Litecoin (LTC) Halving 2023, Could this Cause a Price Surge on Ethereum (ETH) and Orbeon Protocol (ORBN)?

Audy Castañeda
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<strong>Litecoin (LTC) Halving 2023, Could this Cause a Price Surge on Ethereum (ETH) and Orbeon Protocol (ORBN)?</strong>

While most people see halving as a bullish sign, it can force miners to sell more of their LTC to cover their costs, increasing selling pressure.

Bitcoin, Litecoin, and several other cryptocurrencies operate using a PoW (Proof-of-Work) mechanism, essentially securing the network by requiring miners to do a certain amount of work to record transactions. In exchange for their work, miners are rewarded with the currency they mine. When it halves, it means the rewards go down. Read on to find out why this could be a bullish sign for LTC, ETH, and ORBN.

A halving event refers to a 50% reduction in the block reward miners receive for adding a new block to the Blockchain. As the miners’ rewards decrease, so does the incentive to mine, and this means that the asset, in this case Litecoin, becomes more scarce, which can increase prices and demand.

Litecoin has had two halving events so far, and while history doesn’t always repeat itself, there has been an increase in the price of LTC which led to the halving. In addition, and more importantly for ETH, ORBN, and other altcoin and Bitcoin holders, this has resulted in bull runs after the event.

Data from TradingView proves this by showing that the total crypto market capitalization increased significantly after previous Litecoin halvings.

While ETH and ORBN are not PoW cryptos and therefore do not need miners, in a bull run all good tokens and coins generally rise, often starting with Bitcoin and Ethereum, and then continuing with altcoins like ORBN from the Orbeon Protocol.

What is the Orbeon Protocol?

Orbeon Protocol is a decentralized web application being launched on Ethereum. It allows ordinary investors to buy tokens and coins and rewards from companies seeking funding. This means that if the Litecoin halving triggers an uptrend, Orbeon Protocol will be a great place to find deals that can rise with the market as well.

Orbeon Protocol is in its final pre-sale stage with its native ORBN token for sale at $0.0362, launching at the end of the month for as low as $0.04, with analysts forecasting a rise as high as $0.24.

Will History Repeat Itself and Lead ETH and ORBN Holders to Big Gains?

It is impossible to know if history will repeat itself, as a lot has changed since the previous two bull runs, with a very different global and macroeconomic situation.

If history does repeat itself, then it seems very likely that Ethereum and ORBN, as well as other alts, will rise; therefore, this current bear market, and the final pre-sale stage of the Orbeon Protocol, could be an ideal time to invest in these, and any of the cryptos, at bargain prices.

By Audy Castaneda

Litecoin Price Prediction: Will LTC Become a Millionaire Maker in 2023?

Audy Castañeda
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<strong>Litecoin Price Prediction: Will LTC Become a Millionaire Maker in 2023?</strong>

The Bitcoin alternative has become increasingly popular recently.

The Litecoin Blockchain came to the market as a facilitator of payments over the internet. Others, like Bitcoin, served the same purpose, but Litecoin had some added advantages. It reduced the confirmation time, increased the speed of the transaction, and brought other additional features to facilitate the handling of transactions.

Litecoin (LTC) developed two years after Bitcoin and was long considered a major competitor to the top cryptocurrency. However, it has become much quieter around LTC in recent years.

Many contemporary altcoins have taken over the market and have tried to push Litecoin out of the top ten over time. Can Litecoin regain second place behind Bitcoin in a few years? Will LTC become a millionaire maker in 2023?

How Has the Litecoin Price Moved in the Last Months?

Litecoin, like almost all other cryptocurrencies, has suffered recent losses. The bear market caused the price of Litecoin to fall from $150 at the beginning of the 2021/2022 year, to only $70 at the beginning of the 2022/2023 year. As a result, Litecoin’s losses were just over half those of many other cryptocurrencies.

Losses were especially bad in the first half of the year. There was even a slight rise in Litecoin for several months in the second half of the year. This was not observed with almost all other currencies. This also moved LTC back into the top 15 cryptocurrencies in terms of market capitalization.

Why Could Many Altcoins Fail in the Next Years?

The first big altcoin hype happened between 2016 and 2018. At that time, Ethereum had risen to second place in the market, behind only Bitcoin. New projects like Cardano, XRP, and IOTA have received a lot of attention. Some of these projects are still considered among the top cryptocurrencies today. However, the altcoin market may experience a significant decline in the coming years.

Litecoin Price Prediction in 2023

According to CaptainAltcoin, which takes market sentiment into account and reacts accordingly, the high inflation and extremely uncertain macro situation were strongly reflected in the price of Bitcoin in 2023.

If the internal problems of cryptocurrencies with big players like FTX, Celsius, Voyager, and Luna are taken into account, 2023 does not look too good for bulls. There will probably be a lot of boring sideways price action, with a tendency to slide lower with every minor shake in the market.

Other experts forecast a different situation, as they foresee a significant increase in the second half of the year, possibly reaching $126.30.

As with other cryptocurrencies, they expect the rise to be gradual, without considerable falls. The average $117.88 price is pretty ambitious, but it can be reached in the near future, given anticipated collaborations and breakthroughs. LTC, according to this view, is expected to have a minimum value of $101.04.

By Audy Castaneda

Ethereum: Tornado Cash Hit, But Not Sunk

Audy Castañeda
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<strong>Ethereum: Tornado Cash Hit, But Not Sunk</strong>

The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) establishes sanctions against Tornado Cash.

At the beginning of last August, the Tornado Cash protocol was in the spotlight. Indeed, the US Office of Foreign Assets Control blacklisted the protocol.

Thus, the American organization accused Tornado Cash of having facilitated the laundering of more than 7,000 million dollars. In response, OFAC decided to issue sanctions against the protocol and the entities that interact with it.

Soon, many US-based crypto services moved to censor the protocol. Later, this censorship was even extended to Ethereum blocks, with OFAC measures being applied by many block producers.

Are OFAC Sanctions Effective?

On January 9, Chainalysis, specialized in on-chain data analysis, published a study aimed at measuring the effectiveness of the sanctions imposed by OFAC.

As a first step, Chainalysis tried to make a history of sanctions. To do this, the company has collected data since 2018, the date of the first measurements issued by OFAC.

Therefore, it can be seen that the number of addresses and companies sanctioned has grown steadily since 2018. However, it is important to note that the actions remain relatively anecdotal, with only about ten entities sanctioned in 2022, for a total of about 350 addresses.

In 2022, the top three entities targeted by OFAC were:

Hydra, the dark web market;

Tornado Cash, the decentralized mixer; and

Garantex, the Russian decentralized exchange.

Chainalysis sought to determine the actual impact of these sanctions by analyzing on-chain activities related to the sanctioned entities after OFAC targeted them.

Based on the data analyzed, the sanctions against Hydra appear to have paid off. In fact, the cryptocurrency transfers linked to this platform crashed after the sanctions were implemented.

The Tornado Cash mixing protocol also registered a notable drop in activity after the application of sanctions by OFAC. Thus, the protocol registered a volume that oscillated between 5 and 10 million dollars before the application of the sanctions. Following these, the protocol saw its volume plummet so that it rarely exceeds $5 million.

Therefore, OFAC-imposed sanctions appear to have had a moderate impact on Tornado Cash certainly reducing volume, but much less significant than on the Hydra market.

Finally, the decentralized exchange platform Garantex was unfazed by the OFAC sanctions. In fact, it even registered an explosion in its volume after the announcements of the American organization.

Conclusion: A Half Victory for OFAC

As Chainalysis points out, OFAC’s reach remains limited and its sanctions do not always have the desired effect: ““This suggests that sanctions against decentralized services act more as a tool to discourage usage of the service rather than shut it down entirely.”

By Audy Castaneda

2023 Starts with an Altcoin Explosion: Just a Jump Before the Dip?

Audy Castañeda
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<strong>2023 Starts with an Altcoin Explosion: Just a Jump Before the Dip?</strong>

Hundreds of projects have recovered at least 10% of their price in the last week.

This is quite an unexpected turn of events. At least for most of the traders who have witnessed the massive decline of the crypto market in the last 13 months.

The many altcoin bounces seen in early 2023 are far from reaching all-time highs. That being said, these are at least some of the biggest price increases seen since the crypto market bulls ended abruptly back in November 2021.

Thus, among the top 100 crypto assets, a few have made notable returns over the past week:

Lido DAO (LDO): +60%

Solana (SOL): +44%

Aptos (APT): +39%

Hex (HEX): +33%

Decentraland (MANA): +28%

The Sandbox (SAND): +26%

Hundreds of projects have recovered at least 10% of their price in the last week. Clearly, cryptocurrencies still have a long way to go to recover their levels of a year ago. With that said, how did 2023 get off to such a great start for altcoins?

Crypto Market Sentiment

First, altcoins have raised a lot of questions about their ability to recover from their tragic downfall throughout 2022. In this case, the skeptics may well still be right. However, it is certain that FUD is ready to counter, as Santiment surveyed via Twitter:

“Has altcoin season begun?

Open the floodgates: 22,3 %

Prices will flatten out: 12,3 %

They’ll pull back a bit: 20,8 %

Get ready for the plummet: 44,5 %”

With just under two-thirds of respondents in the survey above expecting altcoins to pull back, this is in line with Santiment’s mantra that prices move in the direction of the most unlikely expectation. public. For now, assets continue to rise, while Bitcoin has appreciated enough to allow small projects to thrive.

It is important to analyze the frequency of mentions of words like altcoin or alt season against the price of Ethereum (as a diluted representation of the prices of many altcoins). In this sense, while prices are going up, it usually means that the public has realized that these cryptocurrencies are going up and that FOMO is just around the corner. This usually results in the formation of a price ceiling, at least until the masses start to doubt that the crypto market can go up.

Where Are We Now?

It would seem that the enthusiasm for altcoins has increased significantly due to the price action. Therefore, with the mainstream saying it’s time to buy altcoins, that probably means the right time has passed by now. In fact, among the top altcoins of the past week, it is advised to be especially careful, and not expect their momentum to continue, even as rumors about their popularity spread.

If you’re trying to plan your trades between bitcoin and stablecoins on the one hand, and altcoins on the other, it never hurts to wait for FOMO to go away in order to make a profit in BTC.

So can altcoins keep going a little higher? The answer is Yes. Are they as fascinating as they were on New Year’s Day? Not until Bitcoin regains some momentum.

By Audy Castaneda

Coinbase in the Deepest Crisis: American Crypto Giant Lays Off 20% of Its Staff

Audy Castañeda
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<strong>Coinbase in the Deepest Crisis: American Crypto Giant Lays Off 20% of Its Staff</strong>

The company links the decision to cut staff with a sharp drop in revenue.

Brian Armstrong, the head of Coinbase, announced Tuesday that his exchange would separate 950 of his employees. This is the second time in 6 months that the American crypto exchange has carried out a large wave of layoffs. This proves that the exchange is greatly affected by the bear market context.

Furthermore, Armstrong confirmed that Coinbase will be abandoning several projects. The company will spend up to $68 million to pay severance payments to laid-off employees, he said.

By the end of Q1 2023, Coinbase plans to complete the transition to a new, more efficient business model.

Mass Revocation on Coinbase

The outright effects of the crypto winter continue to affect the industry. After Huobi, Coinbase has just announced that it will reduce part of its workforce to limit the company’s operating costs. The American stock market will lay off no less than 950 people, or almost 20% of its workforce. The cryptocurrency company expects to reduce costs by approximately 25%.

In fact, this is not the first time that the American crypto platform has carried out this wave of layoffs. In June, the company had already laid off 18% of its workforce. So, just like with Huobi, the crypto sphere has quite a few questions about the financial health of the exchange.

In an article on the Coinbase blog, the head of the company, Brian Armstrong, provided an update on the situation. Addressing concerns about the company’s financial stability, he said that Coinbase is well-capitalized and that recent events in the industry will benefit its platform.

“Coinbase is well capitalized and cryptocurrencies are not going away. In fact, I believe that recent events will ultimately benefit Coinbase greatly (large competitor bankruptcy, emerging regulatory clarity, etc.) and validate our long-term strategy,” Armstrong wrote.

A Catastrophic Record

As Q4 results are pending, Q3 results showed that Coinbase revenue was down 50% year-over-year. Unlike 2021, when the company’s finances were in the green during this period, in the third quarter of 2022 the swap shows a net loss of $545 million.

“Trading income was significantly impacted by strong macro and crypto market headwinds, as well as trading volume offshoring,” the firm had written in a note to its investors.

The evolution of the market value of its share, COIN, has risen more concern. Its price has fallen 87.39% from its peak of $342.98 in November 2021. In addition, it should be noted that despite COIN’s dizzying fall, the investment fund dedicated to technology shares, Ark Investment, continued to bet on action

In December, Ark bought Coinbase shares for $11.9 million. Recently, on January 4th, Cathie Wood, a senior director at Ark Investment, revealed that the company acquired $5.3 million worth of Coinbase shares.

By Audy Castaneda

What Will Happen to the Top Ten Coins in 2023?

Audy Castañeda
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<strong>What Will Happen to the Top Ten Coins in 2023?</strong>

US dollar rate hikes may come to an end, which should strengthen cryptocurrencies once again.

Most cryptocurrencies had a very difficult year in 2022. There were massive losses in the first half of the year, followed by a slight stabilization, with infrequent price drops in the second half of the year. As a result, 2023 begins on a low note, with little recognizable movement in the early days.

Nevertheless, prices are expected to rise again in the next twelve months, albeit for a limited time. The US dollar rate hikes may come to an end, which should strengthen cryptocurrencies once more. As a result, the prediction for cryptocurrencies in 2023 points towards optimism.

Below is the forecast for the top ten cryptocurrencies by market capitalization.

Bitcoin (BTC)

A significant increase, similar to that seen in 2019, seems likely in the coming months. Most likely, Bitcoin is currently undervalued. Also, Bitcoin’s dominance may increase significantly this year.

Prediction: Slightly to Moderately Bullish.

Ethereum (ETH)

Ethereum has been the number two cryptocurrency for years and has a relatively bright future. In 2023, Ethereum should focus on scalability. Further price increases appear possible, particularly if Bitcoin prices rise further.

Prediction: Slightly Bullish

Tether (USDT)

Tether is the most well-known and widely used stablecoin on the market. There will also be a lot of cryptocurrency trading in 2023.

Prediction: Still #1 Stablecoin & Top 5 by Market Cap

USD Coin (USDC)

The USD coin is the second most important stablecoin. Like Tether, it will continue to be a vital vehicle for trading other cryptocurrencies. In 2023, the coin will not be able to stop Tether.

Prediction: Still the #2 Stablecoin

BNB (Binance Coin)

Binance aspires to increase financial transparency in the future. However, the platform has received widespread criticism. However, if Binance manages to survive the current storm unscathed, the exchange’s superiority may rise further, resulting in a price surge for BNB.

Prediction: Slightly to Moderately Bullish

XRP (Ripple)

The XRP price in 2023 will be heavily influenced by the outcome of Ripple’s legal dispute with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. Anything is possible, from a massive increase to a complete implosion. It is one of the cryptocurrencies for which predicting the future is difficult.

Prediction: Completely Uncertain

Binance USD (BUSD)

Binance USD has firmly established itself as one of the top three stablecoins. The failure of TerraUSD strengthened the position of centrally planned and issued stablecoins.

Prediction: Still No. 3 Stablecoin

Dogecoin (DOGE)

DOGE was able to put together a strong rally for a short time in the fourth quarter. The reason for this was the acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk. This has the potential to push the Dogecoin price beyond its range, particularly during bullish market phases.

Prediction: Moderately Bullish

Cardano (ADA)

Price-wise, 2022 was a particularly difficult year for Cardano’s ADA token. However, developer activity on the Blockchain is increasing rapidly, and significant efforts are being made to improve scalability. 2023 may also see a slight reversal of the price trend.

Prediction: Slightly Bullish

Polygon (MATIC)

Despite last year’s losses, the MATIC coin has climbed into the top ten cryptocurrencies. On the extremely scalable network, an increasing number of decentralized applications are being built. This momentum should continue into the new year for Polygon.

Prediction: Moderately Bullish

By Audy Castaneda

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