Anyone familiar with Roger Ver may have already heard him proclaim the benefits of Bitcoin Cash (BCH), while deriding the development path taken by Bitcoin (BTC).

That development path has been largely guided by the overseeing hand of Blockstream – a privately funded company which has itself provided much of the funding for Bitcoin’s development.

A Departure from the BTC Vision

While Roger Ver’s constant assault on Blockstream and BTC on Twitter may prove irksome to some – it does appear to be founded on genuine reasons. Ver believes that features like the Lightning Network and Liquid Network detract from the original ideals set forth by Satoshi Nakamoto in the original Bitcoin whitepaper.

Furthermore, Ver and many others maintain that Blockstream purposely derailed the development of Bitcoin, purely so that they could then step in and get rich selling a product that was never needed in the first place.

As Ver recently told his Twitter followers:

“Supporters of lightning network intentionally crippled the world’s best working and most popular cryptocurrency (Bitcoin) in an attempt to push people onto something that doesn’t work, isn’t ready yet, and may never be able to work!”

The crippling of Bitcoin Ver refers to is the refusal by Blockstream to increase block sizes in order to increase scalability. What many believe should have been a straightforward issue – and one that was even touted by Satoshi Nakamoto himself – eventually became a farce.

Rather than increase block sizes on the Bitcoin blockchain to hold more transactions, Blockstream instead decided to create and sell their own products, such as sidechains and the Liquid Network, in order to solve the (self-sustained) scalability problem.

Earlier this week, Ver tweeted:

“BTC is the only coin in existence with intentionally limited on-chain capacity.”

Conflict of Interest?

As for Blockstream, they have made no secret of their intentions to make money from their Bitcoin activities. The company plans to provide sidechain services for investors using the newly created Liquid Network – a system which sees Bitcoin swapped out for a pegged sidechain token.

Some people may see a conflict of interest here. But even if we put conspiracies and speculation aside, this tweet by Blockstream CEO Adam Back suggests they aren’t too interested in maintaining the Bitcoin mainchain:

“I bet they’d pay $100/tx for digital gold, and mid-sized international remittance, I would. Still be really good if fees were much lower.”

The tweet refers to speculation on what the future price of a Bitcoin transaction would be, and seems to confirm that Blockstream see Bitcoin as a remittance tool for large-scale investors, rather than cheap, efficient P2P digital cash.

When Bitcoin started it was supposed to be a decentralized, permission-less, trust-less, immutable and therefore uncensorable alternative to the existing financial hierarchies and centralized infrastructures.

Even if you like the idea of Lightning Network hubs, block producers, and state channels, one thing you can’t say about them is that they’re decentralized, permission-less or trust-less.

Bitcoin Cash (BCH) was forked from Bitcoin in 2017 after many in the BTC community became dissatisfied with the blockchain’s direction. Bitcoin Cash essentially acts as the pre-Blockstream version of Bitcoin.

Disclaimer: The author owns bitcoin, Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies. He holds investment positions in the coins, but does not engage in short-term or day-trading.

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Important: Never invest (trade with) money you can't afford to comfortably lose. Always do your own research and due diligence before placing a trade. Read our Terms & Conditions here. Trade recommendations and analysis are written by our analysts which might have different opinions. Read my 6 Golden Steps to Financial Freedom here. Best regards, Jonas Borchgrevink.

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Greg Thomson

4.4 stars on average, based on 81 rated postsGreg Thomson is a full-time crypto writer and digital nomad. He eats ICOs for breakfast and bleeds altcoins. Wherever he lays his public key is his home.

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Basic Attention Token (BAT) has been quietly recording day on day growth for the last four days as anticipation builds regarding a Coinbase listing.

The value of BAT has increased by 42% in that time, as public opinion leans toward the theory that BAT’s ERC-20 foundation makes it a prime candidate to be the next token listed on Coinbase.

This follows on from the recent listing of Ox (ZRX), which resulted in the token gaining 44% on its value in just over twenty-four hours. Attention has now turned to BAT, and trade volumes hit a three month high this week, all without any real confirmation from Coinbase.

BAT/USD

As of Friday afternoon BAT had grown by 15% in the preceding twenty-four hour period, arriving at a peak price of $0.242660. The last four days were marked by day on day growth, and by Friday afternoon’s peak BAT had risen 42% in value.

Furthermore, the monthly gains for BAT stand at 65%, showing a clear rise in momentum within the last week. The current valuation returns the altcoin to its valuation prior to the September crash. For Bitcoin and Ethereum to say the same, they’d have to reach valuations of $7,400 and $295 respectively.

The majority of trades came on Binance on Friday – 50% of the $14 million total. The BAT/BTC trade was the main mover, and racked up eight hours of green candles between 04:00 and 14:00 UTC.

Coinbase Effect

The whole Coinbase saga began for BAT over three months ago, when the exchange released an announcement stating they were considering the listings of five particular cryptocurrencies. Stellar (XLM), Cardano (ADA), Ox (ZRX), Zcash (ZEC) and Basic Attention Token (BAT) were the cryptos named, and all recorded double digit growth on the day of the announcement.

Even after Coinbase released another statement reminding people that the coins were merely ‘under consideration’, their values continued to surge.

Now, given the ERC-20 structure of BAT, it appears likely that the token will be the next one added to Coinbase. The underlying structure of a coin or token is one of the things an exchange must consider when adding a cryptocurrency. The recent additions of Ethereum Classic (ETC) and Ox (ZRX) suggest that the exchange now has a handle on Ethereum-based tokens.

New Brave Browser

Today also marked the release of the updated Brave Browser – the privacy focused web browser which pays users in BAT for time and attention. The new browser is being hailed as 22% faster than the previous version. According to the Brave twitter feed:

“Our new desktop browser has a 22% faster load time on average than our exiting Brave Muon version. That’s as much as 8-second faster page loads on certain sites.”

The Brave Browser hit four million downloads in September, making it one of the most utilized crypto-based applications to date.

Disclaimer: The author owns bitcoin, Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies. He holds investment positions in the coins, but does not engage in short-term or day-trading.

Featured image courtesy of Shutterstock.

Important: Never invest (trade with) money you can't afford to comfortably lose. Always do your own research and due diligence before placing a trade. Read our Terms & Conditions here. Trade recommendations and analysis are written by our analysts which might have different opinions. Read my 6 Golden Steps to Financial Freedom here. Best regards, Jonas Borchgrevink.

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Greg Thomson

4.4 stars on average, based on 81 rated postsGreg Thomson is a full-time crypto writer and digital nomad. He eats ICOs for breakfast and bleeds altcoins. Wherever he lays his public key is his home.

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• Zcash had jumped over 17% over the period of 12-18^th October, before running into sellers.
• The foundation set to launch the Sapling protocol upgrade. To improve efficiency for shielded transactions.

Zcash over a 6-day period from 12-18th October gained a whopping 17%. Moving quickly from as low as $108, to then be above $126. Since, the price has run into some sellers and touted profit-takinggiven the large run in such as short time frame.

What Is This ‘Zcash’ (ZEC)?

Zcash was a hard fork of Bitcoin in 2016. Unlike the number one ranked crypto by market cap, privacy is ensured via Zcash. Personal and transaction data are kept confidential. This being facilitated through zero-knowledge proofs, allowing conducted transactions to go through verification without any required details about the sender, receiver as well as the transacted amount.

Zcash Set to Launch Sapling Protocol Upgrade

The Zcash foundation recently updated via their blog ‘Sapling Transaction Anatomy’. Full breakdown details can be read there as they are set to launch the Sapling protocol upgrade.

Sapling, this will be a network upgrade that aims to substantially improve efficiency for shielded transactions – paving the way for broad mobile, exchange as well as vendor adoption of Zcash shielded addresses. Their motivations for the Sapling upgrade are to increase speed on these shielded transactions.

Coinbase Speculation Continues to Do Rounds

The community around Zcash continues to speculate on whether the privacy-focused crypto will be added to Coinbase. Earlier in the year, Coinbase said they were exploring the possibility of listing Zcash and others, such as Cardano, Basic Attention Token, Stellar Lumens and 0x on its platforms. This covered back in July and does not guarantee it will be added, but the hope still appears to be flowing through the community.

Zcash Jumps to 20^th Largest by Market Cap

Earlier this week, Zcash managed to break into the top 20 cryptocurrencies by market cap. It overtook Dogecoin. The current market cap at time of writing seen at $588,429,693, ahead of DOGE at $513,884,230.

Technical Review – Daily Chart

ZEC/USD daily chart

ZEC/USD has been cooling over the past two sessions, after its recent 17% price run. It isn’t too much of a surprise to see the current easing, given the fast surge higher. Near-term support can be found around $115 area, then further south within a demand zone tracking from $110-105. Looking to the upside, sellers are camped heading into the $130 territory. A higher near-term target would be eyed at $145, price last traded here on 28^th September.

This year Zcash is still down some 80% from the highs in January, up over the $800 price level. It has failed to sustain any upside momentum, rallies continue to be sold by the bears. This is something that has been seen across the other cryptocurrecies, not just Zcash. The market continues to search for a bottom.

Disclaimer: The author owns bitcoin, Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies. He holds investment positions in the coins, but does not engage in short-term or day-trading.

Featured image courtesy of Shutterstock.

Important: Never invest (trade with) money you can't afford to comfortably lose. Always do your own research and due diligence before placing a trade. Read our Terms & Conditions here. Trade recommendations and analysis are written by our analysts which might have different opinions. Read my 6 Golden Steps to Financial Freedom here. Best regards, Jonas Borchgrevink.

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Ken Chigbo

4.5 stars on average, based on 33 rated postsKen has over 8 years exposure to the financial markets. During a large part of his career, he worked as an analyst, covering a variety of asset classes; forex, fixed income, commodities, equities and cryptocurrencies. Ken has gone on to become a regular contributor across several large news and analysis outlets.

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