Blockchain Newsletter: What is happening to cryptocurrency valuations? [2017W24]

Altcademy Team wrote on 7 February 2018

This Week's Update on Bitcoin and Blockchain [2017W24]

Issue: Week 24 of 2017

Markets

Price per Bitcoin BTC is at ~$2950 USD (+18% from last Monday)
Price per Ethereum ETH is at ~$345 USD (+43% from last Monday)

Articles

What is happening to cryptocurrency valuations? by TechCrunch
Bitcoin Is At An All-Time High, But Is It About To Self-Destruct? by Forbes
Vladimir Putin Is Getting Interested in Bitcoin's Biggest Rival by Bloomberg
How Ethereum became the platform of choice for ICO’d digital assets by TechCrunch
Singaporean Dollar Tokenized Through Ethereum’s Blockchain by the Monetary Authority of Singapore by Trustnodes ( Project Report by Monetary Authority of Singapore )
Vitalik Buterin on Scaling Ethereum, Its Popularity in Asia and ICOs by Bitcoin Magazine
A long-running internal conflict could split the cryptocurrency in half by Slate
Looking Into Ethereum by Seeking Alpha
What is makercoin? by MakerDao
Introducing the Browser-based Blockchain by Nimiq

This week’s new initial coin offerings (ICOs)

Tezos ( Crowdsale Overview )
Tezos is an independent blockchain network created to address the centralization of network protocol development present in pioneering blockchain networks such as Bitcoin (Bitcoin Core) and Ethereum (Ethereum Foundation).
Tezos’s network comes with a set of governance rules for its stakeholders to approve protocol upgrades proposed by developers. Developers who propose an upgrade can attach an invoice to be paid out to their address upon approval. The upgrades are then deployed automatically. This reduces the need for core developers to rely on corporate sponsorship or foundation salaries and decentralizes the maintenance of the Tezos network.
Tezos tokens (Tezzies) power smart contracts on the Tezos network and allow votes on protocol amendments. Tezos will initially roll out with a proof of stake consensus protocol where the computing requirements to become a validator are relatively light. Each Tezzie holder can delegate themselves or several other delegates to create blocks and validate transactions. The higher the stake delegated to a validator, the more often they will be chosen to create blocks.
Tezzies are minted as reward for the block creator with nominal inflation. Tezos has raised $612,000 USD from September 2016 through March 2017 from hedge funds and high net-worth individuals. An allocation of up to $893,200 USD worth of Tezzies will be given to those early backers.
The crowdsale is uncapped, just like Ethereum crowdsale, and the exchange rate is set at 5,000 Tezzies for 1 Bitcoin. The crowdsale will last roughly 2 weeks or 2,000 Bitcoin blocks with an incentive bonus during 5 stages of the crowdsale. Backers who invest in the first 2 days and 18 hours will be given a bonus of 20% Tezzies, 15% in the second stage, 10%, 5% and 0% for the remaining stages.
Tezos Foundation, a nonprofit set up in Switzerland will overwatch the crowdsale and the early continuous development of Tezos for the next four to six years.
0x (White Paper)
0x is a project for creating exchange protocols for Ethereum based assets (digital tokens) using Ethereum smart contracts. Digital token holders can use 0x to exchange their Ethereum based digital tokens directly on the Ethereum network.
Orders created by makers (users who create a new order to sell or buy some token at a certain exchange rate) using the 0x protocol need to be broadcast to other users so they can take up the order (called takers).
To reduce friction costs, an off-chain order book needs to be kept to broadcast those orders, this is essentially what an exchange does. Except those “Relayers” (0x’s term for order book service providers) do not execute the trades on behalf of the users, they merely facilitate signalling between market participants.
Hosting and maintaining an order book is a service with a cost and therefore Relayers get to charge a transaction fee of the execution of a trade.
0x’s token ZRX is used by makers and takers to pay transaction fees to Relayers and for decentralized governance over 0x protocol updates. A total of 100,000,000 ZRX tokens will be created and 70% of which will be sold in the crowdsale. 18% is allocated to the Foundation, 10% to the team and 2 % to the advisors. Crowdsale date will be in either Q3 or Q4 2017.
Status (White Paper)
Status is a free mobile messaging platform and browser to interact with decentralized applications on the Ethereum Network. Status will run an Ethereum node on the mobile directly connected to the Ethereum Network.
Users will be able to send and receive encrypted messages, smart contracts and payments. Browse, chat and interact with decentralized applications, store and control digital tokens and assets with the Status Wallet.
A Status Token SNT will be used to fuel the Status network and its services. Including Username registration on the Status Network, a Decentralized Push Notification Market (similar to last week's Kin), Governance of the Status client, Community Curation of content, Sticker Market, and a proposed fiat-to-crypto “Teller Network” for exchanging between fiat and cryptocurrency in the local vicinity of a user.
Crowdsale of SNT will begin on June 17, 2017. The exchange rate is set at 10,000 SNT per ETH. The crowdsale period will last for 14 days or within 24 hours of reaching the first ceiling of 12 million Swiss Francs. Crowdsale will continue until the remaining hidden ceilings are reached to prevent small number of backers owning majority of the tokens.
Bancor (White Paper)
Bancor is creating a platform for users to create Digital tokens on the Ethereum Network without the need to write any code.
Bancor’s tokens are called Smart Tokens, each comes with a protocol that enables users to buy the Smart Token for an accepted Reserve Token (Ether and other Digital Tokens on Ethereum) and sell the Smart Token for one of its reserve tokens directly through the smart token’s contract (like an automated currency exchange machine).
Use cases of Bancor’s Smart Tokens include loyalty points, crowdfunding, token changers that will allow users to exchange existing digital tokens directly with a smart contract without the need of another trading party, and decentralized token baskets which function similarly to Exchange Traded Funds.
Bancor is creating the Bancor Network Token (BNT) as the first Smart Token. BNT will hold a single reserve in Ether and can be used as reserve token for other Smart Tokens. Users who want to purchase those other Smart Tokens will need to have BNT. As users purchase more BNT for Ether, the price of BNT increases.
The BNT crowdsale is happening on June 12, 2017 10:00 GMT. Backers will transfer Ether to the BNT Smart Token contract to exchange for BNT. New BNT will be created for each Ether transferred.