I have been here for many previous altcoin seasons (2013,2017 etc) and wanted to share knowedle. It's a LOOONG article.
The evaluation of altcoins (i.e not Bitcoin) is one of the most difficult and profitable exercises. Here I will outline my methodology and thinking but we have to take some things as a given. The first is that the whole market is going up or down with forces that we can't predict or control. Bitcoin is correlated with economic environments, money supply increases, safe havens such as Gold, hype and country regulations. This is an impossible mix to analyze and almost everyone fails at it. That's why you see people valuing Bitcoin from $100 to $500k frequently. Although I am bullish on the prospects of Bitcoin and decentralization and smart contract platforms, this is not the game I will be describing. I am talking about a game where you try to maximize your BTC holdings by investing in altcoins. We win this game even if we are at a loss in fiat currency value. To put it another way:

If you are not bullish in general on cryptocurrencies you have no place in investing or trading cryptocurrencies since it's always a losing proposition to trade in bubbles, a scientifically proven fact. If on the other hand you are then your goal is to grow your portfolio more than you would if holding BTC/ETH for example.

Bitcoin is the big boy

How the market works is not easily identifiable if you haven't graduated from the 2017 crypto university. When there is a bull market everything seems amazingly profitable and things keep going up outgrowing Bitcoin by orders of magnitude and you are a genius. The problem with this is that it only works while Bitcoin is going up a little bit or trades sideways. When it decides to move big then altcoins lose value both on the way up and on the way down. The second part is obvious and proven since all altcoins from 2017 are at a fraction of their BTC value (usually in the range of 80% or more down). Also, when BTC is making a big move upwards everyone exits altcoins to ride the wave. It is possible that the altcoin market behaves as an inversed leveraged ETF with leakage where in a certain period while Bitcoin starts at 10k and ends at 10k for example, altcoins have lost a lot of value because of the above things happening.

We are doing it anyway champ!

OK so we understand the risks and just wanna gambol with our money right? I get it. Why do that? Because finding the ideal scenario and period can be extremely profitable. In 2017 several altcoins went up 40x more than BTC. But again, if you don't chose wisely many of them have gone back to zero (the author has first hand experience in this!), they have been delisted and nobody remembers them. The actual mentality to have is very important and resembles poker and other speculative games:
A certain altcoin can go up in value indefinitely but can only lose it's starting investment. Think about it. You either lose 1 metric or gain many many more. Now that sounds amazing but firstly as we said we have the goal to outperform our benchmark (BTC) and secondly that going up in value a lot means that the probability is quite low. There is this notion of Expected Value (EV) that poker players apply in these kind of situations and it goes like that. If you think that a certain coin has a probability let's say 10% to go up 10X and 90% probability it goes to zero it's an even bet. If you think that probability is 11% then it's a good bet, a profitable bet and you should take it. You get the point right? It's not that it can only go 10X or 0X, there is a whole range of probability outcomes that are too mathematical to explain here and it doesn't help so much because nobody can do such analysis with altcoins. See below on how we can approximate it.

How to evaluate altcoins

A range of different things to take into account outlined below will form our decision making. Not a single one of them should dictate 100% of our strategy.

Basics

It's all about market cap. Repeat after me. The price of a coin doesn't mean anything. Say it 10 times until you believe it. I can't remember how many times I had conversations with people that were comparing coins using their coin price instead of their market cap. To make this easy to get.

If I decide because the sky is blue to make my coin supply 100 Trillion FoolCoins with a price of $0.001 and there is another WiseCoin with a supply of 100 Million and price of $1 then FoolCoins are more expensive. - Alex Fin's Cap Law

Fundamental analysis

This is done usually in the stock world and it means that each company has some fundamental value that includes it's assets, customers, growth prospects, sector prospects and leadership competence but mostly centered in financial measures such as P/E ratios etc. Valuation is a proper economic discipline by itself taught in universities. OK, now throw everything out of the window!.
This kind of analysis is impossible in vague concepts and innovations that are currently cryptocurrencies. Ethereum was frequently priced at the fictional price of gas when all financial systems on earth run on the platform after decades (a bit of exaggeration here). No project is currently profitable enough to justify a valuation multiple that is usually equal to P/E in the thousands or more. As such we need to take other things into account. What I do is included in the list below:

Check Github. You need to make sure there is active development for the platform and it's a very bad sign if the project is either keeping the code closed source or even worse there is simply no development. No projects are "complete".
Check Website. If the website is written in bad English the Chinese google translate type it means that they are not serious enough to produce an unbreakable decentralized project. If you can't write English you can't change the world, period. That's a deal breaker.
Check Team's Linkedin. Numerous projects have either fake Linkedin accounts or the team is comprised mainly by unexperienced employees that are even shown to be working in other companies currently.
Check backers. Projects that have Binance, Coinbase or Silicon Valley VC funds backing them are way more legit but way more overpriced too!

Relative valuation

One of my favorite ways to value altcoins that is based on the same principle in the stock market is to look at peers and decide what is the maximum cap it can grow to. As an example you take a second layer Ethereum solution that has an ICO and you want to decide if you will enter or not. You can take a look at other coins that are in the same business and compare their market caps. Thinking that your coin will outperform by a lot the top coins currently is overly optimistic so I usually take a lower valuation as a target price. If the initial offering is directly implying a valuation that is more than that then there is no room to grow according to my analysis and I skip it. Many times this has proven me wrong because it's a game theory problem where if many people think irrationally in a market it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. But since there is opportunity cost involved, in the long run, getting in initial offerings that have a lot of room to grow will pay off as a strategy.

Sector prospects

In 2017 the sexiest sector was platforms and then coins including privacy ones. Platforms are obviously still a highly rated sector because everything is being built on them, but privacy is not as hot as it used to be. In 2018 DEXes were all they hype but still people are massively using centralized exchanges. In 2020 Defi is the hottest sector and it includes platforms, oracles and Defi projects. What I am saying is that a project gets extra points if it's a Defi one in 2020 and minus points if it's a payment system that will conquer the world as it was in 2017 because that's old news. This is closely related to the next section.

Hype

Needless to say that the crypto market is a worse FOMO type of inexperienced trigger happy yolo investors , much worse than the Robinhood crowd that drove a bankrupt company's stock 1200% after they declared bankruptcy. The result is that there are numerous projects that are basically either vaporware or just so overhyped that their valuation has no connection to reality. Should we avoid those kind of projects? No and I will explain why. There are many very good technically projects that had zero hype potential due to incompetent marketing departments that made them tank. An example (without shilling because I sold out a while back) is Quantum Resistant Ledger. This project has amazing quantum resistant blockchain, the only one running now, has a platform that people can build tokens and messaging systems and other magnificent stuff. Just check how they fared up to now and you will get the point. A project *needs* to have a hype factor because you cannot judge it as normal stocks that you can do value investing like Warren Buffet does where a company will inevitable post sales and profitability numbers and investors will get dividends. Actually the last sentence is the most important: No dividends. Even projects that give you tokens or coins as dividends are not real dividends because if the coin tanks the value of the dividend tanks. This is NOT the case with company stocks where you get dollars even if the company stock tanks. All that being said, I would advice against betting on projects that have a lot of hype but little substance (but that should be obvious!).

How to construct your portfolio

My strategy and philosophy in investing is that risk should be proportional to investment capital. That means that if you are investing 100K in the crypto market your portfolio should be very different than someone investing 1K because 10% annual gains are nothing in the latter while they are very significant in the former. Starting from this principle each individual needs to construct a portfolio according to how much risk he wants to take. I will emphasize two important concepts that play well with what I said. In the first instance of a big portfolio you should concentrate on this mantra: "Diversification is the only free meal in finance". In the case of a small portfolio then this mantra is more important: "Concentrate to create wealth, diversify to maintain wealth". Usually in a big portfolio you would want to hold some big coins such as BTC and ETH to weather the ups and downs explained in previous paragraphs while generating profits and keep progressively smaller parts of your portfolio for riskier investments. Maybe 50% of this portfolio could be big caps and 10% very risky initial offerings. Adapting risk progressively to smaller portfolios makes sense but I think it would be irrational to keep more than 30% of a portfolio no matter what tied to one coin due to the very high risk of bankruptcy.

Conclusion

The altseason is supposedly coming every 3 months. Truth is that nobody can predict it but altcoins can be profitable no matter what. Forget about maximalists who are stuck in their dogmas. Altcoins deliver different value propositions and it makes sense because we are very far from a situation where some project offers everything like Amazon and we wouldn't even want that in the first place since we are talking about decentralization and not a winner takes all and becomes a monster kind of scenario! Some last minute advice:

Stay out of paid telegram/discord pump groups. They are deadly for your wallet.
Avoid jumping on overhyped coins that have pumped massively during the last days without any very important news.
Don't keep coins in obscure exchanges for too long or you will get burned with certainty.
Stop thinking that your coin will 1000x and overtake Bitcoin!

P.S If you find value in reading this and want more weekly consider subscribing to my newsletter here

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If you missed the AMA

AMA AT DETECTIVE ID (25/06/2020)
Before welcoming any questions, I would like to briefly introduce STATERA PROJECT. Statera is a smart contract deflationary token pegged to a cryptocurrency index fund. By including STA in an index fund with Link, BTC, ETH, and SNX you can buy one token and access the price action of four of the leading cryptocurrencies. You can also invest directly in the index fund (balancer pool) and receive the benefits of fees and BAL tokens paid to you while also having an automatically balanced fund. Lastly the deflationary mechanics of STA increases the chance for positive price action while decreasing beta (volatility). This is all found in a smart contract that is fully decentralized, the founders can no longer augment the contract in any way and this has been confirmed by a third party code audit through Hacken.
Q1 : please explain in more detail about Statera, what is the background of this project? and when was it established?
The dev of this project had previously created another deflationary token BURN. When the Balancer Labs released the Balancer Protocol, he had an idea to combine the two, deflationary token and a pool of tokens, making the first deflationary index fund. It started in the end of May and on the 3rd iteration, May 29th - a trustless version was launched that we see today. As briefly explained earlier, STATERA or STA is an Index Deflationary Token built on Ethereum blockchain; Index: Contains a token suite of world class leading crypto assests BTC, ETH, LINK, SNX with STA. Deflationary: On every transaction of STA 1% of the transacted amount is sent to 0x address on ethereum, burned forever, thus reducing the circulating supply of STA Index+Deflationary: STA is mixed with BTC, ETH, LINK SNX in a portfolio, backed by liquidity on a protocol known as balancer (balancer.finance) This platform serves as a market maker for the token suit. The Index suite is of equal rate of 20%, that is 20% of BTC, ETH, SNX LINK and STA, Thus, anytime there is an increase in value of any of those coins or tokens, balancer automatically trade them for STA in order to keep the token suit ratio balanced. And anytime there is an increase in the value of STA, the same process applies. while doing this trade, it enables further burning on every transaction, thus facilitating more token scarcity. In addition to this, Statera was deployed with contract finalised, that is, the index suite can not be altered, It is completely out of Dev's control.
Q2 : What are the achievements that have been obtained by Statera in 2020? And what goals do you want to achieve in 2020?
By this we assume the questionnaire is asking for a roadmap! First, the project is barely a month old, and within just a month, our liquidity has grown from $50,000 to over $400,000 currently above $300,000. Among the things we have accomplished so far is the creation of market value for STA's Balancer liquidity pool token BPT, which is currently over $1000 per one BPT. Regarding what we set to achieve: The future is filled with many opportunities and potentials, currently, we are working on a massive campaign to introduce our product to the outside world. We have already made contact with different and reputable forums and channels regarding marketing and advertisement offers, some which we are currently negotiating, some which we are awaiting response. All we can say for now is that the Team is working hard to make this the Investment opportunity every crypto enthusiast has been waiting for. Statera has the goal of putting cryptocurrency into every portfolio. We believe we have a product that increases the returns of investing in cryptocurrencies and makes it easier to diversify in this space. We have done so much in June: articles, how to videos, completed the audit, tech upgrades like one token liquidity additions, and beginning our many social communities. We have been hard at work behind the scenes but things like sponsorships, features, and media take time, content makers need days if not weeks to develop content, especially the best of the best. We are working tirelessly, we will not disappoint. We have plans for 2020-2025 and will release those in the next month. They are big and bold, you’re going to be impressed by the scale of our vision, when we say “Cryptocurrency in every portfolio” we mean it. In 2020 more specifically we are focused on more media, videos, product offerings, and exchanges.
Q3 : What is the purpose of STA token? How can we get STA? The purpose of STA is an investment in the first deflationary index fund. The whole index's value rises from these aspects: 1. The index funds (WBTC,WETH,SNX,LINK) appreciate in value 2. When the index tokens are traded, the pool receives transaction fees - 1% 3. STA burns on transactions, so it's deflationary nature increases its value as the total supply drops 4. Balancer rewards Index holders with BAL token airdrops every week You can invest via the 'Trade' links in stateraproject.com website. Easiest way is to do it using ETH. The monetary policy of our token is set in stone and constantly deflationary. This negative supply pressure is a powerful mechanism in economics and price discovery. Through the lowering of supply we can decrease your beta (volatility) and increase your alpha (gains). Our token is currently only top 40 in liquidity on Balancer, however our volume is top 10! You want to know why? Because Statera works. Statera increases arbitrage, volume, fees, BAL rewards, and liquidity. Our liquidity miners in our Balancer pool are already making some of the highest BAL rewards on the platform, one user we spoke with made 18% in June, that’s over 150% APY! Our product is working, 100% (or you could say 150%), and when people start to see that, and realize the value, the sky's the limit.
Q4 : can we as a user do STA mining? The supply of STA doesn't increase anymore, it only decreases due to the burn feature. So there is no way to mine anymore STA. Only way to acquire the tokens is via an exchange. The monetary policy of our token is set in stone and constantly deflationary. This negative supply pressure is a powerful mechanism in economics and price discovery. Through the lowering of supply we can decrease your beta (volatility) and increase your alpha (gains). Our token is currently only top 40 in liquidity on Balancer, however our volume is top 10! You want to know why? Because Statera works. Statera increases arbitrage, volume, fees, BAL rewards, and liquidity. Our liquidity miners in our Balancer pool are already making some of the highest BAL rewards on the platform, one user we spoke with made 18% in June, that’s over 150% APY! Our product is working, 100% (or you could say 150%), and when people start to see that, and realize the value, the sky's the limit.
Q5 : The ecosystem of a public chain has a lot to do with the level of engagement and participation of third-party developers. How does Statera support the developers?
Not really. Our project is focusing on investment opportunities for the cryptocurrencies. The cryptocurrency tokens that are not used and are just sitting in a wallet can work for you by being added to an index fund and appreciate in value over time. First off, what we have created is a new asset class, I’ll repeat that, a new asset class. This asset has never existed: “Deflationary Index Fund,” what does that mean for finance? What will developers do with this? It’s hard to give a finite answer. We hope there are future economic papers on our token and what it means to be a deflationary index fund. With the addition of synthetic assets and oracles you can put any asset into the DeFi space: Gold, Nikkei 225, USD, etc. STA can be combined with any assets and bring the benefits of it’s ecosystem and deflationary mechanism to that asset. STA, the token itself, also gives you access to the price action of any asset it is paired with. Put simply STA’s balancer pool(s) give you a benefit in holding them, and STA’s price will reflect it’s inclusion in Balancer Pool(s) (and possibly future financial instruments), so STA is a bet on DeFi as a whole. When we say as whole, we mean as whole: what happens if you include STA in a crypto loan, or package it with a synthetic S&P 500 token, or use it as fee payment in a DeFi platform? Being fully decentralized it is up to our community to make this happen, social engagement and community are key. We are constantly bringing community members onto our team and rewarding those that benefit the ecosystem. in addition, Statera is a fully community project now. Paul who is the current team leader was an ordinary member of the community weeks ago, due to his interest and support for the project, he started dedicating his time to the project. Quite a number of community members are also in the same position, while Statera was developed by an individual, it is being built by the entire Statera community
Community Questions (Twitter):
Q1 From: @KazimKara35 The project tells us that the acquisition and sale of data between participants is protected by code of conduct and how safe is deployed on the blockchain, but how do you handle regulations while operating on a global scale?
Statera is decentralized token, similar to other utility crypto tokens and same regulations apply to it as others. his is actually a benefit of our decentralized nature. This isn’t legal advice, however in the past regulating bodies have ruled that the more decentralized a project is, especially from launch, the less likely they are to be deemed a security (see: Ethereum). This means they can be traded more freely and be available on more platforms. We are as decentralized as you can be. The data itself is all secured through the blockchain which has been shown to be a highly secure medium. We do not store any of your data and as long as you follow best practices in blockchain security there are no added security risks of using Statera. We don’t, and literally can’t, hold anymore personal information than is made available in any blockchain transaction. and that "personal information" is more likely than not just your ethereum wallet address, no "real world" data is included in transactions
Q2 from: @Michael_NGT353 What is Mechanism you use On your Project sir? Are you Use PoS,PoW or other Mechanism Can you explain why you use it and what is Make it Different?
Our token is an ERC-20 token and it's running on the Ethereum blockchain. The Ethereum's POW mechanism is currently supporting the Statera token We run on Ethereum, so we are currently PoW. With ETH 2.0 we will hopefully be PoS this year (hopefully). We use it because ETH has over 100 million addresses and around a million daily transactions. We are currently at about 1,900 token holders, we are just touching the edge of what is possible in this market. We chose the biggest and the best network available right now to launch our product. We think the upside is huge because of this choice. Being the biggest network it is also one of the most secure, no high risk vulnerabilities have been found in Ethereum or in our code (we've had our code audited by a third party, Hacken, and you can read their audit on our Medium page), so we also have security on our side
Q3 From : @Ryaaan_Nguyen Can you list some of Statera outstanding features for everyone here to know about? What are the products that Statera is focusing on developing?
As mentioned earlier by GC, First off, what we have created is a new asset class, I’ll repeat that, a new asset class. This asset has never existed: “Deflationary Index Fund,” what does that mean for finance? What will developers do with this? It’s hard to give a finite answer. We hope there are future economic papers on our token and what it means to be a deflationary index fund. With the addition of synthetic assets and oracles you can put any asset into the DeFi space: Gold, Nikkei 225, USD, etc. STA can be combined with any assets and bring the benefits of it’s ecosystem and deflationary mechanism to that asset. STA, the token itself, also gives you access to the price action of any asset it is paired with. Put simply STA’s balancer pool(s) give you a benefit in holding them, and STA’s price will reflect it’s inclusion in Balancer Pool(s) (and possibly future financial instruments), so STA is a bet on DeFi as a whole. When we say as whole, we mean as whole: what happens if you include STA in a crypto loan, or package it with a synthetic S&P 500 token, or use it as fee payment in a DeFi platform? We touched on this a bit in the question on what makes us special compared to other exchanges. We have created a product that synergizes with Balancer Pools creating a symbiotic relationship that improves the outcomes for users (our product can also synergize with future DeFi products). By including STA in an index fund with Link, BTC, ETH, and SNX you can buy one token and access the price action of four of the leading cryptocurrencies. You can also invest directly in the index fund (balancer pool) and receive the benefits of fees and BAL tokens paid to you while also having an automatically balanced portfolio (like an index fund with dividends). Lastly, the deflationary mechanics of STA increases the chance for positive price action while decreasing beta. We want to package Statera with assets across the whole cryptocurrency space, with an emphasis on DeFi. We also want everyday people to be able to invest quickly in crypto while also feeling reassured their investment is set up to succeed. We are focused on developing a name brand that people go to first and foremost when investing in crypto: cryptocurrency in every portfolio. This is all found in a smart contract that is fully decentralized, the founders can no longer augment the contract in any way and this has been confirmed by the third party code audit. This is a feature in and of itself, some argue that Bitcoin’s true value is in it’s network effect, first mover advantage, and immutability. Statera is modeled on all three of those and has those features in spades. The community now owns our token, the power in that, giving finance and power to the people, is why we are here.
Q4 From : @futcek What do you think about the possibility of creating new use cases in DeFi space for existing real world assets by using crypto technology? What role do you see in this creation for Statera?
I think my answer above actually answers this perfectly, Statera in and of itself is a “new use case”, a “deflationary index fund” has never existed, I’ll copy and paste the other relevant part: “With the addition of synthetic assets and oracles you can put any asset into the DeFi space: Gold, Nikkei 225, USD, etc. STA can be combined with any assets and bring the benefits of it’s ecosystem and deflationary mechanism to that asset. STA, the token itself, also gives you access to the price action of any asset it is paired with. Put simply STA’s balancer pool(s) give you a benefit in holding them, and STA’s price will reflect it’s inclusion in Balancer Pool(s) (and possibly future financial instruments), so STA is a bet on DeFi as a whole. When we say as whole, we mean as whole: what happens if you include STA in a crypto loan, or package it with a synthetic S&P 500 token, or use it as fee payment in a DeFi platform? Being fully decentralized it is up to our community to make this happen, social engagement and community are key. We are constantly bringing community members onto our team and rewarding those that benefit the ecosystem.” Statera is a way to make your investment more successful, and owning Statera let's you benefit from other people using it to make their investments more successful (a self feeding cycle).
Q5 From : @Carmenzamorag Statera's deflationary system is based in that with every transaction 1% of the amount is destroyed, would this lead to lack of supply and liquidity in the long term future? How would that be fixed?
The curve of supply is asymptote, meaning that it will never reach zero. The idea is that the deflationary process will slowly decrease the supply of STA, which – combined with a fixed or increaseing demand – will result in STA appreciating in value. Evidently, as the STA token increases in value, the amounts of STA being traded will slowly decrease: The typical investor might buy 10.000 STA at the current rate, but in the future (proportional to an increase in the valueation of STA) this number will tend to decrease, hence the future investor might only buy 1000 STA. This of course results in less STA being burned. Additionally, STA is divisible to the 18th decimal, why – even if the supply was to reach 1 STA – there would be a sufficient supply. Well this would be a question for a Mathematician, and luckily we’re loaded with them (as seen above)! I’ll try to illustrate with an example. 1% of 100 million is 1 million, 1% of 10 million is 100,000. As we go down in supply the burn is less by volume. What also happens at lower supply is higher prices (supply and demand economics). So those 1 million tokens burned may be worth $20,000, but by the time overall supply is at 10 million those 100,000 tokens may also be worth $20,000 or even more. This means you transact “less”, if you want to buy 1 Ether now with Statera you need 8,900 STA which would burn 89 tokens. If Statera is worth $100 you only need 2.32 statera (.023 tokens burned). Along with this proportional and relative burn decrease, tokens are 18 decimals long, so even when we get to 1 token left (which mathematically would take decades if not centuries, but that is wholly dependent on usage), you are still left with 10 to the 18th power, or one quintillion “tokens”. So it’s going to take us a while to have supply issues :)
Nuked Phase (3rd Part)
Q) What is your VISION and Mission?
Our working mission and vision: Mission: Provide every investor with simple and effective ways to invest in cryptocurrency. Decrease volatility and increase positive price pressure in cryptocurrency investments. Lower the barrier to entry for more advanced investment tools. Be a community focused and community driven cryptocurrency, fully decentralized by every meaning of the word. Vision: We aspire to put “cryptocurrency in every portfolio”. We envision a world where finance is given back to the people and wealth building strategies withheld only for affluent individuals are given to all. We also strive to create an investment environment based on sound monetary policy and all the power that comes with a sound asset.
Q) What are the benefits of STA for its investors in long term? Does STA have Afrika as an important area for its expansion?
We have ties to Africa and see Statera as a way for anyone and everyone to invest in cryptocurrency. The small marketcap of statera makes it's price low and it's upside massive. Right now if you wanted to be exposed to the price action of four cryptocurrencies (BTC, ETH, Link, SNX) Statera is a way to gain that exposure in a way that has a huge upside, compared to the other four assets, there are risks in investing in any small cap but with those risk come outsized rewards (not investment advice and all answers are solely my opinions 😊)
Q) In the long run, why should we trust and follow STATERA? How do you raise awareness and elimination of the doubts of investors / partners / customers?.
You're really asking "How do I trust myself and other crypto investors" The project is FULLY decentralized, it is now in the hands of the community. We would venture a guess that the community wants their investment to succeed and be worth more in the future, so you are betting on people. wanting to make themselves money on their own investment. This is a pretty sure bet. The community being active and engaged is key, and we have short term and long term plans to ensure this happens
Q) No one can doubt the strength of #Statera. But can you tell us some of the challenges and difficulties you're presently facing? How can you possibly overcome them?
We're swinging outside our weightclass, we don't see litecoin or SNX, or any other crypto product as our competition. Our competition is NASDAQ, Fidelity, etc. We want to provide world class financial instruments that only the wealthy have access to in the traditional world to everyone. Providing liquidity, risk parity, being paid to provide liquidity, unique value propositions, are all things we want to bring to everyone. However we are coming up in a hectic space, everyday their is fud and defamation on the web, but that is the sandbox we chose to play in and we aren't grabbing our ball and going home. We can tell you that we will not disappoint and fighting all the fud that comes along with being a small and upstart project only fuel our fire. Building legitimacy is our largest challenge and looking at our audit, financial report, and some things you will see in the coming weeks, we hope you see we are facing those challenges head on.
Q) What is the actual uniqueness of #Statera.??? Can you guys please explain tha advantages of #Statera over other projects.??
When we launched there were no other products like ours. There are now copies, and we wish them the best, but we have the best product, hands down. Over the next couple weeks this will become apparent, if it hasn't already, also a lot of the AMA answers dug deeper into our unique value proposition, especially the benefits we provide to Balancer Pools which shows the benefits we would provide for any index fund. We are a tool to improve cryptocurrency investing
Q) Fragmentation, layering and cross-chain are three future solutions for high-performance blockchains. Where is Statera currently? What are the main reasons for taking this direction?
We operate on the Ethereum chain, as it upgrades our services and usability will upgrade. We are working on UI and more user friendly systems to onboard people into our ecosystem
Q) How STATERA plan to make room and make this project known in the world of crypto, full of technology and full of new projects very good in today's market?
We think we have a truly innovative product, which - when first understood - appeals to most investors. Whether you want a high-volatility/medium-risk token like STA or whether you are more conservative and simply just plan on adding to the Statera pool BPT (which is not nearly as volatile but still offers great returns). We plan on making Statera known to the crypto world through a marketing campaign which slowly will be unravelled in the comming days and weeks. If interested, you can check out an analysis of the different investment options in the Statera ecosystem in our first financial report: https://medium.com/@stateraproject/statera-financial-reports-b47defb58a18
Q) Hello, cryptocurrencies are very volatile and follow bitcoin ... and does this apply to Statera? or is there some other logic present in some way? is statera token different from a current token? Are you working on listings on other exchanges?
Currently uniswap is somewhat uncomfortable for fees. We are also on bamboo relay, saturn network, and mesa. Statera will be volatile like all cryptocurrency, this is a small and nascent space. But with the deflationary mechanic and balancer pool, over time, as marketcap grows it will become less volatile and more positively reactive to price.
Q) Security is one of the most essential characteristics for a project to get reputation. How can #Statera Team assure to their community that users assets and investments will stay safe from unwanted agents?
We have been third party audited by the same company that worked with VeChain to audit their code. Our code has been shown to be bulletproof. Unless Ethereum comes up with a fatal security flaw there is nothing that can happen to our contract (there is no backdoor, no way for anyone to edit or adjust the smart contract).
Q) Many investors see the project from the price of the coin. Can you give us advantages why Statera is so suitable for long-term investment? and what makes Statera different from other similar projects?
Sometimes the simplest solutions are the most effective. A question you can ask is “What if this fails”? But you can also ask, “What if this succeeds”? Cryptocurrency is filled with asymmetric risks, we think if you look into the value proposition you will find that there is a huge asymmetric risk/reward in Statera, and we will make that even clearer in our soon to be released litepaper. You are on the ground floor of a simple but highly effective solution to onboarding people into defi, cryptocurrencies, and investing. Our product reduces volatility and increases gains (decreases beta and increases alpha in investor terms), which is highly attractive in any investment. The down side is there but the upside outweighs it exponentially (asymmetric risk)
Q) What your plans in place for global expansion, are Statera focusing on only market at this time? Or focus on building and developing or getting customers and users, or partnerships? Can you explain this?
We have reached out to influencers in other countries and things are in the works. We have also translated documents and are working on having them in at least 4 languages by the end of July. We were founded globally, our team is global, and we are focused on reaching all 7 billion people.
Q) Now in the cryptofield everyday there are new projects joining in the Blockchain space. They are upgraded, Well-established and coming up with innovative technology. How Statera going to compete with them? What do you think, one day Statera will become useless And will be lost into the abyss of time for not bringing any new technology?
We are the first of our kind, no one had a deflationary index fund before us. Index funds will be the future of crypto (look at the popularity of etfs and indexes in the traditional markets). We are a tool to make your index function better and pay you more. As long as people care about crypto index funds they will care about the value STA brings to that. We have an involved and long term plan to reach dominance over a 5 year span, this is not a flash in the pan, big things coming
Q1. You say that the weight and proportions of your tokens are constant. So how have you managed to prevent market price speculation from generating hypervolability in your token price? Do you consider yourselves a kind of stablecoin? Q2. How many jurisdictions allow the use of Stratera products and services? Are they available for Latin America? @joloroeowo The balancer ensures an equal ratio of 20% amongst the five tokens included in our fund. This, however, does not imply that the tokens are stable. Rather, the Balancer protocol helps mitigating price fluctuations.
Q) How can I as a Statera participant participate in liquidity mining, and receive BAL as reward? What are the use cases of $STA token, and how are users motivated to buy and hold long term?
The easiest way is to go to stateratoken.com and click trade then BPT. You can also buy all five tokens and click on portfolio then add liquidity. Balancer is working on a simpler interface to add liquidity with one token, we are waiting on them. I think we explained the use cases above
Q) What do you plan have for global expansion, is Statera currently focused solely on the market? Or is it focused on building and developing or acquiring customer and user or partnership relationships? Can you explain it?
We are currently working on promoting the project and further develope our product, making it lucrative for more new investors to join our pool and invest in the STA token.
Q1) Statera have 2 types of tokens, so can you tell me the differences between STA and STAC ? What are their uses cases? Is possible Swap between them? Q2) Currently the only possible Swap or "exchange" possible is Uniswap, so you do have plans to list the STA token into a more Exchanges?
STAC is obsolete, we only have STA and BPT (go to our website and click on trade) stateratoken.com BPT gives you more diversification and less risk, STA gives you more volatility and more chance for big gains. Q2 we are on multiple exchanges (4), bamboo relay, saturn, and mesa we do have plans for future exchanges but the big ones have processes and hoops to jump through that can't be done so quickly
Q) What business scenarios can STATERA support now? In which industries can we see the mass adoption of STATERA technology in the near future?
Statera increases the effectiveness of your cryptocurrency investments. Specifically it makes cryptocurrency index funds function better, netting you higher returns, which we have already seen in just one month of implementation. Right now, today, you can buy our BPT token and increase the functionality of holding a crypto index fund. In the future we want every single web user to see and use our product
Q) Do you plan to migrate to other platforms like Tron, BinanceChain, EOS, etc. if it is feasible??
Migrating our current contract is not. Starting new offerings on those other chains could be possible, they aren't on our radar currently but if the community requests them we are driven by our community
Q) ETH Blockchain is a Blockchain have many token based in it, i have used ETH blockchain long time and i see it have big fee and need much time to make a transcation so Why you choose to based STA in ETH blockchain not other like Bep2 or Trc20 ?
Simply: 100 million addresses, 1 million transactions a day. The more users we have the more we will benefit our community. We hope ETH 2.0 scaling will fix the problems you mention.
Q) No one achieve anything of value on its own, please can you share about Statera present and future partnerships that will drive you to success in this highly congested crypto space?
We have a unique product that no one else has (there are people who have copied us). We can't announce our current and future partnerships yet, but they will be released soon. Our future hopes of partnerships are big and will be key to our future, know we are focused on making big partnerships, some you may not even be thinking about.
Q) According to the fact that your algorithm causes 1% of each transaction to be destroyed, I would like to know, then, how you plan to finance yourself as a project in the long term?
The project is now in the hands of the community and we are a team of passionate people volunteering to help promote and develope the Statera ecosystem. But then, how do we afford running a promo campaign? We have lots of great community members donating funds that goes to promoting the project. In other words, the community helps financing the project. And so far, we have created a fantastic community consisting of passionate and well-educated people!
Q) There are many cryptocurrency startups were established by talent teams, but they got problem in raising capital via token sales due to many factors as bear market, bankrupt etc. This leaded their potential startups fail. So how will Statera break these barriers and attract more funds from outside crypto space?
We are community focused and community ran. When you look at centralized cryptocurrencies you can see the negative of them (Tron, ADA, etc.) We believe being fully decentralized is the true power position. You the owner of statera can affect our future and must affect our future. This direct ownership means people need to mobilize and organize to push us forward, and it is in their best self interest to do so. It's a bet on our community, we're excited about that bet
Q) What business scenarios can STATERA support now? In which industries can we see the mass adoption of STATERA technology in the near future?
Statera increases the effectiveness of your cryptocurrency investments. Specifically it makes cryptocurrency index funds function better, netting you higher returns, which we have already seen in just one month of implementation. Right now, today, you can buy our BPT token and increase the functionality of holding a crypto index fund. In the future we want every single web user to see and use our product
Q) Why being a hybrid of a liquidity pool and an index fund? What are the main benefits about this?
By being a liquidity pool the exchange side of the pool (balancer also functions as an exchange) gives you added liquidity for more effortless, effective, and cheaper rebalancing. You also benefit from getting paid the fee when people use the exchange AND getting paid BAL tokens that are worth $15-20 USD. These are not benefits you get with an index fund, meanwhile the liquidity pool rebalances just like an index fund would
Q) Which specific about technology and strategy of #STA that make you believe it will be successful and what does #STA plan do to attract more users in the upcoming time?
I think the idea behind Statera is truly ingenious. We have made an index fund, which investors are highly(!) incentivised to invest in, namely because the ROI, so far, has been huge. An increase in the pool liquidity (index fund) indirectly translates into an increase in the price of STA, why we think the STA token - combined with its deflationary nature - will increase in the long run. The mechanism behind this is somewhat complex, but to better get an understanding of it, I suggest you visit our medium page and read more about the project: https://medium.com/@stateraproject

Round up of Cryptocurrency News #3 Week 20/07 - 26/07

Pssst! Hey you. Scroll down for commentary!
Important/Notable/Highlights:

Special Mentions:

You haven't had enough news? Here is some more:

Speculation:

You made it! :)
First up, SORRY! This has been a late post, I have my reasons don't question them (if you must know I'll be posting in the discord - one time only haha). Secondly, I am sure you can agree with me when I say "Wow!" What an incredible week it has been. Last week I thought it was going to take a couple more weeks for more moving price action when it had only taken a few days which has seen Bitcoin reach and pass the $10,000 region. We have also seen the total Market cap for cryptocurrencies increase from about 280B to over 300B (308B at time of writing) within just a few days. A huge injection of liquidity, about 40B, into the market and just to name a few of the best rises in the top 20 (on Coinmarketcap.com), the price of ETH BTC ADA have given good performances/positive responses (With this I will start adding screenshots at the end of each week for timestamp purposes).
This may be a combination from Binance, Mastercard, Paypal, Grayscale investments, VISA AND the DEFI sector. Let me explain... Last week we read about Binance integrating with the company Swipe (SXP) to issue there own debit card expanding the use and reach of cryptocurrency to 31 countries within Europe. ^Binance's Q2 scheduled token burn of $60.5 Million, this figure correlates with its exchange, margin and futures trading platforms where approximately 20% of profits get burned to increase the price of BNB token (careful as the price has been steady after the burn).
This week we find out Mastercard's expansion into the Cryptosphere as they expand and integrate with the Wirex team to issue a Mastercard-backed Bitcoin debit card, thus further extending the reach of cryptocurrency availability internationally.
"The cryptocurrency market continues to mature and Mastercard is driving it forward, creating safe and secure experiences for consumers and businesses in today’s digital economy " "...Our work with Wirex and the wider crypto ecosystem is accelerating innovation and empowering consumers with more choice in the way they pay"
Mastercard is also reaching out to other emerging cryptocurrency firms to apply to become principal members [Partners] with Mastercard as they have relaxed their digital assets program and look to expand into the Digital Assets and Blockchain environment.
Paypals expression of interest in cryptocurrency facilitiation may bear fruits as it is said Paypal has partnered up with stablecoin operator Paxos (who is already in partnership with Revolut in the US) to facilitate trading through a cryptocurrency brokerage which will enable other firms to integrate cryptocurrency trading functionalities with them. In my opinion this looks much more promising than the Libra association they pulled out from last October as regulations.
Grayscale Investments clears regulatory hurdle as they have been given the green light for its Bitcoin Cash Trust (BCHG) and Litecoin Trust (LTCN) to be quoted in over-the-counter (OTC) markets by US Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA).
“The Trusts are open-ended trusts sponsored by Grayscale and are intended to enable exposure to the price movement of the Trusts’ underlying assets through a traditional investment vehicle, avoiding the challenges of buying, storing, and safekeeping digital Bitcoin Cash or Litecoin directly.”
^More green lights for Cryptocurrency in the US as regulators allow banks to provide cryptocurrency custody services (which may go further than just custody services). A little bit strange as it seems unnecessary and undermines one of the key factors and uses of cryptocurrency which is to be in complete control of your own finances... On another outlook this may be bullish as it allows US banks to provide banking services directly to lawful cryptocurrency businesses and show support for Bitcoin.
Visa shows support stating they have a roadmap for their further expansion into the Crypto sphere. Already working with Crypto platform Coinbase and Fold they have stated they recognise the role of digital assets in the future of money. To be frank, it appears to be focused on stable coins, cost effectiveness and transaction speeds. However they are expanding their support for crypto assets.
AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, DeFI! Our very own growing section in crypto. Just like the 2017 ICO boom we are seeing exorbitant growth and FOMO into the Decentralised Finance sector (WBTC, Stablecoins, Yield farming, DEXs etc). The amount of active addresses on Ethereum has doubled but with the FOMO on their network have sky rocketed their fees! Large use-cases of stable coins such as USDT ($6B in circulation using ERC-20 standard), DAI, TUSD, and PAX. $114M Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) on their network acts as a fluid side chain for Bitcoin and DEX trade volume has touched $1.6B this month. With all this action happening on Ethereum I saw the 24HR volume surpass BTC briefly on Worldcoinindex.com
In other news, Bitcoin has been set as a new precedent in a US federal court in a case against Larry Dean Harmon, the operator of an underground trading platform Helix. Bitcoin has now legally been ruled as a form of money.
“After examination of the relevant statutes, case law, and other sources, the Court concludes that bitcoin is money under the MTA and that Helix, as described in the indictment, was an `unlicensed money transmitting business´ under applicable federal law.”
Quick news in China/Asia as floods threaten miners and the most dominant ASIC Bitcoin mining rig manufacturer Bitmain loses 10,000 Antminers worth millions alledgedly goes missing or "illegally transfered" with ongoing leadership dispute between cofounders.
Last but not least, Cardano (ADA) upgrade Shelley is ready to launch! Hardfork is initiated as final countdown clock is switched on. At time of writing the point of no return has been reached, stress tests done and confirmation Hardfork is coming 29/07 The Shelley Mainnet upgrade is a step toward fast, capable and decentralised crypto that can serve billions of people. With the Shelley Mainnet is ADA staking rewards and pools! Here is a chance for us Gravychainers to set up a small pool of our own. Small percentage of profits going into the development of the community, and you keep the rest!
If you read all of my ramblings thanks heaps! I appreciate it! I have added an extra piece of reading called speculation. Most you can speculate on by just reading the headline some others have more depth to them.
Another post next week for a weekly round up! Where do you think the market is going? What is in your portfolio? Let us know in the Gravychain Discord Channel
See you soon!

DISCORD LINK: https://discord.gg/zxXXyuJ

🍕 Bring some virtual pizza to share 🍕
Come have a chat, stimulate a discussion, ask a question or share some knowledge. We are all friendly crypto enthusiasts up for a chat, supportive and want to help each other with knowledge and investments!
Big thanks to our Telegram and My Crypto HQ for the constant news updates!

The Gravychain Collective: https://t.me/gravychain
My Crypto HQ: https://t.me/My_Crypto_HQ

P.S.
Dr Seuss collectables on the blockchain HECK YEAH! and Bitcoin enters NASCAR, remember when Doge did this? it was like when Doge was trending on TikTok.
... Oh yeah did I also mention Steve Wozniak is suing Youtube, Google over rampant Bitcoin scams. Wait, what? Sydney based law firm JPB Liberty is suing Google, Facebook and Twitter for up to $300B. Just another day in the Cryptosphere.

[Part 1] KAVA Historical AMA Tracker! (Questions & Answers)

ATTN: These AMA questions are from Autumn 2019 - before the official launch of the Kava Mainnet, and it's fungible Kava Token.
These questions may no longer be relevant to the current Kava landscape, however, they do provide important historical background on the early origins of Kava Labs.
Please note, that there are several repeat questions/answers.

Q1:

Kava is a decentralized DEFI project, why did you implement the countries restrictions to run the node? Will there be such restrictions by the time of the mainnet?

Answer: There are not country restrictions for nodes. But there are country restrictions for who Kava the company can sell tokens to and remain compliant based on laws and regulations. Anyone can hold Kava, anyone can run a Node. We just can't sell directly to some people which is unfortunate. While we have issues selling directly to Russia, partners like Binance do not. In addition, we have partners like P2P.org that run validators for the Russian communities. (I highly recommend them btw!)

Q2:

According to the project description it has been indicated that staking reward (in KAVA tokens) varies from 3 to 20% per annum. But how will you fight with inflation?

We all know how altcoins prices are falling, and their bottom is not visible. And in fact, we can get an increase in the number of tokens for staking, but not an increase in the price of the token itself and become a long-term investor.

Answer: Kava is both inflationary with block rewards, but deflationary when we burn CDP fees. Only stakers who bond their Kava receive inflationary rewards - users and traders on exchanges do not get this. In this way, rewards are inflated, but given to stakers and removed value from the traders who are speculating like a tax. The Deflationary structure of fees should help counterbalance the price drops from inflation if any. In the long-term as more CDPs are used, Kava should be a deflationary asset by design if all things go well

Q3:

In your allocation it is indicated that 28.48% of the tokens are in the "Token treasury" - where will these tokens be directed?

Answer: Investors in financing rounds prior to the IEO have entered into long-term lock-up agreements in-line with their belief in Kava’s exciting long-term growth potential and to allow the projects token price to find stability. Following the IEO, the only tokens in circulation will be those sold through the IEO on Binance and the initial Treasury tokens released.
No private sale investor tokens are in circulation until the initial release at the end of Q1 2020 and then gradually over the [36] months The initial Treasury tokens in circulation will be used for a mixture of ecosystem grants, the expenses associated with the IEO as well as initial market making requirements as is typical with a listing of this size. Kava remains well financed to execute our roadmap following the IEO and do not envisage any need for any material financings or token sales for the foreseeable future.

Q4:

Such a platform (with loans and stable coins) is just the beginning since these aspects are a small part of many Defi components. Will your team have a plan to implement other functions, such as derivatives, the dex platform once the platform is successfully launched?

Answer: We believe Kava is the foundation for many future defi products. We need stable coins, oracles, and other infrastructure first that Kava provides. Once we have that, we can apply these to derivatives and other synthetics more easily. For example, we can use the price feeds and USDX to enable users to place 100x leverage bets with each other. If they both lock funds into payment channels, then they can use a smart contract based on the price feed to do the 100x trade/bet automatically without counter party risk. In this way, Kava can expand its financial product offerings far beyond loans and stable coins in the future.

Q5:

There are several options for using USDX on the KAVA platform, one of which is Margin Trading / Leverage. Is this a selection function or a compulsory function? Wondering since there are some investors who don`t like margin. What is the level of leverage and how does a CDP auction work?

Answer: This is a good #Q . Kava simply provides loans to users in USDX stable coins. What the users do is completely up to them. They can use the loans for everyday payments if they like. Leverage and hedging are just the main use cases we foresee - there are many ways people can use the CDP platform and USDX.

Q6:

Most credit platforms do not work well in the current market. What will you do to attract more people to use your platform and the services you provide? Thank you

Answer: Most credit platforms do not work well in the current market? I think that isn't correct at least for DeFi. Even in the bear market, MakerDao and Compound saw good user growth. Regardless, our efforts at Kava to build the market are fairly product and BD focused. 1) we build more integrations of assets and expand financial services to attract new communities and users. 2) we focus on building partnerships with high quality teams to promote and build Kava's core user base. Kava is just the developer. Our great partners like Ripple, Stakewith.Us, P2P, Binance - they have the real users that demand Kava. They are like our system integrators that package Kava up nicely and present it to their users. In order to grow, we need to deepen our partnerships and bring in new ones around the world.

Q7:

KAVA functions as a reserve currency in situations where the system is undercollateralized. In such cases new KAVA is minted and used to buy USDX off the market until USDX becomes safely overcollateralized.

Meaning, there will be no max supply of KAVA?

Answer: Yes, there is no max supply of Kava.

Q8:

Why Kava?

Answer: ...because people are long BTC and the best way to go long BTC without giving up custody is Kava's platform. Because it is MakerDao for bitcoin. Bitcoin has a 10x market cap of ETH and Maker is 10x the size of Kava. I think we're pretty undervalued right now.

Q9:

How do you plan to make liquidity in Kava?

Answer: Working with Binance for the IEO and as the first exchange for KAVA to trade on will be a huge boost in increasing the liquidity of trading KAVA.

Q10:

Most crypto investors or crypto users prefer easy transaction and low fees, what can we expect from KAVA about this?

Answer: Transaction fees are very low and confirm if seconds. The user experience is quite good on Tendermint-based blockchains.

Q11:

How do I become a note validator on KavA?

Answer: The basic requirement for a node is nothing really. But in order to earn block rewards you must be a node with the top 100 KAVA by weighted stake at a given time. If you are looking for technical specs, I suggest you check out the Cosmos FAQ for a guide. https://cosmos.network/docs/cosmos-hub/validators/validator-faq.html

Q12:

It is great to know that KAVA is the first DEFI-supported project sponsored by Binance Launchpad, do you think this is the meaning that CZ brings: Opening the DEFI era, as a leader, you feel like how ?

Answer: We are the first DeFi platform that Launchpad has supported. We are a very strategic blockchain for major crypto like BNB. Kava's platform will bring more utility to the users of BNB and the Binance DEX. It feels good of course to have validation from the biggest players in the space like Cosmos, Ripple, CZ/Binance, etc.

Q13:

Since decentralized finance applications is already dominating, how do you intend to surpass those leading in the market?

Answer: The leaders are only addressing ethereum. BTC, XRP, BNB, ATOM is a much larger set to go after that current players cannot.

Q14:

What does Ripple play in the Kava's ecosystem, since Ripple is like a top tier company and it’s impressive that you are partnered with them?

Answer: Ripple is an equity investor in Kava and a big supporter of our work in cross-chain settlement research and implementations. Ripple's XRP is a great asset in terms of users and liquidity that the Kava platform can use. In addition, Ripple's money service business customers are asking for a stable coin for remittances to avoid the currency heading risk that XRP presents. Ripple will not use USDC or other stable coins, but they are open to using USDX as it can be XRP-backed.

Q15:

Considering the connectivity, Libra could be the biggest competitor if KAVA leverages interchain for efficiency.

Answer: With regard to USDX, it is important to understand the users interacting with the Kava blockchain have no counterparty that people could go after for legal actions. A user getting a USDX loan has no counterparty. The software holds the collateral and creates the loan. The only laws that would apply are to the very users that are using the system.

Q16:

Wonder how KAVA will compete with the tech giants

Answer: Libra is running into extreme issues with the US Senate and regulators. Even the G7-G20 groups are worried. Its important to understand that Libra is effectively a permissioned system. Only big companies that law makers can go after are able to run nodes. In Kava, nodes can be run by anyway and our nodes are based all over the world. It's incredibly hard for a law maker to take down Kava because they would need to find and legally enforce hundreds of business in different jurisdictions to comply. We have an advantage in this way over the larger projects like Libra or Clayton.

Q17:

In long-term, what's the strategy that KAVA has for covering the traditional finance users as well? Especially regarding the "stability"

Answer: Technical risk is unavoidable for DeFi. Only time will tell if a system is trustworthy and its never 100% that it will not fail or be hacked. This is true with banks and other financial systems as well. I think for DeFi, the technical risk needs to be priced in to the expected returns to compensate the market. DeFi does have a better user experience - requiring no credit score, identity, or KYC over centralized solutions.
With our multi-collateral CDP system, even with it overcollateralized, people can get up to 3x leverage on assets. Take 100 USD in BTC, get a USDX loan for 66 USDX, then buy $66 BTC and do another loan - you can do this with a program to get 3x leverage with the same risk profile. This is enough for most people.
However, it will be possible once we have Kava's CDP platform to extend it into products that offer undercollateralized financial products. For example, if USER 1 + USER 2 use payment channels to lock up their USDX, they can use Kava's price feeds to place bets between each other using their locked assets. They can bet that for every $1 BTC/USD moves, the other party owes 3x. In this way we can even do 100x leverage or 1000x leverage and create very fun products for people to trade with. Importantly, even in places where margin trading is regulated and forbidden, Kava's platform will remain open access and available.

Q18:

In long-term, what's the strategy that KAVA has for covering the traditional finance users as well? Especially regarding the "stability"

Answer: Kava believes that stable coins should be backed not just by crypto or fiat, but any widely used, highly liquid asset. We think in the future the best stablecoin would be backed by a basket of very stable currencies that include crypto and fiat or whatever the market demands.

Q19:

Compound, maker they're trying to increase their size via the competitive interests rates. THough it shows good return in terms of growth rate, still it's for short-term. Wonder other than financial advantage, KAVA has more for the users' needs?

Answer: Robert, the CEO of Compound is an investor and advisor to Kava. We think what Compound does with money markets is amazing and hope to integrate when they support more than just Ethereum assets. Kava's advantage vs others is to provide basic DeFi services like returns on crypto and stable coins today when no other platform offers that. Many platforms support ETH, but no platform can support BTC, XRP, BNB, and ATOM in a decentralized way without requiring centralized custody of these assets.

Q20:

The vast majority of the cryptocurrency community's priorities is symbolic pricing. When prices rise, the community rejoices and grows. When they fall, many people begin to cast in a negative way. How will KAVA solve the negative problem when the price goes down? What is your plan to strengthen and develop the community to persuade more people to look at the product than the price?

Answer: We believe price is an important factor for faith in the market. One of Kava's key initiatives was selecting only long-term partners that are willing to work with kava for 2 years. That is why even after 6 months, 0 private investor or kava team tokens will be liquid on the market.
We believe not in fast pumps and then dumps that destroy faith, but rather we try and operate the best we can for long-term sustainable growth over time. It's always hard to control factors in the market, and some factors are out of our control such as BTC price correlations, etc - however, we treat this like a public company stock - we want long-term growth of Kava and try to make sure our whole community of Kava holders is aligned with that the best we can.

Q21:

Do you have any plans to attract non-crypto investors to Kava and how? What are the measures to increase awareness of kava in non-crypto space?

Answer: We are 100% focused on crypto, not the general market. We solve the problems of crypto traders and investors - not the average grandma who needs a payment solution. Kava is geared for decentralized leverage and hedging.

Q22:

Adoption is crucial for all projects and crypto companies, what strategy are you gonna use/follow or u are now following to get Kava adopted and used by many people all over the world?

Revenue is an important aspect for all projects in order to survive and keep the project/company up and running for long term, what are the ways that Kava generates profits/revenue and what is its revenue model?

Answer: We have already partnered with several large exchanges, long-term VCs, and large projects like Ripple and Cosmos. These are key ways for us to grow our community. As we build support for more assets, we plan to promote Kava's services to those new communities of traders.
Kava generates revenue as more people use the platform. As the platform is used, KAVA tokens are burned when users pay stability fees. This deflates the total supply of Kava and should in most cases give rise to the value of KAVA like a stock-buyback in the public markets.

Q23:

In order to be success in Loan project of Cryptocurrency, I think marketing is very important to make people using this service without any registration. What is main strategy for marketing?

Answer: Our main strategy is to build a great experience and offer products that are not available to communities with demand. Currently no DeFi products can serve BTC users for example. Centralized exchanges can, but nothing truly trustless. Kava's platform can finally give the vast audiences of BTC, BNB, and ATOM holders access to core DeFi services they cannot get on their own due to the smart contract limitations of those platforms.

Q24:

Currently, some project have policies for their ambassadors to create a contribution and attract recognition for the project! So the KAVA team plans to implement policies and incentives for KAVA ambassadors?

Answer: Yes, we will be creating a KAVA ambassador program and releasing that soon. Please follow our social media channels to learn about it in the coming weeks.

Q25:

Currently there are so many KAVA tokens sold on exchanges, why is this happening while KAVA is going to IEO on Binance? Are those KAVA codes fake or not?

Answer: For everyone's safety, please understand Kava tokens do not exist yet and they will only exist starting with the Binance IEO. Any other token listings or offerings of Kava are not supported by Kava Labs and I highly discourage you all from trying to get them there. It is most likely a big scam. Please only trust Binance for this.

Q26:

KAVA have two tokens, the first is called Kava - a governance and staking token; the second is called USDX - an algorithmically managed crypto-backed stable coin. What are the advantages of USDX compared to other stablecoins such as: USDT, USDC, TUSD, GUSD, ...?

Answer: USDX is one of the few stablecoins to be fully backed by crypto-assets. This means that we do not deal with fiat to back the value, and thus we don't have some of the issues when it comes to storing fiat funds with banks and custodians. This also makes our product fully digital and built for the future of crypto growth.

Q27:

As a CEO, does your background in Esports and Gaming industry help anything to your management and development of KAVA Labs?

Answer: Esports no. But having been a multi-time venture-backed foundeCEO and have gone through the start-up phase before has made creating and running a 2nd company easier. Right now Kava is still small, Fnatic had over 80 employees. It was at a larger scale. I would say developing software is much more than doing the hardware at fnaticgear.com

Q28:

Why did Kava choose to launch IEO on Binance and not other exchanges like: Kucoin, Houbi, Gate, ....?

Answer: Kava had a lot of interest from exchanges to partner with for IEO. We decided based on a lot of factors such as userbase, diverse exposure across multiple regions and countries, and an amazing team that provides so much insight into so many communities such as this one. Binance has been a tremendous partner and we also look forward to continuing our partnership far into the future.

Q29:

Currently if Search on coinmarketcap has 3 types of stablecoins bearing the USDX symbol (but these 3 stablecoins are no information). So, what will KAVA do to let users know that Kava's USDX is another stablecoin?

Answer: All these USDX have no volume or listings. We will be on Binance. I am not worried.

Q30:

In addition to the Token Allocation for Binance Launchpad, what is the Token Treasury in the Initial Circulating Supply?

Answer: This is controlled by Kava Labs, but with the big cash we have saved from fundraising, we see no reason why these tokens would be sold on the market. The treasury tokens are for use in grants, ecosystem growth initiatives, development, and other incentive programs to drive adoption of the platform.

Q31:

How you will compete with your competitors? Currently i don't see much but for future how you will maintain this consistency ? No doubt it is Great and Unique project, what is the main problem that #KAVA is currently facing?

Answer: Because our industry is just starting out, I don't like to think of them as our direct competitors. We are all working to grow the size of the pie rather than get a larger slice from a small pie. The one thing that we believe will allow us to stand apart is the community we are building. Being able to utilize our own community along with Cosmos and our other partners like Binance for the IEO, we have a strong footing to get a lot of early users onto our platform. Also, we are also focusing on growing Kava internationally particularly Asia. We hope to build our platform for an even larger userbase than just the west.

Q32:

How do you explain your project to a random person who has never heard of your project?

Answer: non-crypto = Kava is a lending platform for users of cryptocurrencies.
crypto = Kava is a cross-chain DeFi platform for loans and stablecoins backed by BTC, BNB, XRP, ATOM and other major cryptocurrencies.

Q33:

Will KAVA team have a plan on implementing DAO module on your platform since its efficiency on autonomy, decentralization and transparency?

Answer: All voting is already transparent on the Kava blockchain. We approved a number of proposals on our test net.

Q34:

how to use usdx token :only for your platform or you have plan to use usdx for payment ?

Answer: Payments is a nice use case, but demand for crypto payments is still small. We may choose to focus here later if demand for crypto payments increases. Currently it is quite small with the bulk of use remaining in trading and speculative use cases.

Q35:

Do you have plans to spread KAVA ecosystem across other continents. if yes, what are the strategies and how can I as a community member contribute to making it possible?

Answer: We are already across many continents - I don't think we are in antarctica yet. Africa might be light on nodes as well. I think as we grow on major exchanges like Binance, new node operators will get interested and help decentralize Kava further.

Q36:

Maker's CDP lending system is on top in this market and its Dominance is currently sitting on 64.90 % , how kava will compete will maker and compound?

Answer: adding assets like bitcoin which have more value and more users than ETH. It's a bigger market that Maker cannot compete with Kava in.

Q37:

Currently, the community is too concerned about the price. As prices rise, the community rejoice and grow, when falling, many people start throwing negatively. So what is KAVA's solution to getting people to focus on the project rather than the price of the token?

What is your plan to strengthen and grow the community to persuade more individuals to look at the product than the price?

Answer: We also share similar concerns as price and price direction is always a huge factor in the crypto industry. A lot of people of course are very short-term focused on flipping for bigger profits. One of the solutions, and what Kava has done, is to make sure that everything structured is for the long-term. So that makes sure that our investors and employees are all focused on long-term gains and growth. Locking vesting periods are part of that alignment. Another thing is that we at Kava are very transparent in our progress and development. We will be regularly posting updates within our own communities to allow our users and followers to keep up with everything we're up to. Please follow us or look at our github if you're interested!

Q38:

How did Kava get on Piexgo?

Answer: We did not work with Piexgo. We have not distributed tokens to any exchange other than Binance. I cannot speak to what is going on there, but I would be very wary of what is happening there.

Q39:

Why was the 1st round price so much lower than the current price

Answer: It is natural to worry that early investors got better pricing and could dump on the market. I can assure you that our investors are in this for the long-term. All private sale rounds signed 2 year contracts to run validators - and if they don't they forfeit their tokens. You can compare our release schedule to any other project. We have one of the most restricted circulating supply schedules of any project EVER and its because all our investors are commiting to the long-term success of the project and believe in Kava.
About the pricing itself - it is always a function of traction like for any start-up. When we made our public announcement about the project in June, we were only a 4 man team with just some github code. We could basically run a network with a single node, our own. Which is relatively worthless. I think our pricing of Kava at this time was justified. We were effectively a seed-stage company without a product or working network.
By July we made severe progress on the development side and the business side. We successful launched our first test net with the help of over 70 validator business partners around the world. We had a world-wide network of hundreds of people supporting us with people and resources at this point and the risk we would fail in launching a working product was much lower. At this point, the Kava project was valued at $25M. At this point, we had many VCs and investors asking for Kava tokens that we turned away. We only accepted validators that would help us launch the network. It was our one and only goal.
Fast forward to today, the IEO price simply reflects the traction and market demand for Kava. Our ecosystem is much larger than it was even a month ago. We have support from Ripple, Cosmos, and Binance amongst other large crypto projects. We have 100+ validators securing our network with very sophisticated high-availability set-ups. In addition, our ecosystem partners have built products for Kava - such as block explorers and others are working on native integrations to wallets and exchanges. Launchpad will be very big for us. Kava is a system designed to cater to crypto traders and investors and in a matter of days we distributed via Binance Launchpad and put in the hands of 130+ countries and tens of thousands of users overnight. It doesn't get more DeFi than that.

Q40:

What is the treasury used for?

Answer: Kava's treasury is for ecosystem growth activities.
Investors in financing rounds prior to the IEO have entered into long-term lock-up agreements in-line with their belief in Kava’s exciting long-term growth potential and to allow the projects token price to find stability. Following the IEO, the only tokens in circulation will be those sold through the IEO on Binance and the initial Treasury tokens released. No private sale investor tokens are in circulation until the initial release at the end of Q1 2020 and then gradually over the [36] months The initial Treasury tokens in circulation will be used for a mixture of ecosystem grants, the expenses associated with the IEO as well as initial market making requirements as is typical with a listing of this size. Kava remains well financed to execute our roadmap following the IEO and do not envisage any need for any material financings or token sales for the foreseeable future.

Q41:

Everyone have heard about the KAVA token, and read about it. But it would be great to hear your explanation about it. What is the Kava token, what is it's utility? :)

Answer: The Kava token plays many roles. KAVA is the native staking token of the Kava blockchain and is used for securing the network. KAVA is delegated to validators, basically professional node operators that run highly-available servers to secure the Kava blockchain. The top 100 validators by weight of staked KAVA earn block rewards that range from 3-20% APR based on the total amount staked in the network. These rewards are split between the validators and the KAVA holders.
When users of the platform repay their loans, they must a stability fee (a percentage of the loan) in KAVA tokens. These tokens are burned by the system, effectively deflating the total supply overtime as more users use the CDP system.
KAVA is also the primary token used in governance of the platform. KAVA token holders can vote on key system parameter changes and upgrades such as what assets to support, how much USDX in total can be loaned by the system, what the debt-to-collateral ratio needs to be, the stability fees, etc. KAVA holders have a very important responsibility to govern the system well.
Lastly, Kava functions as a "Lender of Last Resort" meaning if USDX ever gets undercollateralized because the underlying asset prices drop suddenly and the system manages it poorly, KAVA is inflated in these emergency situations and used to purchase USDX off the market until USDX reaches a state of being over collateralized again. KAVA holders have incentive to only support the good high quality assets so risk of the system is managed responsibly.

Q42:

No matter how perfect and technically thought-out a DeFi protocol is, it cannot be completely protected from any unplanned situations (such as extreme market fluctuations, some legal issues, etc.)

Ecosystem members, in particular the validators on whom KAVA relies on fundamental decision-making rights, should be prepared in advance for any "critical" scenario. Considering that, unlike the same single-collateral MakerDAO, KAVA will be a multi-collateral CDP system, this point is probably even more relevant here.

In this regard, please answer the following question: Does KAVA have a clear risk management model or strategy and how decentralized is / will it be?

Answer: Simialar to other CDP systems and MakerDAO we do have a system freeze function where in cases of extreme issues, we can stop the auction mechanisms and return all collateral.

Q43:

Did you know that "Kava" is translated into Ukrainian like "Coffee"? I personally do love drinking coffee. I plunge into the fantasy world. Why did you name your project "Kava" What is the story behind it? What idea / fantasy did your project originate from, which inspired you to create it?

Answer: Kava is coffee to you.
Kava is Hippopotamus to Japanese.
Cava is a region in Spain
Kava is also a root that is used in tea which makes your mouth numb.
Kava is also crow in Hindi.
Kava last but not least is a DeFi platform launching on Binance :)
We liked the sound of Kava it was as simple as that. It doesn't have much meaning in the USA where I am from. But it's short sweet and when we were just starting, Kava.io was available for a reasonable price

Q44:

What incentives does a lender get if a person chooses to pay with KAVA? Is there a discount on interest rates on the loan amount if you pay with KAVA? Do I have to pass the KYC procedure to apply for a small loan?

Answer: There is no KYC for Kava. Its an open blockchain software platform where anyone with a computer can connect to it and use it.

Q45:

Let's say, I decided to bond my cryptocurrency and got USDX stable coins. For now, it`s an unknown stable coin (let's be honest). Do you plan to add USDX to other famous exchanges? Also, you have spoken about the USDX staking and that the percentage would be higher than for other stable coins. Please be so kind to tell us what is the average annual interest rate and what are the conditions of staking?

Answer: Yes we have several large exchanges willing to support USDX from the start. Binance/Binance-DEX is one you should all know ;)
The average annual rates for USDX will depend on market conditions. The rate is actually provided by the CDP fees users pay. The system reallocates a portion of those fees to USDX users. In times when USDX use needs to grow, the rates will be higher to incentivize use. When demand is strong, we can reduce the rates.

Q46:

Why should i use and choose Kava's loan if i can use the similar margin trade on Binance?

Answer: If margin is available to you and you trust the exchange then you should do whatever is cheaper. For a US citizen and others, margin is often not available and if it is, only for a few asset types as collateral. Kava aims to address this and offer this to everyone.

Q47:

The IEO price is $ 0.46 while the price of the first private sale is $ 0.075. Don't you think that such price gap can negatively affect the liquidity of the token and take away the desire to buy a token on the exchange?

Answer: It is natural to worry that early investors got better pricing and could dump on the market. I can assure you that our investors are in this for the long-term. All private sale rounds signed 2 year contracts to run validators - and if they don't they forfeit their tokens. You can compare our release schedule to any other project. We have one of the most restricted circulating supply schedules of any project EVER and its because all our investors are commiting to the long-term success of the project and believe in Kava.
About the pricing itself - it is always a function of traction like for any start-up. When we made our public announcement about the project in June, we were only a 4 man team with just some github code. We could basically run a network with a single node, our own. Which is relatively worthless. I think our pricing of Kava at this time was justified. We were effectively a seed-stage company without a product or working network.
By July we made severe progress on the development side and the business side. We successful launched our first test net with the help of over 70 validator business partners around the world. We had a world-wide network of hundreds of people supporting us with people and resources at this point and the risk we would fail in launching a working product was much lower. At this point, the Kava project was valued at $25M. At this point, we had many VCs and investors asking for Kava tokens that we turned away. We only accepted validators that would help us launch the network. It was our one and only goal.
Fast forward to today, the IEO price simply reflects the traction and market demand for Kava. Our ecosystem is much larger than it was even a month ago. We have support from Ripple, Cosmos, and Binance amongst other large crypto projects. We have 100+ validators securing our network with very sophisticated high-availability set-ups. In addition, our ecosystem partners have built products for Kava - such as block explorers and others are working on native integrations to wallets and exchanges. Launchpad will be very big for us. Kava is a system designed to cater to crypto traders and investors and in a matter of days we distributed via Binance Launchpad and put in the hands of 130+ countries and tens of thousands of users overnight. It doesn't get more DeFi than that.
TLDR - I think KAVA is undervalued and the liquid supply of tokens is primarily from the IEO so its a safer bet than other IEOs. If the price drops, it will be from the overall market conditions or fellow IEO users not due private sale investors or team sell-offs.

Q48:

Can you introduce some information abouts KAVA Deflationary Fee Structure? With the burning mechanism, does it mean KAVA will never reach its max supply?

Answer: When loans are repaid, users pay a fee in Kava. This is burned. However, Kava does not have a max supply. It has a starting supply of 100M. It inflates for block rewards 3-20% APR AND it inflates when the system is at risk of under collateralization. At this time, more Kava is minted and used to purchase USDX off the market until it reaches full collateralization again.
TLDR: If things go well, and governance is good, Kava deflates and hopefully appreciates in value. If things go wrong, Kava holders get inflated.

Q49:

In your opinion what are advantage of decentralized finance over centralized?

Answer: One of the main advantages is not needing to pay the costs of regulation and compliance. Open financial software that is usable by anyone removes middle men fees and reduces the barrier for new entrants to enter and make new products. Also DeFI has an edge in terms of onboarding - to get a bank account or an exchange account you need to do lots of KYC and give private info. That takes time and is troublesome. With DeFi you just load up your funds and transact. Very fast user flows.

Q50:

Plan, KAVA how to raise capital? Kava is being supported by more than 100 business entities around the world, including major cryptocurrency investment funds like Ripple and Cosmos, so what did kava do to convince investors to join the project?

Answer: We have been doing crypto research and development for years. Ripple and Cosmos were partners before we even started this blockchain with Kava Labs. When we announced Kava the DeFi platform they knew us already to do good work and they liked the idea so they support us.

Weekly Wrap 17/04

Welcome to /r/dragonchain - Read this to get started

30+ Reasons Why Cryptocurrencies Are Worthless

1)It is possible to change the code through a miner vote or a fork and change the total supply or anything. DASH did it : they reduced the total supply from 84M to 18.9M a few years ago. They could also increase it to 999 Trillions if they wanted to so that millions of DASH are mined every week.

2)You can also fork bitcoin anytime , start over from 0 and claim it's the real bitcoin. (BCH , BSV , BTG , LTC , BCD etc)

3)Why would you pay $10,000 for a digital collectible unit called BTC when you can use BCH or TRX or LTC .. you name it. They work just as fine and cost less. There is no rarity like in gold.

4)Think of any amount you hold in ethereum as a gift card to use smart contracts on the ETH blockchain. Ridiculous. You’d rather hold a wal mart gift card or even simply cash.

5)Private keys may be bruteforced as we speak. Quintillions entries a second. When they’ll have enough bitcoins under control , they could move them all at once instantly.(At least 45,000 ETH have been stolen this way for now through ethereum bandit)SHA 256 is too old , bitcoin is 10 years old , it is not secure enough , quantum computing could potentially break it.

6)And that’s if people don’t find a way to create an infinite amount of coins to sell on exchanges.. it happened with monero , stellar , bitcoin , zcash , zcoin , eos , etc..

proofs :

“Bitcoin , Coindesk : “The Latest Bitcoin Bug Was So Bad, Developers Kept Its Full Details a Secret”an attacker could have actually used it to create new Bitcoin — above the 21 million hard-cap of coin creation — thereby inflating the supply and devaluing current bitcoins.”

Stellar : “Stellar Inflation: Glitch Leads to 2.25 Billion Extra XLM Printed”

Monero : “A bug in the Monero (XMR) wallet software that could enable fake deposits to exchanges has been recently brought to public attention through a Medium post”

Zcoin : Forged coins were created, but not exceeding 1% of the circulating supply. We will release further details on exact numbers when Sigma is released.

EOS : “Hackers Forge Billion EOS Coins to Steal Real Crypto From DEX “

Zcash : “Zcash Team Reveals It Fixed a Catastrophic Coin Counterfeiting Bug” etc..

7)Segwit , and especially Lightning network is a very complex technology and it will inevitably have flaws , bugs , it will be exploited and people will lose money. That alone can cause bitcoin to drop very low levels.

8)Then miners may be losing millions so they will stop mining , blocks may be so slow , almost no transaction will come though , and bitcoin may not have enough time to reach the next difficulty adjustement. This is reffered to as a death spiral. Then every crypto even those with no mining involved may crash hard.

9)Many crypto wallets are unsafe and have already caused people to lose all their investment , including the infamous “parity wallet”.

10)It is NOT trustless. you have to trust the wallet you’re using is not just generating an address controlled by the developper , you have to trust the node the wallet connects to is an honest node , you have to trust a Rogue state or organization with enough computing power will not 51% attack the network. etc..

11)Bitcoin is NOT deflationary. Bitcoins are created every blocks (roughly every 10 minutes) and you wil be dead by the time we reach the 21 million current hard cap.

12)Bitcoin price may artificially be inflated by Tether.

13)It’s an energy waste , an environmental catastrophy.

14)The only usecases are money laundering , tax evasion , gambling , buying on the dark net , evading sanctions and speculation.

15)Governments will ban it if it gets too big , and they have a big incentive to do so , not only for the obscure usecases but also because it threatens the stability of sovereign currencies. Trump could kill bitcoin with one tweet , force fiat exchanges to cease activity.

16)Most cryptos are scams , the rest are just crazy speculative casino investments.

17)It is pyramidal : early adopters intend to profit massively while last comers get crushed. That's not how money works. The overwhelming majority of crypto holders are buying it because they think they will be able to sell it to a higher price later. Money is supposed to be rather stable. That's why the best cryptocurrencies are USDT USDC etc..

18)The very few stores accepting bitcoin always have the real price in the local currency , not in bitcoin. And prices like 0.00456329 BTC are ridiculous !

19)About famous brokers listing bitcoin : they have to meet the demand in order to make money , it doesn't mean they approve it , some even short it (see interactive broker's CEO opinion on bitcoin)

20)People say cash is backed by nothing and losing value slowly , and yes it is very flawed , but there is a whole nation behind it , it's accepted everywhere , you can buy more things with it.

21)Everybody in crypto thinks that there will be a new bullrun and that then , they will sell. But because everybody thinks it will happen , it might not happen. The truth is past performance doesn’t indicate future performance and it is absolutely not guaranteed that there will ever be another bullrun. The markets are unpredictable.

22)Also BTC went from about $0.003 to the price it is today , so don’t think it’s cheap now.

23)There is no recourse if you’re scammed/hacked/made a mistake in the address etc. No chargebacks. But it might be possible to do a rollback (blockchain reorganization) to reverse some transactions. BSV did it.

24)In case of a financial crisis , the speculative assets would crash the most and bitcoin is far from being a non speculative safe heaven ; and governments might ban it to prevent fiat inflation to worsen.

25) Having to write down the private key somewhere or memorize it is a security flaw ! It’s insane to think a system like this will gain mass adoption.

26) The argument saying governments can not ban it because it is decentralized (like they banned drugs) doesn’t work for cryptos. First , drugs are much harder to find and much more expensive and unsafe because of the ban , and people are willing to take the risk because they like it. But if crypto is banned , value will drop too much , and if you can’t sell it for fiat without risking jail , goodluck to find a buyer. Fiat exchanges could close. Banks could terminate every crypto related bank account. And maybe then the mining death spiral would happen and kill all cryptos.

27) Crypto doesn’t exist. It’s like buying air. It’s just virtual collectibles generated by a code. Faguzzi, fugazzi, it’s a whazzie, it’s a whoozie.. it’s a.. fairy dust. It doesn’t exist. It’s never landed. It’s no matter, it’s not on the elemental chart. It… it’s not fucking real!

28) Most brilliant guys have come out and said Bitcoin was a scam or worthless. Including Bill Gates , Warren Buffet , The Wolf Of Wall Street…

29) Inflation is necessary for POW , BTC code will have to be changed to bypass the 21M cap or mining will die ! If BTC code is not changed to allow for miners to be paid reasonably , they will cease mining when the bitcoin block reward gets too low.Even monero understood it ,the code will have to be changed to allow for an infinite bitcoin supply (devaluating all current bitcoins) or the hash will decrease and the security of bitcoin will decrease dramatically and be 51% attacked

30) Don’t mix up blockchain and cryptos. Even blockchain is overrated. But when you hear this or that company is going blockchain , it doesn’t mean they support cryptocurrencies.

31) Craig Wright had a bitcoin mining company with Dave Kleinman (he died) and on january 1 2020 he claims he will be able to access the 1.1M BTC/BCH/BTG from the mining trust. He may or may not dump them on the market , he also said BTC had a fatal flaw and that by 2019 there will be no more BTC.

32) Hacks in cryptos are very common and usually massive. Billions of dollars in crypto have been stolen in the last 6 years. In may 2019 Binance was hacked and lost 7,000 BTC (and it’s far from being the biggest crypto hack).

33) Bitcoin was first. It's an ancient technology. Newer blockchains have privacy, smart contracts, distributed apps and more.Bitcoin is our future? Was the Model T the future of the automobile? (John Mc Afee)

34) IOTA investiguating stolen funds on mainnet. IOTA shuts down the whole network to deal with trinity wallet attack.

35) Compared to bitcoin other cryptos work just as fine and don't waste so much energy.

36 ) Everytime miners disagree on the updates it will create another version of bitcoin : problem of governance and legitimacy.

37) Cryptos are only legitimate if they act as a credit for a redeemable asset like USDT or gold backed coins.

While the native language of the writter is not english , I think you get the point and it doesn't make it any less relevant.

Bitcoin options are breaking records, and exchanges are competing for this segment. We will tell you what these tools are and how they work

Bitcoin options are breaking records, and exchanges are competing for this segment. We will tell you what these tools are and how they work
The cryptocurrency market is constantly evolving, integrating with the traditional and inheriting complex financial products such as futures and options.
Some types of fixed-term contracts are already firmly established in the bitcoin industry. This is noticeable by the activity of traders on the CME.
However, the situation with options is somewhat different. These derivatives are difficult to understand among ordinary market participants and are not yet so popular.
Nevertheless, there is a demand for such tools, as evidenced by the growth dynamics of this market segment and interest from platforms such as Binance and Bitfinex.
Bitcoin options have already been offered on CME, LedgerX and Bakkt, which are regulated and oriented primarily on whales. Among the unregulated sites, the leader is Deribit, followed by FTX and OKEx.
ForkLog magazine figured out what options are and what types of options are. We will talk about the features of these tools and the current state of affairs in the segment. In this article you will also find comments by leading market experts on the role of options in the industry.

What are options and how do they work?

An option is a financial contract concluded between two parties — the holder and the seller. The first receives the right, but not the obligation, to buy or sell a certain amount of the underlying asset at the strike price (strike price) on a specific date (expiration date).
The seller undertakes to buy or sell the asset at the request of the option holder. The latter pays the seller at the time of purchase of the contract a certain amount of money — the so-called premium.
The rights and obligations of the holder and seller differ significantly. The former has the right to choose whether to exercise the option or not. The seller is obliged to fulfill the terms of the contract at the request of the holder.
Parameters such as the type of underlying asset, expiration date, strike price are fixed at the time of issue of the contract, after which they cannot be changed.
Like futures, options are derivative financial instruments and derivatives. This means that they can be based on various underlying assets (BA) — stocks, indices or cryptocurrencies.
“Like the options already existing in traditional finance for all major assets, there are contracts based on BTC and ETH on the cryptocurrency market. They are very interesting financial products“, said Su Zhu, head of Three Arrows Capital, in a conversation with ForkLog.
Options are used both for hedging risks and for speculative trading. For example, a speculator confident in the growth of the underlying asset buys a call option. If the BA price rises above the strike, the trader can use his contract to buy a discounted asset.
“Derivatives such as options allow users to hedge risks and generate revenue. Derivatives play a key role in the traditional financial market. These tools are needed so that the cryptocurrency market continues to grow and develop, being filled with new participants“, said Aaron Gong, vice president of Binance Futures.

Practical use of options

Consider the simplest example of options hedging. Suppose there is a company manufacturing tomato paste, sauces and ketchups. There is a farmer supplying this company with tomatoes. He acts in conditions of fierce competition, close to perfect.
It is extremely important for a company to buy raw materials cheaper to minimize production costs and remain profitable. The farmer, in turn, hopes for a long-term cooperation with the company so as not to lose a major client.
The company offers the farmer an option, assuming the right to buy 10 tons of tomatoes of the next year’s crop at the current price — say, $1,000 per ton. To exercise this right, the company pays the farmer an option premium of 3% of the total transaction amount of $10,000, that is, $300.
The farmer will have to, at the request of the company, sell the appropriate quantity of goods at the above price and at a specified time.
A year later, the crop was high, which led to a decrease in the market value of tomatoes to $800 per ton. The company decides not to exercise its right to purchase raw materials for $10,000, as other farmers can buy the same 10 tons of tomatoes for only $8,000.
Thus, having lost only $300 as a premium on an option, the company is insured against price risk. Buying raw materials at a significantly lower market price is more than worth the price of the option contract.
Let’s imagine another scenario: the crop turned out to be unimportant and the price of scarce tomatoes jumped to $1200 per ton. Then the company will certainly take advantage of the right to purchase tomatoes for $1000. Thus, the result is any case.
It is easy to guess that the options can be used by miners to hedge the risks of adverse changes in the price of the extracted asset. For example, expecting a decrease in the price of BTC, miners can use options that give them the right to sell cryptocurrency in the future at a price higher than the breakeven point.
“Miners are already very active in options markets. And, probably, they will remain active“, Su Zhu said.
Su Zhu is confident that in the long term, options will make the cryptocurrency spot market more liquid and attractive to a wide range of participants. He added that the growing popularity of such contracts among miners could significantly reduce sales pressure.
“Options give miners the opportunity to fix the price of coins mined in the future. Miners can better manage their production costs and protect themselves from market volatility“, said Aaron Gong, expressing confidence that the popularity of options will continue to grow.
According to him, such tools open up new opportunities and may be of interest to speculators, funds and long-term cryptocurrency holders.
“Institutional investors are also showing growing interest in options and other derivatives. Last week it was reported that the famous Wall Street trader Paul Tudor Jones allocated a few percent from his Tudor BVI fund for bitcoin futures. This is a positive signal, which means that more and more institutions are interested in the cryptocurrency market“, Gong added.
However, option strategies are not suitable for every market participant — effective work with these tools requires certain experience, Co-founder of CoinIndex.agency Julia Sporysh is sure:
“Of course, in order to use this effectively, the miner must have an experienced trader (option strategies are some of the most difficult on the market) — or they will have to unite and work through specialized trading companies. This market exists, although it is not for the general public.”
Also, according to her, options may be of interest to funds and retail traders who have gained a hand in speculative trading.
“Options are an independent and good speculative tool. And if you have positions in futures or in the spot market, it’s just the time to explore new opportunities“, added Yulia Sporysh.

Types of options

There are two main types of options — option call and option put. The first gives the right to the contract holder to purchase a certain amount of the underlying asset from the seller (they also say — the inscription) at the strike price on a certain date in the future. This type of option was used in the tomato example.
The put option, on the contrary, gives the buyer of the contract the right to sell the underlying asset at a fixed price. The latter may be higher than the market at the time of expiration, which is beneficial to the trader.
Market participants use the call, predicting an increase in the price of BA, and put — expecting it to decline.
More complex strategies use combinations of these two types of contracts.
There is also the term “covered option”. For example, an option call is covered if the seller has the amount of the underlying asset corresponding to the terms of the contract.
Options may also differ in the style of execution — American or European.
European-style options require the holder to execute the contract exclusively on the expiration date. Such options, in particular, are presented at CME and Bakkt.
American style implies the possibility of contract execution at any time prior to the date of expiration. Options of both styles are traded all over the world, their names have no relation to geographic location.
There are less standardized, exotic options. However, the popularity and importance of such instruments in the financial market is not so great.
Parameters and conditions for trading certain options are described in the specifications for them, which indicate the expiration date, strike price and other elements of the contract.

Premium, strike price and cash option

The option premium is the amount of money paid by the buyer to the seller. The premium is equal to the value of the contract and, in fact, represents a fee for the risk of adverse changes in the value of the underlying asset.
The option premium is formed by two components:
• Intrinsic value — the amount that the buyer would receive if the contract were currently executed. It depends on the ratio of the price of the underlying asset and the strike.
• Time value — depends on the time remaining until expiration. Usually, the less time it takes to execute a contract, the lower the premium.
As a rule, high price volatility contributes to premium growth, and vice versa. A deal with a close strike price in relation to the current one has much greater chances of closing in profit and, therefore, the premium for such an option will be relatively high.
The strike price is the price fixed in the option at which the buyer of the call option can buy (or sell, if this is a put option) the underlying asset. In turn, the seller of the contract is obliged to sell or buy BA.
Money is an indicator of the ability to receive funds from the exercise of the right to exercise a derivative. In the context of options, cash can be calculated by comparing the spot price of the BA and the strike price of the option. Thus, three options are possible:
• “in the money” option: in the case of a call — if the spot price is higher than the strike (then the intrinsic value of the contract is positive), in the case of a put, on the contrary, if the BA price is lower than the strike;
• option “on money” (or “with one’s own”) — equal strike to current stock quotes, intrinsic value equal to 0;
• the option “out of money” (“without money”) — the exercise of the option is not economically feasible; in such a situation, the current price of the underlying asset is lower than the strike price of the call option or, conversely, the spot price of the BA is higher than the strike price in the case of a put.

Option strategies

There are many option trading strategies. Four basic approaches can be distinguished.
Long call — buying a call option, the investor expects an increase in the price of the underlying asset above the strike on the expiration date of the contract. Then he will be able to buy an asset at a discount to the market price and thus earn on the difference. If the price drops below the strike, the buyer risks only the premium paid for the option.
Long put — is a kind of alternative to a short position in the spot market. The buyer of the put option hopes to make money, assuming that the price of the BA falls below the strike at the time of expiration. In this scenario, the investor may sell the asset at a higher price than the market price.
Also, through a put option, an investor can limit the risk of a fall in the price of an asset that has a long position open. According to Su Zhu, miners may use the “protective put” strategy, in whose activity a substantial and prolonged drop in the price of mined cryptocurrency is undesirable. Through such tools, miners can provide profitable or even break-even activity.
Short call — the investor acts as the seller of the contract, counting on a decrease in the price of BA below the strike on the date of expiration. However, the higher the price of the asset, the more losses the inscription bears. Thus, the risk of the seller of the contract is unlimited, and the profit potential is limited by the premium on the sale of the call.
Short put — the seller of such an option expects a premium on it, being firmly convinced that the price of the BA will be higher than the strike.
Combinations of these basic strategies may underlie more sophisticated options trading approaches, such as:
• protective put — purchase of a put option for an available asset;
• covered (secured) call — an investor sells a call option to an existing BA or which will be acquired simultaneously with the sale of the option; the strategy reduces the risk of owning an asset, since a fall in its price is partially offset by a premium;
• straddle — a kind of bet on volatility, which implies the purchase of a call and put option on the same asset with the same expiration date and the same strike price;
• strangle — almost the same as straddle, differs only in different strike prices.

Conclusions

Options are complex financial instruments, their mechanism of work is unlikely to be mastered immediately by most novice traders. Nevertheless, these derivatives may seem interesting to experienced market participants and, in particular, to miners.
The following advantages and disadvantages of options can be distinguished. Of the advantages of these contracts, we note:
- flexibility of use in speculative trading;
- the ability to use many combinations and trading strategies;
- a good tool for hedging risks;
- the ability to use in any trend — upward, downward, sideways.
Disadvantages:
- the difficulty of understanding the mechanism of work, especially for novice market participants;
- asymmetric conditions and, accordingly, risks for the buyer and seller;
- the complexity of trading strategies;
- the volatility of an option premium, which depends on the proximity of the expiration date and price dynamics in the spot market;
- low liquidity.
Different industry players have different cryptocurrency options. Some consider them promising tools useful for miners, funds, retail traders and the market as a whole. Others are convinced that such derivatives are archaism.
Nevertheless, options are gradually taking root in the cryptocurrency market. This is evident in the dynamics of trading volume and open interest. In addition, more and more exchanges are trying to add support for these contracts, which contributes to increased competition and further development of the industry.
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[Part 1] KAVA Historical AMA Tracker! (Questions & Answers)

Q1:

Kava is a decentralized DEFI project, why did you implement the countries restrictions to run the node? Will there be such restrictions by the time of the mainnet?

Q2:

According to the project description it has been indicated that staking reward (in KAVA tokens) varies from 3 to 20% per annum. But how will you fight with inflation?

We all know how altcoins prices are falling, and their bottom is not visible. And in fact, we can get an increase in the number of tokens for staking, but not an increase in the price of the token itself and become a long-term investor.

Q3:

In your allocation it is indicated that 28.48% of the tokens are in the "Token treasury" - where will these tokens be directed?

Q4:

Such a platform (with loans and stable coins) is just the beginning since these aspects are a small part of many Defi components. Will your team have a plan to implement other functions, such as derivatives, the dex platform once the platform is successfully launched?

Q5:

There are several options for using USDX on the KAVA platform, one of which is Margin Trading / Leverage. Is this a selection function or a compulsory function? Wondering since there are some investors who don`t like margin. What is the level of leverage and how does a CDP auction work?

Q6:

Most credit platforms do not work well in the current market. What will you do to attract more people to use your platform and the services you provide? Thank you

Q7:

KAVA functions as a reserve currency in situations where the system is undercollateralized. In such cases new KAVA is minted and used to buy USDX off the market until USDX becomes safely overcollateralized.

Meaning, there will be no max supply of KAVA?

Q8:

Why Kava?

Q9:

How do you plan to make liquidity in Kava?

Q10:

Most crypto investors or crypto users prefer easy transaction and low fees, what can we expect from KAVA about this?

Q11:

How do I become a note validator on KavA?

Q12:

It is great to know that KAVA is the first DEFI-supported project sponsored by Binance Launchpad, do you think this is the meaning that CZ brings: Opening the DEFI era, as a leader, you feel like how ?

Q13:

Since decentralized finance applications is already dominating, how do you intend to surpass those leading in the market?

Q14:

What does Ripple play in the Kava's ecosystem, since Ripple is like a top tier company and it’s impressive that you are partnered with them?

Q15:

Considering the connectivity, Libra could be the biggest competitor if KAVA leverages interchain for efficiency.

Q16:

Wonder how KAVA will compete with the tech giants

Q17:

In long-term, what's the strategy that KAVA has for covering the traditional finance users as well? Especially regarding the "stability"

Q18:

In long-term, what's the strategy that KAVA has for covering the traditional finance users as well? Especially regarding the "stability"

Q19:

Compound, maker they're trying to increase their size via the competitive interests rates. THough it shows good return in terms of growth rate, still it's for short-term. Wonder other than financial advantage, KAVA has more for the users' needs?

Q20:

Q21:

Do you have any plans to attract non-crypto investors to Kava and how? What are the measures to increase awareness of kava in non-crypto space?

Q22:

Adoption is crucial for all projects and crypto companies, what strategy are you gonna use/follow or u are now following to get Kava adopted and used by many people all over the world?

Revenue is an important aspect for all projects in order to survive and keep the project/company up and running for long term, what are the ways that Kava generates profits/revenue and what is its revenue model?

Q23:

In order to be success in Loan project of Cryptocurrency, I think marketing is very important to make people using this service without any registration. What is main strategy for marketing?

Q24:

Currently, some project have policies for their ambassadors to create a contribution and attract recognition for the project! So the KAVA team plans to implement policies and incentives for KAVA ambassadors?

Q25:

Currently there are so many KAVA tokens sold on exchanges, why is this happening while KAVA is going to IEO on Binance? Are those KAVA codes fake or not?

Q26:

KAVA have two tokens, the first is called Kava - a governance and staking token; the second is called USDX - an algorithmically managed crypto-backed stable coin. What are the advantages of USDX compared to other stablecoins such as: USDT, USDC, TUSD, GUSD, ...?

Q27:

As a CEO, does your background in Esports and Gaming industry help anything to your management and development of KAVA Labs?