Several cryptocurrency projects are pushing forward with continued development and feature deployment as we make our way towards the middle of Q2 2021. The total cryptocurrency market capitalization rose from $2.26 to $2.45 trillion throughout the past week, indicating that the sector is still in a bullish period. But you should be cautious despite the positive market sentiment as the cryptocurrency markets are known to be highly volatile. While it is difficult to predict in which way the market will move, we aim to select the most promising and interesting coins to follow (or invest into if you wish) in the following week and list them in our weekly Top Coins to Watch article. Here is this week’s top trio.
1. Chainlink (LINK)
Chainlink is a decentralized oracle network (DON) that provides data and price oracles, which act as a reliable feed of information for some smart contracts. Chainlink’s cryptocurrency price and real-world data oracles have seen numerous implementations and their popularity is still increasing. Their oracle service is one of the most reliable and trustworthy services available and the connection with smart contracts is end-to-end secured, leaving very little space for the manipulation of the execution of smart contracts. The platform ensures quality data by incentivising providers of good data feeds. On the other hand, nodes that submit bad data will be punished by losing some of their staked LINK tokens. The project launched in 2017, when it also raised $32 million of funding through an ICO.
Chainlink allows the most complex smart contracts
According to YouTuber Tyler Swope also known as Chico Crypto, Chainlink is one of the most promising tokens around. With countless protocol application possibilities this DON has plenty of room to grow. While Chainlink already offers rather complex smart contracts the complexity and utility is going to further increase with Chainlink 2.0, which aims to bring several technical advancements including hybrid smart contracts and scaling solutions. Developers will also focus on increasing the confidentiality, security, and order fairness, as well as simplifying dApp development by abstracting away complexity. In addition, Swope believes that LINK should be the main meme cryptocurrency as it has far greater utility and just as tight-knit meme community. Although it is difficult for people who are not part of the Chainlink subculture to understand their art (memes), Chainlink has a major advantage over Dogecoin, the current meme coin – smart contracts. In fact, using Chainlink’s oracles, people can create dynamic NFTs, making it possible to pay people in customizable, modifiable collectable tokens, perhaps even “memes” in the future.
From technical perspective, LINK just broke a multi-year resistance line, which overlapped with the psychological resistance level placed at $50. While LINK is currently trading just below $51, it undoubtedly has the potential to double on that price in the remainder of the year.
2. Dogecoin (DOGE)
The cryptocurrency Dogecoin was introduced as a joke in December 2013 by Billy Markus. Markus built the cryptocurrency project around the Shiba Inu doge meme that went viral in 2013 and the Dogecoin even uses the Doge meme as its official logo. Surprisingly, the currency took off. Even more, it developed a relatively large community on social platforms such as Reddit, which used Dogecoin to tip other members of the community and for performing similar micro-transactions. The Dogecoin community also raised funds to sponsor their own NASCAR racer for a few races and pay for a physical gold Dogecoin to be delivered to the moon via crowdfunding.
Dogecoin Drops 30% After Elon Musk Called it a “Hustle”
Although the currency is regarded as a joke by more serious investors, Dogecoin is currently the 4th largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization as the total valuation of almost 130 billion coins in circulation exceeding $75 billion. Nevertheless, DOGE traded even higher before Elon Must, jokingly referred to as the “Dogefather” because of his frequent public endorsement of this particular crypto, appeared on Saturday Night Live (SNL) show. The ATH price of $0.73 was reached on May 8, right before the show as many expected Elon to shill DOGE to millions of Americans on live TV. However, Elon ended up calling Bitcoin a “hustle” in a funny financial commentary causing DOGE to plunge 30% as Musk failed to deliver a more appealing presentation of what Dogecoin really is.
Nevertheless, we must admit that SNL is a comedy show and Musk even broke his character when he said that the $1 bill is just “sort of real”. In addition, Dogecoin still has a strong community that aims to push DOGE above $1. And with recent developments DOGE and USD parity seems to be within the reach. But be warned, 28% of the circulating DOGE supply is owned by one single investor. This whale better have strong hands, or the Doge ship will sink deep. Either way, it will be interesting to see how DOGE will perform in the coming days and whether it will continue its journey towards the moon.
3. Swipe (SXP)
Swipe is a crypto debit card issuer that allows its users to easily spent their cryptocurrencies for everyday purchases. The Swipe Token is the platform’s utility token and the gas and fuel to the Swipe Wallet and Swipe Card.
The First Initial Wallet Offering (IWO) is coming to Swipe Ignition Soon
The Swipe team has revealed that they will soon be conducting the first ever Initial Wallet Offering (IWO) on Swipe Ignition platform. The project that will claim the title of the first token sale on Ignition is a yet-unnamed NFT project running on both Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain (BSC). Users will only be able to participate in the IWO with SXP and 50% of all SXP contributed will be burned. Given that the project will run on BSC, Binance is likely to endorse the project. If the IWO attracts plenty of investors it could significantly raise the demand for SXP as well as diminishing the supply, granting favourable conditions for SXP appreciation. The date of token listing remains to be announced. More information regarding the IWO will be posted on May 12.
