Welcome to the first Crypto Buzz of 2022 by Kalkine TV I’m Sage and have we got a treat
for you in today’s show. 2021 saw more regulations for crypto, Layer 2 protocols for many blockchains,
increased blockchain interoperability, the rise of the NFTs, the growing DeFi sector
and the shift from bullish sentiments to a bearish tone from crypto investors as the
price of Bitcoin is now at about $41600, down 0.32%. levels it has not seen since the November
2021 slump. Ethereum is the closest it’s been to slipping under $3000 level since the
end of September 2021. ETH currently sits at $3067 being down about 2%. This data is
courtesy of coinmarketcap and was current during the Asian mid-market session.
But what about the energy consumption of crypto mining? In today’s show we’ll take a loot
at Forest Coin and the projected growth for the blockchain in energy market, what’s
going on with Livepeer crypto, as well as news from the exchanges Coinfund, Coinbase,
Bittrex and tZero. There’s also plenty from the defi and NFT space so stay watching till
the end.
The Cop 26 summit was held in Glasgow last year where many nations showcased what they
are doing to decrease carbon emissions coming from the burning of hydrocarbons and fossil
fuels. To meet the target of lowering the global temperature by 1.5-2 degrees Celsius,
global emissions would need to be halved this decade. If you mentioned this 10 years ago,
the idea would have been laughed out of the arena. You probably would have been labelled
an irrational conspiracy theorist. Now, we are at a critical juncture and something is
being done, we are about a quarter of way to reaching the set goal, the Shadow President
Mr. Ed Miliband of the Cop 26 Summit has confirmed when speaking to Jonathan Pie for his World’s
End Cop 26 special. It seems that somewhere, someone, somehow has to make some sacrifices
to maintain a respectable and just stewardship of the planet for future generations. So where
do we start? Should the finger be pointed at cryptocurrency that aims to find a way
to fund and find solutions to many of the world’s problems through blockchain and
defi, because Bitcoin mining uses the same amount of energy as a small country. If the
thought of production cuts at Australian mines is giving Gina Rinehart and Twiggy Forest
PTSD. Why aren’t the meat eaters being singled out? the world could go vego and stop eating
meat to decrease global emissions, or could we remove all the dyes and fragrances from
our bodywash to prevent soil desalination that kills trees, should the world elite stop
flying around in private jets. At present the crypto sector cops a lot of flack for
it’s energy consumption and although the Cardano Foundation has a goal to plant a million
trees, as does Sydney’s mayor Clover Moore. Canada’s Mogo a digital payments company
has created a “green” bitcoin. Mogo’s CEO Mr David Feller told IB Times, “Bitcoin
is the best performing asset class of the past decade with massive inflows of capital
daily,” “But the tremendous potential of bitcoin is hindered by its environmental
impact; By launching ‘green’ bitcoin, we’ve made buying bitcoin good for the planet
and arguably one of the most ESG-oriented investments anyone can make.”
Mawson Infrastructure and Hut 8 mining all have sustainable practices embedded as part
of their business model including growing trees and adding to the circular economy.
BitNile Holdings a diversified holdings company who runs a data centre where it mines bitcoin
has announced $52.2 Million in Secured Debt Financing. The company previously announced
in November 2021, that it was in acquisition of 20600 S19j Pro Antminers. By March 2022,
they are expected to receive 2,300 new Miners per month. Bitniles mining hashrate will
be significantly boosted by this purchase to 2.24 exhashes per second.
ForestCoin has started trading on exchangeforest.com early Jan 2022.
They aim to plant a tree for every single human on the planet. Forestcoin has a limit
of one forestcoin for every person on the planet. Forestcoins are being released in
25 stages. Currently forestcoin is in stage 1 and tree planters receive 10 coins per tree
planted. All you need to do is take a photo of the tree planted load it to the Forestcoin
app and it will be validated by other Forestcoin users and you will be offered Forestcoin via
the exchangeforest.com platform. Forest Coin a decentralised blockchain ledger has many
attractive attributes: Like using the Proof of Elapsed Time consensus algorithm, PoET
is a random, lottery-style mechanism to select the node that is going to win the new block.
Introduced by Intel back in 2016 miners need to register on the network. The process doesn’t
use much electricity as the miners need to wait a set randomly selected time before they
are able to start mining new blocks. They can go into “sleep mode” as they wait.
The miner who is allocated the shortest amount of time wins the block.
There is a Limited supply, the Coin reward will be lowered as more trees are planted
and it can run Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) smart contracts too, there will be no transaction
fees on Forestcoin.
Amid the COVID-19 crisis, the global market for Blockchain in Energy is estimated at US$1.5
Billion in the year 2020, this is projected to reach US$73.2 Billion by 2027, growing
at a tremendous CAGR of 73.7% over the period 2020-2027.
A good sign of this is Western Australia’s Powerledger’s token surging through
this week. POWR moved up from approx. $0.47-$0.71 over 9th-10th Jan. The price of POWR is currently
at $0.61 down 15% during the Asian mid-market session according to Coinmarketcap.
We’ve now reached the time for a short break, after the break we’ll take a look at news
from Coinbase, Livepeer Crypto and what Coinfund, tokens.com and Decentraland are adding to
the NFT space.
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Welcome back to the crypto buzz by kalkine TV. The twittersphere is rampant with talks
about the bearish slump we are noticing in the crypto market. @tedtalksmacro notes that
both bull and bear markets in the cryptocurrency ecosystem are becoming shorter in duration.
The analyst recommends that traders get used to range-bound price action. Historically,
bear markets are followed by a short-term increase in prices until the uncertainty and
fear among traders stopped. The Bitcoin Fear and Greed Index, an indicator of trader sentiment
towards the asset, indicated “extreme fear.” This is synonymous with a bear market. Whether
it is the high bond yields, 30 yr record levels of inflation or the volatility of the crypto
market causing a sell off there is still plenty pulsing in the sector. The news surrounding
Coinbase exchange, is that they are teaming up with Enfusion a provider of cloud-based
investment management software to enable financial institutions and investment fund managers
to easily trade crypto on Coinbase. This follows Australia’s Commonwealth Bank’s move to
allow trading of a handful of cryptos on it’s pilot platform late last year. This is a first
for Coinbase who has been operating since 2012 with the ethos that anyone, anywhere,
should be able to easily and securely send and receive Bitcoin. Coinbase is today one
of the most trusted and easy-to-use platforms for the cryptoeconomy. A good sign that there
is a future for crypto.
Blockchain and crypto utility has come more into focus as we notice some of the trends
in the cryptos that are pegged to accelerate into the new year. Livepeer crypto a decentralised
video transcoding network built on Ethereum’s blockchain. It announced last week that is
has raised $20 million in Series B-1 from new investors Alan Howard and Tiger Global.
Livepeer has been surging since the 2nd last week of December 2021.
LPT moved up from $35 approx on the 22 Dec to $47 approx on 25th Dec 2021. On the 5th
Jan 2022 the LPT token surged again to reach approximately $51.
Doug Petkanics, Livepeer’s CEO said “This rapid Series B extension is another welcome
endorsement of how we are executing on our vision of becoming the world’s open video
infrastructure. We’ve seen strong organic growth in demand for transcoding, as well
as growing awareness of the reliability, value and efficiency of web3 infrastructure.”
2021 was a year of expansion for Livepeer first in July with the closure of $20 million
series B funding from investors Northzone, Coinbase and Coinfund it managed to raise
$48 million and now employs 32 people. In October 2021, Livepeer expanded its video
streaming offerings through the acquisition of MistServer, whose content delivery technology
simplifies the complexities of video streaming.
Now for news from the NFT space $20 billiion worth of NFTs now are on Solana and Ethereum.
There is so much going in this space, so we’ll only scrape the surface.
Coinfund and Jump Capital have helped NFT financialization platform Bridgesplit to raise
$4.25 million. Bridgesplit aims to build a bridge of interoperability between NFTs and
DeFi by providing scalable infrastructure. Luke Truitt, co-founder of Bridgesplit said:
“The path to the next phase of web3 is paved by integrating the off-chain economy, from
in-game assets to traditional financial markets with on-chain equivalents as NFTs “Bridgesplit
is the base financial layer for cross-chain NFTs, providing the composability and liquidity
needed for the economy of the future.”
Coinfund’s CEO Jake Brukhman said:
“CoinFund’s NFT investment thesis views NFTs as a financial technology for uniquely
valued goods. While the most visible use cases of NFTs revolve around art, collectibles,
and in-game assets, the Birdgesplit team is rapidly advancing the state of the art in
this space by launching financialization products which will work on Solana and other blockchains,” said
Jake Brukhman, CEO of CoinFund.
Despite the ban from China on cryptocurrencies, it was reported by Forkast news that a shang-hai
auction house has sold a CryptoPunk collectible #8690 for US$820k.
Decentraland has also got some big news capitalising on the future by marketing to the students
and young developers it has teamed up with Tokens.com, a publicly listed company that
owns an inventory of Metaverse, DeFi and NFT based digital assets. Through defi functions
of staking, Tokens.com’s inventory of crypto assets are used to earn additional tokens.
In addition, Tokens.com is the majority owner of the Metaverse Group, one of the world’s
first virtual real estate companies. They are not only hosting a fashion week with a
lease from Decentraland to run the much anticipated event on their virtual property. This is a
first of it’s kind event due to be held in March 24-27th 2022. This event is touted
to attract the biggest names in fashion it will even have after party’s and immersive
experiences connection the digital and the physical worlds. Wowsers and if that’s not
enough tokens.com will
be