Huobi Global has unveiled its plans to delist privacy tokens, counting Monero (XMR), Dash (DSH), Decred (DCR), Firo (FIRO), Verge (XVG), Zcash (ZEC) and Horizen (ZEN) as the digital assets that will be affected.
The delisting process starts today as all deposit support for the cryptocurrencies has been halted. Huobi said its users who still have some funds in any of these digital assets would have up to September 19 to liquidate their positions into their spot wallets.
According to the exchange, any user who did not exit their respective trade position by then will see the trades automatically closed for them by the Huobi and credited into their spot wallet.
The delisting of these privacy coins can be attributed to mounting regulatory pressures and the failure of the coins to comply with their internal compliance policies. Effectively, the delisting of these tokens is supported by the exchange’s Token Management Rules of which Article 17(16) provides for delisting if “The token is a privacy token, does not support offline signatures, or its node source codes are not open-sourced”.
While Huobi, one of the major global digital currency trading platforms, did not ascertain whether the crackdown moves on the privacy coins were based on its compliance efforts from a request from a regulatory body in the regions it currently plies its trade, the firm sure wants to stay on the good books of these market watchdogs.
Huobi has faced some backlash from some regulators in the past year and has been asked to move its business away from Thailand. Despite this, the exchange has been making targeted efforts to enter the US market, with its subsidiary receiving the Money Service Business license from the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), as reported by Blockchain.News back in July.
With the scrutiny on privacy coins building up, Huobi believes it’s high time it delisted the coins.
While there is a growing bullish trend in the digital currency ecosystem across the board at the time of writing, the industry is notably not exhibiting a sign of persistent health as we are unsure if we are at the bottom of the current crypto winter or not.
The combined market capitalization of the crypto industry slumped below $850 billion over the weekend as Bitcoin (BTC) tumbled to multi-year low levels. Amidst the ongoing onslaught, this piece analyzes three altcoins that are worst hit by the correcting prices. The selection is based on the top 100 coins listed on CoinMarketCap.
Ethereum (ETH)
Ethereum is the largest smart contract platform in the world, and its native token, the Ether (ETH) is down by more than 50% over the past month and by 30.27% in the past week. At a current price of $1,106.08, Ethereum is currently showing signs of recovery on the daily chart as it has parred off its losses and is up 17%.
The coin slumped to a low of $896.11 over the past weekend, its lowest level in more than 2 years. With a lot of utilities surrounding Ethereum, its demand is bound to pick up in the coming months and it has the potential to retrace its steps toward regaining its previous All-Time High (ATH) of $4,891.70.
Nexo (NEXO)
NEXO is the native token of the Swiss-based blockchain-based lending platform that offers users instant cryptocurrency-backed loans. Users deposit an accepted token – such as Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), or XRP (XRP) – as collateral to receive a loan in the form of a fiat currency or stablecoin.
The coin is currently changing hands at $0.6833, an 18.53% upsurge following its 34.53% drop over the past week. Nexo claims it is in a solid position to fulfill its lending obligations and even offered to buy out the collateralized loans of embattled Celsius Network this past week.
Investors may rewrite the growth path of NEXO over the coming week if its outlook stays positive.
Monero is a privacy coin that fell remarkably over the past week per data from CoinMarketCap. The coin dropped as low as $97.23, a level that comes off as its lowest in more than 52 weeks. However, XMR is seeing a good recovery at the moment, and its investors can only hope this price will be sustained in the coming week.
In terms of seasonality, May is considered a relatively successful month for BTC. Given the current risk aversion among investors and the macroeconomic environment, this May may prove to be different.
Those accustomed to Bitcoin’s extreme volatility are scratching their heads and looking forward to a rally similar to that of last year when the flagship cryptocurrency doubled in price from July to November’s all-time high. What happened to Bitcoin’s legendary volatility? The following are a few possible explanations.
BTC Is Still Correlated, But to a Lesser Degree
As concerns grow over how aggressively the Federal Reserve should tighten policy to combat decades-high inflation, richly valued tech stocks have been experiencing historic volatility. Bitcoin, however, hasn’t been battered to the same extent.
The chart below measures systematic risk by looking at how Bitcoin’s returns correlate with the market. As of right now, its value is 0.0362, which indicates that it is moving in sync with the benchmark, but not as drastically.
Source: Macroaxis.com
Bitcoin Volatility Vanishes
I wrote in December that institutional investors might dampen the volatility of the crypto market and smooth out the market’s dynamics some time in the future, and it seems we are already witnessing that.
The Average True Range Index, a volatility indicator, shows that Bitcoin volatility has been falling and is currently at its lowest level since December 2020.
Source: Macroaxis.com
Top Performing Privacy Coins
Over the past three months, the privacy coin sector with a combined value of $8.84 billion has posted an overall gain of 20.24% compared to weak or negative performance by other sectors during the same period.
Haven Protocol (XHV)
Haven Protocol posted the biggest gain over the last three months, rising 135.23%. With a market cap of $75,268,861, it traded at $3.04 at the time of writing.
Built on Monero and including xUSD, the world’s first private stablecoin, Haven aims to become an open, private, and decentralized offshore bank, with a mint-and-burn mechanism that allows users to convert between XHV, Haven’s native token, and its ecosystem of synthetic assets and algorithmic stablecoins.
Source: CoinGecko
Monero (XMR)
Monero (XMR) is the most popular privacy-centric cryptocurrency based on the CryptoNote protocol, a secure and untraceable system. All of Monero’s transactions remain 100% unlinkable and untraceable thanks to a special kind of cryptography.
XMR was worth $221.24 when this article was written, with a market capitalization of $4,006,536,770. For the past three months, it gained 49.81% and outperformed Bitcoin by 40.49%.
Monero is nearing its tail emission on June 8, which is expected to appeal to the mining community and keep the price of XMR high.
Source: CoinGecko
Railgun (RAIL)
Railgun provides privacy for trading on DEXs and lending due to its fully Eth layer-1 architecture, which does not use layer 2 nodes or cross-chain bridges to compromise security. It is a smart contract system that gives zk-SNARK privacy to any Ethereum transaction or smart contract interaction.
Railgun allows users to go untraceable when trading, using leverage platforms, or adding liquidity with any Ethereum dApp.
Currently trading at $3.22 with a market cap of $184,773,805, RAIL is 23.5% away from its record high of $4.20 set in January 2022, so it’s likely it will soon retest the new high.
Source: CoinGecko
Zcash (ZEC)
Another privacy-preserving cryptocurrency, Zcash provides anonymous value transfer using zero-knowledge cryptography. The protocol provides the option of shielding transactions to ensure they are completely anonymous, or to make them transparent to show them on the Zcash blockchain.
It has recently been revealed that Edward Snowden played a key role in the creation of Zcash privacy coin.
Source: CoinGecko
In the past three months, ZEC gained 31.10% against the greenback and 23.04% against Bitcoin. With a market cap of $1,640,053,535, its price is currently $132.16, up 10% over the past 24 hours.
Another business week just starts on Monday. Printing a good gain in the digital currency ecosystem now takes more than just a slight swing or an impressive bullish close for the day. It takes massive resilience on the path of the coin and a sustained buying momentum spanning days.
Despite the growth in the broader crypto ecosystem, there is a high level of volatility that investors are typically cautious of. Over the past week, it has favoured a few coins and stirred a massive sellsell-offngst others.
At the time of writing, the global cryptocurrency market capitalization is pegged at exactly $2, up 1.58% in the past 24 hours. Here are the best and poor performers in the past week.
Monero (XMR) is one of the best gainers for the week, changing hands at $243.09, up 2.88% in the past 24 hours, and has risen by over 13% in the week-to-date period. Monero is a privacy coin whose value has been called into question in recent times by regulators worldwide as transactions are generally untraceable.
It is yet unknown what spiked the growth in Monero in the past week. However, with growing sanctions in Russia per the ongoing war with Ukraine, Russians are likely taking to Monero coin to conduct some of their transactions.
Mina (MINA) coin also printed a growth of 15.47% growth to print a price tag of $3.12. While the coin has pared off some of its gains at the time of writing, its bullish momentum is billed to imprint a notable resilience from the temporary sellsell-offt may be introduced in the short.
Top Losers: AXS and WAVES
The bears dominated the market relatively more in the trailing 7-day period with Axie Infinity (AXS) and Waves (WAVES) amongst the coins that bore the brunts more. While AXS slipped 22.81% to $50.96, WAVES dropped 49.78% to $24.84.
Both coins are notably paring off their losses as well as they have a relatively impressive outlook per the daily gain trail. The receipt of bailout funds from Binance Exchange and others is poised to help cushion the effects of the hack the Ronin Bridge of Axie Infinity experienced barely 2 weeks ago.
In all, the digital currency ecosystem is opening up to a new week that is poised to be filled with a lot of intriguing price trends.
Privacy coin Monero (XMR) usually spends its time in the shadows, which is exactly the way its community likes it. Till date, it is still impossible to penetrate the privacy that the digital asset offers, making it the go-to choice for investors who are trying to keep their crypto transactions and holdings a secret. Recently though, the cryptocurrency is breaking out onto the radars of more investors as it shatters an important milestone.
As more crypto users are discovering their transactions are not as hidden as they might have thought, they are moving towards coins like Monero that offers the privacy they desire. This has seen the number of users rise on the blockchain and total transactions carried out has soared, more than doubling in just the first quarter of 2022.
Monero (XMR) Surpasses 20 Million Transactions
Monero is no doubt the leading privacy coin in the crypto space and it has once again proven this with its recent milestone. The coin seems to have exploded in popularity in just the first two months of 2022 as the number of transactions carried out has doubled from 2021. Last year, the number of transactions recorded was sitting at 8.65 million. With less than two months into the new year, the volume of transactions tells a new story.
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Growing almost 150% in just a matter of months, the number of Monero transactions has crossed 20 million. Data from Blockchair shows that there have been a total of 2,554,175 blocks mined over the lifetime of the privacy digital asset, landing on more than 20,023,000 transactions carried out in the same time period.
This number is important for a digital asset like Monero whose sole utility is being untraceable. It spells more usage from crypto users as they move towards keeping their crypto footprints hidden. It also points towards more adoption of the coin, and as the market rises out of the ashes of the last burn, it may mean significant growth for the digital asset in relation to price.
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Growing With The Market
Like most cryptocurrencies, the price of Monero (XMR) had suffered when the market had crashed. This saw the cryptocurrency crashing from its high of almost $525 to the low $140, around which its value has trended for the past week. However, with the recent market recovery going into last weekend, Monero has followed along and has posted a recovery, up 16% in the past 24 hours alone.
Related Reading | Cryptocurrency Wallet Phantom Marks $1.2 Billion Valuation Amid Recent Funding Round
This does not mean that the digital asset is out of the woods though. Sentiments around the cryptocurrency continues to skew greatly in the bearish territory, and sell signals continue to overpower the asset. According to data from Barchat, Monero’s sell indicators have taken hold with 88% pointing towards sell. The 50-day, 100-day, and 200-day MACD Oscillator also point towards sell.
XMR recovers to $176 | Source: XMRUSD on TradingView.com
On the short term though, the 20-day moving average has turned towards buy. Coupled with the increased adoption and growing volume recorded, this trend is expected to continue and drive the price of the digital asset up in its wake. With a strong close above $180 by end of day, next significant support will be at $200, at which point, bulls will be able to sink their claws firmly into the asset.
Featured image from CoinJournal, chart from TradingView.com
Crypto intelligence firm Santiment says that significant price spikes could be coming for seven different altcoins based on under-the-radar data.
Santiment says that an excessive number of short-sellers are piling into altcoins, raising the probability of an incoming short squeeze.
A short squeeze occurs when a large number of traders try to short an asset, and then get hit by an unexpected price bump which triggers a cascade in liquidations and a price rise thereafter.
The analytics firm says that excessive shorts, plus negative funding rates on exchanges are threatening the bears when it comes to Binance Coin (BNB), Axie Infinity (AXS), Monero (XMR), NEM (XEM), Ankr, SiaCoin (SC) and DigiByte (DGB).
“We’re seeing a notable rise in leveraged short positions across different #crypto assets currently. Average exchange funding rates are negative for altcoins such as ANKR, XEM, SIA, XMR, AXS, DGB, & BNB. If these shorts are liquidated, it can lead to major price spikes.”
Source: Santiment/Twitter
Looking at Bitcoin, Santiment sees some bullish on-chain metrics looming behind the scenes for the largest crypto asset by market cap. According to the firm’s data, BTC is flying out of exchanges at a rate not seen since 2018, which could suggest that another major liquidation event is less likely than price action would suggest.
“In the midst of Bitcoin’s 10-week price retrace, its ratio of supply on exchanges has dropped to its lowest level since November 2018. Traders moving BTC to cold wallets continues, and this milestone points to less risk of a continued major selloff.”
Source: Santiment/Twitter
Santiment also points out that Bitcoin whales, or entities with 1,000 to 10,000 BTC, have accumulated over 40,000 coins in the last two days, equivalent to roughly $1,689,160,000.
“Bitcoin has rebounded, and is +$1,000 in price the past 5 hours. Now sitting at $42.4k, this comes after whales have accumulated 40k more BTC in the past 2 days alone. They now are back to owning the same amount from before their dump began at $49k.”
Source: Santiment/Twitter
At time of writing, BTC is trading at $42,229.
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Disclaimer: Opinions expressed at The Daily Hodl are not investment advice. Investors should do their due diligence before making any high-risk investments in Bitcoin, cryptocurrency or digital assets. Please be advised that your transfers and trades are at your own risk, and any loses you may incur are your responsibility. The Daily Hodl does not recommend the buying or selling of any cryptocurrencies or digital assets, nor is The Daily Hodl an investment advisor. Please note that The Daily Hodl participates in affiliate marketing.
Leading crypto intelligence firm Santiment is revealing some bullish on-chain metrics that are developing for Litecoin (LTC) behind the scenes.
LTC is trading at $148 at time of writing, down 64% from its all-time high of $410 in a hard downtrend. Despite this, Santiment says crypto whales may have other plans for the early Bitcoin (BTC) competitor.
According to the firm, “smart money” Litecoin whales are on a 15-week accumulation streak, something that hasn’t been seen since 2017.
“Litecoin is showing some signs of life, up about +5% against BTC in the past two days. Whale addresses holding 10,000 to 1,000,000 LTC are in a 15-week accumulation pattern that is their longest since 2017. They have added 5% of LTC’s supply in just 15 weeks.”
Source: Santiment/Twitter
Santiment also says that privacy-focused blockchain Monero (XMR) is showing some under-the-radar signals that could be bullish. According to the firm, Monero is being discussed in forums at its highest rate in 10 months.
“Monero has decoupled from the crypto pack on a down Thursday. The asset has been quiet since hitting $513 back on May 7, 2021. But with XMR being one of the few pumping coins currently, it’s seeing the highest forum discussion rate in 10 months.”
Looking at BTC and the broader market, Santiment says that traders may be getting too confident in predicting further price drops.
Historically, the firm says that current conditions often lead to short squeezes, which is when an excessive number of traders attempt to short the market only to get hit with an unexpected price bump that leads to a cascade of liquidations that push the price up even further.
“Bitcoin and several other altcoins reveal a higher short-to-long ratio than usual, indicating traders are expecting prices to drop. Traditionally, when this funding rate ratio is extremely negative, shorts are primed to be liquidated and prices rise.”
Source: Santiment/Twitter
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Blockchain gaming crypto Axie Infinity (AXS), privacy coin Monero (XMR) and four more altcoins are conditioned for rallies, according to data from analytics firm Santiment.
Besides AXS and XMR, the firm highlights decentralized application (DApp) platform Quantum (QTUM), Web3-focused Ankr, Solana-based liquidity provider Raydium (RAY), and XRP competitor DigiByte (DGB).
“There are usually at least a few crypto assets that are being excessively shorted by bearish traders at any given moment. Our latest insight looks at the negative funding rates of XMR, AXS, QTUM, ANKR, RAY, and DGB for potential opportunities.”
Source: Santiment/Twitter
A short squeeze occurs when an excessive amount of short sellers enter the market, and then get hit by an unexpected price spike that causes a chain reaction of liquidations and consequently a strong rally. According to the firm, traders bearish on Monero are making themselves vulnerable to such a scenario.
Santiment also says that the decentralized finance sector of crypto looks ready for healthy growth this new year. The firm identifies three of the most bullish-looking DeFi coins showing strength while much of the market trades sideways.
“DeFi assets are showing some nice signs of growth to kick off 2022. YFI [Yearn.Finance], UNI [Uniswap], and AAVE are all ticking up nicely thus far with the first Monday of the year looking bullish for several altcoins.”
Source: Santiment/Twitter
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The year 2021 has undoubtedly been a bull market with Bitcoin (BTC) raising the all-time high price bar several times this year. But not all crypto assets have performed equally. There have been a number of losers in addition to the majority of winners in terms of price gains.
Since the beginning of 2021, total crypto market capitalization has gained 190% from just under $800 million to over $2.3 trillion today. It hit an all-time high of just over $3 trillion in early November.
Top 3 crypto gainers in 2021
The crypto top-ten in terms of market capitalization looked a little different on Jan. 1, 2021, as it contained Litecoin (LTC), Chainlink (LINK), and Bitcoin Cash (BCH). These have dropped out and have given way to Solana (SOL), USDC, and Avalanche (AVAX) by the year’s end.
Dogecoin (DOGE)
Dogecoin has skyrocketed this year, driven primarily by Elon Musk’s surreptitious social media posts. On New Year’s Day, DOGE was priced at just $0.004 and largely ignored by the majority of crypto traders. DOGE had its first little spurt in February following the first of what would be a number of subsequent Elon pumps.
DOGE prices really went on a wild ride in April and May when they surged more than 1,100% to an all-time high of $0.731 on May 8, pushing it up the crypto market cap charts to the fourth spot.
Musk extolled the virtues of DOGE as a payments network in June, resulting in another round of FOMO for the memecoin.
DOGE has been falling from that epic pump since May, both against Bitcoin and USD. But all of the additional mainstream media it has got, in addition to major trading platform listings, has still given the Shiba Inu-inspired joke coin a monumental gain of 3,800% so far this year. In BTC terms, DOGE has gained 2,100% on the year from 168 satoshis to 3,696 sats in mid-December.
DOGE/USD YTD – coingecko.com
Starting position by market capitalization on Dec. 15: 26 — Final position: 11
Solana (SOL)
The native token for the enterprise blockchain Solana has also had a bumper year in terms of gains. At the beginning of 2021, SOL was priced at just $1.52, at the time of writing it was trading for a little over $150. This is an epic gain of more than 9,800% in less than a year.
SOL hit an all-time high of $260 in early November but has retreated as markets began correcting late in the year. The massive move has given SOL a fifth spot in the market cap charts after peaking at fourth. Against BTC, SOL has gained 6,473% over the year.
Major investments and increased adoption in the wake of surging transaction prices on Ethereum have driven momentum for Solana, which has also been touted as an “Ethereum killer.” In June, Solana Labs raised $314 million via a private token sale led by Andreessen Horowitz and Polychain Capital.
SOL/USD YTD – coingecko.com
Starting position: 112 — Final position: 5
Terra (LUNA)
The native token for decentralized financial payment network Terra has also made it into the crypto top ten briefly. LUNA began the year trading at around $0.65 and was largely unknown to mainstream retail traders.
Prices were lifted in March and May, but they didn’t really take off until August when a massive pump took LUNA to an all-time high of $77.73 on Dec. 5. At the time of writing, LUNA was trading up a whopping 8,515% since the beginning of the year. In satoshi terms, LUNA has increased up 5,815% this year against BTC.
The rapid expansion of partners on the Terra ecosystem has been largely responsible for the bullish price action.
LUNA/USD YTD – coingecko.com
Starting position (CMC): 62 — Final position (CMC): 10
A few others are also worth a mention for making impressive gains this year and they include Avalanche’s AVAX up 2,330% on the year, Polygon’s MATIC, which has surged more than 12,000%, and Binance Coin (BNB) making 1,271% this year.
Top 3 crypto losers in 2021
Internet Computer (ICP)
Amid a world of hype, Dfinity’s Internet Computer project exploded onto the scene this year after 5 years of largely secretive development. It promised an internet revolution replacing the trillion-dollar legacy internet and IT industry by allowing developers to install their code directly on a “public internet” without having to rely on third-party hosting firms.
Speculators in a frenzy for the next big thing in crypto loaded up on ICP tokens when they were listed on major exchanges in mid-May sending prices skyrocketing to a very quick all-time high of $700 on May 10.
Since then, ICP prices have virtually collapsed sinking to an all-time low of $24.29 on Dec. 4, a painful 96% down from its peak just 7 months prior. It has also lost 93% against Bitcoin in terms of satoshis.
ICP/USD YTD – coingecko.com
Starting/Highest position: 8 — Final position: 37
EOS (EOS)
The once darling of crypto that many touted would kill Ethereum has actually done very little in terms of price movements this year while those around it have surged.
EOS had already fallen out of the market cap top ten on Jan. 1 and it continued to fall down the charts all year. EOS prices have only gained a paltry 15% over the year when others were in thre and 4 figures so we would consider that a loser in the grand scheme of things.
Block.one’s once-hyped token was trading at $3.25 at the time of writing, having slumped to the 50th spot by market cap. It is currently 86% down from its April 2018 all-time high of $22.71 and has lost 22% against BTC over the year.
In early November, members of the EOS ecosystem voiced their dissatisfaction with the direction the network was heading.
EOS/USD YTD – coingecko.com
Starting position: 15 — Final position: 50
Monero (XMR)
The privacy-focused cryptocurrency Monero has also fallen heavily down the market cap charts this year as a number of major exchanges delisted digital assets that offer anonymity.
XMR prices have mustered just 17% this year and have come nowhere near their January 2018 all-time high of $524. Currently trading at around $183, XMR has slumped 66% from that peak resulting in a fall to 49th in the coin cap tables. Monero has lost 30% against Bitcoin since the beginning of the year.
XMR/USD YTD – coingecko.com
Starting position: 16 — Final position: 49
To put these gains and losses into perspective, Bitcoin is up 67.5% year-to-date (YTD) year while Ethereum gained 440%.
Pirates attempting to download illegal copies of the latest Spider-Man film are exposing their computers to crypto-mining malware.
According to researchers at cybersecurity firm Reason Labs, copies of “Spider-Man: No Way Home” circulating on torrent sites have been packaged with malware that diverts the user’s computer to mining the “privacy coin” Monero.
The affected file is named “spiderman_net_putidomoi.torrent.exe,” which translates from Russian to “spiderman_no_wayhome.torrent.exe,” hinting at the source of the torrent: “most likely from a Russian torrenting website,” according to Reason Labs.
The malware crypto miner adds exclusions to the Windows Defender antivirus software and creates a “watchdog process” for persistence. After killing any process that shares the name of its components, the malware then launches two new processes, Sihost64.exe and WR64.exe. Once up and running, the malware runs XMrig, an open-source Monero miner.
Although the malware doesn’t steal personal information, Reason Labs pointed out that it does exact a cost on the victim, in the form of increased electricity bills and high CPU usage—causing their machine to slow down. The cybersecurity firm recommended “taking extra caution when downloading content of any kind from non-official sources – whether it’s a document in an email from an unknown sender, a cracked program from a fishy download portal, or a file from a torrent download.”
Basically, don’t pirate movies from dodgy torrent sites.
Cryptojacking malware
Cryptojacking, or inserting malicious software onto an unsuspecting user’s computer to mine cryptocurrency, is a growing phenomenon; in the first half of 2021, they were the most common family of malware detected by cybersecurity firm Trend Micro, which detected nearly 75,000 instances of cryptojacking malware.
Earlier this month, cybersecurity firm Sophos reported that Monero-mining malware was infecting company networks. “All of the miners we’ve seen recently are Monero miners,” Sophos threat researcher Sean Gallagher told Decrypt.
Monero has become a favorite of cybercriminals because it incorporates privacy features that make it challenging to trace.
Law enforcement agencies are keen to crack the privacy coin too. Last year, the IRS awarded contracts worth $1.25 million to firms attempting to develop tools to track Monero, while in August this year, crypto intelligence firm Ciphertrace claimed to have developed a toolset for tracing Monero transactions at the behest of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
