NEM, Augur and District0x price push higher while Bitcoin trades below $32K

July 16, 2021 Coin Telegraph

NEM, Augur and District0x price push higher while Bitcoin trades below K

Massive spikes in trading volume sent the price of XEM, REP and DNT higher even as Bitcoin price hit a weekly low at $31,000.

Bitcoin (BTC) is on the verge of closing another week that saw the price dip closer to $30,000 but the same bearish observation cannot be made for all altcoins. On Friday, several smaller-cap altcoins managed to shake off the bearish assault and post-double-digit gains before traditional markets closed for the weekend.

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that the top movers over the past 24 hours were NEM (XEM), Augur (REP) and district0x (DNT).

*Top 7 coins with the highest 24-hour price change. Source:* *Cointelegraph Markets Pro*

It's worth noting that four of the top seven gainers are layer-one protocols, an interesting development that comes at a time when Ether’s (ETH) price is struggling below the $2,000 level and the community anxiously waits to see if the upcoming London hard fork improves Ether price and the process of transacting on the network.

NEM/USDT

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that after a month where the average 24-hour trading volume for NEM was $50 million, demand for the token surged on July 16 as the volume increased to $532 million and the price rallied 35% to $0.151.

*XEM/USDT 4-hour chart. Source:* *TradingView*

The uptick in price follows the July 13 announcement that Symbol (XYM), an enterprise blockchain protocol developed by the NEM group, had agreed to a collaborative project with the government of Colombia.

REP/USDT

According to data from TradingView, REP price began to surge on July 13 after the 24-hour trading volume spiked from a daily average of $17 million to more than $521 million on July 14.

As a result of the sudden increase in trading volume, the price of REP rallied 57% from a low of $14.60 on July 13 to an intraday high at $22.97 on July 16.

While there is no readily identifiable cause for the sudden increase in interest, a scroll through the Augur's Twitter feed shows that forecasting on the network remains active with the most recent polls asking “Who would win the 2021 Major League Baseball Home-run derby?” and “Who will win the Ultimate Fighting Championship fight between Connor McGregor and Dustin Poirier?”

DNT/USDT

The third-largest gainer on July 16 was Distric0x, a protocol that bills itself as a "network of decentralized markets and communities" and specializes in helping users launch their own decentralized autonomous organizations (DAO).

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that DNT's trading volume spiked from $3 million to more than $60 million on Friday, which led to a 73% rally from $0.112 to an intraday high at $0.193.

At the time of writing the price of DNT had since retraced to $0.133 which represents a 17.35% gain on the day.

The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph.com. Every investment and trading move involves risk, you should conduct your own research when making a decision.

Streaming tokens surge as Bitcoin price drops to the $54,000 support

March 22, 2021 Coin Telegraph

Streaming tokens surge as Bitcoin price drops to the ,000 support

Augur

Tokens related to gaming, video and music streaming rallied to new highs even as Bitcoin price pulled back to the $54,000 support.

Bitcoin (BTC) bulls faced strong headwinds on March 22 that quickly dampened any attempt at a breakout above the $58,000 level despite comments from United States Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell which called the top cryptocurrency a “substitute for gold.”

Data from Cointelegraph Markets and TradingView show that traders made several attempts to push BTC above $58,000 over the past two days only to be rejected, with Monday’s failure resulting in a pullback to the $54,000 support level.

*BTC/USDT 4-hour chart. Source:* *TradingView*

On-chain analysis shows that while BTC price struggles to climb back above $60,000, whale wallets have been in accumulation mode over the past 30 days indicating that some of the wealthiest Bitcoin holders still see more upside for the current bull market.

Mainstream cryptocurrency adoption gains traction

The macro picture for the cryptocurrency sector continues to improve as the globally recognized TIME magazine revealed that it is looking for a CFO who is comfortable with Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies as the publication has begun exploring the creation of one-of-a-kind non-fungible tokens based on some of its most iconic covers.

Now that blockchain technology has evolved to the point where it can handle processes like video and music streaming, platforms with a first-mover advantage in those sectors have seen their prices breakout over the past few months as mainstream audiences are increasingly exposed to the cryptocurrency ecosystem.

Theta (THETA) and Theta Fuel (TFUEL) have taken the lead when it comes to blockchain-based video streaming with the dual token system enjoying astronomical growth in 2021 that continues to push its price to new all-time highs.

*THETA/USDT vs. TFUEL/USDT 4-hour chart. Source:* *TradingView*

Audius (AUDIO), a music streaming platform, has also rallied strongly over the past month as its price increased from $0.356 on Feb. 28 to a new all-time high at $2.05 on March 16.

VORTECS™ data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro began to detect a bullish outlook for AUDIO on March 1, prior to the recent price rise.

The VORTECS™ score, exclusive to Cointelegraph, is an algorithmic comparison of historic and current market conditions derived from a combination of data points including market sentiment, trading volume, recent price movements and Twitter activity.

*VORTECS™ Score (green) vs. AUDIO price. Source:* *Cointelegraph Markets Pro*

As seen in the chart above, the VORTECS™ score for AUDIO was in the green late in February and hit a high of 68 on March 1, roughly 24-hours before the price began to increase by 400% over the next two weeks.

Following the price peak on March 16, AUDIO price and its VORTECS™ score experienced a pullback that lasted several days. The VORTECS™ score then turned green again and reached a high of 71 on March 20, roughly 15 hours before its recent price rise.

*Daily cryptocurrency market performance. Source:* *Coin360*

Other notable altcoin performances on March 22 include Augur (REP), which has seen its price increase 30% to a multi-year high of $39.30, and XRP, which spiked 20% to an intraday high at $0.60 as members of the XRP army look to get the token relisted on exchanges that suspended services in response to th actions from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The overall cryptocurrency market cap now stands at $1.746 trillion and Bitcoin’s dominance rate is 59.8%.

How This Millionaire Economist Trades Crypto Prediction Markets

March 20, 2021 The Crypto Briefing

Augur

An anonymous trader with a Ph.D. in economics walked Crypto Briefing through the risks and methodology of being a big player in the crypto prediction markets.

How to Predict the Future

Insight_Predict, henceforth referred to as IP, is a seasoned options trader who became active on the PredictIt and BetMoose betting platforms years ago, recently moving into the Polymarket crypto prediction platform. They now have over half of their net worth on these prediction markets.

Turns out yesterday was a good day to take profits on my calls. Here's a sampling of the profits I booked yesterday. The biggest profits were on Exxon-Mobil calls. I am basically treading water on BP calls, but wanted to lighten my load and reduce risk. https://t.co/wdVqx7pNM5 pic.twitter.com/WUnt2d8DHV

— Insight Prediction (@Insight_Predict) February 17, 2021

IP explained the logic behind the move towards crypto sites, saying, “I think peer-to-peer betting markets are a great innovation relative to the old-fashioned ‘betting against the house’ [system].”

Centralized platforms are notorious for issuing low betting limits and often banning or limiting successful users to ensure profits.

However, sites like Polymarket don’t have risk management features like setting a stop loss. This particular trader embraces these risks but backs up bets with extensive research.

“I place extremely high-risk wagers both when I’m trading options, and when I’m trading on Polymarket generally.”

The trader added that they also placed low-risk bets on Biden to be inaugurated, with a 9% return and President Trump not to become President after losing the election.

Curiously, as of March 2021, traders can still bet that Donald Trump will become president of the USA by the end of the month.

The odds are now so low that Polymarket’s 2% fees would outweigh the 1% gain. Still, traders could have made 7% minus fees as recently as February, highlighting the difference between the “house always wins” platforms and less centralized crypto markets.

Research Methods

Research and risk management consists of reading about and discussing the topic online, including discord servers for each betting site. IP also sets Google Alerts for relevant market topics.

“Thus far this year, I’ve made more money on Polymarket than in my salaried day job, and I’m not doing it full time, which hurts my performance. Doing well on Poly generally requires staying on top of the news and doing research.”

The research is, of course, crucial to long-term success. One popular prediction market is now taking bets on whether the Biden administration will vaccinate 100 million people before Apr. 1.

Traders keep an eye on CDC cutoff times for vaccine reporting each day and calculate the moving average of vaccinations to predict results.

“For the vaccine markets, for example, it’s helpful to really dive into the data. I’ve run some regressions using the vaccine data but it’s mostly just looking at the trends in the data and in taking a big-picture perspective.”

It turns out that the number of vaccines administered has a pretty close relationship with the number of unused vaccines distributed. This suggests that should the # of vaccines increase the next few weeks, doses should rise roughly in proportion. pic.twitter.com/n1UBOFz28Q

— Insight Prediction (@Insight_Predict) March 9, 2021

Some Polymarket traders have programmed and released their own models to forecast trends in the vaccination rollout.

I have a model at https://t.co/VZoPABtf2C that predicts how many 2nd doses will be needed based on month-ago first doses, and therefore how many will be left for first doses. pic.twitter.com/1nbY7zsSXk

— Scott Leibrand (@scottleibrand) March 7, 2021

Shortcomings of Prediction Markets

The lack of risk management features makes it imperative that traders rely on automated alerts and constant vigilance for such volatile markets. These prediction markets are still in their infancy in relative terms, with limited features and events to bet on.

The underlying technology also comes with drawbacks as well as benefits. Polymarket and major competitor Augur have both been affected by ongoing congestion on the Ethereum network.

Polymarket actually runs on Polygon, an Ethereum sidechain. However, deposits and withdrawals of USDC, the only supported currency, have been slow and expensive of late due to high Ethereum traffic and fees. This issue is widespread throughout Ethereum and the DeFi ecosystem.

IP aims to tackle these issues by launching a new predictions market in the coming year, allowing users to buy and sell crypto directly, among other features.

The space will likely see the launch of increasingly sophisticated platforms and features. With so much demand and money on the line, truth-seekers and market researchers should keep a close eye.

Disclosure: The author held Bitcoin at the time of writing

Augur