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ZCash (ZEC) Journey in May 2018

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Zcash

ZCash (ZEC) has been observing an upward trend recently even when the price of Bitcoin (BTC) had fallen due to the raid of Upbit, a South Korean cryptocurrency exchange. At the time of writing, according to coinmarketcap.com, the price of ZEC shows $361.07 USD (3.74%) approximately. The market cap shows nearly $1,420,442,610 USD while volume (24h) is over $265,000,000 USD. (As of 17th May 2018) Currently, as per coinmarketcap.com, ZCash holds onto the 22nd position. There are quite a number of reasons for the price surge of ZCash (ZEC).

Gemini Thumbs Up

Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, the co-founders of Gemini, the US-based cryptocurrency exchange had recently announced that ZCash will also be included in their list. As Gemini has received approval from the New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS), it became the first cryptocurrency exchange with a license to trade ZCash. After this announcement, the price of ZCash (ZEC) had surged significantly and the market cap had reached approx. $1.5 billion. The users can start trading ZCash from 22nd May 2018 at 9:30 a.m. ET.

The focus for the Gemini team is on co-existence of Bitcoin and ZCash on the platform. One reason for adding ZCash as Tyler Winklevoss says, “Zcash picks up where Bitcoin left off.” …“Bitcoin has many strengths, but privacy is not one of them.” Privacy protection features of ZCash are another reason for the Winklevoss brothers to choose the crypto coin. In the beginning, the traders can choose three pairs of ZCash—ZEC/USD, ZEC/BTC, and ZEC/ETH.

ZCash uses both shielded addresses (z-address) and unshielded addresses (t-address). At first, Gemini will allow the users to make deposits from both but, in the case of withdrawals, it can be done through t-addresses only. They also plan to make shielded addresses to support withdrawals.

ASIC Mining

ZCash allowing ASIC mining can take ZEC to new heights and even has the power to decrease the weight of this cryptocurrency. This is because there are many who had predicted that ZCash will follow the direction of Monero and would choose a lower hashrate. But, the effect of ASIC mining did not go this way. Rather, the price action of ZCash (ZEC) had shown an uptrend. Even as the projects of the ZCash network had been criticised by the Monero community, the rest of the cryptocurrency world including Vitalik Buterin and Saleem Rashid (hardware wallet expert) had praised ZCash’s moves. From the official announcement of ZCash, “In the short term, we consider it critical to protect the community members who are building the ecosystem with us. If it’s necessary based on our evaluation of the ASICs on the network, we will hire a developer to construct and submit a ZIP to mitigate its effect on the network. If the Zcash core development team and community approves, it will ideally be deployed by late 2018.”

Even as these discussions within the ZCash community had caused a little slide in the market, the crypto coin did not see a drastic fall. Its appeal lies in solid technology and this may be one of the reasons for the improvement in price action.

Vitalik Buterin Support

A plus point for ZCash is that Vitalik Buterin had supported the cryptocurrency during the arguments regarding its centralized nature. Vitalik Buterin had argued over Twitter that if a person was looking for a ‘high-privacy-demanding use case’ then decentralization would be a ‘luxury’ to him. It is sufficient to have ‘right cryptography’ centralized systems for transactions. He continues to say, “ZCash’s confidentiality guarantees are stronger than its survival guarantees.”

StarkWare Partnership

The developers had recently revealed that they will partner up with StarkWare Industries. STARK technology from StarkWare Industries is expected to increase the privacy features and scalability of the ZCash network.

Eli Ben-Sasson and Alessandro Chiesa, the founders of StarkWare Industries were also a part of the ZCash development team. They will again join ZCash but as consultants and partners with the objective of implementing STARK technology that will enhance privacy and scalability. Currently, the zero-knowledge proof system (ZK) in the form of the zk-SNARK Protocol is utilized for preserving the anonymity of the users. StarkWare with its STARK technology is expected to bring in a new angle to anonymity. It is also to be noted that StarkWare Industries had accumulated $6 million investments in its seed round of financing from Bitmain, Pantera Capital as well as Vitalik Buterin (creator of Ethereum) and Fred Ersam (co-founder of Coinbase).

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Disclaimer: This article should not be taken as, and is not intended to provide, investment advice. Global Coin Report and/or its affiliates, employees, writers, and subcontractors are cryptocurrency investors and from time to time may or may not have holdings in some of the coins or tokens they cover. Please conduct your own thorough research before investing in any cryptocurrency and read our full disclaimer.

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Altcoins

XNO Token of Xeno NFT Hub listed on Bithumb Korea Exchange

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Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 25th January, 2021, // ChainWire //

Xeno Holdings Limited (xno.live ), a blockchain solutions company based in Hong Kong, has announced the listing of its ecosystem utility token XNO on the ‘Bithumb Korea’ cryptocurrency exchange on January 21st 2021.

Xeno NFT Hub (market.xno.live ), developed by Xeno Holdings, enables easy minting of digital items into NFTs while also providing a marketplace where anyone can securely trade NFTs.

The Xeno NFT Hub project team includes former members of the technology project Yosemite X based in San Francisco and professionals such as Gabby Dizon who is a games industry expert and NFT space influencer based in Southeast Asia.

NFT(Non-Fungible Token) technology has recently gained huge focus in the blockchain arena and beyond, making waves in the online gaming sector, the art world, and the digital copyrights industry in recent years. The strongest feature of NFTs is that “NFTs are unique digital assets that cannot be replaced or forged”. Unlike fungible tokens such as Bitcoin or Ether, NFTs are not interchangeable for other tokens of the same type but instead each NFT has a unique value and specific information that cannot be replaced. This fact makes NFTs the perfect solution to record and prove ownership of digital and real-world items like works of art, game items, limited-edition collectibles, and more. One of the ways to have a successful…

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Altcoins

Should Crypto Projects Devote Resources to Community Growth and Marketing?

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2020 has been an incredible year for crypto as investors have generated windfall profits and crypto projects have seen their businesses gain the spotlight they’ve been looking for.  While Bitcoin has received most of the attention after major institutional investors announced they were accumulating the increasingly scarce asset, many altcoins have also seen their fair share of glory.  When looking at all the big winners of the past year, the first project that probably comes to mind is Chainlink, having appreciated by more than 550% YTD and now valued at over $4.5 billion.  But, the actual biggest winner of the year is HEX with a YTD return of over 5,000%.

I mention both of the above projects as they have each taken slightly different paths to achieve greatness.  Chainlink has devoted resources toward building a fundamentally sound business with many strategic partnerships while HEX has spent vast sums of money on marketing and promotion.  Both approaches are valid, but one thing is certain, it is absolutely imperative for crypto projects to let the crypto community know what makes them special.  Of course, one of the reasons that makes crypto so valuable is the powerful blockchain technology that most projects are utilizing.

Cryptocurrency vs. Blockchain Technology

It’s important to make a distinction between blockchain technology and cryptocurrency.  Although they are often used interchangeably, they are different.  Blockchain technology and crypto were both created after the 2008 financial crisis, but cryptocurrency…

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Altcoins

XENO starts VIP NFT trading service and collaborates with contemporary artist Hiro Yamagata

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Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 24th December, 2020, // ChainWire //

The XENO NFT Hub (https://xno.live) will provide a crypto-powered digital items and collectables trading platform allowing users to create, buy, and sell NFTs. Additionally it will support auction based listings, governance and voting mechanisms, trade history tracking, user rating and other advanced features.

As a first step towards its fully comprehensive service, XENO NFT Hub launched a recent VIP service to select users and early adopters in December 2020 with plans for a full Public Beta to open in June 2021. 

“NFTs are extremely flexible in their usage, from digital event tickets to artwork, and while NFTs have a very wide spectrum of uses and categories XENO will initially focus its partnership efforts and its own item curation on three primary areas: gaming, sports & entertainment, and collectibles.”, said XENO NFT Hub president Anthony Di Franco.

He also added “This does not mean we will prohibit other types of NFTs from our ecosystem However, it simply means that XENO’s efforts as a company will be targeted into these verticals initially as a cohesive business approach.”

Development and Procurement Lead, Gabby Dizon explained, “Despite our initial focus, we found ourselves with a unique opportunity to host some of the works of Mr. Hiro Yamagata. We are collaborating with Japanese artist Hiro Yamagata to enshrine some of his artwork into NFTs.”

Mr. Yamagata has…

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