Bitcoin’s (BTC) strong bull run and the immense popularity of the decentralized finance space have attracted several new investors to cryptocurrencies. A report from Crypto.com shows a massive increase in crypto users as the figure rose from 66 million in May 2020 to 106 million by January this year. 

Contrary to the popular notion that new crypto users are mostly speculating on the price, data from Unchained Capital shows that investors who bought in the past three to five years are still holding and are not yet tempted to book profits.

Unlike the 2017 bull market where many low-cap altcoins rallied, the current bull trend has rewarded projects with strong fundamentals. Let’s have a look at three such tokens and also analyze their charts.

HOT/USD

Holochain (HOT) aims to provide the solution for the scalability problems which may be a limiting factor in the crypto sector. Holochain wants to give control of data and privacy back to the people, eliminating large corporations and middlemen.

To achieve that, Holo, a distributed peer-to-peer hosting platform, acts as the link between the web and the Holochain apps. Holochain wants to make this technology available to users who can access the apps in a web browser. If this needs to be done, the technology must have vast scalability, fast speeds, and it should also be financially viable. The team at Holochain believes they are on the path to achieving this goal.

As part of the process, Holochain launched an app called Elemental Chat that runs on HoloPorts. The team is also planning to enable web users to log into Elemental Chat through the HoloPort. This will put the protocol’s scalability claims to the test and help to further fine-tune the project.

The team has also outlined the progress on the upcoming milestones of the Holo suite of products that will be progressively released in the future. If the team delivers on its promises, the protocol may attract investor attention.

HOT surged from $0.0007817 on Feb. 8 to an intraday high at $0.00424 on Feb. 21, a 442% rally within two weeks. This up-move had pushed the relative strength index (RSI) above 92 on Feb. 21, indicating the market was extremely overbought in the short term.

That resulted in profit-booking on Feb. 22 and 23, which pulled the price down to the 61.8% Fibonacci retracement level at $0.0021028. But the positive sign is that the long tail on the candlesticks on both days showed strong buying at lower levels.

However, traders who are stuck at higher levels are dumping their positions on rallies, as seen from the long wick on the Feb. 24 candlestick.

After the large intraday range of the past few days, the HOT/USD pair has formed an inside day candlestick pattern today, indicating a balance between supply and demand. The pair may now consolidate for a few days.

If the bulls can push the price above $0.00363, a retest of $0.00424 is possible. A breakout of this level could start the next leg of the up-move that may reach $0.0055629.

Conversely, if the bears sink the price below $0.0028, the pair may drop to the 20-day exponential moving average ($0.0020).

ORN/USD

As the decentralized finance space grows, many new projects are being announced on a regular basis. It becomes difficult for investors to keep track of all of them. Hence, a liquidity aggregator that connects to several decentralized and centralized exchanges in order to swap pools and provide access from a single platform may be sought after and this is what the Orion protocol (ORN) aims to do.

The protocol plans to offer its investor’s a variety of revenue streams. The Orion Liquidity Boost Plugin offers increased liquidity to its partners and has already onboarded Polkastarter and many other blockchain projects.

Orion’s Launchpad Liquidity has partnered with DAO Marker and DuckDAO, which will enable projects launch incubated projects on the launchpad’s own platform

Orion recently launched the staking calculator, allowing ORN token holders to calculate the staking rewards and attain APY’s of up to 38%.

After launching the first phase of the Orion Terminal’s mainnet on Dec. 15, the team plans to add several features like derivatives, leveraged ETFs, contract trading, NFTs, lending, margin trading and staking of any digital asset by 2021.

As more products are launched, the revenue is likely to increase and that may benefit ORN token holders.

ORN has been in a strong bull run this year. It rallied from $4.3014 on Feb. 8 to an intraday high at $15.20 today, a 253% rally in just over two weeks. As a result, the RSI has surged to above 91 levels, indicating the possibility of a short-term fall or a range-bound trading action.

The bears tried to stall the rally on Feb. 22 and Feb. 23, but the long tail and the positive closes of each day show that the bulls purchased the dips and resumed the rally.

However, today it looks as if traders booked profits and a retest of the 38.2% Fibonacci retracement level at $11.4379 is possible. 

If the ORN/USD pair rises from this support level, it will indicate strong demand at lower levels. That could result in a retest of $15.20 and a breakout of this resistance may propel the pair to $20.

On the other hand, a break below $10.2759 could pull the price down to the 20-day EMA ($8.21). Such a deep fall could delay the next leg of the up-move.

DODO/USD

The DeFi space has been attracting investor attention in the past few months. However, the growing popularity has clogged the Ethereum network gas fees have soared to unsustainable levels. Therefore, traders are searching for options that are on competing networks and charge fewer fees. Binance Smart Chain has been one of the major beneficiaries of this trend.

DODO is a decentralized exchange that uses the Proactive Market Maker (PMM) algorithm, which the team claims is better than automated market makers. DODO offers several features such as trading, aggregation, initial DEX offerings, and mining.

DODO introduced Crowdpooling in January, and this feature aims to provide equal opportunity to investors by addressing the biggest issues being faced by new projects. If successful, Crowdpooling will help prevent frontrunning, insufficient liquidity, and the high costs associated with attracting liquidity. The first phase of the DODO V2 Beta crowdfunding pool called ‘ShuttleOne’ was a huge success as it was oversubscribed by 173 times.

DODO token was listed on Binance on Feb. 19 following the DODO V2 Public Beta launch on the Ethereum Mainnet and Binance Smart Chain on Feb. 22. There are also several incentive programs available on BSC.

DODO price rallied from an intraday low at $2.788 to an intraday high at $10 on Feb. 19. The token had strong listing gains but since then, the price has been in a corrective phase.

The bulls attempted to start a rebound off $3.50 on Feb. 23, but the bears continue to sell on minor rallies, indicating a negative sentiment. However, a minor positive is that the bulls have been defending the $4.50 level for some time.

If the price turns up from the current level and breaks above $5.660, the DODO/USD pair may rise to $7.50. This level is likely to act as a stiff resistance but if crossed, the pair could rally to $8.75 and then retest $10. The next leg of the uptrend may resume above this level.

Conversely, if the bears sink the price below $4.50, a drop to $3.50 is possible. The selling could intensify if the $3.50 to $2.788 support cracks.

The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph. Every investment and trading move involves risk, you should conduct your own research when making a decision.

Source: https://cointelegraph.com/news/focus-on-defi-fairness-benefits-holochain-orion-protocol-and-dodo

Crypto custodian and banking company Anchorage has raised $80 million in a series C funding round, which was led by GIC, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund. Other participants in the round included a16z, Blockchain Capital, Lux, and Indico. 

Anchorage aims to use the new capital to scale to meet rising demand for participation in the digital asset space. The firm noted a surge in demand, particularly among corporations, and traditional financial institutions. This new round of funding will allow Anchorage to help institutions participate in “new ways — by bringing crypto to their users.” Especially, by diversifying their corporate treasuries, and by “enabling a wide range of emerging use cases.” 

Anchorage co-founders Diogo Mónica and Nathan McCauley said in a release shared with AMBCrypto:

Today, with banks and corporations seeking exposure to the space for themselves and for their customers, we expect the meaning of participation to expand once again. 

The team at Anchorage stressed that the firm has always focused on enabling institutions to participate in the crypto asset space. 

They found that at first, such participation translated to secure custody that clients could use. However, this has since grown to mean a wide range of crypto-native financial products and services, such as staking and governance, to financing and lending, trading and DeFi.

The firm happens to be one of the first crypto-native companies to receive a federal banking charter from United States OCC. 

In the coming months, Anchorage team expects to offer at-launch support for new protocols and support emerging corporate use cases, among others. 

The firm intends to offer custody support for DeFi tokens, bringing wrapped layer-one protocols to Ethereum, and supporting Bitwise in the launch of the first DeFi crypto index fund.

Source: https://eng.ambcrypto.com/anchorage-raises-80-million-in-series-c-round

Coinbase, the biggest US-based cryptocurrency exchange has disclosed its detailed plan for the upcoming direct listing on the stock market by Nasqad. Coinbase submitted an S-1 report to the US SEC outlining key information such as revenue and ownership structure for investors to carry out due diligence on the company.

According to the document, Coinbase has 43 million verified users and an average of 2.8 million transactions per month. In 2020, the company returned a net income of $322 million from total revenue of $3.4 billion, with transaction fees constituting 96% of the net revenue.

Coinbase which makes most of its profit from bitcoin and Ethereum transactions, also saw a 56% increment on its $1.1 billion direct revenue for 2020 compared to $482 million in 2019.

The company incurred a total of $880 million in expenses for 2020, most of which went to sales, general administrative expenses, and research and development. Transaction reversal costs miners fees, staking fees, and verification expenses constituted $135 million of the total expenses,

Coinbase also made $533 million in 2019, against $579 million in operational and development costs, leading to losses totaling $46 million.

Coinbase to Usher Crypto’s Real Mainstream Adoption

The report indicates that much of the revenue for 2020 was generated from institutional investors’ activity in the crypto market but with higher retail activity in Q4 2020 than in previous quarters.

Coinbase’s debut as the first publicly listed crypto-exchange in the US is estimated to be one of 2021’s largest new listings of the tech industry. This will have a huge positive impact on the crypto market investors and blockchain technology backers.

According to the crypto trader and analyst Rekt Capital, the public listing will officially open up cryptocurrencies to the public.

“Coinbase going public is another way of saying crypto is going public.”

Coinbase Becomes Decentralized

The update comes a month after Coinbase chose Nasdaq as its direct listing avenue on February 1, following a secondary Coinbase stock launch by Nasdaq Private Market on January 25.

Now that Coinbase has moved to a remote-first environment without headquarters in any city, the company is referring to itself as a decentralized company. Up to 95% of Coinbase employees have the option to work at home, in a post-office world setting, or a mix of both.

“since we’ve made the decision to go remote-first we’ve decentralized ourselves; even after people can safely return to offices, the executive team has no plans to be “in-office” on a regular basis,  and none of them currently live in San Francisco.”

Source: https://zycrypto.com/what-coinbase-going-public-could-do-for-crypto/