Cryptocurrency miners in China join forces to mine Chia, a “green” cryptocurrency that comes from hard drives. The boom is causing price increases as well as shortages.

The rise of a Chia (XCH), a new cryptocurrency that claims to be green and comes from hard drives for extraction, seems imminent. The cryptocurrency is becoming very famous among miners in China, and this situation is causing an increase in demand for hard drives among manufacturers in Asia.

A report in Retail News Asia noted that large capacity hard drives are practically out of stock in Vietnam due to an invasive demand. According to the news agency, local merchants take advantage of the demand to buy hard drives in bulk and resell them in the Chinese market.

Although the digital currency has yet to start trading, Chinese investors seem very keen on mining or mining it. Chia announced in March that its cryptocurrency’s mining is coming from a hard drive or SSD rather than a CPU, GPU, or ASIC (cryptocurrency mining equipment).

The excitement about the new cryptocurrency seems to have inevitably caused a price increase on these storage cards.

What is Chia, and How did this Fever Start?

The euphoria among Chinese investors for cryptocurrency appears to have started in April, shortly after the Chia storage network announced the launch of its mainnet for mining in late March.

Chia Network is a US-based startup that focuses on building a “green blockchain for digital work”. Chia appeared for the first time in 2017 by Bram Cohen, who is also behind the BitTorrent protocol. Chia Network offers a decentralized storage network that decided this year to launch a revolutionary “green” Blockchain with its native token (XCH).

The Chia network bases its core on a consensus algorithm called Proof of Space and Proof of Time (PoST). The algorithm allows network participants to demonstrate that they have expended a “space-time” resource, which means that they have allocated storage capacity to the network.

According to The Block, the idea behind Chia is similar to Filecoin: replacing the consensus proof-of-work (PoW) that Bitcoin uses for mining and consumes large amounts of electrical energy with PoST. Similar to Filecoin, Chia mining also has two steps: tracing and cultivating.

The Shortage of Hard Drives is Real

The lifespan of SSDs is usually facing limitations. Although these limitations may vary for different models, in general, SSDs can only perform a restricted number of delete cycles before becoming unreliable. So, investors interested in Chia are anticipating these limitations to buy as many hard drives as possible.

Recent reports suggest that the growing interest in Chia is affecting the hard drive market in similar ways to what Bitcoin has done to the GPU market: rising prices and letting shortages take the lead.

Since the very beginning, there has been a change of 100% in prices of various hard drives between Chinese businesses such as Taobao JD.com.

By: Jenson Nuñez

In a matter of hours, the price of Bitcoin went from USD 58,000 to USD 53, 3000 per unit. The behavior of the cryptocurrency market led to almost USD 2 billion in settlements.

In recent days, the cryptocurrency market lost more than USD 100 billion, and some crypto assets fell back significantly. In a matter of hours, the price of Bitcoin (BTC) dropped by 7%, going from USD 58,000 to USD 53,300 per unit.

Total market capitalization went from USD 2.29 trillion to around USD 2.17 trillion. However, the market partially recovered to settle back above USD 2.21 trillion, according to data from CoinMarketCap.

The Drop in the Price of Bitcoin Generated Nearly USD 2 Billion in Settlements

There were more than USD 1 billion in settlements on exchanges in 12 hours due to the general behavior of cryptocurrencies. Besides, this situation generated almost USD 2 billion in settlements in 24 hours, according to data from Bybt.

Spanish trader @inmortalcrypto believes that this correction is due to the temporary migration of traders to alternative cryptocurrencies or altcoins. He argues that investors could be looking for higher levels of profitability, which the pioneering cryptocurrency would not be offering at the moment.

“The price of Bitcoin is falling because the price of altcoins is going up. Right now, Bitcoin does not have enough potential to give returns to investors. All the people who have been dabbling in Bitcoin in recent months have already made a profit. However, now they can see that the cryptocurrency is consolidating,” explained the Bitcoin trader.

Those Who Invest in Altcoins Do It to Buy More Bitcoins

The trader considers that the diversification of the market could be a positive factor. He said that this is not the beginning of a downtrend for the main cryptocurrency on the market. In that sense, the trader highlighted that all the profit that altcoins offer will return to BTC. He explained that “those who trade altcoins just want to have more bitcoins.”

The drop in Bitcoin’s dominance to 2018 levels gives validation to @immortalcrypto’s point of view. The Ethereum network and its native crypto asset Ether (ETH) are targeting BTC. The second cryptocurrency on the market recently reached an all-time high of USD 3,523 per unit. Following that increase in the price of Ether, Vitalik Buterin became a billionaire.

At the time of writing this article, the dominance of the pioneering cryptocurrency in the market is 44.36%. The four cryptocurrencies following Bitcoin are Ether at 16.74%, Binance Coin (BNB) at 4.2%, Ripple’s XRP at 3%, and Dogecoin (DOGE) at 3.51%, according to data from CoinMarketCap.

Ether is not the only crypto asset that has shown positive numbers despite Bitcoin’s stumble. Among the others is the meme cryptocurrency Dogecoin, which has grown by 106% in the last week. For their part, LINK has had a boost of 25.5%, and Ethereum Classic (ETC) has had an advance of 87.4% in the same period.

By Alexander Salazar

Cuban and Creative Planning CEO Peter Mallouk recently debated the performance of cryptocurrencies and stocks. Mallouk defends his position that stocks will yield higher returns in the long run than cryptocurrencies.

American entrepreneur and investor Mark Cuban believes that BTC and ETH will outperform the S&P 500 index within 10 years. For that reason, the owner of the NBA team, the Dallas Mavericks, made a bet with Creative Planning CEO Peter Mallouk. Both of them decided that the winner will get USD 1 million settled through a smart contract.

The executives started the debate when the CEO of Creative Planning participated in a thread where Cuban was discussing Dogecoin.

Cuban and Mallouk Choose the Stocks that They Will Compare Over the Next Ten Years

According to Mallouk, achieving growth when investing in a company is more likely than when investing in cryptocurrencies. He suggested comparing the performance of the S&P 500 stock index with that of any stocks that Cuban selected. At that moment, the latter placed a bet of USD 1 million on which will p

erform better over the next ten years.

Cuban said that he will make a second bet of USD 1 million if Mallouk agrees on that. He added that he will stay 50/50 with Netflix and Amazon shares while the CEO of Creative Planning stays with the S&P 500. The owner of the Dallas Mavericks highlighted that whichever achieves the highest increase in returns on the 10^th anniversary will win.

Then Mallouk requested Cuban to move on to those things that they had disagreed on. For example, the investor had told him that “only a fool” would invest in 100 stocks. For that reason, the CEO of Creative Planning will take a 100 stock index or 100 stocks while Cuban chooses any other stocks. Mallouk said that he also felt good about this based on their market calls.

Cuban Proposes Using Smart Contracts to Make Both Bets

In the end, Cuban proposed placing the two bets through automated smart contracts. First, he will bet that the returns of Bitcoin or Ether will exceed those of the S&P 500 within 10 years. For the second bet, Cuban predicts that Netflix and Amazon stocks will outperform the S&P 500 collective.

Once Mallouk accepted both bets, Cuban promised to deposit DAI in a smart contract and do will yield farming on his USD 1 million. Both participants planned to donate their potential winnings to charity.

Ethereum’s Ability to Create Smart Contracts Makes Cuban Bet on It

In early April, Mark Cuban said that he is betting on Ethereum because of the blockchain’s ability to create smart contracts. He believes that they could be the basis for the future of the economy as they have promoted decentralized finance (DeFi) and non-fungible tokens (NFT).

The community knows that Cuban owns at least small amounts of Dogecoin in addition to Bitcoin and Ether. He only sees the latter two as a true investment, but he believes that DOGE is simply entertainment.

By Willmen Blanco

There are at least a total of 9,563 cryptocurrencies currently in circulation, according to data from CoinMarketCap. Each of the cryptocurrencies outside of the top 10 is worth an average of USD 4.6 million.

The dominance of the pioneering cryptocurrency in the market has recently dropped below 50%. However, the top 10 cryptocurrencies hold 80% of the total value of the market. Although there are more than 9,500 cryptocurrencies in circulation today, the money in this market is concentrated in a few.

Right now, the sum of the value of all cryptocurrencies exceeds USD 2.21 trillion. However, the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization are equivalent to USD 1.77 million, according to data from CoinMarketCap.

The group of cryptocurrencies totaling this amount is the following: Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Binance Coin (BNB), Dogecoin (DOGE), Ripple’s XRP, the stablecoin Tether (USDT), Cardano (ADA), Polkadot (DOT), Uniswap (UNI), and Litecoin (LTC).

The First Six Cryptocurrencies Have a Value Higher Than 9,553 of Them

The first six cryptocurrencies have 75% of the total value of the cryptocurrency market. This contrasts with the low incidence of thousands of cryptocurrencies in the global market. More than 9,500 cryptocurrencies have 19.44% of the value of the market, that is, around USD 0.44 trillion.

There are a total of 9,563 cryptocurrencies on record on the CoinMarketCap website. When subtracting those of the top 10, the result is that 9,553 cryptocurrencies share those USD 0.44 trillion. Therefore, each cryptocurrency in circulation is worth an average of USD 4.6 million.

It is striking that only 10 cryptocurrencies have a greater market capitalization than thousands of them. Besides, this is big enough to be in the top 5 of the most valuable assets in the world.

Data from CompaniesMarketCap indicates that Bitcoin currently ranks eighth on that list of assets. However, when adding the value of the main altcoins, the total capitalization is greater than those of Amazon, Google, and the silver market.

Investors Look to Bitcoin and Other Cryptocurrencies as a Store of Value

The market of cryptocurrencies is essentially speculative, but investors look to them as a store of value. According to recent reports, they are keeping them long-term, waiting for new all-time highs in this bullish cycle.

The latest Glassnode report states that investors are holding their Bitcoin and Ether for a long time. The price of Ethereum’s native cryptocurrency recently exceeded the psychological mark of USD 3,000 per unit.

The general community expects there to be further spikes in prices in this bullish cycle of the cryptocurrency market. Concerning BTC, its price may reach levels close to USD 300,000 this year. That would place Satoshi Nakamoto’s cryptocurrency easily second among the most valuable assets in the world.

The price of Bitcoin is falling, so it does not have as much potential to give investors a return. Those who have dabbled in Bitcoin in recent months have already made a profit, but BTC seems to be consolidating. However, it is only a matter of time before the pioneering cryptocurrency exceeds its all-time highs again.

By Willmen Blanco