The cryptocurrency market managed to maintain a market cap of over $1 trillion throughout the majority of last week and is entering Week 45 with a total valuation of $1.06 trillion. The bullish market conditions not only survived but even amplified after the U.S. Federal Reserve announced another 0.75% interest rate hike on November 2. In a volatile crypto market, you could make (or loose) 4%, which is the current Fed annual interest rate, much faster than in a year – perhaps even a week if you invest smartly. This article lists, what we believe are 3 of the smartest investments thy crypto sector has to offer for this week.
3. Fantom (FTM)
Fantom is a fast, high-throughput open-source smart contract platform for digital assets and dApps. It is a Layer 1 network competing with the likes of Avalanche, Solana, and Terra to dethrone Ethereum. Fantom utilizes Asynchronous Byzantine Fault Tolerance (aBFT) consensus algorithm. The aBFT algorithm promises to debunk the blockchain Scalability Trilemma, according to which only two of the crucial three components that include decentralization, security, and scalability, are achievable at the same time. FTM was one of the best-performing assets of 2021, in which it appreciated by approximately 13,000%.
Key blockchain developer Andre Cronje seems to be re-joining Fantom
While FTM was one of the most profitable cryptocurrencies to hold last year, this Layer 1 network native asset took a massive hit during this year’s bear market. Nevertheless, Fantom is making headlines again and the new developments around the project suggest that we might see Fantom’s comeback in the remainder of 2022. The newly emerged high expectations are related to the rumoured return of the prominent blockchain developer Andre Cronje to Fantom. It has to be noted that Cronje played a key role in Fantom’s early days but has soon after that announced that he will no longer be active in the DeFi space. Recently, Cronje tweeted and hinted that he may be returning to DeFi and Fantom.
In addition, Andre Cronje changed his Twitter handle to “iamdefinitelyandre.ftm” and swapped his profile picture for an artistic rendering of him holding the Fantom logo. He left hints of him returning to the Fantom project on his LinkedIn too – there Cronje updated his title to “Memes at Fantom Foundation”. The price of the FTM rallied by almost 50% on the rumours and peaked at the price of above $0.31 on November 5. This is the highest FTM price since August. Should Cronje’s return be confirmed, the rally could extend to new highs.
2. Arweave (AR)
Arweave is a blockchain-powered data storage software. The project was originally named Archain but got rebranded to Arweave in 2018. For a fee paid in the native AR token, Arweave protocol allows users to store their data on the permaweb. Data is said to be stored forever and users can share the stored files with anyone. This way the project creates something similar to a digital archive of files accessible by the protocol’s users today, but also available for future generations. The protocol is designed to provide scalable on-chain storage in a cost-efficient manner. Since the protocol stores files on the blockchain and the blocks can get rather big, users who wish to add new data the network do not need to verify all the previous blocks, but rather just a randomly chosen block. This is made possible by the Proof of Access consensus and the Blockweave technology.
Arweave chosen as the storage provider for Instagram NFTs
Social media giant Meta (formerly Facebook) has recently announced that Instagram users will soon be able to mint NFTs as well as offer them to followers within the app itself. The first platform Instagram will support for NFT minting is Polygon. So why is this good news for Arweave? Pictures, music, GIFs, videos, or literally any media represented by the NFT needs to be stored somewhere and Meta has opted for a decentralized storage of Instagram NFT media files on the Arweave blockchain. Stephane Kasriel, head of commerce and financial technologies at Meta revealed that Arweave was selected for its data permanency as the protocol allows users to retain information forever and it is almost impossible to tamper the stored data.
The news from Meta could be felt throughout the crypto markets connected with the announcement. But while Polygon’s MATIC token only surged 9% in the 24 hours following the announcement, Arweave’s AR token has spiked by a whopping 52% in the same time period. On three occasions throughout the week AR even reached as high as $17.50, which represents a 75% price increase from the pre-announcement $10.00 baseline. The announcement-driven rally was enaugh to catapult AR token into the group of 100 largest market cap crypto assets. In fact, AR gained quite some spots as it is currently the 81st largest cryptocurrency. In addition, AR’s $496 million market cap also make it the eight-largest Web3 token worldwide.
1. BNB (BNB)
Binance Coin (BNB) was originally launched in 2017 as an ERC-20 token sold through an initial coin offering (ICO). In April 2019, the Binance rolled-out its native Binance Chain and all the existing Binance Coin ERC-20 tokens were replaced with BNB, which became the native cryptocurrency of the new blockchain. As of today, Binance Chain is still almost completely centralized, with Binance having complete control of block management. Binance gives users who utilize BNB to pay for trading, withdrawal and listing fees hefty discounts. While this used to be pretty much the only use case of BNB, the coin has a far greater utility now as it allows users to pay for gas fees, earn cashback on Binance Visa card purchases, stake BNB and participate in liquidity pools and other DeFi activities. BNB is also used to determine eligibility to participate in Initial Exchange Offerings (IEOs). Furthermore, the Binance ecosystem is continuously expanding, which means that new products and services are regularly added and many of them give BNB some new utility.
BNB sets a new all-time high BTC price
BNB has set a new all-time high price in Bitcoin in the morning hours of November 4. BNB’s top BTC valuation therefore stands at 0.01701 BTC per BNB, the price of BNB on November 4. In fact, BNB is still changing hands at a price that is very close to its top BTC price. Several recent developments might have helped BNB reach its record BTC price. Among other thighs is Binance’s recently launched Oracle Network for the BNB Chain ecosystem. The Oracle network utilizes an in-house Threshold Signature Scheme to continusely verify the authenticity of the data that is fed to the oracles. The launch of Oracle Network actually pits Binance as a competitor to Chainlink. In addition, Binance finally added a new project to its Launchpool after a nearly 6-month hiatus. The 31st blockchain project to be fetured on the crypto exchange’s Launchpool platform is Hashflow. Its HFT token was made available through the platform to BUSD and BNB stakers.
Furthermore, Binance is also getting stronger in the stablecoin market. The valuation of all the platform’s native BUSD stablecoin in circulation is increasing and has surged over $20 billion for the first time ever in the end of October. While it may not be directly connected to the BNB rally, it is worth noting that Binance also helped Elon Musk with the take-over of the social media platform Twitter with a $500 million acquisition. To cut it short, Binance is expanding and is becoming far more than just one of the biggest exchanges. BNB price will likely go up, as Binance slowly becomes an important global player in the global tech industry.
