Another turbulent week for the Altcoins as Ethereum rules the roost again, Telegram’s ICO could be worth $500 Million, Click, Kodak steals the thunder at CES, and Venezuelan Petro currency hits hard opposition.
Venezuelan Petro currency hits hard opposition
A recent controversial currency development planned by Nicolas Maduro, the president of Venezuela, has run into a lot of strong internal opposition. The currency in question, The Petro, is reported to be backed by oil reserves and will have the potential to negate international sanctions against the country. Earlier last week, Nicolas Maduro, announced these plans live on national TV. He spoke of the launch of the currency which would stand at $5.9 Billion. However, this week in the opposition-held parliament, a debate took place which declared the plan to be illegal. The idea that was put forward for the new currency was shot down heavily and was labeled a scheme to allow further corruption and fraud, with opposition politician Jorge Milan stating;
“This is not a cryptocurrency, this is a forward sale of Venezuelan oil. It is tailor-made for corruption.”
Similarly to Venezuela, Russia also recently announced its plans for the potential launch of a new national cryptocurrency now dubbed the “Crypto Ruble” to combat existing international sanctions in place. It will be interesting to see how these two stories develop. the fact that Cryptocurrencies, a phenomenon that most of the world thought (incorrectly of course) to only be useful for criminals, now has the potential to become a nationally used form of payment is very progressive indeed.
Kodak steals the thunder at CES
In what seemed to be a completely unprecedented move and a complete change of direction for the company, Kodak took all the attendees of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2018) by surprise when they announced their plans to launch the KodakCoin. This new venture of theirs is fueled by their aim to protect photographers copyright as well as their desire to get involved in the crypto scene. The KodakCoin, as previously mentioned, is a currency that protects photographers copyright and will also facilitate renting out cryptocurrency mining rigs. These mining rigs will be housed in Kodaks own facility and will be run using cheap electricity from Kodak’s generating capacity.
As the news of the announcement hits mainstream media, shares shot up by 120% as the story became viral. Kodak has had a tough few years, they had to file for bankruptcy in 2012 and also has extended its brand name to be licensed for the manufacturing of batteries, printers, drones, tablets, and cameras. KodakOne, the ICO for Kodaks new business venture, will be released on January 31st, 2018 and it will interesting to see just how much traction they can generate in the long term. The CEO for Kodak Jeff Clarke is clearly quite forward thinking with this new dip into the crypto world and is confident with this new product “Engaging with a new platform, it is critical photographers know their work and their income is handled securely and with trust, which is exactly what we did with KodakCoin.”
Telegram’s ICO could be a billion dollar bid
News broke this week of the popular messenger app Telegram planning to launch its own cryptocurrency which will introduce the Gram token to the market. The cryptocurrency will run on Telegrams own blockchain dubbed the Telegram Open Network. It is rumored that the funds surrounded this new ICO will range from $500 Million up to the Billions. The founder of this new venture is Pavel Durov, who is a past employee of VKontakt which is a Russian equivalent of Facebook. Pavel was forced to leave Russia due to the immense political pressure and he set up Telegram on the basis of absolute privacy and freedom to communicate.
While unprecedented, the ICO in question could make some big moves in the world of Initial Coin Offerings is sure to be one to watch. Due to the background of Pavel and the ethos of the Telegram app as a whole, this new project is perfectly situated in the middle of the cryptocurrency community and will be able to gather a decent amount of attention as well as the trust of its investors. The big question, whether this ICO can get off the ground, is yet to be answered. We’ll just have to wait and see, however, this could be the biggest ICO this year and maybe the biggest one to date.
Ethereum rules the roost again
Panic in the market, most likely caused by the rumors of a potential ban on all cryptocurrencies for South Korea, caused a momentary dip for Ethereum. Coinmarketcap actually made the decision to delist all of the Korean exchanges due to the rumors surrounding the ban on crypto. Ethereum dropped a bit, chugging for a few hours, but it quickly returned to form and carried on its recent growth reaching a new high of $1400. Ethereum has been growing at an aggressive rate in recent times and it is really proving to be one to watch.
Ripple also felt the heat and took a bit of a tumble as the rising price of Ethereum and the temporary removal of a large quantity of their fanbase in the Korean market pushed it back to third place in the top ten rankings of Crypto based on overall market capitalization. A lot of other Altcoins such as Cardano, Verge and Stellar were hit hard too, however, the coin that experienced the biggest drop was Tron. Tron’s dip was related to the controversy surrounding its business partners and claims of plagiarism on its whitepaper. Tron recently had a price spike up to 21 cents but is currently sitting at a measly 4 cents. Justin Sun now needs to put some real work in and get a working product on the market.
