Cryptocurrency

Litecoin sailed past its level of resistance on the charts and could register some more gains in the next day or two, before facing its next resistance. Ontology could continue to show bullish momentum in the markets in the short-term. Zcash bulls showed strength too, and were likely to drive prices up in the coming days. Litecoin [LTC] Source: LTC/USD on TradingView Litecoin rose its past resistance at the $45.7-level, on a move with above-average trading volume. Subsequently, the price also retested the zone of demand at $45, and sellers were unable to push the prices under the zone, as indicated by the cyan arrow. The Aroon indicator also showed that in the short-term, LTC was moving upwards. The Aroon Up (orange) crossed above and stayed above the Aroon Down (blue). LTC could face resistance at $48 and $50, with $48.5 being an important level, according to a longer time-frame analysis. Ontology [ONT] Source: ONT/USD on TradingView The recent drop from $0.85 to $0...

The past week saw Bitcoin’s dominance drop from 61.6% to 59.5%, while Bitcoin surged from $10,000 to $10,500 over the same period of time. Bitcoin Cash appeared to be consolidating as traders waited for the market to decide upon a direction. Monero rose past a level of resistance and seemed to have flipped its level from resistance to support. Zcash was also on an uptrend, with ZEC intent on recovering its losses from early-September. Bitcoin Cash [BCH] Source: BCH/USD on TradingView Bitcoin Cash was in a consolidation phase. A few sessions prior to press time, however, the price appeared to have broken out as it moved towards the upper band of the Bollinger Bands . The mouth of the bands was also expanding, but the move had reversed quickly. As shown by the white trendline, the volume for BCH has been falling for the past few moves. Combined with a constricted pair of Bollinger bands, it can be confirmed that BCH was consolidating on the charts. Monero [XMR] Source: XMR...

Zcash is a fork of bitcoin and is similar to it in that transaction data is recorded on a public blockchain. However, Zcash offers users the choice of utilizing transparent transactions or private transactions. Zcash obscures personal and transaction data through zero-knowledge proofs called zk-SNARKS. Zero-knowledge proofs make it possible for one party to prove that they know the value of something to another party, without revealing any information beyond that they know that value. Zcash also has a ‘founder’s reward’, which means that over time, 10% of the total zcash supply will be distributed to investors, founders, employees and advisors. The reward is taken from each block reward for the first four years of the project: 80% of the block reward goes to miners and the remaining 20% goes to the founders. After the project’s first four years, 100% of the block reward will be given to miners. Some founders have committed to donating a portion of their rewards to the Zcash Fou...

In summary: The amount of fully-shielded ZCash (ZEC) transactions has reached a monthly all-time high.  The increase could be attributed to awareness about government surveillance as well as real-life use cases of ZEC.  A ZEC Mobile wallet is now available on Android with tests still being done on its iOS version.  Private crypto transactions are slowly but surely becoming popular with the amount of fully-shielded ZCash (ZEC) transactions hitting a new monthly all-time high. Data suggests that there has been a sharp increment of private transactions from March 2020. The chart below courtesy of the ZCash community forum further provides a better comparison of shielded transactions from 2016. Feb – May 2020 shows a massive increment of fully shielded ZEC transactions. Use of ZEC Could be Due to Concerns of Increased Government Surveillance 2020 will be one year in the history books that might take more than one chapter to explain. The Coronavirus has had a domino...

Mining reward halvings are a hot topic in the crypto markets, as they alter a cryptocurrency’s supply and often have a significant impact on prices.  Bitcoin, the biggest cryptocurrency by market value, underwent its third halving on May 11, which reduced the reward per block mined to 6.25 bitcoin from 12.5. Bitcoin offshoots bitcoin cash and bitcoin SV also witnessed halvings in April.  Next in line is zcash (ZEC), a privacy-focused cryptocurrency first created in 2016 that uses a proof-of-work (or mining) algorithm and encrypts user information within shielded transactions. Currently, it is the 26th largest cryptocurrency by market value, as per data source CoinMarketCap. Rewards per block mined on the zcash blockchain – launched and supported by the Electric Coin Company – are scheduled to be cut by 50% from the current 12.5 ZEC to 6.25 ZEC at block 1,046,400 this year.  Zcash’s first ever halving, the block subsidy reduction is expected to happen someti...

A handful of big names in crypto want in on the privacy features offered by Zcash. “It is humbling and inspiring that such a strong group of builders is leaning in to push that mission forward and help guide the future of Zcash,” privacy coin co-founder Zooko Wilcox said in a press statement.  The Electric Coin Company (ECC) announced Monday the launch of the Zcash Developers Alliance (ZDA), an invite-only working group that includes the Lightning Network startup Bolt Labs, the cross-chain technology startup Thesis, the Ethereum conglomerate ConsenSys and two leading startups working on the Cosmos project, Agoric and Iqlusion, just to name a few.  “The ZDA is an attempt to introduce a way to collaborate with the ECC, and the Zcash ecosystem, which focuses around other people’s priorities,” Iqlusion founder Zaki Manian said. “Product-market fit is other people [beyond fans and founders] actually caring about it.”  Manian said the “Zcash anonymity set” is a “v...

Zooko Wilcox, the founder of privacy coin Zcash, isn’t fond of anyone suggesting that Zcash is used by criminals. In a bid to rid the Internet of those nasty sentiments, he hired the Rand Corporation to seek out the facts and make them public. In a 65-page report released today, the think tank and government contractor revealed that Bitcoin still reigns supreme among criminal elements. The study was commissioned last year by the Electric Coin Company, the company behind Zcash.  Rand, which examined the use of Zcash in three areas—money laundering, trade in illicit goods and services, and terrorism financing—found “no evidence of widespread illicit use of Zcash.” “Zcash has only a minor presence on the dark web, indicating that Zcash is seen as a less attractive option to dark web users and is used less often compared to other cryptocurrencies, particularly Bitcoin and Monero,” the report stated.   However, the study made it clear that this doesn’t mean that Zcash i...

Developers are competing to bring ZCash privacy functionality to a Bitcoin sidechain. To do this, they’re using the Drivechain technology created by decentralized prediction market pioneer, Paul Sztorc. As an added incentive, Sztorc has announced a prize fund of up to 6.1 Bitcoin (BTC). This bounty will reduce slightly if not claimed by midnight EST on May 1. Drivechain adds altcoin functionality to BTC  Drivechain is an implementation which allows for the creation of Bitcoin sidechains with a true two-way peg. This would allow Bitcoin holders to move their coins to any sidechain they choose. Doing this could allow users to benefit from characteristics and features not found on the main Bitcoin blockchain. This could be a sidechain with large blocks and low fees, with smart contracts, or even with the enhanced privacy features of an altcoin, like ZCash (ZEC). Zcash functionality provides an ideal complement to the transparency and auditability of Bitcoin. Bitcoin which is tran...

April 27th 2020 First, we would like to emphasize that we have a lot of respect for our friends at Zcash and Monero and the activities that these projects have completed so far in order to promote the needed financial confidentiality in crypto. We will organize our comparison by looking at three parameters: confidentiality, scalability, and auditability. The comparison is quite advanced and does not claim to be complete — there are other played factors besides the three we have chosen to address. Monero: Confidentiality Monero enables confidentiality by using  Ring Confidential Transactions  (a combination of Confidential Transactions and Ring Signatures) and  Stealth Addresses . In addition, Kovri (currently in pre-alpha) is used to obfuscate peer-to-peer communication. Confidential Transactions hide the transferred amounts. With Ring Signatures, at least six “decoy” coins are added to each transaction, each looking equally likely to be the actual one spent in t...

The Zcash Foundation has released a report titled “The Zcash Foundation’s 2020 Q1 Report.” The report includes updates on Zebra, ZecWallet, Zcash-Cosmos pegzone and budget details of the project. Zcash Foundation’s new budget outlines $2.68 million of spending compared to the earlier amount of $3.24 million. In a recent report, the Zcash Foundation has updated the crypto community on the work accomplished in the first quarter of 2020. Zcash is one of the most well-known privacy coins in the market.  Firstly, the Foundation acknowledged that the current coronavirus pandemic has affected almost all the industries globally. However, as the project has always worked remotely, the pandemic’s impact on it has been less severe, as per the report. In fact, the Foundation has leveraged its blockchain network to develop a privacy-preserving contact tracing app in a coalition with TCN during this time.  The report noted that the Zcash Foundation’s work on Zebra is still ongoing. ...

Zcash surged nearly 60% over the past month, and data suggests that it could have hit an exhaustion point in its uptrend. Key Takeaways Zcash's social volume is reaching levels that have previously indicated local tops. Different technical indexes add credence to this outlook signaling that a correction is underway. If validated, the high correlation between ZEC and some of the top cryptocurrencies could spell trouble for the rest of the market. Share this article On-chain and technical metrics suggest that Zcash, a privacy-centric cryptocurrency, reached a local top, which could have severe implications for the rest of the crypto market. ZEC’s Social Volume Skyrockets Zcash is up nearly 13 percent over the past 24 hours. The privacy token rose from hovering around $29.7 to recently hitting a high of $47.6. Now, this price level could represent a local top, according to Santiment. The behavior analytics firm explained that ZEC’s social volume spiked to a month h...

In a report published on April 17, 2020, titled “The Zcash Foundation’s 2020 Q1 Report,” the privacy-centric cryptocurrency project shared several updates on its developments, including the progress on Zebra, cross-chain integration, and privacy-enhancement research and development, among others. Zcash Foundation Provides Key Updates Sharing details on the progress made in Q1 2020, privacy-focused distributed ledger technology (DLT) project Zcash updated its community on the work accomplished during the first quarter of 2020. The report begins with acknowledging the unanticipated adverse effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on virtually all industries across the world. However, as it happens, the Zcash Foundation has always worked remotely so the pandemic’s impact on the project has been relatively less severe. In fact, the pandemic gave the project an opportunity to leverage its blockchain network to develop a privacy-preserving contact tracing app in a coalition with TCN. The report ...

Source: Wit Olszweski - Shutterstock Charles Hoskinson shared his favorite crypto projects, besides Cardano, with the community in a new interview. He follows the developments of Zcash, Dash, Ergo, StarkWare, Lightning Labs, Tezos, Algorand, Avalanche and the Basic Attention Token. The co-founder of Cardano and Ethereum, Charles Hoskinson, spoke in an interview about his personal favorite projects on the cryptomarket. Hoskinson, the CEO of Input Output Hong Kong (IOHK), the company responsible for the development of Cardano, said that he has a total of nine other crypto projects that he considers very interesting. Zcash Hoskinson describes that Zcash has strongly pushed the development in the area of privacy coins and Cardano has copied some functions and additionally enhanced others to implement them in Cardano: They’ve advanced the entire discussion of zero knowledge cryptography. We’ve borrowed some of their stuff. We’ve innovated on some of the things.” … “They’re carry...

Blockchain COVID-19 privacy contact tracing App is under development. Coronavirus contact tracing has been a huge challenge across the globe and ZCash privacy backed contact tracing application is underway. The App will be used in tracing the virus contacts without compromising on privacy on the part of the victim. This is an open-source method set to bring privacy in contact tracing across the globe. Concerns have been raised on how tracing can be done using digital technology whilst preserving personal privacy. Contact tracing app solution A blockchain-based solution is necessary to slow down the spread of coronavirus. According to a ZCash board member Peter Van Valkenburgh, there is no need to impose contact tracing and methods that put personal privacy on the line. He adds that the approach is already working in China and might not work in the U.S. The same sentiments have been expressed by a crypto expert, Sydney Ifergan on a tweet adds: Ideally, we need contact tracing tec...

The spread of coronavirus has uncovered a number of vulnerabilities in today’s society. This crisis was not restricted only to developing countries, but also to a number of developed nations. Several institutions have been wracking their heads in order to come up with solutions to combat the raging pandemic. In the midst of this, ZCash, a popular cryptocurrency organization, has begun developing its own contact tracing system to stem coronavirus spread . The ZCash application will be used to track people who have come into contact with the virus. According to the developers, the key difference between the ZCash app and those on the market was the privacy factor. ZCash developers have pointed out that the open-source setup of the application will ensure that user information is always kept private. Many companies, both in the mainstream and decentralized ecosystems, have stepped up to contribute what they can. Sydney Ifergan, an Honorary Advisor of Hong Kong International Blockchain...