I saw an ad for a cryptocurrency themed energy drink the other day. Is that bullish? Bearish? Does it count as adoption? Let us know.

3 things you need to know:

One: Switzerland’s main stock exchange is developing a platform for the tokenization of securities. The SIX Swiss Exchange will launch the SIX Digital Exchange. It is unknown what DLT platform they will build it on, but the exchange will be fully compliant with Swiss regulations. It will not be designed to trade cryptocurrencies, but instead it will be for traditional securities to migrate to a tokenized model.

Not the first, not the last: The Australian Securities Exchange is also currently developing a blockchain based exchange. It is intended to replace their existing exchange by 2020.

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Two: Binance has already made $300 Million in 2018. Binance, an exchange which is barely a year old, expects to make up to one billion dollars in 2018. Binance now has 10 million users, which is about half that of Coinbase. For Binance’s founder, CZ, it has been a crazy journey, from flipping burgers at McDonald’s to help with the family bills in high school, to CEO of the largest crypto exchange by volume.

Levi’s: Just like the California gold rush, the people really getting rich are those which sell the equipment and services. If you can find a way to provide a service to people who want to trade crypto or adopt DLT, you can make a lot more money with less risk than just trading yourself.

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Three: The Augur mainnet deploys today. Augur is a decentralized prediction market. Prediction markets allow you to place a stake on the outcome of events. Anyone can create a market for any event and others can place a stake on the outcome of that event.

Finally: Augur was one of the first ICOs on the Ethereum network. It conducted its ICO nearly three years ago in August of 2015. At the time it raised $5.5 Million worth of Ether. It’s value has since ballooned to $377 Million.

Legal?: There’s no way to sugar coat it, Augur allows anyone to gamble on anything. Gambling laws vary country to country, and can be quite strict as to what can and cannot be bet on. In the U.S you can use PredictIt.com to gamble on the outcome of elections, but this is an exception that was granted due to the fact that prediction markets can provide valuable data for researchers, and PredictIt is a non-profit which limits the amount that can be bet. Augur could hypothetically allow someone to bet $1 million that Donald Trump will be assassinated within the next year. Clearly, there are some ethical and legal issues that will arise.

Kitty Killer: CryptoKitties has been one of Ethereum’s killer apps. Many are wagering that Augur will be the next. It will be the first fully developed, decentralized prediction market. The main advantages of this are that the backend is transparent, and that no government or entity will be able to shut it down. Joey Krug, one of the lead Augur developers has warned that if Augur lives up to the hype, it will likely clog up the Ethereum network and result in ridiculous gas prices like we saw with Crypto Kitties. Crypto Goergdi @theblockdaddy @joeykrug I believe in Augur's ability to become Ethereum's first Killer App, maybe in more ways than one. If @AugurProject does turn out to be a smash hit, won't we be facing another crisis à la Crypto Kitties?

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Also in the news:

What I’m reading today:

Crypto-Anarchists vs Crypto-Incrementalists

Bitcoin was launched in 2009 by a bunch of cypher-punks. This much is known. They all had strong anti-governmentment and libertarian mindsets, and launched Bitcoin as a way to reduce reliance on government currencies. Cryptocurrencies were seen as a way to subvert and get around regulations — and they were fantastic at that. Decentralization, immutability, and privacy were paramount, and took precedence over any other quality, including efficiency.

Fast-forward to 2018, and we now have a huge variety of people involved in the blockchain and cryptocurrency space. Some hold the viewpoints of the original founders and developers. Most now, do not. The new entrant cede some ideological battles in order to pave an easier path to adoption. The former we call crypto-anarchists. The latter we call crypto-incrementalists.

So, here is a fantastic essay by Tony Sheng about the main differences in thought between these two groups, and why each side shouldn’t be attacking the other. He makes the argument that there can be incrementalist and anarchist blockchain projects that co-exist together, and actually complement each other!

The main argument can be boiled down to this: Crypto projects as either crypto-incremental or crypto-anarchic. Both remove the middle-man in today’s society but differ when it comes to complying with authoritarian requests and preserving privacy…and this is okay!

Around the corner:

VeChain is releasing their mobile wallet on July 9th

The Augur mainnet is launching on July 9th

NULS is releasing their mainnet on July 12th

Market Outlook:

Quick Take

Woo! This weekend we broke upwards to the 6.7k level. Everyone should be paying attention closely. We bounced off the previous resistance at 6.85k I talked about, and are now trading in between support of 6.65k and resistance of 6.85k. A daily close above/blow either on of those would likely signal the beginning of a new trend.

If we want bullish momentum to last, a close about 6.85k is necessary. The longer we trade below that level the more likely we are to have another leg down. Notice that we have tested that level 6 times!

Daily Chart:

Fear & Greed:

Fear and Greed remains bullish, and not in the overbought territory. I would be consolidating alt coins into BTC over the next few days, as any violent moves in BTC usually drive down alt value.

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