets, right?

Here’s where, IMHO, Poloniex does a great job with their “Trollbox,” or the chatroom that’s attached to their trading platform. Start saying things like “wow, XYZ coin is going to the moon!” or “XYZ will hit 10,000 tomorrow, better get yours now!” and you get banned for an hour or a day, depending upon how egregious your sins are.

They’re trying to keep folks from pumping and dumping – especially with thinly traded coins whose prices might be the most volatile.

Trading caveats like these might make you ask: what should I do?

Research. Investigate. Ask Questions.

We don’t give investment advice here, and past performance of any coin is not indicative of future results. But, really, are you going to base your investment on what some rando says on the chatbox?

We’d encourage you to look around, visit other sites, check out the underlying fundamentals of any of these coins. Smith and Crown is a great place to start – look at the market cap, the age of the coin, how many will be released. Visit the individual sites of these coins, too. And don’t forget chatrooms, Reddit, Slack, and the like; you’re often a quick Google search away from the answers to the questions you didn’t even know you had.