Comparing the total cryptocurrency market valuation of $1.42 trillion at the end of Week 27 to the one at the start of the week ($1.5 trillion) shows that there were on average no bigger moves throughout the week. Bitcoin, the barometer of the cryptocurrency space behaved in a similar manner, ending the week at an almost the same valuation as it has started the week – $34.500. Do you think that we will see bigger moves in Week 28? If this is the case, which coins or tokens are more likely to appreciate? Find out more in this week’s selection of top 3 coins to watch.
1. Crypto.com (CRO)
Crypto.com is a Hong Kong-based crypto debit card issuer and cryptocurrency exchange, which aims to increase the usage of cryptocurrency as a payment method for everyday purchases. The company started out under another name – Monaco. Monaco conducted a token sale between May and June of 2017, which raised a total of $26.7 million. The platform’s native CRO token offers discounted fees on the exchange, higher earnings on Crypto Earn, loans with low annual interest as well as 100% rebates on streaming services (Spotify, Netflix, Amazon Prime) for the Crypto.com’s card subscribers.
Crypto.com Signs a $175 Million Sponsorship Deal with the UFC
Cryptocurrency platform Crypto.com revealed on July 7 that they have established an important partnership with the UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship). According to sources familiar with the deal, Crypto.com cashed out $175 million, for being featured on fighter kits, canvases and in the octagon. In addition, Crypto.com will become the UFC’s official “Cryptocurrency Platform Partner”. The deal was signed for 10 years. UFC debuted the Crypto.com-themed clothing at the UFC 264 Poirier vs. McGregor ceremonial Weigh-Ins.
Besides that, Crypt.com is present in pretty much all sectors of the cryptocurrency industry. It offers a cryptocurrency exchange, has crypto payment processor, an NFT platform and issues Visa cards for spending cryptocurrency balances with an up to 8% cashback in CRO token on credit card purchases (for comparison American Express only offers 1% cashback). The CRO token is currently trading at $0.128 and is up by more than 8% in the last 7 days and 9.5% in last 1 month. Throughout both periods CRO outperformed both ETH and BTC. Crypto.com platform userbase exceeded 10 million in February and with the UFC deal, the userbase is poised to grow further. We believe that CRO could easily climb back above $0.20.
2. Cardano (ADA)
Cardano is a decentralized blockchain platform focused at creating a smart contract-enabled environment, on which developers can build decentralized applications. Cardano utilizes a Proof-of-Stake consensus model and aims to provide a more sustainable, scalable, and transparent operation compared to other smart contract blockchains. The project was started by Charles Hoskinson, a mathematician, who was once part of the Ethereum developer team, in 2017. The team raised $62.2 million for project’s development through an ICO. The development of the project is now overseen by three main organizations, the IOHK, Cardano Foundation and Emurgo. Hoskinson and IOHK stive to follow the principles of academic peer review in the project’s development process. The native asset of the Cardano blockchain is called ADA, but previously this year, the project rolled-out an update, which enabled support for other Cardano-native tokens as well.
Grayscale Investments adds ADA to its Digital Large Cap Fund
The developers of Cardano, one of the most actively developed cryptocurrency projects, are not resting even during the summer. The global blockchain development company that stands behind the project Input Output Hong Kong (IOHK) keeps announcing strategic partnerships by which Cardano is increasing its presence in different sectors of the cryptocurrency industry as well as increasing ADA’s utility. Last week, IOHK announced a partnership with a cryptocurrency lending platform Nexo, that will allow ADA holders to trade, borrow, and lend crypto on the Nexo Exchange. Perhaps another confirmation that Cardano is on the right path is that the major crypto asset management firm Grayscale Investments has included ADA in its Digital Large Cap Fund. The famous asset manager has reduced the share of Bitcoin in the Digital Large Cap Fund from 79.8% to 67.47% to add ADA, which now represents 4.26% of the fund, as well as increase its ETH exposure. The readjusmtents were part of the regular qarterly rebalancing.
Nevertheless, some observers have exposed the fact that Cardano adoption is failing to meet the Charles Hoskinson’s optimistic predictions as the blockchain’s founder forecasted in 2020 that there will be 100s tokens and 1000s dApps running on Cardano blockchain in one year’s time. The reality is a bit different though, as the Cardano still has not deployed the smart contract functionality. Hoskinson responded to the criticizm saying that those who don’t see the progress since last year haven’t been paying attention. In addition, the Alonzo upgrade that will bring the smart contract functionality to the Cardano blockchain is set to start rolling out soon. From a technical standpoint, however, ADA is not doing great as it recently dipped below the ascending channel’s support line on the ADA/BTC graph. Will we have to wait for the Alonzo upgrade to reverse the downward trend?
3. Band Protocol (BAND)
Band Protocol is a cryptocurrency oracle solution that aims to establish a standard framework for the collective data curation. This reliable and trustless data sources (oracles) can then be used to feed the codes of various decentralized technology protocols and blockchain applications.
Band Mainnet Network to Upgrade to Phase 2 on July 13
Developers of the Band Protocol have announced that the Band protocol mainnet will be upgraded from Phase 1 (GuanYu) to Phase 2 (Laozi) at block 7486289. This is expected to occur at 11:00 am UTC on July 13. However, the Phase 2 (Laozi) chain will only go live 6 hours after the upgrade completes, meaning that the BandChain network will be down for around 6 hours. Most of the exchanges have opted to disable BandChain token deposits and withdrawals during this period. Nevertheless, the BAND ERC-20 token will function as normal. The highly anticipated upgrade will introduce streaming revenue for data providers, an Inter-Blockchain Communication Protocol (IBC protocol) to boost cross-chain compatibility and optimized network throughput. Once the Phase 2 is fully deployed, users will be able to access their holdings via the same wallets, private keys, and mnemonics.
