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https://preview.redd.it/rqt2dldyg8e51.jpg?width=1044&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=777ae9d4fbbb54c3540682b72700fc4ba3de0a44
We are excited to participate and present Syscoin Platform's ideal characteristics and capabilities towards a well-rounded Reddit Community Points solution!
Our scaling solution for Reddit Community Points involves 2-way peg interoperability with Ethereum. This will provide a scalable token layer built specifically for speed and high volumes of simple value transfers at a very low cost, while providing sovereign ownership and onchain finality.
Token transfers scale by taking advantage of a globally sorting mempool that provides for probabilistically secure assumptions of “as good as settled”. The opportunity here for token receivers is to have an app-layer interactivity on the speed/security tradeoff (99.9999% assurance within 10 seconds). We call this Z-DAG, and it achieves high-throughput across a mesh network topology presently composed of about 2,000 geographically dispersed full-nodes. Similar to Bitcoin, however, these nodes are incentivized to run full-nodes for the benefit of network security, through a bonded validator scheme. These nodes do not participate in the consensus of transactions or block validation any differently than other nodes and therefore do not degrade the security model of Bitcoin’s validate first then trust, across every node. Each token transfer settles on-chain. The protocol follows Bitcoin core policies so it has adequate code coverage and protocol hardening to be qualified as production quality software. It shares a significant portion of Bitcoin’s own hashpower through merged-mining.
This platform as a whole can serve token microtransactions, larger settlements, and store-of-value in an ideal fashion, providing probabilistic scalability whilst remaining decentralized according to Bitcoin design. It is accessible to ERC-20 via a permissionless and trust-minimized bridge that works in both directions. The bridge and token platform are currently available on the Syscoin mainnet. This has been gaining recent attention for use by loyalty point programs and stablecoins such as Binance USD.

Solutions

Syscoin Foundation identified a few paths for Reddit to leverage this infrastructure, each with trade-offs. The first provides the most cost-savings and scaling benefits at some sacrifice of token autonomy. The second offers more preservation of autonomy with a more narrow scope of cost savings than the first option, but savings even so. The third introduces more complexity than the previous two yet provides the most overall benefits. We consider the third as most viable as it enables Reddit to benefit even while retaining existing smart contract functionality. We will focus on the third option, and include the first two for good measure.

1. Distribution, burns and user-to-user transfers of Reddit Points are entirely carried out on the Syscoin network. This full-on approach to utilizing the Syscoin network provides the most scalability and transaction cost benefits of these scenarios. The tradeoff here is distribution and subscription handling likely migrating away from smart contracts into the application layer.
2. The Reddit Community Points ecosystem can continue to use existing smart contracts as they are used today on the Ethereum mainchain. Users migrate a portion of their tokens to Syscoin, the scaling network, to gain much lower fees, scalability, and a proven base layer, without sacrificing sovereign ownership. They would use Syscoin for user-to-user transfers. Tips redeemable in ten seconds or less, a high-throughput relay network, and onchain settlement at a block target of 60 seconds.
3. Integration between Matic Network and Syscoin Platform - similar to Syscoin’s current integration with Ethereum - will provide Reddit Community Points with EVM scalability (including the Memberships ERC777 operator) on the Matic side, and performant simple value transfers, robust decentralized security, and sovereign store-of-value on the Syscoin side. It’s “the best of both worlds”. The trade-off is more complex interoperability.

Syscoin + Matic Integration

Matic and Blockchain Foundry Inc, the public company formed by the founders of Syscoin, recently entered a partnership for joint research and business development initiatives. This is ideal for all parties as Matic Network and Syscoin Platform provide complementary utility. Syscoin offers characteristics for sovereign ownership and security based on Bitcoin’s time-tested model, and shares a significant portion of Bitcoin’s own hashpower. Syscoin’s focus is on secure and scalable simple value transfers, trust-minimized interoperability, and opt-in regulatory compliance for tokenized assets rather than scalability for smart contract execution. On the other hand, Matic Network can provide scalable EVM for smart contract execution. Reddit Community Points can benefit from both.
Syscoin + Matic integration is actively being explored by both teams, as it is helpful to Reddit, Ethereum, and the industry as a whole.

Proving Performance & Cost Savings

Our POC focuses on 100,000 on-chain settlements of token transfers on the Syscoin Core blockchain. Transfers and burns perform equally with Syscoin. For POCs related to smart contracts (subscriptions, etc), refer to the Matic Network proposal.
On-chain settlement of 100k transactions was accomplished within roughly twelve minutes, well-exceeding Reddit’s expectation of five days. This was performed using six full-nodes operating on compute-optimized AWS c4.2xlarge instances which were geographically distributed (Virginia, London, Sao Paulo Brazil, Oregon, Singapore, Germany). A higher quantity of settlements could be reached within the same time-frame with more broadcasting nodes involved, or using hosts with more resources for faster execution of the process.
Addresses used: 100,014
The demonstration was executed using this tool. The results can be seen in the following blocks:
612722: https://sys1.bcfn.ca/block/6d47796d043bb4c508d29123e6ae81b051f5e0aaef849f253c8f3a6942a022ce
612723: https://sys1.bcfn.ca/block/8e2077f743461b90f80b4bef502f564933a8e04de97972901f3d65cfadcf1faf
612724: https://sys1.bcfn.ca/block/205436d25b1b499fce44c29567c5c807beaca915b83cc9f3c35b0d76dbb11f6e
612725: https://sys1.bcfn.ca/block/776d1b1a0f90f655a6bbdf559ff5072459cbdc5682d7615ff4b78c00babdc237
612726: https://sys1.bcfn.ca/block/de4df0994253742a1ac8ac9eec8d2a8c8b0a6d72c53d6f3caa29bb6c171b0a6b
612727: https://sys1.bcfn.ca/block/e5e167c52a9decb313fbaadf49a5e34cb490f8084f642a850385476d4ef10d70
612728: https://sys1.bcfn.ca/block/ab64d989edc71890e7b5b8491c20e9a27520dc45a5f7c776d3dae79057f59fe7
612729: https://sys1.bcfn.ca/block/5e8b7ecd0e36f99d07e4ea6e135fc952bf7ec30164ab6f4d1e98b0f2d405df6d
612730: https://sys1.bcfn.ca/block/d395df3d31dde60bbb0bece6bd5b358297da878f0beb96be389e5f0e043580a3
It is important to note that this POC is not focused on Z-DAG. The performance of Z-DAG has been benchmarked within realistic network conditions: Whiteblock’s audit is publicly available. Network latency tests showed an average TPS around 15k with burst capacity up to 61k. Zero-latency control group exhibited ~150k TPS. Mainnet testing of the Z-DAG network is achievable and will require further coordination and additional resources.
Even further optimizations are expected in the upcoming Syscoin Core release which will implement a UTXO model for our token layer bringing further efficiency as well as open the door to additional scaling technology currently under research by our team and academic partners. At present our token layer is account-based, similar to Ethereum. Opt-in compliance structures will also be introduced soon which will offer some positive performance characteristics as well. It makes the most sense to implement these optimizations before performing another benchmark for Z-DAG, especially on the mainnet considering the resources required to stress-test this network.

Cost Savings

Total cost for these 100k transactions: $0.63 USD
See the live fee comparison for savings estimation between transactions on Ethereum and Syscoin. Below is a snapshot at time of writing:
ETH price: $318.55 ETH gas price: 55.00 Gwei ($0.37)
Syscoin price: $0.11
Snapshot of live fee comparison chart
Z-DAG provides a more efficient fee-market. A typical Z-DAG transaction costs 0.0000582 SYS. Tokens can be safely redeemed/re-spent within seconds or allowed to settle on-chain beforehand. The costs should remain about this low for microtransactions.
Syscoin will achieve further reduction of fees and even greater scalability with offchain payment channels for assets, with Z-DAG as a resilience fallback. New payment channel technology is one of the topics under research by the Syscoin development team with our academic partners at TU Delft. In line with the calculation in the Lightning Networks white paper, payment channels using assets with Syscoin Core will bring theoretical capacity for each person on Earth (7.8 billion) to have five on-chain transactions per year, per person, without requiring anyone to enter a fee market (aka “wait for a block”). This exceeds the minimum LN expectation of two transactions per person, per year; one to exist on-chain and one to settle aggregated value.

Tools, Infrastructure & Documentation

Syscoin Bridge

Mainnet Demonstration of Syscoin Bridge with the Basic Attention Token ERC-20
A two-way blockchain interoperability system that uses Simple Payment Verification to enable:

• Any Standard ERC-20 token to be moved from Ethereum to the Syscoin blockchain as a Syscoin Platform Token (SPT), and back to Ethereum
• Any SPT to be moved from Syscoin to the Ethereum blockchain as an ERC-20 token, and back to Syscoin

Benefits

• Permissionless
• No counterparties involved
• No trading mechanisms involved
• No third-party liquidity providers required
• Cross-chain Fractional Supply - 2-way peg - Token supply maintained globally
• ERC-20s gain vastly improved transactionality with the Syscoin Token Platform, along with the security of bitcoin-core-compliant PoW.
• SPTs gain access to all the tooling, applications and capabilities of Ethereum for ERC-20, including smart contracts.

https://preview.redd.it/l8t2m8ldh8e51.png?width=1180&format=png&auto=webp&s=b0a955a0181746dc79aff718bd0bf607d3c3aa23
https://preview.redd.it/26htnxzfh8e51.png?width=1180&format=png&auto=webp&s=d0383d3c2ee836c9f60b57eca35542e9545f741d

Source code

https://github.com/syscoin/?q=sysethereum
Main Subprojects

• Sysethereum contracts: Ethereum contract deployment source code.
• Sysethereum agents: External agents.
• Sysethereum Dapp: UI Dapp for reference implementation. The Sysethereum-Dapp automates the process flows depicted in “Syscoin Bridge & How it Works” within a native ReactJS application for convenience. An active implementation using the Syscoin Platform Mainnet can be used at bridge.syscoin.org.

API

Tools to simplify using Syscoin Bridge as a service with dapps and wallets will be released some time after implementation of Syscoin Core 4.2. These will be based upon the same processes which are automated in the current live Sysethereum Dapp that is functioning with the Syscoin mainnet.

Documentation

Syscoin Bridge & How it Works (description and process flow)
Superblock Validation Battles
HOWTO: Provision the Bridge for your ERC-20
HOWTO: Setup an Agent
Developer & User Diligence

Trade-off

The Syscoin Ethereum Bridge is secured by Agent nodes participating in a decentralized and incentivized model that involves roles of Superblock challengers and submitters. This model is open to participation. The benefits here are trust-minimization, permissionless-ness, and potentially less legal/regulatory red-tape than interop mechanisms that involve liquidity providers and/or trading mechanisms.
The trade-off is that due to the decentralized nature there are cross-chain settlement times of one hour to cross from Ethereum to Syscoin, and three hours to cross from Syscoin to Ethereum. We are exploring ways to reduce this time while maintaining decentralization via zkp. Even so, an “instant bridge” experience could be provided by means of a third-party liquidity mechanism. That option exists but is not required for bridge functionality today. Typically bridges are used with batch value, not with high frequencies of smaller values, and generally it is advantageous to keep some value on both chains for maximum availability of utility. Even so, the cross-chain settlement time is good to mention here.

Cost

Ethereum -> Syscoin: Matic or Ethereum transaction fee for bridge contract interaction, negligible Syscoin transaction fee for minting tokens
Syscoin -> Ethereum: Negligible Syscoin transaction fee for burning tokens, 0.01% transaction fee paid to Bridge Agent in the form of the ERC-20, Matic or Ethereum transaction fee for contract interaction.

Z-DAG

Zero-Confirmation Directed Acyclic Graph is an instant settlement protocol that is used as a complementary system to proof-of-work (PoW) in the confirmation of Syscoin service transactions. In essence, a Z-DAG is simply a directed acyclic graph (DAG) where validating nodes verify the sequential ordering of transactions that are received in their memory pools. Z-DAG is used by the validating nodes across the network to ensure that there is absolute consensus on the ordering of transactions and no balances are overflowed (no double-spends).

Benefits

• Unique fee-market that is more efficient for microtransaction redemption and settlement
• Uses decentralized means to enable tokens with value transfer scalability that is comparable or exceeds that of credit card networks
• Provides high throughput and secure fulfillment even if blocks are full
• Probabilistic and interactive
• 99.9999% security assurance within 10 seconds
• Can serve payment channels as a resilience fallback that is faster and lower-cost than falling-back directly to a blockchain
• Each Z-DAG transaction also settles onchain through Syscoin Core at 60-second block target using SHA-256 Proof of Work consensus

https://preview.redd.it/pgbx84jih8e51.png?width=1614&format=png&auto=webp&s=5f631d42a33dc698365eb8dd184b6d442def6640

Source code

https://github.com/syscoin/syscoin

API

Syscoin-js provides tooling for all Syscoin Core RPCs including interactivity with Z-DAG.

Documentation

Z-DAG White Paper
Useful read: An in-depth Z-DAG discussion between Syscoin Core developer Jag Sidhu and Brave Software Research Engineer Gonçalo Pestana

Trade-off

Z-DAG enables the ideal speed/security tradeoff to be determined per use-case in the application layer. It minimizes the sacrifice required to accept and redeem fast transfers/payments while providing more-than-ample security for microtransactions. This is supported on the premise that a Reddit user receiving points does need security yet generally doesn’t want nor need to wait for the same level of security as a nation-state settling an international trade debt. In any case, each Z-DAG transaction settles onchain at a block target of 60 seconds.

Syscoin Specs

Syscoin 3.0 White Paper
(4.0 white paper is pending. For improved scalability and less blockchain bloat, some features of v3 no longer exist in current v4: Specifically Marketplace Offers, Aliases, Escrow, Certificates, Pruning, Encrypted Messaging)

• 16MB block bandwidth per minute assuming segwit witness carrying transactions, and transactions ~200 bytes on average
• SHA256 merge mined with Bitcoin
• UTXO asset layer, with base Syscoin layer sharing identical security policies as Bitcoin Core
• Z-DAG on asset layer, bridge to Ethereum on asset layer
• On-chain scaling with prospect of enabling enterprise grade reliable trustless payment processing with on/offchain hybrid solution
• Focus only on Simple Value Transfers. MVP of blockchain consensus footprint is balances and ownership of them. Everything else can reduce data availability in exchange for scale (Ethereum 2.0 model). We leave that to other designs, we focus on transfers.
• Future integrations of MAST/Taproot to get more complex value transfers without trading off trustlessness or decentralization.
• Zero-knowledge Proofs are a cryptographic new frontier. We are dabbling here to generalize the concept of bridging and also verify the state of a chain efficiently. We also apply it in our Digital Identity projects at Blockchain Foundry (a publicly traded company which develops Syscoin softwares for clients). We are also looking to integrate privacy preserving payment channels for off-chain payments through zkSNARK hub & spoke design which does not suffer from the HTLC attack vectors evident on LN. Much of the issues plaguing Lightning Network can be resolved using a zkSNARK design whilst also providing the ability to do a multi-asset payment channel system. Currently we found a showstopper attack (American Call Option) on LN if we were to use multiple-assets. This would not exist in a system such as this.

Wallets

Web3 and mobile wallets are under active development by Blockchain Foundry Inc as WebAssembly applications and expected for release not long after mainnet deployment of Syscoin Core 4.2. Both of these will be multi-coin wallets that support Syscoin, SPTs, Ethereum, and ERC-20 tokens. The Web3 wallet will provide functionality similar to Metamask.
Syscoin Platform and tokens are already integrated with Blockbook. Custom hardware wallet support currently exists via ElectrumSys. First-class HW wallet integration through apps such as Ledger Live will exist after 4.2.
Current supported wallets
Syscoin Spark Desktop
Syscoin-Qt

Explorers

Mainnet: https://sys1.bcfn.ca (Blockbook)
Testnet: https://explorer-testnet.blockchainfoundry.co
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Thank you for close consideration of our proposal. We look forward to feedback, and to working with the Reddit community to implement an ideal solution using Syscoin Platform!

So this week has probably been one of the most bullish weeks in recent times for crypto — both established and small cap coins.
Starting with a quick market overview:

• Total crypto market cap breaks past the $360bn mark, currently sitting over $370bn+ — last time it was this high was May 2018.
• Total avg. daily volume breaks past the $20bn mark in the week, where it was previous stuck before.
• Average gain of the crypto top 10 = 43%

chart from livecoinwatch.com
Many established coins (Top 100) making huge moves in the last month alone:

• $LINK +123% — which has become the 3rd most traded crypto on Binance.
• $ETH +85%
• $XRP +53%
• $OCEAN +255%
• $BAND +445%
• $WAVES +163%
• $SOLO +72%
• $EWT 82%

And so many more, including non-top 100 coins, have seen exponential growth, not just this month, but in the last week also.
Some cryptos have seen major technical price breakthroughs at key levels:
>> Ethereum breaking out of a price range after 2 years!
>> Bitcoin breaking out of a downward diagonal trend line, firmly placing itself outside of the previous downtrend.
Exchanges seeing huge rises in traffic — hitting 12-month highs:
Binance hitting a over 200,000 daily users & 1.2 million daily page views.
chart from livecoinwatch.com
Also, Binance recently hitting a 12-month trading volume high of $5.7bn, today recording a daily vol. of $5.6bn. Same goes with other exchanges like Coinbase, Kraken, + others, who have all seen a rise a traffic and overall daily trading volume.
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Google Trends showing worldwide interest in cryptocurrency is at a 12-month high:
chart from Google Trends
And the overall vibe on all crypto subreddits just spells a lot of excitement and activity.
Overall sentiment (from my observations) being very bullish overall, both for established and small cap coins. It definitely seems like we're at the launchpad stage of a bull run.
https://reddit.com/link/iaaopc/video/ks4ea2au27h51/player
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Question: Where are we going to go from here? Will we soon see 2017-like parabolic rallies? Pullbacks before more uptrends?
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(charts used from livecoinwatch.com and Google Trends)

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https://preview.redd.it/mnxeb74hk4j51.jpg?width=990&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=32d152a7495971c10e1af12185abe5e77b61fd14
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How popular is DeFi?
Link, known as the leader of the oracle machine, has increased by 305.19% for the past three months, with an investment return of 17,052%, climbing to the fifth spot in the cryptocurrency ranking list by market value in the short term;
Since its issuance, YFI, which has soared 350 times all the way, has attracted 630 million US dollars of investment in 5 days, and was even dubbed the next Bitcoin in this circle;
From Comp for lending, KNC and BAL, governance tokens for decentralized exchanges, to SNX which is a stable currency payment network, various governance tokens of the DeFi ecosystem have emerged in an endless stream, stirring the blood in the market.
Such a boom is not only reflected in the currency price, but also pushes the brand new DEX based on the AMM (automated market making) model an overnight hit. UniSwap, known as the next-generation casino, has surpassed the world's first-tier centralized exchanges such as Binance, OKex, and Huobi in user activity, daily trading volume, and daily turnover.
With the rapid rise of UniSwap, the DEX threat theory has once again triggered heated discussions among the media and communities in the blockchain industry.
DEX on the Rise
The success of UniSwap is by no means something accidental. As early as 2018 when centralized exchanges suffered the hacker theft one after another, Vitalik Buterin, founder of Ethereum, predicted that the future lay in decentralized exchanges and that Ethereum, by developing a "better" decentralized platform, could empower the cryptocurrency community to regain the dominance from the centralized cryptocurrency exchange.
To realize the decentralized concept of returning to users their asset ownership, geeks in the blockchain industry have made many attempts.
Kyber Network, Bancor, Balancer, 0X, Curvefi, etc. are all DEXs based on Ethereum blocks. For a long time, affected by the performance of Ethereum and cross-chain issues, these DEXs were once stagnant.
With the lessons learned from Ethereum DEX, newcomers to the DEX have focused on high performance, high TPS, and rich assets as the ultimate goal for product development.
Amid the DEX threat theory, major exchanges have deployed their own public chain DEX products in a response to their respective development strategies: Binance launched Binance DEX on its Binance Chain, and Bittrex Exchange unveiled Ethfinex on the Ethereum and EOSfinex on the EOS blockchain, two platforms where users can exchange for fiat currencies; last year, CoinEx officially launched CoinEx Chain, a public chain dedicated to decentralized transactions, followed by CoinEx DEX.
Since the birth of the DEX in the blockchain world, this field has never run out of competition.
By independent development or other’s advantage?
From 2017 when it was established to 2019 as it stabilized, DEX has witnessed its annual trading volume skyrocketing from less than US$5 million to over US$2.5 billion. As DeFi gains fame and grows rapidly, DEX has grown into the most popular source of money, attracting a flood of speculators. In the past month, the trading volume of the global cryptocurrency market DEX has exceeded US$ 4 billion, more than twice the figure across 2019.
In the past two years, despite the increasingly in-depth exploration in the DEX, the cross-chain issue remains a stumbling block in its development path. DEX will not outperform CEX in the trading experience until a cross-chain solution is worked out.
The concept of DeFi went viral in 2019. With the continuous improvement of the DeFi ecosystem, the current Ethereum blockchain has developed into a complete decentralized financial system, covering mortgage lending, interest from deposit, leveraged trading, token exchange, identity authentication, and other infrastructure essential to traditional financial systems.
In addition to the mouth-watering profit, the DeFi ecosystem has also brought along explosive growth in both the type and quantity of digital assets, making DEX a market favorite. Compared with the DEX dedicated to public chains, the Ethereum-based DEX has been equipped with more possible functions and thus become more attractive thanks to the comprehensive supplementary infrastructure on Ethereum.
This also presents DEX pioneers with new opportunities. Dubbed “Swap’s summer”, the summer of 2020 has seen a market rush in Swap development after UniSwap became a hit.
Miniswap, Justswap, and btswap are no more innovative than UniSwap according to their product structures and white papers.
By comparison, OneSwap has injected unique essence into its product design and governance model based on UniSwap's automated market making.
Upgraded UniSwap
OneSwap, which has a double mining model + order book, has received an investment of tens of millions from CoinEx even before the product is launched. It is known that OneSwap is jointly developed by a group of technology geeks who have engaged in the cryptocurrency community for many years. The project was initiated by a member of the team in an attempt to upgrade UniSwap after he experienced the convenient AMM enabled by UniSwap.
Without limit orders, users have to trade in the price set by the platform, which, however, compromised their experience. In addition, the lack of liquidity mining and transaction mining rewards cannot reduce the losses of liquidity providers caused by unilateral market conditions.
"DEX still has much room for perfection, and could even surpass CEX in trading experience"
The OneSwap development team always believes that UniSwap still has a long way to go before it becomes the strongest DEX in the DeFi ecosystem. They have endeavored to, relying on their abundant experience in exchange product development and digital currency trading, create the most powerful DEX product in the DeFi ecosystem based on smart contracts.
OneSwap is called the “upgraded UniSwap” in the community. By the combination of the Constant Product Market Maker (CPMM) model in the Uniswap project and the on-chain order book, it reduces restrictions on users’ trading, and, through its OneSwap Wallet, improves user interaction methods and further enhances their experience in trading and product usage.
OneSwap boasts one-click token issuance and listing essential to DEX. Unlike the listing review mechanism on Binance DEX, the setting of OneSwap is more consistent with the concept of decentralization. Anyone can put his or her good projects and ideas, if any, into practice through OneSwap without permission.
In terms of product design, OneSwap will add to its function menu the Candlestick chart, order form, and depth chart according to user habits, apart from limit orders. These functions will offer OneSwap users an experience as smooth, easy-to-use, and convenient as in the CEX.
A new source of money? A two-pronged platform with transaction mining + liquidity mining
To support on-chain governance, OneSwap will issue a ERC20 governance token called ONES. The total number of ONES remains constant at 100 million, 50% of which will be used as community funds to support the construction of the OneSwap ecosystem and 50% will be owned by the OneSwap team. Community funds can be applied for through on-chain governance. 5% of the part held by the team will be unlocked initially, and the rest will be unlocked at a rate of 5% every six months until all is unlocked after four and a half years.
After the OneSwap product was launched, the OneSwap team will take part of the initially unlocked tokens as airdrop rewards for the open beta. Then OneSwap will officially start liquidity mining and transaction mining, and the governance token ONES will also be simultaneously launched on centralized trading platforms across the world. The first round of mining activities will last for one month, and mining rewards are yet to be made public.
Liquidity mining is a popular way of obtaining governance tokens in the DeFi ecosystem. Well-known DeFi projects including COMP, Cure, and Banner have all enabled liquid mining.
Transaction mining could date back to 2018 when Fcoin grew popular.
The transaction mining model initiated by Fcoin in 2018 once set off a bull market that year, pushing many investors into financial freedom in the rush of transaction mining. In addition, transaction mining based on the DeFi ecosystem is still a blue ocean, which is not common in the current market. The success of OneSwap's double mining model, if possible, would surely start a craze in the cryptocurrency market.
The OneSwap team has not yet announced specific mining rules, but disclosed that it has developed the smart contract code. To ensure the product security, OneSwap will invite three well-known security agencies in the blockchain industry to audit the code and announce the auditing results in early September at the soonest.
Conclusion
DeFi did not rise to fame without reason in 2020. Such overnight popularity is an inevitable result of Ethereum's efforts to build a decentralized consensus mechanism and improve infrastructure in the past few years. Ethereum has almost become the only public chain in the DeFi circle and the only construction base for well-known DEX. If OneSwap succeeds, it means a huge breakthrough for both DeFi and Ethereum, and decentralization in its true sense is around the corner.

\This post has been written by Hedgehog, an MCS influencer and one of Korea's famous cryptocurrency key opinion leaders.*
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https://preview.redd.it/15cn7c8sg4i51.png?width=1024&format=png&auto=webp&s=a8cf9ee278cfe942cc536ae875d1bec4b331b00d
#Be_a_Trader!
Greetings from MCS, the derivatives trading platform where traders ALWAYS come first.
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If you are an MCS trader interested in Defi, that is emerging and trending in the cryptocurrency industry, you will have heard of an exchange called Uniswap and know that Uniswap is a decentralized exchange. The concept of Uniswap's decentralized exchange is very different from the decentralized exchange (DEX) which trended in 2017-2018.

What is Uniswap?

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https://preview.redd.it/g0d9s77tg4i51.png?width=470&format=png&auto=webp&s=2611450177d7a107a42f401c0f749f7693ce80e1
Uniswap is a decentralized exchange protocol. In short, it is an Ethereum-based protocol designed to facilitate automatic exchange transactions between Ethereum and ERC20 tokens. Uniswap is installed on-chain, so anyone can use this Uniswap protocol by installing a decentralized wallet like Metamask. Uniswap is loved by the cryptocurrency enthusiasts as it is a DeFi project that provides protection of assets when trading by decentralization.

How Does It Differ From Other DEXes?

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https://preview.redd.it/4t7ijzxtg4i51.png?width=1922&format=png&auto=webp&s=1b9daba69637a54a82f92791a23401e13cd9f19e
The image above is a screenshot of Binance's Decentralized Exchange (DEX). Most Decentralized Exchanges (DEX) have similar UI/UXs as above. These decentralized exchanges (DEX) are different from centralized exchanges as they do not require deposits of cryptocurrency assets on the exchange but rather links it with personal wallets. The trading concept is no different from centralized exchanges.
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https://preview.redd.it/y3zhz0vug4i51.png?width=868&format=png&auto=webp&s=b07d075b55a2e17c6822e0f124860a1411d61d5f
The image above is a screenshot of Uniswap's trade page. MCS traders who are new to Uniswap will have many questions like "What is this?" and "Can I trade with this?" Unlike traditional decentralized exchanges (DEXs), Uniswap has removed the order book. Instead, Uniswap introduced the Oracle concept and uses a pricing mechanism which guarantees liquidity and provide low spreads and slippage. These mechanisms are working successfully and are equipped with the concept of receiving incentives by providing liquidity utilizing the pool function on Uniswap.

Uniswap's Simple Market Making Mechanism

Uniswap guarantees liquidity using an automated market making mechanism. ERC-20 tokens traded in Uniswap has an Ethereum pool and token pool, and at a specific time, the token price is determined by the ratio of the Ethereum pool and the token pool size. Every time someone receives Ethereum from Uniswap by selling tokens, the amount of tokens increase and Ethereum decreases. In this case, the token price will gradually decrease by mechanism. Conversely, whenever someone gives Ethereum and buys a token, the corresponding token in the pool decreases, and the Ethereum quantity increases, so the mechanism increases the token price. As such, the token price is determined by an automated market making algorithm by checking the amount of Ethereum and token remaining in the token pool.

Incentivized Liquidity on Uniswap

Uniswap's automatic market making mechanism provides its own liquidity. However, it requires a significant pool of Ethereum and tokens to run smoothly. Uniswap incentivizes this liquidity by rewarding those who contribute to Ethereum and token pools. When each transaction occurs, part of the transaction fee is compensated to those who provide liquidity, and the size of the reward is proportional to the contribution ratio of the token pool liquidity.

Uniswap's Exponential Growth

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https://preview.redd.it/sxcmgsqvg4i51.png?width=1340&format=png&auto=webp&s=57dfbfc8b44ea40a92b9b7ea1bb00ee3e5d23d69
According to an article on coinDesk on the 13th, citing Dune Analytics data, Uniswap's trading volume from August 1st to 12th was approximately $1.76 billion. This volume has already exceeded the monthly volume of July which was $1.75 billion. As shown in the chart above, the monthly trading volume of Uniswap has succeeded in breaking a record high for 4 consecutive months and it still continues to grow.
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Cryptocurrency technical analysis: cryptocurrency assets began the rally
Top crypto assets have been in an uptrend this week. One of the reasons for the growth was the positive dynamics in the US stock market. This was facilitated by the decision of the US Federal Reserve to continue the asset repurchase program in current volumes until March 2021. In addition, a number of news has influenced the digital asset market. So, on July 25, Chief Justice of the District Court of the District of Columbia Beryl Howell recognized bitcoin as a form of money and stated that the asset falls under the money laundering law. This decision was made during the $311 million laundering case, where the head of the Coin Ninja crypto project Larry Dean Harmon is the defendant.
Also since the beginning of the week, Bitcoin futures trading volumes have shown impressive growth, and the regulated crypto exchange Bakkt has reported closing of record high trading sessions. Also, significant support for the growth of the first cryptocurrency was provided by the massive closing of short positions, which were liquidated on July 28 for more than $500 million. And on July 29 it became known that the Central Bank of the Philippines is now participating in the race to launch the first national cryptocurrency. For this, a special committee will be created that will study the issue of launching the CBDC and the legal norms necessary for its work.

Bitcoin

After a rebound from support at $9150, bitcoin quotes easily overcame the $9500 level, which now also acts as support. The 200-day simple moving average (SMA) line passes in this area, as well as the boundaries of the technical analysis “Triangle” (they are marked in pink on the chart below). This allowed Bitcoin to reach the first goal in the form of cluster boundaries of $9,900- $10,000 and $10,400- $10,500.
Now the movement is taking place within the consolidation of $10,800- $11,300. In the coming weeks, maintaining the upward momentum will allow BTC quotes to rush to the following targets — $11,580 and $12,000. divergences ”between the highs on the chart and the MACD oscillator. If this scenario is realized, the targets will be the levels of $10,400 and $10,000. Further downward movement looks unlikely, but may lead to a retest of the $9,500- $9,600 area, where whales will most likely prefer to gain new positions in bitcoin.
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BTC / USD chart, four-hour timeframe
On the daily chart of Bitcoin, you can see that there was a breakthrough of the boundaries of the technical analysis model “Triangle” (in the chart below they are marked in orange). From the point of view of technical analysis, a retest of the upper border of this figure should follow in the near future. This can lead to a decrease in the price from the current resistances of $11,000 and the cluster $11,200- $11,300 back to the supports at $10,500 and $10,000. If this scenario is implemented, there is also a chance of Bitcoin falling to the important cluster of $8900 (50% retracement at Fibonacci levels) — $9580.
The presence of divergence between the BTC price and the MACD oscillator indicates a high probability of a correction. But at what levels this reversal will occur is not yet known. But until the end of this year, the first cryptocurrency is ready to maintain its growth trend, which can lead to reaching $11,800, $12,500, a cluster of $13,100- $13,350 and $14,000.
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BTC / USD chart, daily timeframe

Ethereum

Altcoins went up after bitcoin. The ether also shows good growth, the quotes of which continue to confidently rise from the support at $233, below which the 200-day SMA line is located. After overcoming the first target at $280, the ether rushed to the next targets located at the resistance levels of $300 and $320.
Now the ETH quotes have returned to the framework of the “Flag” graphical model, which can reduce the volatility of the asset. At the same time, a correctional decline below $320 will allow big capital to gain positions. The support levels will be $300, $280 and $251. The targets for the development of a long-term upward movement are $363.80, $400 and $420.
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ETH / USD chart, daily timeframe

Litecoin

On the daily chart, Litecoin confidently maintains a positive momentum, which led to a breakout of the boundaries of the Descending Triangle technical analysis model. The upward breakout of the $47.45 level, just above which the 200-day moving average (MA) line is located, allowed LTC to go to the targets of $51.50 (38.2% correction level along the Fibonacci lines) and $56.80.
In the medium term, further upward movement may develop to $60.80, $65, $70 and even $83. However, in the event of a correction from the current levels, the whales are likely to gain positions only at the previously tested levels of $50 and $51.50.
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LTC / USD chart, daily timeframe

Bitcoin Cash

Bitcoin Cash, as expected, soared from the borders of the “Triangle” price model (on the chart below the borders are marked with pink lines) to the resistance located at the upper border of the “Horizontal Channel” $200- $272. Then the altcoin continued its way to the $305 area.
A correction may develop towards the 200-day SMA line, which is located in the $272 area. But in the long run of the coming months, we can expect a breakout of the $305 level, which will allow Bitcoin Cash to go up to the $356- $368 cluster and further to $400.
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BCH / USDT chart, daily timeframe

XRP

XRP also took advantage of an influx of liquidity, which led to the breakout of the boundaries of the Descending Triangle model. This allowed the asset to break through the boundaries of the “horizontal channel” of $0.18- $0.2050, in the area of which the 200-day MA line passes. As a result, XRP reached its first targets at $0.2360 and $0.2540.
In the long term, the bulls will be able to take profits at $0.27, $0.2860 and $0.3080. At the same time, the levels of $0.2040, $0.2360 and $0.2540 in the event of a correction can act as supports for the current XRP quotes.
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XRP / USD chart, daily timeframe

Binance Coin

Binance Coin also did not fail to take advantage of the market situation to break through the resistance in the form of the upper boundary of the “Ascending Triangle” and the level of $18.14. This allowed us to start the long-awaited growth towards the first target in the form of a powerful $19.36– $20 cluster. Maintaining this momentum in the months ahead will lead to the achievement of targets at $21.30, $23.50, $25.80 and $28.20.
But before that, the asset may wait for a correction to the levels of $19.36 and $18, where the 200-day SMA line is located.
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BNB / USDT chart, daily timeframe
At the end of this week, we can confidently say that another rally has begun among crypto assets. Moreover, it occurs before the start of the correctional decline on the world stock markets, which some investors warn about. Thus, the cryptocurrency market is becoming a new safe haven for whales, which have preferred to accumulate positions since March. We will not be surprised if this upward movement will last more than one month.
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Can the early success of major crypto exchanges propel them to winning the broader consumer finance market?
https://reddit.com/link/i48t4q/video/v4eo10gom7f51/player
This is the first part of Crypto Banking Wars — a new series that examines what crypto-native company is most likely to become the bank of the future. Who is best positioned to reach mainstream adoption in consumer finance?
While crypto allows the world to get rid of banks, a bank will still very much be necessary for this powerful technology to reach the masses. We believe a crypto-native company, like Genesis Block, will become the bank of the future.
In an earlier series, Crypto-Powered, we laid out arguments for why crypto-native companies have a huge edge in the market. When you consider both the broad spectrum of financial use-cases and the enormous value unlocked through these DeFi protocols, you can see just how big of an unfair advantage blockchain tech becomes for companies who truly understand and leverage it. Traditional banks and fintech unicorns simply won’t be able to keep up.

The power players of consumer finance in the 21st century will be crypto-native companies who build with blockchain technology at their core.

The crypto landscape is still nascent. We’re still very much in the fragmented, unbundled phase of the industry lifecycle. Beyond what Genesis Block is doing, there are signs of other companies slowly starting to bundle financial services into what could be an all-in-one bank replacement.
So the key question that this series hopes to answer:

Which crypto-native company will successfully become the bank of the future?

We obviously think Genesis Block is well-positioned to win. But we certainly aren’t the only game in town. In this series, we’ll be doing an analysis of who is most capable of thwarting our efforts. We’ll look at categories like crypto exchanges, crypto wallets, centralized lending & borrowing services, and crypto debit card companies. Each category will have its own dedicated post.
Today we’re analyzing big crypto exchanges. The two companies we’ll focus on today are Coinbase (biggest American exchange) and Binance (biggest global exchange). They are the top two exchanges in terms of Bitcoin trading volume. They are in pole position to winning this market — they have a huge existing userbase and strong financial resources.
Will Coinbase or Binance become the bank of the future? Can their early success propel them to winning the broader consumer finance market? Is their growth too far ahead for anyone else to catch up? Let’s dive in.
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Binance

The most formidable exchange on the global stage is Binance (Crunchbase). All signs suggest they have significantly more users and a stronger balance sheet than Coinbase. No other exchange is executing as aggressively and relentlessly as Binance is. The cadence at which they are shipping and launching new products is nothing short of impressive. As Tushar Jain from Multicoin argues, Binance is Blitzscaling.
Here are some of the products that they’ve launched in the last 18 months. Only a few are announced but still pre-launch.

• Lending: earn interest on your deposits
• Debit Card: users can spend their crypto with a card (via Swipe acquisition)
• Fiat onramps: 300+ payment methods and supported in 170+ countries
• Options Trading: starting with mobile-only and Bitcoin
• Futures Trading: became top 2 in volume within 6 months
• Margin Trading: can get up to 5x leverage
• BUSD stablecoin: similar to USDC, PAX, and other USD-backed stablecoins
• Staking: easily earn interest on assets that have Proof of Stake chain
• Mining pool: allowing miners to easily transfer funds between various Binance services
• OTC Portal: over-the-counter trading desk for those who want to make bigger trades
• Peer-to-Peer trading: for onramps/offramps (i.e. user buying crypto with fiat)
• Launchpad: crypto startups can launch their tokens via IEO (Initial Exchange Offering)
• Binance Charity: recently donated a lot to covid19-related efforts
• Binance Chain: a new blockchain that powers their Binance Dex.
• Binance DEX: a decentralized exchange
• Binance Labs: the venture arm of Binance
• Smart Contracts on Binance Chain: could this be an Ethereum killer?

Binance is well-positioned to become the crypto-powered, all-in-one, bundled solution for financial services. They already have so many of the pieces. But the key question is:

Can they create a cohesive & united product experience?

Binance Weaknesses

Binance is strong, but they do have a few major weaknesses that could slow them down.

1. Traders & Speculators Binance is currently very geared for speculators, traders, and financial professionals. Their bread-and-butter is trading (spot, margin, options, futures). Their UI is littered with depth charts, order books, candlesticks, and other financial concepts that are beyond the reach of most normal consumers. Their product today is not at all tailored for the broader consumer market. Given Binance’s popularity and strength among the pro audience, it’s unlikely that they will dumb down or simplify their product any time soon. That would jeopardize their core business. Binance will likely need an entirely new product/brand to go beyond the pro user crowd. That will take time (or an acquisition). So the question remains, is Binance even interested in the broader consumer market? Or will they continue to focus on their core product, the one-stop-shop for pro crypto traders?
2. Controversies & Hot Water Binance has had a number of controversies. No one seems to know where they are based — so what regulatory agencies can hold them accountable? Last year, some sensitive, private user data got leaked. When they announced their debit card program, they had to remove mentions of Visa quickly after. And though the “police raid” story proved to be untrue, there are still a lot of questions about what happened with their Shanghai office shut down (where there is smoke, there is fire). If any company has had a “move fast and break things” attitude, it is Binance. That attitude has served them well so far but as they try to do business in more regulated countries like America, this will make their road much more difficult — especially in the consumer market where trust takes a long time to earn, but can be destroyed in an instant. This is perhaps why the Binance US product is an empty shell when compared to their main global product.
3. Disjointed Product Experience Because Binance has so many different teams launching so many different services, their core product is increasingly feeling disjointed and disconnected. Many of the new features are sloppily integrated with each other. There’s no cohesive product experience. This is one of the downsides of executing and shipping at their relentless pace. For example, users don’t have a single wallet that shows their balances. Depending on if the user wants to do spot trading, margin, futures, or savings… the user needs to constantly be transferring their assets from one wallet to another. It’s not a unified, frictionless, simple user experience. This is one major downside of the “move fast and break things” approach.
4. BNB token Binance raised $15M in a 2017 ICO by selling their $BNB token. The current market cap of $BNB is worth more than $2.6B. Financially this token has served them well. However, given how BNB works (for example, their token burn), there are a lot of open questions as to how BNB will be treated with US security laws. Their Binance US product so far is treading very lightly with its use of BNB. Their token could become a liability for Binance as it enters more regulated markets. Whether the crypto community likes it or not, until regulators get caught up and understand the power of decentralized technology, tokens will still be a regulatory burden — especially for anything that touches consumers.
5. Binance Chain & Smart Contract Platform Binance is launching its own smart contract platform soon. Based on compatibility choices, they have their sights aimed at the Ethereum developer community. It’s unclear how easy it’ll be to convince developers to move to Binance chain. Most of the current developer energy and momentum around smart contracts is with Ethereum. Because Binance now has their own horse in the race, it’s unlikely they will ever decide to leverage Ethereum’s DeFi protocols. This could likely be a major strategic mistake — and hubris that goes a step too far. Binance will be pushing and promoting protocols on their own platform. The major risk of being all-in on their own platform is that they miss having a seat on the Ethereum rocket ship — specifically the growth of DeFi use-cases and the enormous value that can be unlocked. Integrating with Ethereum’s protocols would be either admitting defeat of their own platform or competing directly against themselves.

Binance Wrap Up

I don’t believe Binance is likely to succeed with a homegrown product aimed at the consumer finance market. Their current product — which is focused heavily on professional traders and speculators — is unlikely to become the bank of the future. If they wanted to enter the broader consumer market, I believe it’s much more likely that they will acquire a company that is getting early traction. They are not afraid to make acquisitions (Trust, JEX, WazirX, DappReview, BxB, CoinMarketCap, Swipe).
However, never count CZ out. He is a hustler. Binance is executing so aggressively and relentlessly that they will always be on the shortlist of major contenders.
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Coinbase

The crypto-native company that I believe is more likely to become the bank of the future is Coinbase (crunchbase). Their dominance in America could serve as a springboard to winning the West (Binance has a stronger foothold in Asia). Coinbase has more than 30M users. Their exchange business is a money-printing machine. They have a solid reputation as it relates to compliance and working with regulators. Their CEO is a longtime member of the crypto community. They are rumored to be going public soon.

Coinbase Strengths

Let’s look at what makes them strong and a likely contender for winning the broader consumer finance market.

1. Different Audience, Different Experience Coinbase has been smart to create a unique product experience for each audience — the pro speculator crowd and the common retail user. Their simple consumer version is at Coinbase.com. That’s the default. Their product for the more sophisticated traders and speculators is at Coinbase Pro (formerly GDAX). Unlike Binance, Coinbase can slowly build out the bank of the future for the broad consumer market while still having a home for their hardcore crypto traders. They aren’t afraid to have different experiences for different audiences.
2. Brand & Design Coinbase has a strong product design team. Their brand is capable of going beyond the male-dominated crypto audience. Their product is clean and simple — much more consumer-friendly than Binance. It’s clear they spend a lot of time thinking about their user experience. Interacting directly with crypto can sometimes be rough and raw (especially for n00bs). When I was at Mainframe we hosted a panel about Crypto UX challenges at the DevCon4 Dapp Awards. Connie Yang (Head of Design at Coinbase) was on the panel. She was impressive. Some of their design philosophies will bode well as they push to reach the broader consumer finance market.
3. USDC Stablecoin Coinbase (along with Circle) launched USDC. We’ve shared some stats about its impressive growth when we discussed DeFi use-cases. USDC is quickly becoming integrated with most DeFi protocols. As a result, Coinbase is getting a front-row seat at some of the most exciting things happening in decentralized finance. As Coinbase builds its knowledge and networks around these protocols, it could put them in a favorable position to unlock incredible value for their users.
4. Early Signs of Bundling Though Coinbase has nowhere near as many products & services as Binance, they are slowly starting to add more financial services that may appeal to the broader market. They are now letting depositors earn interest on USDC (also DAI & Tezos). In the UK they are piloting a debit card. Users can now invest in crypto with dollar-cost-averaging. It’s not much, but it’s a start. You can start to see hints of a more bundled solution around financial services.

Coinbase Weaknesses

Let’s now look at some things that could hold them back.

1. Slow Cadence In the fast-paced world of crypto, and especially when compared to Binance, Coinbase does not ship very many new products very often. This is perhaps their greatest weakness. Smaller, more nimble startups may run circles around them. They were smart to launch Coinbase Ventures where tey invest in early-stage startups. They can now keep an ear to the ground on innovation. Perhaps their cadence is normal for a company of their size — but the Binance pace creates quite the contrast.
2. Lack of Innovation When you consider the previous point (slow cadence), it’s unclear if Coinbase is capable of building and launching new products that are built internally. Most of their new products have come through acquisitions. Their Earn.com acquisition is what led to their Earn educational product. Their acquisition of Xapo helped bolster their institutional custody offering. They acqui-hired a team to help launch their staking infrastructure. Their acquisition of Cipher Browser became an important part of Coinbase Wallet. And recently, they acquired Tagomi — a crypto prime brokerage. Perhaps most of Coinbase’s team is just focused on improving their golden goose, their exchange business. It’s unclear. But the jury is still out on if they can successfully innovate internally and launch any homegrown products.
3. Talent Exodus There have been numerous reports of executive turmoil at Coinbase. It raises a lot of questions about company culture and vision. Some of the executives who departed include COO Asiff Hirji, CTO Balaji Srinivasan, VP & GM Adam White, VP Eng Tim Wagner, VP Product Jeremy Henrickson, Sr Dir of Eng Namrata Ganatra, VP of Intl Biz Dan Romero, Dir of Inst Sales Christine Sandler, Head of Trading Hunter Merghart, Dir Data Science Soups Ranjan, Policy Lead Mike Lempres, Sr Compliance Vaishali Mehta. Many of these folks didn’t stay with Coinbase very long. We don’t know exactly why it’s happening —but when you consider a few of my first points (slow cadence, lack of innovation), you have to wonder if it’s all related.
4. Institutional Focus As a company, we are a Coinbase client. We love their institutional offering. It’s clear they’ve been investing a lot in this area. A recent Coinbase blog post made it clear that this has been a focus: “Over the past 12 months, Coinbase has been laser-focused on building out the types of features and services that our institutional customers need.” Their Tagomi acquisition only re-enforced this focus. Perhaps this is why their consumer product has felt so neglected. They’ve been heavily investing in their institutional services since May 2018. For a company that’s getting very close to an IPO, it makes sense that they’d focus on areas that present strong revenue opportunities — as they do with institutional clients. Even for big companies like Coinbase, it’s hard to have a split focus. If they are “laser-focused” on the institutional audience, it’s unlikely they’ll be launching any major consumer products anytime soon.

Coinbase Wrap Up

At Genesis Block, we‘re proud to be working with Coinbase. They are a fantastic company. However, I don’t believe that they’ll succeed in building their own product for the broader consumer finance market. While they have incredible design, there are no signs that they are focused on or capable of internally building this type of product.
Similar to Binance, I think it’s far more likely that Coinbase acquires a promising young startup with strong growth.

Honorable Mentions

Other US-based exchanges worth mentioning are Kraken, Gemini, and Bittrex. So far we’ve seen very few signs that any of them will aggressively attack broader consumer finance. Most are going in the way of Binance — listing more assets and adding more pro tools like margin and futures trading. And many, like Coinbase, are trying to attract more institutional customers. For example, Gemini with their custody product.

Wrap Up

Coinbase and Binance have huge war chests and massive reach. For that alone, they should always be considered threats to Genesis Block. However, their products are very, very different than the product we’re building. And their approach is very different as well. They are trying to educate and onboard people into crypto. At Genesis Block, we believe the masses shouldn’t need to know or care about it. We did an entire series about this, Spreading Crypto.
Most everyone needs banking — whether it be to borrow, spend, invest, earn interest, etc. Not everyone needs a crypto exchange. For non-crypto consumers (the mass market), the differences between a bank and a crypto exchange are immense. Companies like Binance and Coinbase make a lot of money on their crypto exchange business. It would be really difficult, gutsy, and risky for any of them to completely change their narrative, messaging, and product to focus on the broader consumer market. I don’t believe they would ever risk biting the hand that feeds them.
In summary, as it relates to a digital bank aimed at the mass market, I believe both Coinbase and Binance are much more likely to acquire a startup in this space than they are to build it themselves. And I think they would want to keep the brand/product distinct and separate from their core crypto exchange business.
So back to the original question, is Coinbase and Binance a threat to Genesis Block? Not really. Not today. But they could be, and for that, we want to stay close to them.
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Other Ways to Consume Today's Episode:

• Read on Medium: https://medium.com/genesisblock/crypto-banking-wars-will-coinbase-or-binance-become-the-bank-of-the-future-eb31bcf02b02
• Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/0csY1j0FuEk
• Listen on SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/genesisblock/13-crypto-banking-wars-will-coinbase-or-binance-become-the-bank-of-the-future/
• Listen via Podcast (Spotify, Apple Podcasts, etc): https://anchor.fm/genesis-block/episodes/13-Crypto-Banking-Wars---Will-Coinbase-or-Binance-Become-the-Bank-of-the-Future-ehmrmo

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HUOBI – THE EXCHANGE BUILT FOR THE FUTURE
A HONEST REVIEW BY AN USER
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Leon Li founded Huobi in 2013, a former computer engineer at Oracle. Huobi Global is a digital asset and crypto currency exchange headquartered in Singapore. Huobi also has local exchanges in South Korea, Japan, and through its strategic partner, the United States.
The Huobi Group, the parent company of Huobi Global, has received venture capital finance from prominent Beijing based ZhenFund and American VC firm Sequoia Capital.
The Huobi Global exchange serves traders in 130 countries. Through Huobi Global, traders can access almost 200 crypto and stable coin assets. Huobi users can download trading clients on both mobile and desktop devices.
Huobi has traded over US$1.2 trillion in digital assets, and at one time it was the world’s leading exchange by volume, capturing 50% of all global trading volume.
In terms of security, Huobi has adopted a decentralized exchange structure, which helps to resist DDOS attacks. However, Huobi has implemented the ‘Huobi Security Reserve, in which Huobi has set aside 20,000 BTC reserved for users who have lost funds either due to hacks, or exchange failures.
Ease of use
The UI is clean, user-friendly and perfectly designed with all the basic requirements for a crypto-trader. The charting software is provided by Tradingview, which is exactly what you want.
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Huobi OTC
Huobi’s OTC exchange is a good initiative. The Huobi OTC exchange allows users to trade funds peer-to-peer which doesn’t affect the market price of the underlying asset. The OTC trading-desk, with transfer options like bank-transfers, PayPal, WU, Paytm, UPI, IMPS, Alipay & many others, is an easy to use payment gateway. With a secure exchange to diversify your investment, right next door, too with effective list of Buy and Sell options for BTC, ETH, USDT and EOS coins.
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Huobi Lite
Huobi Lite App provides a convenient channel for everyone to buy cryptocurrencies at the best prices. Tailor-made for beginners, traders, and users.
We can download the App directly from the respective iOS Store or Google Play Store. Alternatively, we may access via the link: https://lite.huobi.com/download
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On Huobi Lite, you can buy Bitcoin with your local currencies, credit card, or exchange cryptocurrencies tokens, with zero fees at competitive prices. Huobi Lite currently supports MYR / HKD / VND / USD (Credit Card deposit only), with more to come in the future.
Huobi Derivative Market (Huobi DM)
Margin Trading
Huobi Global launched Huobi Derivative Market (Huobi DM) exchange to selected countries. It provides margin trading, with very low daily loan interest rates of 0.1%. Margin Trading allows users to increase their investment exposure given a limited base principal to enjoy multiple returns.
3-Steps taken in Margin Trading:

1. Request for Loan
2. Trade on Margin (Long/Short)
3. Repay Margin Loan and Interest

With the introduction of Cross Margin on Huobi, users will have to explicitly input the respective margin type before executing the above 3 steps. Balances on the Cross Margin balance does not show on the Isolated Margin balance.
Huobi Futures
Huobi Futures is a kind of digital currency derivatives. Users can make a profit from the rising/falling of digital currencies prices by going long or selling short based on their own judgment.
The Huobi Futures Contract adopts spread delivery. When the contract expires, all open positions will be closed at the index-based last-hour arithmetic average price, instead of physical delivery.
BTC/ETH/EOS/LTC/XRP/BCH/TRX/BSV/ETC Contracts are available on Huobi DM. Contracts are priced in USD, with corresponding digital currency (BTC/ETH/EOS/LTC/XRP/BCH/TRX respectively) as margin to open positions, and PnL is also settled in corresponding digital currency.
Weekly, bi-weekly and quarterly contracts are available in Huobi DM. Weekly contracts will be settled on imminent Friday; Bi-weekly contracts will be settled on next Friday; Quarterly contracts will be settled on the last Friday of March, June, September and December.
Choices of leverage: 1x, 5x, 10x, 20x
Huobi Perpetual Swap
Huobi introduced Perpetual Swaps on March 27, 2020 (GMT+8). Huobi Perpetual swap is a kind of digital currency derivatives. Users can make a profit from the rising/falling of digital currencies prices by going long or selling short based on their own judgment. Similar to a margin spot market, its price is close to the price of the underlying reference index. The main mechanism for anchoring spot prices is the cost of funds. Perpetual swap have no delivery date. Users can always hold it. Perpetual swap are settled every 8 hours. After each settlement, the realized profit/loss and unrealized profits/losses are transferred to the user account balance.
Partial Liquidation
Huobi Futures adopted partial liquidation to help position holders reduce liquidation risk. Users with large positions and high leverage bear high risk. Huobi Futures releases partial liquidation with the aim to lower possible losses due to high price volatility thus giving users better trading experience.
Under partial liquidation mechanism, when liquidation is triggered, instead of liquidating all positions at once, the system reduces positions gradually till a grade whose margin ratio is great than 0. Full liquidation will only occur when the margin ratio of tier 1 upper limit net position still fails to be great than 0.
Trading Fees
The Huobi exchange has a fair trading fee structure. Every asset traded via Huobi Global is subject to a 0.2% trade fee, for both market makers and takers. Further, Huobi Global has introduced a tiered fee system which offers competitively lower fees for high volume traders. VIP membership gives access to various fee reductions and other benefits.
Huobi Prime
Huobi Prime, the Launchpad platform which we can call Direct Premium Offering (DPO), does share some similarities with initial exchange offerings (IEO) like Binance Launchpad, but it is unique as it is not a fundraising platform, and any coins purchased on the platform are immediately deposited into the users’ wallets and tradable on Huobi Global. Huobi Prime offers its users early access to the coins of premium projects, which can be bought using its native crypto currency, the Huobi Token. To avoid dumping, Huobi has implemented an innovative idea of a period of tiered price limits.
Huobi FastTrack
Huobit FastTrack, rebranded from Huobi Prime Lite, is a new listing model. Wherein, all participants will have a direct say in what projects are listed on Huobi Global and when. In addition, winning voters will get access to quality tokens at below market rates. The program also provides much needed exposure and a straightforward listing process.
Huobi Wallet
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Huobi Wallet is the official mobile wallet of Huobi Group, a leading global digital asset financial service provider. It is a multi-chain asset management tool that provides native support for various types of blockchains and all of the ERC20 tokens. So far Huobi Wallet supports BTC, BCH, LTC, ETH, ETC, USDT and all ERC20 tokens.
Huobi wallet is the first wallet to expand support to cover seven stablecoins including, Paxos Standard Token (PAX), TrueUSD (TUSD), USD Coin (USDC), Gemini Dollar (GUSD), Dai (DAI), Stasis EURS (EURS), and Tether (USDT).
Huobi Wallet is built based on the core principle of security-first. The wallet gives back its users, complete control of their private keys. In simple terms, You own your assets. The wallet is backed up with mnemonics, so in future when you want to import your wallet, it’s just simple few clicks.
Currently, the wallet is compatible with both iOS and Android devices and you can download both from here (www.huobiwallet.com/en)
Huobi Chain
Huobi launched Huobi Chain’s Testnet (“the Testnet”) on February 29th 2020 (GMT+8). Huobi Chain is China’s autonomous cum compliant-ready blockchain platform, and is committed to providing a global, blockchain-based, digital asset infrastructure. Huobi Chain is committed to providing a high-performance, blockchain-based, global digital asset infrastructure. Once the Mainnet goes live, Huobi Chain will announce HT- related events: e.g. pledge HT to be a Super Node, etc.
HT Lock & Mine (Huobi Pool)
Huobi launched HT Lock and Mine operations on 25th July 2019 (GMT+8). Users who lock HT tokens receive daily HPT rewards. Specific reward quantity will depend on lock option period selected, quantity locked and Huobi Pool’ s mining hash power and daily float.
DPOS Rewards: All Huobi Global users with more than 1,000HPT holdings in their HBG account will receive DPOS mining rewards. Currently, token reward received under DPOS mining include EOS, TRX, CMT, ONG, IOST, ATOM, IRIS, LAMB。
Huobi Support
Users of the Huobi exchange can access 24/7 live chat and Huobi help center. Those facing issues can also open a support ticket to have their issue resolved by an expert representative immediately.
The Huobi Group has a very active YouTube channel, featuring Huobi Talk, where it posts user tutorials, detailed guides, and crypto currency information for traders.
What I like the most about Huobi

1. An established platform that’s been operating since 2013, which is a long time in the crypto world.
   
2. Highly secured with decentralized exchange structure, which helps to resist DDOS attacks. Huobi has never suffered a large hack.
   
3. Huobi Security Reserve of 20000 BTC to compensate users’ loss of funds.
   
4. Dedicated, fast and 24/7 customer support.
   
5. Regulated in major jurisdictions.
   
6. User interface is very smooth and clean.
   
7. Over 230 crypto assets are available.
   
8. User education program is good initiative.
   
9. Separate trading desk for institution and firm size users.
   
10. Very transparent about its operations, listings and projects.
    
11. Huobi Wallet is secured and very easy to operate.
    
12. Huobi mobile app is smooth and very easy to use.
    
13. Competitive fees.
    
14. Has taken serious steps towards avoiding wash trading.
    
15. Impressive array of trading pairs.
    
16. Has given more important on community participation, like voting for listing, mining pool, Huobi Knights program etc.
    
17. I like Huobi Prime because of following reasons: -
    

(a) Purchased tokens are immediately deposited into user’s accounts,
(b) As projects launch exclusively through Huobi Prime from day one, all users get assets at the best price.
(c) Tiered price limits on the platform protect both investors and projects from immediate dump.

1. Huobi screen projects and launches which are only the best. I don’t have to worry about poor or scammy projects.
   
2. Burning of HT is a great move and it would benefit long term holders.
   

Join Huobi by click here: https://www.huobi.com/en-us/topic/invited/?invite_code=7zkb4
Visit
Huobi Global: https://www.huobi.com/en-us/
Join Indian Group: https://t.me/huobiglobalindia
Global telegram Channel: https://t.me/huobiglobalofficial
Join Huobi by click here: https://www.huobi.com/en-us/topic/invited/?invite_code=7zkb4

​
The CEO Of The Biggest Crypto Exchange To Date, Binance, Admitted That Most Crypto Exchanges Mark 1 BTC Trading Volume As 2 BTC Exchanged
One of the biggest crypto data aggregators, CoinMarketCap (CMC), received a wave of controversy about the truthfulness of reported data amid the recent acquisition by Binance. The recent changes in CoinMarketCap’s exchange performance algorithms caused several of the biggest exchanges to fall down in the exchange list.
However, the importance of CoinMarketCap`s algorithm may lead to essential changes in the sector. Positions shuffling of the exchanges has recently positioned Binance as a sole leader, which sparked a wave of criticism about whether the data is real or not.
Changpeng “CZ” Zhao responded to the accusations by revealing a shocking secret – most crypto exchanges report a single Bitcoin trade as two trades – one buy and one sell trade. Thus, the volumes of most crypto exchanges are inflated by 100%.
Zhao noted that “Binance reports trades in the traditional way”.
“Also, we chose to “hide” our trading volumes to prevent Binance to be seen as much bigger than it is. As per the trade washing accusations – do we do wash trading? No”, Zhao added.
However, even with Binance reporting effectively half of the trading volumes it sees, the exchange still records the highest trading volumes in the market, while Binance’s Futures platform is establishing itself as a leading derivatives trading platform.
The controversy happened as CoinMarketCap applied a new metrics algorithm, which resulted in one of Binance’s most prominent rivals like BitMEX, to fall down as low as #175 in CoinMarketCap’s list. BitMEX currently holds the leadership in crypto derivatives trading. However, CoinMarketCap’s new algorithm reports zero liquidity for the exchange, thus – bringing it beyond the middle of the chart.
Source: CoinMarketCap
The case with BitMEX also applies for crypto exchanges Deribit and Bybit, as they both mark zero liquidity on CMC’s ranking.
Meanwhile, the team at CMC responded to the accusations, stating that crypto derivatives platforms do not fall under the radar of the new metrics. Crypto enthusiasts and traders immediately questioned CMC’s integrity and data honesty. The team at CMC clarified that the new metrics apply only to crypto spot trading and exchanging. For crypto derivatives, CMC considers opening a brand new tab in CoinMarketCap’s ranking.

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Founded by HDR Global Trading Limited (which in turn was founded by former bankers Arthur Hayes, Samuel Reed and Ben Delo) in 2014, BitMEX is a trading platform operating around the world and registered in the Seychelles.
Meaning Bitcoin Mercantile Exchange, BitMEX is one of the largest Bitcoin trading platforms currently operating, with a daily trading volume of over 35,000 BTC and over 540,000 accesses monthly and a trading history of over $34 billion worth of Bitcoin since its inception.
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Unlike many other trading exchanges, BitMEX only accepts deposits through Bitcoin, which can then be used to purchase a variety of other cryptocurrencies. BitMEX specialises in sophisticated financial operations such as margin trading, which is trading with leverage. Like many of the exchanges that operate through cryptocurrencies, BitMEX is currently unregulated in any jurisdiction.
Visit BitMEX

How to Sign Up to BitMEX

In order to create an account on BitMEX, users first have to register with the website. Registration only requires an email address, the email address must be a genuine address as users will receive an email to confirm registration in order to verify the account. Once users are registered, there are no trading limits. Traders must be at least 18 years of age to sign up.
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However, it should be noted that BitMEX does not accept any US-based traders and will use IP checks to verify that users are not in the US. While some US users have bypassed this with the use of a VPN, it is not recommended that US individuals sign up to the BitMEX service, especially given the fact that alternative exchanges are available to service US customers that function within the US legal framework.
How to Use BitMEX
BitMEX allows users to trade cryptocurrencies against a number of fiat currencies, namely the US Dollar, the Japanese Yen and the Chinese Yuan. BitMEX allows users to trade a number of different cryptocurrencies, namely Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Dash, Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, Litecoin, Monero, Ripple, Tezos and Zcash.
The trading platform on BitMEX is very intuitive and easy to use for those familiar with similar markets. However, it is not for the beginner. The interface does look a little dated when compared to newer exchanges like Binance and Kucoin’s.
Once users have signed up to the platform, they should click on Trade, and all the trading instruments will be displayed beneath.
Clicking on the particular instrument opens the orderbook, recent trades, and the order slip on the left. The order book shows three columns – the bid value for the underlying asset, the quantity of the order, and the total USD value of all orders, both short and long.
The widgets on the trading platform can be changed according to the user’s viewing preferences, allowing users to have full control on what is displayed. It also has a built in feature that provides for TradingView charting. This offers a wide range of charting tool and is considered to be an improvement on many of the offering available from many of its competitors.
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Once trades are made, all orders can be easily viewed in the trading platform interface. There are tabs where users can select their Active Orders, see the Stops that are in place, check the Orders Filled (total or partially) and the trade history. On the Active Orders and Stops tabs, traders can cancel any order, by clicking the “Cancel” button. Users also see all currently open positions, with an analysis if it is in the black or red.
BitMEX uses a method called auto-deleveraging which BitMEX uses to ensure that liquidated positions are able to be closed even in a volatile market. Auto-deleveraging means that if a position bankrupts without available liquidity, the positive side of the position deleverages, in order of profitability and leverage, the highest leveraged position first in queue. Traders are always shown where they sit in the auto-deleveraging queue, if such is needed.
Although the BitMEX platform is optimized for mobile, it only has an Android app (which is not official). There is no iOS app available at present. However, it is recommended that users use it on the desktop if possible.
BitMEX offers a variety of order types for users:

• Limit Order (the order is fulfilled if the given price is achieved);
• Market Order (the order is executed at current market price);
• Stop Limit Order (like a stop order, but allows users to set the price of the Order once the Stop Price is triggered);
• Stop Market Order (this is a stop order that does not enter the order book, remain unseen until the market reaches the trigger);
• Trailing Stop Order (it is similar to a Stop Market order, but here users set a trailing value that is used to place the market order);
• Take Profit Limit Order (this can be used, similarly to a Stop Order, to set a target price on a position. In this case, it is in respect of making gains, rather than cutting losses);
• Take Profit Market Order (same as the previous type, but in this case, the order triggered will be a market order, and not a limit one)

The exchange offers margin trading in all of the cryptocurrencies displayed on the website. It also offers to trade with futures and derivatives – swaps.

Futures and Swaps

A futures contract is an agreement to buy or sell a given asset in the future at a predetermined price. On BitMEX, users can leverage up to 100x on certain contracts.
Perpetual swaps are similar to futures, except that there is no expiry date for them and no settlement. Additionally, they trade close to the underlying reference Index Price, unlike futures, which may diverge substantially from the Index Price.
BitMEX also offers Binary series contracts, which are prediction-based contracts which can only settle at either 0 or 100. In essence, the Binary series contracts are a more complicated way of making a bet on a given event.
The only Binary series betting instrument currently available is related to the next 1mb block on the Bitcoin blockchain. Binary series contracts are traded with no leverage, a 0% maker fee, a 0.25% taker fee and 0.25% settlement fee.

Bitmex Leverage

BitMEX allows its traders to leverage their position on the platform. Leverage is the ability to place orders that are bigger than the users’ existing balance. This could lead to a higher profit in comparison when placing an order with only the wallet balance. Trading in such conditions is called “Margin Trading.”
There are two types of Margin Trading: Isolated and Cross-Margin. The former allows the user to select the amount of money in their wallet that should be used to hold their position after an order is placed. However, the latter provides that all of the money in the users’ wallet can be used to hold their position, and therefore should be treated with extreme caution.
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The BitMEX platform allows users to set their leverage level by using the leverage slider. A maximum leverage of 1:100 is available (on Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash). This is quite a high level of leverage for cryptocurrencies, with the average offered by other exchanges rarely exceeding 1:20.

BitMEX Fees

For traditional futures trading, BitMEX has a straightforward fee schedule. As noted, in terms of leverage offered, BitMEX offers up to 100% leverage, with the amount off leverage varying from product to product.
However, it should be noted that trading at the highest leverages is sophisticated and is intended for professional investors that are familiar with speculative trading. The fees and leverage are as follows:
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However, there are additional fees for hidden / iceberg orders. A hidden order pays the taker fee until the entire hidden quantity is completely executed. Then, the order will become normal, and the user will receive the maker rebate for the non-hidden amount.

Deposits and Withdrawals

BitMEX does not charge fees on deposits or withdrawals. However, when withdrawing Bitcoin, the minimum Network fee is based on blockchain load. The only costs therefore are those of the banks or the cryptocurrency networks.
As noted previously, BitMEX only accepts deposits in Bitcoin and therefore Bitcoin serves as collateral on trading contracts, regardless of whether or not the trade involves Bitcoin.
The minimum deposit is 0.001 BTC. There are no limits on withdrawals, but withdrawals can also be in Bitcoin only. To make a withdrawal, all that users need to do is insert the amount to withdraw and the wallet address to complete the transfer.
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Deposits can be made 24/7 but withdrawals are processed by hand at a recurring time once per day. The hand processed withdrawals are intended to increase the security levels of users’ funds by providing extra time (and email notice) to cancel any fraudulent withdrawal requests, as well as bypassing the use of automated systems & hot wallets which may be more prone to compromise.

Supported Currencies

BitMEX operates as a crypto to crypto exchange and makes use of a Bitcoin-in/Bitcoin-out structure. Therefore, platform users are currently unable to use fiat currencies for any payments or transfers, however, a plus side of this is that there are no limits for trading and the exchange incorporates trading pairs linked to the US Dollar (XBT), Japanese Yen (XBJ), and Chinese Yuan (XBC).
BitMEX supports the following cryptocurrencies:

• Bitcoin (XBT)
• Bitcoin Cash (BCH)
• Ethereum (ETH)
• Ethereum Classic (ETC)
• Litecoin (LTC)
• Ripple Token (XRP)
• Monero (XMR)
• Dash (DASH)
• Zcash (ZEC)
• Cardano (ADA)
• Tron (TRX)
• EOS Token (EOS)

BitMEX also offers leverage options on the following coins:

• 5x: Zcash (ZEC)
• 20x : Ripple (XRP),Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Cardano (ADA), EOS Token (EOS), Tron (TRX)
• 25x: Monero (XMR)
• 33x: Litecoin (LTC)
• 50x: Ethereum (ETH)
• 100x: Bitcoin (XBT), Bitcoin / Yen (XBJ), Bitcoin / Yuan (XBC)

Trading Technologies International Partnership

HDR Global Trading, the company which owns BitMEX, has recently announced a partnership with Trading Technologies International, Inc. (TT), a leading international high-performance trading software provider.
The TT platform is designed specifically for professional traders, brokers, and market-access providers, and incorporates a wide variety of trading tools and analytical indicators that allow even the most advanced traders to customize the software to suit their unique trading styles. The TT platform also provides traders with global market access and trade execution through its privately managed infrastructure and the partnership will see BitMEX users gaining access to the trading tools on all BitMEX products, including the popular XBT/USD Perpetual Swap pairing.
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The BitMEX Insurance Fund

The ability to trade on leverage is one of the exchange’s main selling points and offering leverage and providing the opportunity for traders to trade against each other may result in a situation where the winners do not receive all of their expected profits. As a result of the amounts of leverage involved, it’s possible that the losers may not have enough margin in their positions to pay the winners.
Traditional exchanges like the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) offset this problem by utilizing multiple layers of protection and cryptocurrency trading platforms offering leverage cannot currently match the levels of protection provided to winning traders.
In addition, cryptocurrency exchanges offering leveraged trades propose a capped downside and unlimited upside on a highly volatile asset with the caveat being that on occasion, there may not be enough funds in the system to pay out the winners.
To help solve this problem, BitMEX has developed an insurance fund system, and when a trader has an open leveraged position, their position is forcefully closed or liquidated when their maintenance margin is too low.
Here, a trader’s profit and loss does not reflect the actual price their position was closed on the market, and with BitMEX when a trader is liquidated, their equity associated with the position drops down to zero.
In the following example, the trader has taken a 100x long position. In the event that the mark price of Bitcoin falls to $3,980 (by 0.5%), then the position gets liquidated with the 100 Bitcoin position needing to be sold on the market.
This means that it does not matter what price this trade executes at, namely if it’s $3,995 or $3,000, as from the view of the liquidated trader, regardless of the price, they lose all the equity they had in their position, and lose the entire one Bitcoin.
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Assuming there is a fully liquid market, the bid/ask spread should be tighter than the maintenance margin. Here, liquidations manifest as contributions to the insurance fund (e.g. if the maintenance margin is 50bps, but the market is 1bp wide), and the insurance fund should rise by close to the same amount as the maintenance margin when a position is liquidated. In this scenario, as long as healthy liquid markets persist, the insurance fund should continue its steady growth.
The following graphs further illustrate the example, and in the first chart, market conditions are healthy with a narrow bid/ask spread (just $2) at the time of liquidation. Here, the closing trade occurs at a higher price than the bankruptcy price (the price where the margin balance is zero) and the insurance fund benefits.
Illustrative example of an insurance contribution – Long 100x with 1 BTC collateral
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(Note: The above illustration is based on opening a 100x long position at $4,000 per BTC and 1 Bitcoin of collateral. The illustration is an oversimplification and ignores factors such as fees and other adjustments.
The bid and offer prices represent the state of the order book at the time of liquidation. The closing trade price is $3,978, representing $1 of slippage compared to the $3,979 bid price at the time of liquidation.)
The second chart shows a wide bid/ask spread at the time of liquidation, here, the closing trade takes place at a lower price than the bankruptcy price, and the insurance fund is used to make sure that winning traders receive their expected profits.
This works to stabilize the potential for returns as there is no guarantee that healthy market conditions can continue, especially during periods of heightened price volatility. During these periods, it’s actually possible that the insurance fund can be used up than it is built up.
Illustrative example of an insurance depletion – Long 100x with 1 BTC collateral
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(Notes: The above illustration is based on opening a 100x long position at $4,000 per BTC and 1 Bitcoin of collateral. The illustration is an oversimplification and ignores factors such as fees and other adjustments.
The bid and offer prices represent the state of the order book at the time of liquidation. The closing trade price is $3,800, representing $20 of slippage compared to the $3,820 bid price at the time of liquidation.)
The exchange declared in February 2019, that the BitMEX insurance fund retained close to 21,000 Bitcoin (around $70 million based on Bitcoin spot prices at the time).
This figure represents just 0.007% of BitMEX’s notional annual trading volume, which has been quoted as being approximately $1 trillion. This is higher than the insurance funds as a proportion of trading volume of the CME, and therefore, winning traders on BitMEX are exposed to much larger risks than CME traders as:

• BitMEX does not have clearing members with large balance sheets and traders are directly exposed to each other.
• BitMEX does not demand payments from traders with negative account balances.
• The underlying instruments on BitMEX are more volatile than the more traditional instruments available on CME.

Therefore, with the insurance fund remaining capitalized, the system effectively with participants who get liquidated paying for liquidations, or a losers pay for losers mechanism.
This system may appear controversial as first, though some may argue that there is a degree of uniformity to it. It’s also worth noting that the exchange also makes use of Auto Deleveraging which means that on occasion, leveraged positions in profit can still be reduced during certain time periods if a liquidated order cannot be executed in the market.
More adventurous traders should note that while the insurance fund holds 21,000 Bitcoin, worth approximately 0.1% of the total Bitcoin supply, BitMEX still doesn’t offer the same level of guarantees to winning traders that are provided by more traditional leveraged trading platforms.
Given the inherent volatility of the cryptocurrency market, there remains some possibility that the fund gets drained down to zero despite its current size. This may result in more successful traders lacking confidence in the platform and choosing to limit their exposure in the event of BitMEX being unable to compensate winning traders.

How suitable is BitMEX for Beginners?

BitMEX generates high Bitcoin trading levels, and also attracts good levels of volume across other crypto-to-crypto transfers. This helps to maintain a buzz around the exchange, and BitMEX also employs relatively low trading fees, and is available round the world (except to US inhabitants).
This helps to attract the attention of people new to the process of trading on leverage and when getting started on the platform there are 5 main navigation Tabs to get used to:

• **Trade:**The trading dashboard of BitMEX. This tab allows you to select your preferred trading instrument, and choose leverage, as well as place and cancel orders. You can also see your position information and view key information in the contract details.
• **Account:**Here, all your account information is displayed including available Bitcoin margin balances, deposits and withdrawals, and trade history.
• **Contracts:**This tab covers further instrument information including funding history, contract sizes; leverage offered expiry, underlying reference Price Index data, and other key features.
• **References:**This resource centre allows you to learn about futures, perpetual contracts, position marking, and liquidation.
• **API:**From here you can set up an API connection with BitMEX, and utilize the REST API and WebSocket API.

BitMEX also employs 24/7 customer support and the team can also be contacted on their Twitter and Reddit accounts.
In addition, BitMEX provides a variety of educational resources including an FAQ section, Futures guides, Perpetual Contracts guides, and further resources in the “References” account tab.
For users looking for more in depth analysis, the BitMEX blog produces high level descriptions of a number of subjects and has garnered a good reputation among the cryptocurrency community.
Most importantly, the exchange also maintains a testnet platform, built on top of testnet Bitcoin, which allows anyone to try out programs and strategies before moving on to the live exchange.
This is crucial as despite the wealth of resources available, BitMEX is not really suitable for beginners, and margin trading, futures contracts and swaps are best left to experienced, professional or institutional traders.
Margin trading and choosing to engage in leveraged activity are risky processes and even more advanced traders can describe the process as a high risk and high reward “game”. New entrants to the sector should spend a considerable amount of time learning about margin trading and testing out strategies before considering whether to open a live account.

Is BitMEX Safe?

BitMEX is widely considered to have strong levels of security. The platform uses multi-signature deposits and withdrawal schemes which can only be used by BitMEX partners. BitMEX also utilises Amazon Web Services to protect the servers with text messages and two-factor authentication, as well as hardware tokens.
BitMEX also has a system for risk checks, which requires that the sum of all account holdings on the website must be zero. If it’s not, all trading is immediately halted. As noted previously, withdrawals are all individually hand-checked by employees, and private keys are never stored in the cloud. Deposit addresses are externally verified to make sure that they contain matching keys. If they do not, there is an immediate system shutdown.
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In addition, the BitMEX trading platform is written in kdb+, a database and toolset popular amongst major banks in high frequency trading applications. The BitMEX engine appears to be faster and more reliable than some of its competitors, such as Poloniex and Bittrex.
They have email notifications, and PGP encryption is used for all communication.
The exchange hasn’t been hacked in the past.

How Secure is the platform?

As previously mentioned, BitMEX is considered to be a safe exchange and incorporates a number of security protocols that are becoming standard among the sector’s leading exchanges. In addition to making use of Amazon Web Services’ cloud security, all the exchange’s systems can only be accessed after passing through multiple forms of authentication, and individual systems are only able to communicate with each other across approved and monitored channels.
Communication is also further secured as the exchange provides optional PGP encryption for all automated emails, and users can insert their PGP public key into the form inside their accounts.
Once set up, BitMEX will encrypt and sign all the automated emails sent by you or to your account by the [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]) email address. Users can also initiate secure conversations with the support team by using the email address and public key on the Technical Contact, and the team have made their automated system’s PGP key available for verification in their Security Section.
The platform’s trading engine is written in kdb+, a database and toolset used by leading financial institutions in high-frequency trading applications, and the speed and reliability of the engine is also used to perform a full risk check after every order placement, trade, settlement, deposit, and withdrawal.
All accounts in the system must consistently sum to zero, and if this does not happen then trading on the platform is immediately halted for all users.
With regards to wallet security, BitMEX makes use of a multisignature deposit and withdrawal scheme, and all exchange addresses are multisignature by default with all storage being kept offline. Private keys are not stored on any cloud servers and deep cold storage is used for the majority of funds.
Furthermore, all deposit addresses sent by the BitMEX system are verified by an external service that works to ensure that they contain the keys controlled by the founders, and in the event that the public keys differ, the system is immediately shut down and trading halted. The exchange’s security practices also see that every withdrawal is audited by hand by a minimum of two employees before being sent out.

BitMEX Customer Support

The trading platform has a 24/7 support on multiple channels, including email, ticket systems and social media. The typical response time from the customer support team is about one hour, and feedback on the customer support generally suggest that the customer service responses are helpful and are not restricted to automated responses.
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The BitMEX also offers a knowledge base and FAQs which, although they are not necessarily always helpful, may assist and direct users towards the necessary channels to obtain assistance.
BitMEX also offers trading guides which can be accessed here
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Conclusion

There would appear to be few complaints online about BitMEX, with most issues relating to technical matters or about the complexities of using the website. Older complaints also appeared to include issues relating to low liquidity, but this no longer appears to be an issue.
BitMEX is clearly not a platform that is not intended for the amateur investor. The interface is complex and therefore it can be very difficult for users to get used to the platform and to even navigate the website.
However, the platform does provide a wide range of tools and once users have experience of the platform they will appreciate the wide range of information that the platform provides.
Visit BitMEX

Huobi is a Singapore-based cryptocurrency exchange. Founded in China, the company now has offices in Hong Kong, Korea, Japan and the United States. In August 2018 it became a publicly listed Hong Kong company.
Recently during early 2019, after crypto communities lost interest in ICOs (Initial Coin Offering) due to many unregistered STOs (Security Token Offering) and other projects whose aim was only to raise the funds. Exchanges adapted and gave a new dimension of the fund raising, IEO (Initial Exchange Offering).
In this regard, exchanges helped the projects by providing them a platform to raise the funds and also helped the retail investors by doing due diligence on the project on behalf of the investors. Best part of this process is, such issued tokens are listed on the same platform and exchanges helped these start ups in the process. This gave a sense of security and helped to maintain integrity with the projects and public investors.
All the top tier exchanges are participating in this movement and named such fund raising as Launchpad, Jumpstart, Spotlight, Startup etc. While Huobi came up with Huobi Prime.
Unlike other exchanges, Huobi Prime has helped varieties of start-ups.

• It all started with a DAG based blockchain platform, Top Network.
• A project named after the greatest scientist who made a major impact on the human lives, Newton Project. It is aimed to deliver an infrastructure for the community economy.
• It is followed by Thunder Core. A blockchain project dreamt of decentralized future and allows anyone to build dApps on their platform.
• Then Reserve Rights continued the legacy. It’s a protocol for stable currencies with three kinds of tokens RSV, RSR and collateral tokens.
• Akropolis - a protocol to explore the informal economy and help the people with DeFi. It was one of it’s kind which was competitive enough to seek the help from the Huobi.
• Later a social digital currency, Emogi secured a place to be the next Prime project.
• Recently, Whole Network - A consensus, co-creation, and win-win behavioral value network had the opportunity to feature as a 7th Prime project.

However, each of the Prime project is different from the other in the list. One must admit, it is a basket with mixed fruits. From DAG to Currency to dApp platform to stable coin protocol to DeFi protocol to digital currency to blockchain phone. Huobi has covered a rich list of projects in this journey.
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https://preview.redd.it/8z08lbq3qls41.png?width=800&format=png&auto=webp&s=34de122d950f32feb46df82cdce290221e1572be
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(This chart presents the information based on the price of the each token on 2nd October. However it may vary marginally as price of the cryptocurrencies are volatile in nature)
Trading Options
Many centralized exchanges serve as the sole, centralized market maker. In contrast, Huobi also allows you to trade over the counter (OTC). This means that you can buy and sell cryptocurrencies peer-to-peer on Huobi. Even though this option exists on the exchange, it has yet to gain adoption from traders. Various commenters have said that there is a lack of OTC offers. Still, this is still an innovative technical feature.
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If you are a margin trader, Houbi has a separate platform specifically for this. You can access this by going to the margin tab in the header. The amount of leverage you can have varies from coin-to-coin. For example, BTC is around 3x. Compared to other margin trading platforms, this is low. Nonetheless, it is an attractive option for potential users.
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In December 2018, Huobi Derivative Market issued BTC contracts and ETH contracts (including weekly, bi-weekly and quarterly, respectively), and flexible leverages, including 1x, 5x, 10x and 20x. In the future, more digital currencies will be issued to meet various investment demands.
Meaning “currency” in Mandarin Chinese, Huobi consistently ranks as one of the world’s top ten largest exchanges by trade volume. In this article, we look at everything you need to know as a potential Huobi user. Let’s examine fees, fund security, customer experience and more.
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User Interface and Mobile App
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Available on iOS and Android, the Huobi mobile app features most of the functionalities available on the web platform. You can even complete tasks like account registration and verification directly via the app. In Google Play, the Huobi Global app has an average rating of 4.1 stars out of 3,730 reviews. However, in December 2018 and January 2019, some users have said that the Android app won’t let them login due to an error with Captcha. On the Apple App Store, Huobi boasts an average rating of 4.9 stars out of over 4,800 reviews.
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Trading Options
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Many centralized exchanges serve as the sole, centralized market maker. In contrast, Huobi also allows you to trade over the counter (OTC). This means that you can buy and sell cryptocurrencies peer-to-peer on Huobi. Even though this option exists on the exchange, it has yet to gain adoption from traders. Various commenters have said that there is a lack of OTC offers. Still, this is still an innovative technical feature.
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If you are a margin trader, Houbi has a separate platform specifically for this. You can access this by going to the margin tab in the header. The amount of leverage you can have varies from coin-to-coin. For example, BTC is around 3x. Compared to other margin trading platforms, this is low. Nonetheless, it is an attractive option for potential users.
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In December 2018, Huobi Derivative Market issued BTC contracts and ETH contracts (including weekly, bi-weekly and quarterly, respectively), and flexible leverages, including 1x, 5x, 10x and 20x. In the future, more digital currencies will be issued to meet various investment demands.
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Huobi offers a margin trading option.
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Security
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Compared to other exchanges, Huobi continues to excel from a security perspective. Many top exchanges suffer from large-scale hacks, with varying results in terms of trading volume afterward. In 2015, a Bitstamp hacker withdrew 12,000 BTC from Huobi. However, this issue did not relate to the security of Huobi. Huobi reported a DDOS attack in 2015 but this did not cause a security breach. According to one review, an individual user lost USDT and EOS on Huobi. This reviewer states that the problem was caused by a technical error with Huobi’s 2FA. One comment suggests that it was the result of a phishing scam.
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Huobi claims that its risk controls have been developed by the likes of Goldman Sachs. The exchange stores around 98 percent of funds in cold wallets. Moreover, Huobi now utilizes a decentralized exchange structure to prevent DDOS attacks. The exchange even has a User Protection Fund Initiative. Twenty percent of net revenue that the exchanges gains from trades will go to this fund, which it will use to buy back Huobi Token (HT). It also has a service called Huobi Security Reserve. As part of this, the exchange plans to store 20,000 BTC for insurance. This is a preventative measure that will help Huobi reimburse users in the case of any future hacks.
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Huobi Fees
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Huobi has a 0.2 percent fee that applies to both market makers and takers for amounts between $0 and $5,000,000 over the course of a 30-day period. In comparison, other top exchanges like Binance have 0.1 percent fees. Meanwhile, GDAX has 0.3 percent fees.
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In January 2019, Huobi Global launched a tiered fee structure that significantly reduces fees for higher volume traders. This is relatively competitive when compared to other exchanges. Users also have the option to reduce trading fees on Huobi by becoming a VIP member. This involves paying a monthly payment of HT, which varies depending on the membership level (1-5).
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Like most exchanges Huobi has no fees on deposits. However, Huobi does have withdrawal fees and minimums that vary from coin-to-coin. For example, withdrawing Bitcoin (BTC) costs 0.001 BTC, with a minimum withdrawal amount of 0.01 BTC. For Tether (USDT), the flat fee is 5 USDT and minimum withdrawal amount is 20 USDT. Overall, this means that Huobi fees are generally higher than most exchanges for lower withdrawal amounts. A few exceptions exist. For example, TUSD has a withdrawal minimum of $20 but a withdrawal fee of only $2.
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Withdrawal Limitations
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Similar to many exchanges on the market, Huobi has withdrawal limitations based on various levels of user verification. One thing you will notice is that withdrawal amounts vary greatly depending on your citizenship. For example, if you are a citizen of China, you can’t withdraw any funds as an unverified user or with level 1 verification. This option is only available at level 2 or above. In the United States, the exchange only requires level 1 verification. However, the amounts are relatively low: a daily limit of $2,000 and a monthly limit of $10,000.
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Customer Service Experience
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Compared to most exchanges, Huobi has above average customer service experience. Customer support is available 24/7, and response times only take two to three hours on average. Many consider this to be a rarity in the space.
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There are two main methods that you can use to reach customer support. First, you can utilize the chat app that is available directly on the Huobi trading platform. Second, you can contact the team at [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]). If you choose this option, Huobi asks that you use the registered email address associated with your Huobi account and include your user ID.
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Huobi Website: https://www.huobi.vc/en-us/topic/invited/?invite_code=3afg5
UID: 134371568
Huobi Indian Community: https://t.me/huobiglobalindia
Huobi Global Community: https://t.me/huobiglobalofficial