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BNT is the native cryptocurrency of Bancor, a blockchain protocol that lets users directly convert virtual currencies rather than using centralized cryptocurrency trading platforms.

Through its on-chain liquidity protocol and Smart Tokens, Bancor aims to enable automated and decentralized exchange on Ethereum and other blockchains. Bancor wants to facilitate automatic price determination and autonomous liquidity mechanism for tokens on blockchains supporting smart contracts. Bancor network token (BNT) is the blockchain’s native asset, and the token has seen some wild price swings over the years.

BNT price

The BNT price has had numerous ups and downs since the asset’s introduction. It touched all-time lows of $1.44 on Jan. 23, 2021, and rose to an all-time high of $10.72 on March 10, 2021. The BNT price rose substantially and there was relative stability until mid-May 2021. A price drop occurred afterward, bringing the value down by almost 65%. A few volatile weeks followed with the price drifting even lower, but the market stabilized by mid-October 2021. The BNT price hovers near $4, generally. BNT has a maximum supply of 227.80 million tokens, almost all of them are in circulation at this time. However, not all of the supply is liquid, as 82.274 million BNT are accessible. As no additional inflation or issuance of tokens are in the works, the number is expected to remain unchanged.

Moreover, the supply of BNT is deflationary through the use of the Bancor Vortex Burner, which introduces an adjustable-fee taken from all swap revenue generated by liquidity providers. Through this fee cut, the Burner will buy vBNT assets to increase locked liquidity in the protocol. Additionally, the Burner continuously buys BNT and removes it from circulation, creating deflationary pressure. The upward price pressure on vBNT lowers borrowing risks for users leveraging their BNT stakes.

How does Bancor work?

The Bancor protocol is built on the Ethereum blockchain and uses Ethereum’s Proof-of-Work consensus algorithm. Bancor will benefit from all of the current and future updates on Ethereum, including sharding for parallel transaction processing and the change to Proof-of-Stake. The project is a protocol and not a new blockchain, and there have been no noteworthy forks other than the upgrades Ethereum has undergone.

As a protocol on the Ethereum blockchain, Bancor uses smart contracts to provide non-custodial trading solutions and wallet support. Bancor has also integrated Chainlink price oracles to provide accurate real-time pricing information on all supported assets. Through the BancorX bridge, the protocol bridges the gap between Ethereum and EOS via BNT.

Key events and management

Bancor was founded on Feb. 13, 2017, by Galia Benartzi, Guy Benartzi, Eyal Hertzog and Yehuda Levi. The founders hold various roles in the project, and the team has grown to 17 employees.

Bancor raised an undisclosed amount in a February 2018 seed round, led by KR1 plc. Additionally, Bancor raised funds during an initial coin offering on June 12, 2017. The team raised $153 million, or 396,712 ether during that process. Notable participants in the ICO include Blockchain Capital, Tim Drapers, Alexis Berthoud, ICONIZ, and NON-fungible Chain.

Bancor has actively explored solutions to combat high gas fees on the Ethereum network. The team deployed its contracts on the Arbitrum testnet in early 2021. However, the Arbitrum mainnet launch hit a snag in late 2021, and its “beta mainnet” is still rolling out gradually.

REN is the native cryptocurrency of the Ren protocol. It is an open protocol designed to allow users to move digital assets from one blockchain to another, generating cross-chain liquidity. To do so, it allows users to create tokens that conform to Ethereum’s ERC-20 standard that are backed 1:1 with their counterparts, such as bitcoin and bitcoin cash. In that, it resembles wrapped bitcoin (WBTC).

Ren price

The Ren protocol’s native token, REN, is an Ethereum-based cryptocurrency that uses the ERC-20 token standard. The token is paid as a refundable bond by network participants as a guarantee of good behavior.

The REN price touched an all-time low of about $0.01548 in February 2019, and remained below $0.20 from its initial sale in 2018 until August 2020. It touched a record high, $1.80, on Feb. 20, 2021.

There is a theoretical maximum supply of 1 billion REN tokens, all of which have been issued, according to CoinGecko data.

How does Ren work?

The protocol is similar to wrapped bitcoin (WBTC) in that users deposit tokens and receive an ERC-20 version in exchange. For example, if a user deposits bitcoin (BTC), the person receives renBTC. The difference is that REN does not use a single custodian to hold the keys to the backed assets but a distributed system.

The heart of the system is the RenVM network of so-called darknodes, which are individual machines that donate their computing power and storage space to form a virtual machine. In return, they are paid fees that vary with demand, and are adjusted automatically.The darknodes facilitate the minting (creating) and burning (destroying) of the wrapped assets. RenVM uses a trustless system for minting and redeeming tokens.

REN is used as a bond for users who lock their assets up within the RenVM darknodes. When users want to retrieve their assets from the RenVM, they can use their REN to do so. Because REN’s use case is limited to serving as a bond, the maximum supply of REN has been fixed at 1 billion and no other REN will be created.

Key events and management

Ren was founded by Taiyang Zhang and Loong Wang as the Republic Protocol. The Republic protocol is known for operating as a merchant for facilitating the creation and backing of wrapped bitcoin (WBTC), a role that Ren maintains. Following the REN token sale in 2018, Republic Protocol rebranded to Ren.

The initial coin offering (ICO) raised 35,000 ether from lead investors Polychain Capital and FBG, as well as funds like Huobi Capital, Hyperchain Capital and Signal Ventures. While initially formulated as a way of bringing dark pools – privacy-preserving trading venues where the order book is kept secret – to crypto, the founders later switched to focus on moving assets between blockchains.

The first renBTC went live on Ethereum in May 2020.

Tether announced Tuesday that it would launch its USDT stablecoin on the Polkadot and Kusama networks.

The launch schedule isn’t determined yet as the formation of parachains is pending, said Tether.

Parachains are individual blockchains that run parallel within the Polkadot ecosystem (Polkadot and Kusama). They can interact with each other and also with external networks such as Ethereum using bridges. This flexibility helps address the problems of scalability, security, and interoperability of blockchains.

Tether will first launch on Kusama, Polkadot’s experimental cousin network. Kusama helps projects prepare for deployment on Polkadot. It is built using Substrate (a blockchain development kit) and has nearly the same codebase as Polkadot.

Tether CTO Paolo Ardoino told The Block that Tether will “most likely launch on the Statemint parachain soon after Statemint becomes available.”

Statemint was introduced last month by Polkadot developer Parity Technologies. It would provide functionality for deploying assets such as stablecoins in the Polkadot and Kusama networks and help end-users with lower fees.

“We are expecting the launch of Statemint in the next few months,” Ardoino told The Block. “But the roadmap is not yet finalized, and so this is all still in the planning stages.”

“We also continue to look at Kusama,” said Ardoino. “Kusama would theoretically allow us to start experimenting with supporting Tether on parachains even before Statemint is officially live.”

Tether’s planned USDT launch on Kusama and Polkadot would make the stablecoin available on a total of ten networks. USDT is currently live on Ethereum, Solana, Algorand, EOS, Liquid Network, Omni, Tron, and Bitcoin Cash’s Standard Ledger Protocol.

Ethereum remains the popular network for USDT — the world’s largest stablecoin with a market capitalization of over $43 billion — according to data compiled by The Block.

Nearly $23 billion worth of USDT has been issued on Ethereum, followed by Tron, worth almost $20 billion. USDT hasn’t gotten much traction on the other networks yet.

Tether said it aims to have USDT as the first-ever stablecoin on Polkadot. “Polkadot, with its parachain structure, has the ability to grow significantly in the coming years. This growth will be driven by its high level of scalability,” said Ardoino.

© 2021 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Filecoin token (FIL) is the native digital token offered by Filecoin, a peer-to-peer, decentralized network for file storage. The token is offered as an economic incentive to ensure the reliability of file storage. Filecoin was built on top of the decentralized file sharing network InterPlanetary File System (IPFS), and brought the economic incentive system and marketplace functionality to IPFS.

Filecoin price

FIL serves as the main component of Filecoin’s economic incentive system and community participation on the Filecoin network. Storage Providers receive FIL as payment for storing and distributing the user’s data on the Filecoin network.

FIL’s price jumped to an all-time high of $237.62 on April 21, 2021, from a record low of $19.95 on Dec. 30, 2020. It has a total circulating supply of $114.87 million with a max supply of $1.97 billion.

How does Filecoin work?

Filecoin aims to disrupt traditional, centralized data storage products and services like Amazon Web Services and Google Drive. Unlike the traditional data storage providers, it implements a publicly verifiable, trustless storage product that doesn’t rely on a single entity.

Filecoin users pay fees to storage miners for storing their files on the network. Storage miners are internet-connected computers responsible for storing files and offering proof of their continued storage. Users are able to customize their storage preferences for cost, redundancy and speed when selecting a miner. Once the user has selected a miner, they can store files and verify the storage by viewing the proofs on the Filecoin blockchain.

Storage providers are users who offer disk space on their storage miner system. Anyone can participate as a storage provider and receive the FIL rewards for offering their storage capabilities to others. Once a provider’s computer implements the Filecoin protocol, they gain access to an open market of storage users.

Network Security. Unlike proof-of-work (PoW) blockchains like Bitcoin, Filecoin ensures its data is verifiably stored through proof-of-replication (PoRep) and proof-of-spacetime (PoSt). Under PoRep, storage miners create a proof by showing that they have stored a unique copy of the data on their system, at the time when the data sector was sealed. PoRep only validates a proof once, making it a less intensive validation process compared to PoW.

Once PoRep is established, PoSt runs repeatedly to prove that the space being used by the storage provider has the user’s data. Storage miners are required to put up some collateral to enter the Filecoin ecosystem. The PoSt algorithm will penalize the miners if they fail to prove the continued storage of the data, ensuring good behavior from the participants.

The Filecoin ecosystem. The Filecoin protocol has been utilized by several layer 2 solutions, including Powergate and Textile Hub, to enable new functionalities on the Filecoin blockchain. Filecoin can also host IPFS apps.

Key events and management

Filecoin and IFPS were developed by Juan Benet and his team at Protocol Labs. In 2017, Protocol Labs raised over $250 million through a combination of a private and public sale. Protocol Labs would use 5% of the total for the development of the Filecoin Foundation, an independent organization dedicated to the development of Filecoin and related technology. Since Filecoin does not offer on-chain governance, Protocol Labs remained responsible for governance functionalities until the creation of the Filecoin Foundation.

The Filecoin mainnet officially went live on October 15, 2020.

On October 13, 2021, Filecoin became the official storage collaborator for Flow blockchain.

Monthly volumes for bitcoin futures and options both broke all-time highs in March, according to data compiled by The Block Research. 

Bitcoin futures volume reached $2.13 billion last month, or 1.90% larger than the previous high, which was recorded in January. The top players accounting for March’s bitcoin future volumes were Binance with 33.84% of the volume, Huobi with 22.32%, and OKEx with 13.75%. 

Meanwhile, bitcoin options rose 16.19% from February to March, reaching a total volume of $28.63 billion last month. Of that volume, 96.26% was from Deribit, 3.37% was from OKEx, and 2.02% was from CME.

© 2021 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Quick Take 

• Converting an existing traded security into an ETF is a novel approach, but Grayscale’s CEO says its track record will be an advantage with regulators and investors.
• The firm says it will not file until it is satisfied that regulators are ready for such a product.

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Internet domain registrar GoDaddy has removed a mysterious listing that appeared today for the domain name Bitcoin.com.

Some in the crypto community noticed Monday that the Bitcoin.com domain appears to be for sale on GoDaddy for a minimum price of $100 million.

But Roger Ver, the owner of the domain, said it is in fact not for sale. “100% fake news,” he told The Block. 

Ver showed The Block screenshots in which he appears to be messaging GoDaddy, saying: “Why are you listing my domain name for sale? It isn’t for sale.”

“Please remove this fake news that is damaging my real brand,” Ver’s message to GoDaddy continued.

It is not clear how or why the listing appeared, or why it was removed. GoDaddy did not respond to The Block’s request for comment by press time.

© 2021 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

As tax season in the US comes to a close, the nation’s tax agency is aiming to ramp up its technological capabilities. 

In an informational posting on April 2, the Internal Revenue Service revealed ambitious plans to digitize operations in fiscal year 2021. The initiative includes a shift away from paper, an emphasis on extracting data from poor-quality images and developing new tools based on artificial intelligence and machine learning.

The AI and machine learning projects specifically aim to develop automated customer service “chatbots” and to better track cryptocurrency transactions.

The listing reads: “The IRS utilizes publicly available sources of information regarding cryptocurrency, and an initiative to bring in public, open-source data for necessary deconfliction and analytics could demonstrate value to the Service.” 

The IRS envisions AI and machine learning drawing on many data inputs to find information on crypto services:

“An automated process would be established to ingest data into an environment for agency-wide access. Open source data could consist of scrapped dark web/clear web information, social media, public records/filings, and technical components such as available Domain Name Registration (DNS), Geolocational IP data, etc.”

The past week has found the IRS heavily involved in crypto. The tax agency is involved in two court actions seeking information on clients of USDC issuer Circle and users of crypto exchange Kraken.

The IRS’s press officer had not responded to The Block’s request for comment as of press time.

© 2021 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Quick Take

• Decentralized storage networks have the potential to expand existing blockchains’ capabilities.
• Incentive mechanisms are the main component of decentralized storage networks.
• At the moment, Filecoin is experiencing an excess supply, which is why storage miners store useless files.
• Arweave offers permanent storage thanks to its innovative incentive system.

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Decentralized borrowing protocol Liquity is now live on the Ethereum mainnet. 

The launch comes a week after the startup raised $6 million in a Series A round led by investment firm Pantera Capital with participation from Nima Capital, Alameda Research, and several others. 

Founded in January 2020, the Ethereum-based lending protocol allows users to draw loans against ETH with a minimum collateralization ratio of 110% — lower than the 150% ratio required for MakerDAO — and does not charge a recurring “stability fee” the way Maker does.

Loans are issued in LUSD, a USD-pegged stablecoin. Users can deposit LUSD to a “stability pool” to earn rewards in ETH and LQTY, the protocol’s token. All of the protocol’s operations are algorithmic and fully automated, minimizing the need for governance. 

“We believe Liquity will unlock a whole suite of new capabilities for DeFi users, and is pushing the space forward with their unique ‘governance-light’ protocol approach,” said Polychain co-founder and CEO Olaf Carlson-Wee in a statement. Polychain, which is Liquity’s biggest investor.

Disclosure: Pantera was an investor in a past funding round for The Block.

© 2021 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.