Tag: Staking

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Bitcoin News Blockchain News Cryptocurrency News

Standard Hashrate Welcomes 5 New Miners To BTCST

Standard Hashrate

Standard Hashrate Group (“SHG”) is an open platform where prominent miners standardize and tokenize their BTC hashrate. Today, SHG announced Atlas Mining, BTC.TOP, Easy2Mine, Genesis Mining and Hengjia as tokenization miners. SHG welcomes these industry-leading companies to tokenize a total of 25 PH/s of Bitcoin hashrate into Bitcoin Standard Hashrate Tokens (“BTCSTs”).

With its successful debut on Binance Launchpool, BTCST has become the benchmark hashrate token with deep market liquidity and price premium. Further contribution of Bitcoin hashrate by Atlas Mining, BTC.TOP, Easy2Mine, Genesis Mining and Hengjia Group will bring to BTCST best-in-class skills in hashrate provisioning and continuity assurance.

“Atlas Mining, BTC.TOP, Easy2Mine, Genesis Mining and Hengjia form a diverse and powerful group to join as BTCST’s new batch of tokenization miners. They share SHG’s vision of bringing exchange-level liquidity to mining power and bridging real-world mining to the DeFi world. Their rich experience and collaborative approaches in industrial scale mining will be greatly complementary to SHG,” said Alex Zhao, CEO of SHG.

“We believe BTCST has connected Bitcoin mining to the DeFi world,” said Tony Ma, CEO of Atlas Mining. “With BTCST, we can earn real BTC via crypto-native staking.”

“Mining is an asset intensive industry. BTCST has turned mining machines into high liquidity assets as Grayscale does to Bitcoin, injecting incremental value into the mining market,” said Zhuoer Jiang, CEO of BTC.TOP.

“We believe a project like BTCST should focus on decentralization of hashrate sourcing,” said Cathy Yu, CMO of Easy2Mine. “We are glad to support this project as a tokenization miner.”

“BTCST is really exciting,” said Rene Hennen, COO of Genesis Mining, “It is one of the rare inventions which expands the Bitcoin ecosystem with the potential to add a lot of value.”

“As the operator of some of the largest hydropower cryptocurrency mining facilities, we applaud the innovation of the BTCST project,” said Jiwei Zhu, Chairman of Hengjia Group. “We hope to work with the BTCST project to improve its ecosystem.”

BTCST is a token collateralized by real Bitcoin mining power. By staking BTCSTs, holders of the tokens will receive daily Bitcoin distributions that correspond to the mining power staked. With BTCST, you mine Bitcoin the DeFi way.

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Blockchain News Cryptocurrency News

OKEx Releases Two New Decentralized Apps

OKEx

OKEx, a world-leading cryptocurrency spot and derivatives exchange, is delighted to announce that the team behind the open-source blockchain OKExChain has launched two decentralized applications, OKEx Swap and OKEx Farm, on the protocol. Both these new features, along with the opening of the OKT/USDT Farm Pool commenced today at 10:00 am UTC. 

OKT withdrawals also opened at the same time, giving OKT holders the ability to stake OKT along with USDT in Swap to earn OKT-USDT LP tokens. These can then be used to stake in the OKT-USDT Farm Pool for additional earnings, such as mining new OKT.

The OKEx Swap and Farm initiatives have been enabled by the initial stability testing of the OKExChain mainnet that generated tens of thousands of OKT block rewards (according to OKExChain’s block reward rules). These tokens have not yet been allocated, meaning that OKT holders can unlock significant rewards by mining OKT on-chain.

The size of the reward will be voted on by the OKT/USDT whitelist pool on Jan. 26 at 10:00 am UTC. If the vote is approved, a snapshot will be taken according to the blocks that voted in favor, and the accumulated OKT will be distributed according to the proportion of OKT-USDT LP tokens that they had staked in the OKExChain Farm pool when the proposal was approved.

The amount of OKT that users can mine is equal to the number of tokens staked divided by the total number of tokens in the Farm Pool, multiplied by the cumulative amount of OKT. After the cumulative OKT allocation is complete, users can continue to mine through the OKT-USDT Farm Pool. Staking starts as soon as the Farm function is launched. 

“The phased launch of OKExChain is moving along at a very encouraging pace. Already after completion of the initial stage, we have seen its native token, OKT, commanding an all-time high of $86.54 in its first days of trading on the OKEx platform. We’re thrilled that the team behind OKExChain has been able to provide OKT holders with even more benefits through the Swap and Farm initiatives and to see OKExChain expanding its utility,” commented OKEx CEO Jay Hao.

In addition to staking and mining rewards via OKEx Swap and Farm, OKT provides users with further immediate utility and benefits, including voting rights and transaction-fee payments for decentralized exchanges and other DeFi applications built on the network. OKT is currently available to trade on the OKEx platform with zero fees on all trading pairs for the first 30 days.

For further information on OKEx Swap and OKEx Farm DApps, please visit the OKEx Support Center here.

OKEx is a world-leading cryptocurrency spot and derivatives exchange, OKEx offers the most diverse marketplace where global crypto investors, miners and institutional traders come to manage crypto assets, enhance investment opportunities and hedge risks. OKEx provides spot and derivatives trading — including futures, perpetual swap and options — of major cryptocurrencies, offering investors flexibility in formulating their strategies to maximize gains and mitigate risks.

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Blockchain News Cryptocurrency News Ethereum News

Creator Of First ICO Developing Blockchain DeFi Platform For UBI

Karma Finance

Universal Basic Income (UBI) Planned In 30 U.S. Cities

UBI is increasingly being recommended as a possible strategy to help mitigate the economic consequences of an extended coronavirus pandemic.

Almost all the UBI programs currently being piloted propose direct, unconditional cash payments to citizens, a lot like how many welfare payments are actually distributed today.

Based on data from Welfare and Health Studies at the Cato Institute only 30% of funds allocated to government welfare programs end up in the hands of the people who benefit from it. For private charities, an average of 82% of funds reach those that want it, while fund-raising and administrative expenses account for the remaining 18%. If numbers that are very much the same are actually assumed for UBI programs, 70% of funds will go towards a UBI program’s administrative expenses rather compared to its intended recipients.

The use of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology is able to transform how UBI is actually implemented, making it cost effective, most importantly, and, secure, transparent. The primary benefit to using blockchain technology will be the elimination of bureaucracy, resulting in 100% of funds reaching UBI recipients.

Karma Finance, founded by Antoine Sorel Neron, the designer of the first Initial Coin Offering (ICO) in cryptocurrency, is actually developing a new Decentralized Finance (DeFi) platform that is going to allow users to choose either to get a weekly UBI payment or perhaps to participate in the community reward pool. Owners participating in the reward pool is going to be strongly incentivized to provide the funding required for the UBI program itself.

“Decentralized finance and UBI are actually a natural fit, particularly as we are working to build economic resilience in cities across the country,” said Neron, who grew up on Chicago’s South Side. “Decentralized finance is actually meant to produce a far more inclusive and open financial system for everyone. We might not have the ability to make it happen for the world’s billion plus poor just yet, but at least we are able to build a practical solution to help regular folks who’ve been affected by COVID, even as government budgets start to be more strained. This’s exactly where the public is able to step in to help.”

Karma Finance is going to be the first DeFi application built for UBI.

About Karma Finance

Karma Finance launched on August thirty one, 2020, with the goal of providing a privately funded Universal Basic Income solution via blockchain and smart contracts. A community based project aimed at empowering users impacted by COVID and other economically devastating events, it uses a unique decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol which allows Karma’ angels’ to stake Ethereum cryptocurrency for the benefit of other users that receive direct UBI payments from the product.

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Blockchain News Cryptocurrency News Ethereum News

Voyager Digital Lists Elrond Gold Token

Elrond

Voyager Digital  Ltd. (OTCQB: VYGVF), a publicly-traded, licensed crypto-asset broker that provides investors with a turnkey solution to trade crypto assets, today announced the listing of the Elrond Gold Token (EGLD) on the Voyager platform, expanding Voyager’s industry-leading offering of 55+ cryptocurrencies.

“The listing of our 56th token now offers U.S. customers an easy way to invest in the Elrond Network. Investors will now have the ability to download the Voyager App, fund their account, and begin trading eGold within minutes,” said Steve Ehrlich, Co-founder and CEO of Voyager. “As Voyager’s growth accelerates, we will continue to expand our platform of the most exciting digital assets to invest in, with over 20 interest-bearing assets on the Voyager platform.”

Elrond is a highly-scalable, fast, and secure blockchain platform for distributed apps, enterprise-use cases, and the new internet economy. Elrond’s native token, eGold, also known as EGLD, is used for paying network fees, staking and rewarding validators. Use cases include fintech, DeFi, and the Internet of Things. 

“The successful transition from traditional to decentralized finance will help our regulatory framework evolve in many positive ways. A publicly-traded company like Voyager, built to simplify onboarding to the crypto space, is a powerful catalyst toward unlocking blockchain’s multi-trillion-dollar potential,” added Elrond CEO and Co-founder Beniamin Mincu. “We look forward to working with the Voyager team towards compliant adoption at an internet-scale.”

For more information on Voyager Digital, please visit https://www.investvoyager.com. The Voyager app is available for Android and iPhone.

About Voyager Digital Ltd.
Voyager Digital Ltd. is a crypto-asset broker that provides retail and institutional investors with a turnkey solution to trade crypto assets. Voyager offers customers best execution and safe custody on a wide choice of popular crypto-assets. Voyager was founded by established Wall Street and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who teamed to bring a better, more transparent, and cost-efficient alternative for trading crypto-assets to the marketplace.

About Elrond
Elrond is the internet-scale blockchain, designed from scratch to bring a 1000-fold cumulative improvement in throughput and execution speed. To achieve this, Elrond introduces two key innovations: a novel Adaptive State Sharding mechanism and a Secure Proof of Stake (PoS) algorithm, enabling linear scalability with a fast, efficient, and secure consensus mechanism. Thus, Elrond can process upwards of 15,000 transactions per second (TPS), with 6-second latency and negligible cost, attempting to become the backbone of a permissionless, borderless, globally accessible internet economy.

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Blockchain News Cryptocurrency News Ethereum News

Fireblocks Adds New Staking Service For DOT, XTZ and ETH 2.0

Fireblocks announced today it has integrated with Blockdaemon and Staked to add new staking services for over 165 enterprise and institutional customers. The new Fireblocks PoS capabilities will debut with initial support for Polkadot (DOT), Tezos (XTZ) and Eth 2.0.

“Fireblocks already simplifies securing and trading cryptocurrencies, like Bitcoin and Polkadot. With the roll-out of DOT staking, Fireblocks is quickly becoming an all-in-one solution for crypto power users,” said Jack Platts, Co-Founder of Hypersphere Ventures.

Traditionally, setting up staking was complicated and required 2-3 full time employees to integrate and manage nodes, or turning to a cold storage custodian, which fragments infrastructure, distributes assets across different providers, and limits operational flexibility.

Now, in addition to leveraging Fireblocks’ secure MPC-based wallet technology and Network for crypto custody, settlement, and DeFi, the world’s largest institutional digital asset investors and managers can add staking to earn more revenue from DOT, Tezos or Ethereum 2.0 assets.

“To set up staking, you need the highest degree of security in storing the asset and delegating it to the staking nodes,” said Michael Shaulov, CEO of Fireblocks. “There has been an increase in demand from our customers requesting simple and secure access to these strategies by utilizing their Fireblocks MPC wallet. We are extremely excited to roll out these new staking services on the largest PoS networks, giving our customers an opportunity to enhance their yield by 5% to 15%.”

Starting today, Fireblocks’ customers will be able to stake DOT, XTZ and ETH 2.0 tokens all from the Fireblocks platform. The assets will be protected from cyber attacks, internal collusion and human error while accruing rewards. Users will maintain custody of the funds in their Fireblocks MPC-based wallets with an interface to monitor staking performance on Staked and Blockdaemon.

“Fireblocks is a leading pioneer in providing secure digital infrastructure for institutional trading, lending, and borrowing and we are thrilled to partner with them by supporting customers with our validator staking and node management,” says Konstantin Richter, CEO and Founder of Blockdaemon. “Having close collaboration with a leader in the space is essential in driving earning potential forward at an accelerated rate.”

With significant demand from Fireblocks’ customer base, the company will continue to prioritize supporting additional staking protocols in 2021.

“We are thrilled to extend our staking services to a growing number of institutional customers through our partnership with Fireblocks,” said Tim Ogilvie, CEO of Staked, which provides non-custodial infrastructure services for the major PoS blockchains and is the leading independent validator for Ethereum 2.0. “Fireblocks has a well-established reputation for delivering infrastructure and we are delighted to support this new offering for its many enterprise and institutional customers.”

About Fireblocks

Fireblocks is an enterprise-grade platform delivering a secure infrastructure for moving, storing, and issuing digital assets. Fireblocks enables exchanges, lending desks, custodians, banks, trading desks, and hedge funds to securely scale digital asset operations through the Fireblocks Network and MPC-based Wallet Infrastructure. Fireblocks has secured the transfer of over $200 billion in digital assets and has a unique insurance policy that covers assets in storage & transit.

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Blockchain News Cryptocurrency News

Victoria VR Initial Exchange Offering Of Its ERC-20 Cryptocurrency Token Now Available

Victoria VR

VICTORIA VR Virtual reality is a completely unique platform, designed to connect all virtual reality platforms. VICTORIA VR brings forth a true virtual revolution with its photo-realistic graphics and innovative approaches. It provides users with a decentralized photo-realistic virtual world that takes full advantage of the amazing blockchain capabilities, with all the benefits that flow from it.

The VICTORIA VR (VR) token is currently available at pre-sale as an IEO on the DEXFIN Exchange. Full details can be found on the VICTORIA VR website, where you can also download the VICTORIA VR White Paper.

Besides stunning virtual graphics, decentralization and blockchain, VICTORIA VR also offers a passive income of 20% per year from staking. Other benefits are listed in the overview below.

The Virtual Reality of VICTORIA VR Gives You the First Photo-realistic World Without Limits

The virtual reality market is flourishing and could exceed $70B by 2024. Virtual reality creates completely new possibilities for its users. We live in an amazing world that is constantly progressing and becoming faster every day thanks to newer and more innovative technologies. However, we are limited. We are limited by the laws of physics, our human body, and time. Virtual reality offers you a world where there are no such limitations. Imagine a world where:

  • You don’t have to travel for an hour every day to get to school or work.
  • You don’t have to fly across the continent for a personal or business meeting.
  • You can enjoy the concert, theatre performance or an exhibition together with millions of other people from all corners of the world.
  • You can easily visit any place and be anything.
  • No one can dictate the opening hours of your business, where no one can close your business, where no one can take anything from you, and where there is no lockdown.
  • Where you can’t get infected by disease, where you can’t get hurt and where you can’t die.

VICTORIA VR: A Decentralized World Using the Blockchain

VICTORIA VR is a Massive Multiplayer Online (MMO) virtual world with photo-realistic graphics built on the blockchain. Users mine the VR cryptocurrency by their activity in the virtual reality of VICTORIA VR. They can trade lands and build their Internet-connected projects and applications, acquire and create unique assets, explore a world full of user created content, complete challenging tasks and play games.

All assets are registered here on the public blockchain. The VR world is fully owned by the users and the community, which also creates rules for the entire community, because the world of VICTORIA VR is a DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization).

Thanks to VICTORIA VR, you can materialize your most secret wishes and experience your life’s greatest desires. You can share everything with everyone here. And you always have unlimited possibilities – when working, creating, discovering, trading, and playing.

VICTORIA VR uses the proven Unreal Engine for development. In the current extreme world situation (lockdown, economic crisis 2020, covid-19), photo-realistic virtual reality is becoming a sought-after solution by companies, players and ordinary users alike.

VICTORIA VR Cryptocurrency – The Driver of the Virtual World

VICTORIA VR (VR) is an ERC-20 token and is the principal currency of VICTORIA VR. The token also serves as a reward for active users and for those who use staking. The total supply of the VR is set at 168 billion. At this time, 78B VR is available for pre-sale as IEO (Initial Exchange Offering). Unsold tokens serve as a reward for the future users.

  • Pre-sale for 0.00000006 BTC (15/12/2020 – 31/01/2021).
  • Pre-sale for 0.00000009 BTC (01/02/2021 – 28/02/2021).
  • Pre-sale for 0.00000012 BTC (29/02/2021 – 16/03/2021).
  • Listing on the DEXFIN Exchange and other exchanges (18/03/2021).

Staking With 20% APY and Trading in Virtual Reality

Staking is similar to keeping money on your term deposit, but with a much higher appreciation. You just hold your crypto assets at the DEXFIN Exchange, creating an interesting source of passive income. With the VR token, you get 20% per year from staking.

Thanks to VICTORIA VR, you can also discover novel ways of trading in the virtual world and new business opportunities. When trading in virtual reality, users can see and monitor all the necessary information at once – social networks, prices of popular cryptocurrencies, graphs, indicators, and more.

VICTORIA VR: Based in the Crypto Hub of Europe

VICTORIA VR is based in Prague, Czech Republic, where quite a few successful games were created, and which is the home of several notable inventions in the field of crypto. Some examples include the first mining pool (SlushPool) which started in the Czech Republic back in 2010 and the world-famous Trezor hardware wallet. The Czech Republic ranks among one of the most crypto-friendly countries in Europe.

With its photo-realistic graphics and innovative approaches, VICTORIA VR brings in a real virtual revolution! VICTORIA VR world is created and owned by its users and is designed to constantly motivate the users to activity and to algorithmically create quests, and thus, to live without its creators. You can acquire and create unique assets here, which will be, because of their usefulness, sought after by companies, enterprises, and individual users alike.

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Bitcoin News Cryptocurrency News

As The World Rings In A New Year, Crypto Investors More Bullish Than Ever

 Bitcoin IRA, the world’s first, largest, and most secure digital asset IRA technology platform that allows clients to purchase cryptocurrencies and other digital assets for their retirement accounts, today released results of their recent survey asking individuals for their market sentiment and investing choices on crypto heading into 2021.

Bitcoin IRA’s survey revealed many cryptocurrency retirement insights.

Overall, as the COVID-19 pandemic continues, investors appear to have a more heightened awareness about inflation and its negative impact on US dollars as more investors indicated it as an investment reason from previous surveys. Also, crypto prices have risen sharply in 2020, with Bitcoin far surpassing all-time highs, and the majority of respondents believe they’ll continue much higher into 2021.

Key takeaways from the survey:

  • Bitcoin’s price projection: 40% of responders believe Bitcoin‘s price will be at least $50,000 at the end of 2021. Bitcoin’s price passed all-time highs in 2020 and investor sentiment remains high likely due to large Bitcoin investments by major companies such as PayPal and MicroStrategy among many others.
  • Reasons to invest: There’s a significant rise in inflation concerns by respondents as 28% of them stated their primary reason for buying crypto was due to inflation concerns. This is nearly twice as many that stated that reason in the company’s previous annual survey in 2019 (17% selected “inflation” then). Other reasons for buying crypto included that they believed prices would go up (65%) and that they simply wanted to diversify (29%).
  • Amount invested: A quarter of respondents stated they have invested 50% or more of their total cash or savings into crypto.
  • Altcoins: Chainlink remains the #1 most requested alternative coin, “altcoin,” for investing (excluding Ethereum) with 22% of respondents selecting it. Other top requested coins included Stellar Lumens (XLM), Polkadot (DOT), and Cardano (ADA).
  • Top features: Earning interest remains very desirable for crypto holders as 26% of all respondents requested it. An additional 15% of users wanted to earn rewards through “staking,” which is another method of earning a return on crypto holdings.

Methodology

The 2021 consumer survey was sent on December 28, 2020, to a randomized group of individuals comprised of the company’s clients, account holders, and customer prospects since 2016. 284 respondents completed the survey. Individuals did not receive compensation or likewise for their participation in the survey.

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Cryptocurrency News

DeFi Platform OIN Finance Partners With Frontier

OIN Finance, a decentralized finance gateway, has partnered with Frontier to bring the FRONT token to OINDAO, being the second token to do so. The integration will allow FRONT to be staked into the OINDAO and used to mint stablecoins alongside OIN and STPT for DeFi applications.

Bringing Frontier’s native token to OIN Finance means it can be used as collateral on the OINDAO platform. Users who stake FRONT tokens can use their collateralized assets to issue USDF stablecoins, unlocking and leveraging the value in their original tokens while retaining ownership of them. With the minted USDF1, users will eventually be able to redeem for a variety of other liquid assets like DAI, USDC, USDT, and even NFTs, with the OINDAO dashboard enabling positions to be monitored and adjusted in real-time.

OIN Finance Co-Founder Richie Li said: “Frontier is on a mission to make DeFi easier to interact with, by aggregating popular protocols. We at OIN are on a mission to bring DeFi functionality to the crypto community as a whole. As the number of projects on OINDAO expands, so too will the list of connected defi features. We are excited to see the synergies here develop, and look forward to the growth of both our platforms.”

Frontier also mentioned in their announcement that “OINDAO is the first decentralized stablecoin issuance platform that also caters to the small cap assets. Different from Maker DAO, OINDAO empowers projects like Frontier to issue their own stable assets. Instead of just copying and forking the current model, the OIN Finance team is aiming to bring value and what’s missing in the current DeFi space to make DeFi more mature.”

Future development of the OIN Finance ecosystem will see support for leveraged trading and cross-chain staking. OIN Finance aims to become a universal portal for token swapping, leveraged trading, and minting stablecoins through its product lines such as OINSWAP, and the OIN Bond.

Decentralized finance refers to a technology that attempts to create a more fluid and flexible model of global exchange through the use of cryptocurrencies. It is a type of peer-to-peer lending that renders traditional financial functions such as settlements, equity certificates, debentures, stock market trading, and commercial loans more accessible, convenient, and fast through the implementation of smart contract technology. Unlike conventional finance, decentralized finance makes the exchange of currencies transparent, profitable, and manageable by removing the need for traditional intermediaries. This results in a more democratic control over the supply and demand of money, which can benefit both borrower and lender.


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Cryptocurrency News Ethereum News

ETH2 Staking Reaches 4th Largest

Ethereum 2.0 has already emerged as the fourth-largest proof-of-stake network by total value locked in staking within roughly six weeks of the Eth2 deposit contract going live.

Despite withdrawal functionality not yet enabled and no precise estimation for its full launch date, nearly $1 billion worth of Ether (ETH) has already been designated for staking. According to crypto data aggregator Staking Rewards, more than 1.5 million Ether or 1.35% of Ethereum’s supply has been deposited for staking.

Ether staking rewards are currently estimated at approximately 13.20%, meaning that a single stake of 32 ETH would earn $2,530 over one year at the current price of around $600.

Polkadot, the brain-child of Ethereum co-founder Gavin Wood, is currently the largest staking network by total value locked. Since Polkadot’s mainnet launch in May, the network has seen 67.51% of its supply designated for staking, valued at nearly $3.4 billion. Cardano, a rival network from fellow Ethereum co-founder Charles Hoskinson, ranks as a close second, with 65.53% of its supply locked since July for a staking TVL of $3.37 billion. 

Tezos launched staking in 2018, and has the highest rate of network participation among staking networks ranking among the top 50 crypto assets by capitalization with 79.43%. Tezos has a current staking cap of $1.38 billion. Since its mainnet launch last year, Cosmos has also emerged as a top proof-of-stake network, with 71.77% of its supply locked up for a staking TVL of $915,593,114.

While Ethereum 2.0’s developers are yet to provide a precise date for when users will be able to withdraw their staked Ether, staking service provider Rocket Pool recently estimated the function may go live during the first quarter of 2021.

If you have been pondering about getting into the world of smart contract technology or maybe you are just thinking of getting into the best cryptocurrency opportunity for the first time, one of the things that you might be wondering is whether or not it would be beneficial to start a crypto staking plan. Taking into account the info above, the answer is that it certainly can be.