Aeto's Crypto Weekly Roundup 1/4/18
Metrics
Total Market Cap: $761 billion (+34% w/w)
Ripple and Rockets
All around insane week for many top “altcoins” (non-Bitcoin), especially protocol coins —
- Cardano ADA +190% w/w
- Stellar XLM +269% w/w
- Tron TRX +412% w/w
- Neo NEO +72% w/w
— but Ripple XRP really shook headlines as the coin, an oft-maligned project for being centralized, overtook Ethereum for the #2 spot by market cap (and #1 by total supply). XRP went from $1.47 and $57 billion market cap to $3.56 and $138 billion. Possible reasons for the jump: Coinbase addition rumors, Koreans, and hedge funds (?).
Cardano
Redditors are concerned that Cardano, a recent market favorite for its high degree of peer-reviewed technical concepts, is now worth more than SpaceX by market cap. ADA is a classic "whitepaper" project (no product except for a whitepaper).
Stellar
Someone dug up a gem about Stripe (a real-world online payments company) lending Stellar $3M in 2014, which was repaid with 2 billion XLM coins. Each XLM token is currently worth $0.80 (that’s a cool $1.6 billion repayment).
Tron
Charlie Lee (Founder of Litecoin) calls out Tron as mostly hype, and Justin Sun (Founder of Tron) strikes back about Charlie selling all his LTC. Crypto Twitter is the best Twitter.
The Neo Ecosystem
A G3 (NEO + Elastos + Bitmain) Summit was held in China yesterday discussing blockchain technology and project visions. NEO hit $100 later that night as, along with general market exuberance, traders anticipate a slew of ICOs on the NEP5 protocol. NEP5 coin returns have been great so far.
US Closes Like-Kind Tax Election
As the new year rolls around, crypto traders are up in arms (in the USA, at least) about the latest tax bill, specifically Section 1031 which closes a gray area around reporting crypto-crypto trades as “like-kind” and thus deferring capital gains or losses. Popular places to move with more favorable tax laws include Germany and Hong Kong.
A perhaps coincidental theme around the rise of many coins this week is their low and often sub-$1 nominal value (as opposed to total market cap). Remember folks, there’s more to a coin than its nominal price.
See you guys next week —
This post originally appears on my personal blog.
Last week: Aeto's Crypto Weekly Roundup 12/28/17
Crypto Weekly Roundup is for informational purposes only and does not constitute any investment recommendations.