Strong Price Recovery After an “Eventful” 2018

Market sentiment around cryptocurrencies has once again turned optimistic (for now). Following the billions added to the sector this week, plus altcoins gaining market dominance against Bitcoin, many are hoping this is THE trend reversal to end the longest bear market in digital asset history.

Amongst some of the strongest performers, Tezos (XTZ) started its own price surge over a month ago. Bottoming between $0.31-$0.37, XTZ was given an extra boost by the overall market surge and hit $1.10 before cooling off. It currently trades at $0.97.

Tezos’ Strong Rally Highlighting Investor’s KEEN Interest In Staking

Source: XTZ/USD https://www.worldcoinindex.com/coin/tezos

To quickly put the price into perspective, XTZ is still down 90% from its 2017 all-time highs, according to ATHCoindex. Following the successful ICO of over $230 million, the project endured legal issues and internal leadership problems in 2018.

Tezos’ Strong Rally Highlighting Investor’s KEEN Interest In Staking

Source: XTZ/USD 1-Year https://www.worldcoinindex.com/coin/tezos

With MOST of these hurdles overcome and the XTZ price bottoming in December 2018 at $0.31, the Tezos project seems to be moving forward and making progress in the crypto sector, starting 2019 with good news and renewed hope in the project.

Tezos’ “Athenian” Democracy and Monetizing Your Portfolio Through Staking?

Similar to smart contract platforms EOS and TRON, the Tezos blockchain runs on a delegated proof-of-stake (DPOS) system, which enables a user to stake or “bake” the XTZ coin to participate in the consensus of the Tezos ecosystem.

Stakeholders on the Tezos network are also referred to as “bakers” and can vote on important milestones in the development of the Tezos system. The blockchain industry witnessed the first on-chain Tezos upgrade proposal in late February, called Athens.

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Athens: our protocol proposal for the first voted upgrade of Tezos. We shall propose two upgrades.

Tezos has a built-in system to try new protocols: it can fork a test chain from the main chain.

The test chain has the advantage of forking from an actual context of mainnet, complete with all the accounts and contracts, thus giving a realistic trial of what could happen at activation.” Nomadic Labs Announcement

Another benefit of being a baker on the Tezos network is that participants or nodes can passively earn more XTZ while simultaneously securing and validating the blockchain. Most wallets supporting XTZ will allow you to do this with a few clicks.

Tezos’ Strong Rally Highlighting Investor’s KEEN Interest In Staking

List of bakers for delegating XTZ, source: https://www.mytezosbaker.com/

Towards the end of last month, Coinbase also announced that it would be supporting Tezos baking for its institutional clients through Coinbase Custody. Because of Coinbase’s regulatory clarity, this restored a great deal of trust and faith in the Tezos project while exposing XTZ to institutional-grade investors.

“Today, we’re announcing Tezos (XTZ) baking for Coinbase Custody clients. We’re proud to be the first full-service, regulated, comprehensively-insured, and 100% offline staking provider in crypto.” – Coinbase Custody Tezos announcement

Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Litecoin run on a proof-of-work (POW) system, which relies on computational/hashing power to secure the network.

EOS, TRON, Tezos, and soon to be Ethereum run on DPOS or POS, which involves staking or delegating the digital assets to a trusted node or validator to secure the network and receive a portion of newly-created coins or tokens.

Delegating or staking also entitles the user to the innovative resources the blockchain has to offer.

The flurry of good news has benefitted Tezos and put it in a good position to have an excellent 2019. As a smart contract platform, it will be interesting to see how Tezos evolves and competes with other more established rivals in the sector.

Hopefully the project shakes off the negative controversy from its launch and further pushes the boundaries of blockchain technology in the years to come.

This is not investment advice; please always do thorough research and only invest what you are willing to lose, especially in times of uncertainty.

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