REN price spiked to a new all-time high shortly after its recent integration with Binance Smart Chain.
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Ren (REN) price underwent a strong 65% breakout on Feb.19 as the interoperability-focused protocol saw continuing accumulation from whale wallets holding more than 1 million REN.
Data from Cointelegraph Markets and TradingView shows that REN rose from $0.99 on Feb. 18 to establish a new all-time high of $1.84 on Feb. 19. The move to a new high occurred as REN’s trading volume also reached $704 million over the past 24-hours.
Attention for the protocol received a noticeable uptick at the end of January when it was announced that Dogecoin (DOGE) would be integrated with REN, enabling the trading of renDOGE in the growing DeFi ecosystem.
Since that time the REN ecosystem has continued to expand as more top-tier projects like Filecoin (FIL) have undergone the transformation to become renFIL, which is now being considered for addition to the AAVE ecosystem.
Binance Smart Chain integration strengthens REN’s use case
REN was trading at $0.94 on Feb. 15 before it was announced that RenBridge 2 was live and integrated with the Binance Smart Chain. Since that time, the trading volume has steadily increased as well as the total value locked on the RenVM.
VORTECS™ data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro began to detect a bullish outlook for REN on Feb. 18, prior to the recent price rise.
The VORTECS™ score, exclusive to Cointelegraph, is an algorithmic comparison of historic and current market conditions derived from a combination of data points including market sentiment, trading volume, recent price movements and Twitter activity.
As seen in the chart above, the VORTECS™ score began to increase following the announcement of RenBridge 2 on Feb. 15 and reached a peak of 81 on Feb. 18, shortly before the price of REN began to spike upwards.
The recent integration with BSC has brought renewed attention to REN which was hampered by high transaction costs on the Ethereum network.
With decentralized finance heating up, interoperability between blockchain networks is becoming essential for a well-functioning market and REN is emerging as a key piece in cross-chain interaction.
The Tesla CEO avowedly loves “dogs and memes” and is greeting the alleged possibility of federal scrutiny of his Dogecoin tweets with a consistently droll attitude.
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Rumors of a possible investigation by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission into Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s alleged impact on Dogecoin’s price moves have been circulating on social media over the past day — a phenomenon that one Twitterer has quipped is “peak 2021.”
Musk’s previous show-downs with the SEC notwithstanding, the CEO appears to be nonplussed about the possibility of an all-too-real legal fallout sparked by his penchant for the meme cryptocurrency. Musk’s professed love for “dogs & memes” has spurred him to repeatedly post jocular memes about Dogecoin (DOGE), most recently one showing the Doge mascot “on the actual moon.”
While the reference apes trader lingo for stratospheric price action and could therefore be construed as some form of endorsement, Musk has publicly said that for all his love of the meme cryptocurrency, he is a partisan of Bitcoin (BTC) when it comes to strategic personal and corporate investment. That hasn’t stopped the CEO’s twittering, however tongue-in-cheek, from providing some serious fuel for memecoin market volatility — Dogecoin Christmas 2020 being just one instance.
Both the prospect of an SEC investigation and the prospect of Doge’s metamorphosis into “a real currency,” remain, for now, parallel meme-like and humorous eventualities in the CEO’s imagination. Musk’s previous SEC battles back in 2018 may have had real ramifications for the CEO, resulting in his removal as chairman of the Tesla board and the payment of financial penalties, but he seems unlikely to give up on his Twitter kicks just yet.
Crypto industry captains are throwing their support behind a long-term project from MIT’s Digital Currency Initiative to enhance Bitcoin’s security.
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The Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Digital Currency Initiative has revealed a new “Bitcoin Software and Security Effort” intended to foster research into bolstering the Bitcoin network’s defenses.
The open-source initiative has received support from a diverse group of crypto industry leaders, including Gemini’s Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, MicroStrategy’s CEO Michael Saylor, Square CEO Jack Dorsey, and major European digital asset manager, CoinShares.
In a blog post unveiling the project, DCI said that Bitcoin’s ascent from an “obscure cryptographic toy” to a robust network that “secures on the order of $1 [trillion] of value” was due to the millions of hours invested into building the project by open-source developers.
Coinshares announced a $500,000 donation to the project and chief executive Jean-Marie Mognetti hinted that perhaps other crypto companies should do likewise:
“As a beneficiary of the work of hundreds of developers who secure, upgrade, and maintain the open-source protocols that underlie the Bitcoin network and the applications built on top of it, we believe for-profit firms in the digital asset industry have an obligation to fund independent, neutral development efforts and research that advances the mutual interest of all ecosystem participants.”
The DCI’s four-year research and development program aims to “harden the Bitcoin network and steward the industry’s commitment to funding open-source software.”
The blog post noted that, “The objective of DCI’s new program is to contribute neutral, expert resources to improving the robustness of the Bitcoin protocol. Bitcoin’s security is foundational to the underlying technology’s continued evolution, as well as the broad realization of the public-good promises of digital currencies.”
The post listed several key issues that MIT is exploring, including sustaining a senior team of Bitcoin developers, exploring new programming languages, and pre-emptive investigations against possible attacks,
MIT also stressed the need for the network’s security to grow and strengthen alongside increasing adoption, noting the challenge associated with coordinating a decentralized network:
“Unlike traditional assets, Bitcoin is software running on a decentralized network. Bitcoin’s security is predicated on the accuracy and robustness of the software and hardware running it, and the actions of those participating in the network.”
In July 2020, DCI researcher James Lovejoy warned that attempted 51% attacks — attempts to capture a majority share of nodes and thus control over the Bitcoin network — may be more plausible than previously thought.
Lovejoy stressed the need for active blockchain monitoring in order to identify 51% attacks targeting proof-of-work blockchains, stating: “You need an active observer to be monitoring the network to check whether or not an attack occurs.”
“Up until now we’ve been reliant on victims to tell us about whether they’ve been attacked. As you can imagine, if this results in insolvency or a loss of user funds, victims are often not super interested in revealing when an attack has taken place,” he added.
Cointelegraph Markets Pro, a data platform designed to level the playing field for cryptocurrency market participants, is now available to the public following a successful live testing period.
The platform, which has been in development for a year, is the result of exhaustive analysis of the crypto markets and the key drivers of asset price movements. It was developed jointly by Cointelegraph and The TIE, a leading provider of crypto data, analytics and software that counts major hedge funds, market makers and over-the-counter desks among its clients.
Testing the VORTECS Score
At the heart of the platform is the VORTECS Score, which compares current market conditions for over 130 crypto assets to historically similar marketscapes. A proprietary algorithm analyzes those historic conditions, seeking consistent patterns in market behavior in the following days.
“Even if crypto markets may seem volatile, the volatility often demonstrates remarkable consistency,” said Cointelegraph CEO Jay Cassano. “While we’re all aware that past performance is not indicative of future results, the Markets Pro platform combines sentiment analysis and social media activity with real-time market conditions in a way that allows us to create very specific models.”
“History doesn’t predict, but it can be deeply informative.”
VORTECS beta testing delivered compelling results, according to Joshua Frank, CEO of The TIE.
“We tested every score that crossed a certain threshold in our live beta phase,” explained Frank. “When the VORTECS score for a particular crypto asset crossed 70, we saw an average price increase of 7.61% over the next 24 hours, and 25.9% over the next seven days.”
Frank noted that when scores that crossed the 80 threshold, asset gains were 8.58% over the next 24 hours — and 28.2% over the following week.
“Of course, since most crypto traders are rotating into other assets such as Bitcoin, the real measure of success during a bull market is whether or not assets that crossed these thresholds delivered gains against the entire crypto market,” continued Frank.
“And in fact, that’s exactly what happened — over the course of a week, 70-scored assets gained an average of 21.3% vs. the universe of coins, rising to 23.8% for assets that scored over 80.”Breaking NewsQuakes deliver headlines faster
Cointelegraph Markets Pro also features NewsQuakes, a comprehensive headline news aggregator believed to be the fastest in the cryptocurrency industry.
“We’ve been working with The TIE for a year to identify and isolate the most important price drivers in the news cycle,” explained Cointelegraph editor-in-chief Jon Rice.
“Token burns, exchange listings, partnerships and staking announcements are among the headlines that tend to move markets. The Markets Pro platform uses AI to sift through the thousands of sources we analyze every minute, delivering key insights into these events directly to Markets Pro subscribers — often within seconds.”
Rice suggested that when a cryptocurrency asset is listed on Coinbase, for example, it often sees rapid and significant price appreciation. “These announcements can deliver swift returns to traders who pick up on them quickly,” he said.
“For instance, our NewsQuake system delivered the news of the Filecoin listing in December within a minute of the announcement — and almost 60 seconds before the Coinbase team tweeted. That window matters to traders.”
Rice also noted that for many foreign exchanges, the time between an announcement in the exchange’s native language and an English version can be far greater, but that the NewsQuake service supports multiple languages and translates them in real time.
Market intelligence for everyone
Markets Pro subscribers also gain access to community features. Managed by teams from both Cointelegraph and The TIE, members can join the discussion with fellow enthusiasts, share strategies and ideas, and access unique research from the experts.
Cassano hopes that the combination of real-time news and algorithmic modeling makes the crypto markets more accessible to investors of all stripes. “We’ve witnessed a global surge in interest in cryptocurrencies, as well as a realization that the information asymmetries inherent in existing financial markets tend to be stacked against the average investor. I hope that Markets Pro can help level that playing field in the crypto industry.”
Frank echoed the sentiment, expressing that “When we initially set out to build The TIE more than three years ago, we had one singular goal: to enable millions of everyday investors around the globe to make more informed decisions with trusted and transparent cryptocurrency data. The challenge was synthesizing the billions of data points we captured, and sharing intelligence that is actionable and insightful for everyone.”
“We tested every score that crossed a certain threshold in our live beta phase,” explained Frank. “When the VORTECS score for a particular crypto asset crossed 70, we saw an average price increase of 7.61% over the next 24 hours, and 25.9% over the next seven days.”