Editor’s Note: Adam will be sending out a new altcoin recommendation later today. The coin trades on Kucoin. If you don’t have an account on Kucoin yet, you can register here.
This will be the first position in a brand-new speculative portfolio where Adam will hold very small coins with big upside. He’ll recommend that you make smaller investments in these coins due to their more volatile nature (and often less proven technology). Full details will follow soon.
Dear Member,
Let’s take a look at the market.
Altcoins continue to wrestle with regulatory concerns, and major exchanges Bittrex and Binance still haven’t reopened their doors to new customers. These sites are the primary “on ramps” to the altcoin markets, so their closure has hurt demand. Fortunately they should reopen account registration soon. Both exchanges have begun new registration limited to select invitees.
These exchanges are sacrificing market share and revenue to make sure they can adequately meet demand. It’s a smart move in the long term, but for now it’s not helping altcoins.
On the regulatory front, we got some very positive comments from the SEC chair today. Here’s a snippet from
Fortune‘s coverage published on Friday (emphasis mine):
| SEC chairman Jay Clayton on Thursday defended the agency’s recent regulatory steps on cryptocurrency, arguing that oversight will strengthen the industry.During a talk at Princeton University, Clayton also responded “absolutely not” to a question as to whether all ICOs were fraudulent, CoinDesk reports. Clayton went to explain the SEC’s steps to combat fraud will help the cryptocurrency industry develop.
The remarks from SEC’s highest-ranking official may signal a softening approach to ICOs. |
Our Coins
Unfortunately, our coins have been down with the market lately. They remain strong fundamentally, but they’re caught up in the pullback at the moment.
Let’s go over some recent highlights.
Nano (NANO) recently announced a major upgrade to the network called “Universal Blocks.” UB will dramatically increase the network’s efficiency and security.
Nano’s development team summed up the benefits in a recent update:
| This protocol upgrade increases the efficiency of the network, helps improve security and simplifies code needed to construct a block for developers and exchange. In this post we will detail the benefits of Universal Blocks as well as the implementation plan. |
You can read the rest of the post here. This is a major achievement for the team and demonstrates this coin’s laser focus on doing one thing well: fast, free transactions.
Nano is trading at $4.75.
Vertcoin (VTC) announced a new web design built by the community. It looks great and shows that Vertcoin has a loyal and involved userbase. You can see a preview here. Vertcoin remains one of the best pure-play cryptocurrencies out there, but it hasn’t been getting much respect in the market this year. I feel it’s one of the safest coins from a regulatory standpoint due to its age, distribution (which is wide and fair) and model.
Vertcoin is trading at $1.87.
OmiseGO (OMG) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with South Korea’s second-largest bank, Shinhan Bank. Shinhan is known as the crypto-friendly bank in Korea and counts many exchanges as clients.
No specific projects have been announced yet, but the two parties are clearly exploring ways to collaborate on possible payment solutions using the OmiseGO platform. More info can be found here.
OmiseGO is trading at $9.11 and has been holding its ground relatively well against the market. It remains one of the most widely respected projects in crypto.
Ark (ARK) released an encouraging marketing update in March, and it shows that it’s paying serious attention to this important aspect of any crypto project. It’s engaged with a “storytelling” consultant to help shape its brand. Explaining complex projects like Ark requires careful messaging, so this is a smart move.
Ark continues to have an extremely active GitHub presence, with logs showing a lot of development. A recent post on Reddit highlighted the frequency of updates. This is a very good sign, and it shows that developers have been busy improving the software and adding features.
Ark is trading at $2.04.
Decred (DCR) was recently featured in a Bitcoin Magazine feature article titled “Decred Sets Its Sights on Decentralization in 2018.”
Bitcoin Magazine is arguably the most prestigious publication in the crypto world, so this is a major win for Decred.
The article highlighted Decred’s innovative treasury system and ongoing work to improve and decentralize it. Here’s a snippet:
| Decred’s most important project, by far, is its treasury system. Last year, Decred applied voting to unactivated consensus changes in the daemon. Similar to how soft forks get activated in bitcoin, stakeholders in Decred vote by flipping a version bit in a block header. Once a majority threshold is reached, the new code activates automatically.Now, Decred wants to completely decentralize the control of its development funds. (Other projects are working toward similar goals, but if Decred pulls this off, it could be among the first to fully disintermediate the handling of treasury funds.) |
Decred remains widely respected in the crypto world, as evidenced by this prominent recent coverage. It’s been caught up in the pullback, but like our other coins, it remains fundamentally solid.
Decred is trading at $49.03.
Good investing,
Adam