With mass adoption comes the risk that cryptocurrency may lose one of its core value propositions: decentralization.

This is the year cryptocurrency finally starts to break into the mainstream. From Elon Musk and Tesla investing in and accepting Bitcoin (BTC) to the recent nonfungible token craze, the days of blockchain tech being the domain of cypherpunks and coders are behind us.

Still, the technology has not quite advanced to the stage where the average person will feel comfortable using it. And the longer the usability of cryptocurrency takes to reach the level where it connects with nontechnical users, the higher the risk that centralized companies will take over the task of improving accessibility instead, harming the censorship resistance of this relatively new technology as it finally surges into the mainstream consciousness.

Let’s look at the state of the crypto usability landscape as it stands today.

Bitcoin’s “Lightning-or-bust” approach faces hurdles

When Bitcoin chose to reject on-chain scaling via big blocks, it essentially placed all its hopes and dreams of being usable as an everyday currency on second-layer scaling solutions, foremost among them being the Lightning Network. While functional today, the Lightning Network nonetheless introduces a whole new host of complexities, including liquidity balancing, opening and closing channels, routing payment paths, maintaining connectivity at all times in order to receive funds and so on. And perhaps most challenging to new users, moving funds off-chain onto the Lightning Network requires an on-chain transaction (as do various other Lightning Network functions), triggering those awful, long confirmation times and high transaction fees. All in all, this is a frustrating experience even for a savvy cryptocurrency user and an absolute non-starter for complete newbies.

Thankfully, tireless developers have deployed a new generation of Lightning Network wallets that significantly improve the user experience to a level where a nontechnical user may be comfortable using them. The second-generation Lightning Network wallets, such as Phoenix, achieve this by outsourcing some of the functionality of a regular Lightning Network node — including opening channels, managing liquidity, automatic backups and more — to the wallet provider.

Essentially, they resemble custodial wallets in almost every way except that they’re noncustodial. That is, the user maintains control over their own funds and the service provider can’t run off with (or deny access to) their money. Basically, two main objectives were prioritized: ease of use and user control over funds, and any and all necessary trade-offs were made in order to achieve this. And the results are pretty good: If you use a second-generation Lightning Network wallet, you can send and receive pretty easily without being exposed to the complicated inner workings of the network, and you still keep full control over your money at all times. You just have to trust the Lightning Service Provider, or LSP, for a lot more than if you were just using Bitcoin on-chain.

The challenge comes in the precedent and direction this sets for the ecosystem. This approach makes an increasing number of users reliant on a shrinking number of large LSPs to move their Bitcoin around with ease, resembling the legacy financial system where transaction processing coalesces around a small number of major payments companies.

Sure, many users would still be able to control their own funds and become protected from inflation and currency manipulation, but save for a hardy few technophiles running their own nodes, most people will be relying on centralized entities in order to transact.

Even “fast” competitors don’t seem like it from the user’s perspective

To be fair, not every cryptocurrency suffers from the complications of a congested main chain and a still-nascent second-layer solution. Plenty of chains, most notably the major Bitcoin forks and projects like Litecoin (LTC), have low on-chain fees and regular confirmation times. However, even this experience is insufficient for an end-user.

No matter what Bitcoin Cash (BCH) fans say, transactions are not, in fact, instant, and paying through many popular payment processors or depositing to exchanges will still necessitate waiting for several confirmations, which can take many from minutes to, sometimes, hours. The average user won’t understand why they have to wait, or why the waiting time is variable, or that the service should have been able to trust zero-confirmation transactions but chose not to. They will only understand that they had to wait, and will be frustrated as a result.

Of course, some coins, such as those based on proof-of-stake, can be considered secure after a single conformation, significantly cutting down on waiting times. Depending on the chain, this may or may not be sufficient to ensure a seamless user experience. Dash (DASH) transactions become permanent after a single confirmation (roughly 2.5 minutes) and can be considered highly secure in under two seconds, creating an experience rivaling or surpassing that of proof-of-stake coins despite being a proof-of-work network.

However, not all exchanges and services fully understand the underlying technology, and so this experience can be hit-or-miss. Still, other networks, like Nano (NANO), reach transaction finality in a matter of seconds. However, this may come with significant network reliability trade-offs. No one cares that they can get a payment instantly finalized if the entire network can become unreliable for days, even weeks, due to spam attacks.

Usernames are centralized, rudimentary, a mess or on a testnet

Even once the problem of fast, reliable transactions is solved, there still remains a major key to usability necessary for mass adoption: usernames. While QR code scanning can be simple enough, for web, remote and other situations, copying and pasting long cryptographic hashes is a non-starter. We need a simple, social way for people to pay, leveraging human-readable usernames and contact lists.

There are quite a few systems out today that accomplish this to a certain degree. However, most have significant trade-offs in either usability or trust, or both. Solutions like Ethereum Name Service simply resolve to a static address, which still often reveals said long, ugly address in the user interface, and creates some troubling privacy issues by exposing your entire transaction history to anyone who can simply paste your address into a block explorer. The Foundation for Interwallet Operability is similar, except with even more complexity due to wallet-specific domains and implementations.

Related: Crypto transactions must be easier. That’s it. That’s the headline

Another solution is provided by HandCash, a popular wallet for Bitcoin SV (BSV), which does not resolve to a static address and supports contact lists. The problem is that the solution is centralized: Users must rely on the company and its infrastructure entirely. A similar setup across the BSV ecosystem, Paymail, lets users easily resolve to a new address every time without relying on a single centralized system. However, just like with email, Paymail relies on whichever server hosts your domain, with the only option for censorship-resistance being hosting your own server. Also, there is no universal contact list system. Both of these more user-friendly solutions underscore the unfortunate direction toward centralization, as easy-to-use solutions are hard to make decentralized.

Once again, DASH is focused on providing the most elegant solution to the usability problem — building a decentralized application layer that, among other things, offers both usernames and contact lists on the protocol level in an intuitive, user-friendly, completely decentralized form. However, this years-in-the-making solution is still on testnet, and it remains to be seen if a wide public release will happen in time to impact the trend of mass adoption toward centralized services.

The danger that end-users will simply trust bank-like companies

Of course, the real risk isn’t that cryptocurrency ease-of-use solutions will struggle or fail to take hold. The greater risk is that fully custodial solutions will simply win out, returning us to the same old financial system we sought to escape from, only (allegedly) backed by crypto.

We’re already seeing examples of this, from incentivized blogging platform Publish0x encouraging withdrawals directly to centralized exchanges in order to avoid high Ethereum fees to United States fast food giant Chipotle giving away Bitcoin exclusively to exchange accounts. Then there are the forays into crypto that payment giants like PayPal and Visa have made. If we’re not careful, in the future we could be spending our cryptocurrency through the exact same companies and services we used for our fiat currency, still at the mercy of the same players we sought freedom from in the first place.

We’re at a crossroads: Create ease of use in a decentralized way or let mainstream adoption power the death of decentralization. The challenge is formidable, but the stakes are too high to simply concede. Is cryptocurrency up to the task?

This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

As Ripple fends off SEC lawyers, XRP enjoys an explosive weekend pump

Amid a weekend pump carrying multiple cryptocurrencies higher, Ripple’s XRP looks to be leading the way with a push as high as 30% on the daily — carried on the back of a string of legal victories and rumors of relisting at some exchanges. 

Where Bitcoin and Ethereum are up merely 2.7% and 3.4% respectively on the day, XRP climbed to $1.36 before retreating to $1.32, where it sits at the time of publication. The digital currency is now up 111% on a 7 day basis, and a staggering 544% on the year. The recent push has also buoyed XRP back into the top 10 cryptocurrencies by marketcap, behind only BTC, ETH, and BNB at #4.

🙂 pic.twitter.com/qYIf6RPOoY

— sats (@satsdart) April 10, 2021

The rally flies in the face of a lawsuit from the Securities and Exchange Commission, which charges that XRP’s $1.3 billion ICO was an “unregistered securities offering.” The news led multiple exchanges to delist the currency, and XRP lost its place as the 3rd largest currency by marketcap, at time looking as if it would even fall out of the top ten. 

The bad news for XRP didn’t stop with the SEC, either. In March Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse announced that the company would be “winding down” its relationship with Moneygram — a once highly-touted partnership that investors often pointed to as proof of the digital currency being on a path towards becoming “the standard” for payments and settlement.

Despite the deluge of negative headlines, it appears all buyers needed was a small ray of hope to jump back in — and they’ve gotten exactly that. Ripple lawyers have notched two victories in their legal battle against the SEC, including winning access to internal SEC discussion history regarding cryptocurrencies, and a court denied the SEC the ability to disclose the financial records of two Ripple execs, including Garlinghouse.

Ripple executives themselves seem heartened by the news, with CTO David Schwartz saying the US isn’t “prepared” to regulate cryptocurrencies (a possible dig at the ongoing legal proceedings).

All in all, it’s just another week for one of the most controversial cryptocurrencies in the space.

According to professional trader Scott Melker, Ethereum’s “tremendous upside potential” could overshadow Bitcoin this year.

Ethereum is likely to outperform Bitcoin, at least in the short term, said veteran trader Scott Melker in an exclusive interview with Cointelegraph. 

Alt szn is upon us

Melker sees this period of Bitcoin’s price consolidation as particularly bullish for the second largest cryptocurrency, that recently reached new all time highs. Melker sees Ether’s outstanding performance as the main catalyst of the recent altcoin market bull run.

He also revealed he has been largely switching his dollar-cost averaging strategy from Bitcoin to Ether in the last few months, in order to take advantage of Ethereum’s “tremendous upside potential”.

“It’s like investing in the Internet in the early 1990s to me.”, Melker said.

According to Melker, Etherum could reach the $10K price target within the end of 2021.

“ I don’t see why that’s crazy. It’s basically just under a five X from here. […] Bitcoin did almost three times that last year.”

To find out about Melker’s outlook on Ether, XRP and other large-cap altcoins, watch the full interview on our YouTube channel and don’t forget to subscribe!

Coming every Saturday, Hodlers Digest will help you track every single important news story that happened this week. The best (and worst) quotes, adoption and regulation highlights, leading coins, predictions and much more a week on Cointelegraph in one link.

Top Stories This Week

Bitcoin suddenly hits $60,000 as a new resistance battle liquidates $850 million

A bout of long-overdue volatility has hit the crypto markets, propelling Bitcoin to highs of $61,276.67 on Saturday.

A sudden push allowed BTC/USD to exit the $50,000 price range in the early hours of the morning. This move had been weeks in the making, with the digital asset repeatedly trying (and failing) to break $60,000 for most of March.

Analyst Lex Moskovski said Bitcoin is now grinding up to a new all-time high, writing: Being a bear is expensive.

But its unclear how much staying power this rally has, and as weve seen over recent months, erratic market movements over weekends dont always endure.

The favorable market conditions led to new all-time highs for Ether and Binance Coin on Saturday and another altcoin has also been making a comeback, too.

XRP surpasses $1 for the first time since 2018: Whats behind the new rally?

XRP has had a remarkable week, and over the past seven days, its almost doubled in price. On Tuesday, the altcoin smashed through the $1 zone for the first time since March 2018, with its price going from strength to strength in the days that followed.

It is currently trading above the next resistance level at about $1.20, prompting some to set their sights on a macro sell-wall of $2 that dates all the way back to December 2017.

XRP has now regained the coveted position of the fourth-largest cryptocurrency by market cap. The uptick in trading volume may have been linked to Ripple unveiling a new acquisition designed to enhance its cross-border payment capabilities.

There was also some upbeat legal news for Ripple this week. Ripple Labs has been granted access to the SECs documents expressing the agencys interpretations or views on the subject of crypto assets.

Counsel representing Ripples CEO, Brad Garlinghouse, believes it may be game over for the SECs suit should they find any evidence that the regulator has deemed XRP akin to Bitcoin or Ether.

Speaking to Cointelegraph, Ripple Labs chief technology officer David Schwartz urged U.S. regulators to look at the rest of the world, warning America risks falling behind when it comes to crypto and blockchain regulation.

Coinbases first-quarter revenue hits record $1.8 billion ahead of its Nasdaq listing

Its been a week of upbeat statistics for the crypto sector. We saw the total market cap hit $2 trillion, meaning that the industry is now worth as much as Apple. There was a big milestone as 100 cryptocurrencies all secured their own $1-billion market cap for the first time. It was also revealed that the crypto industry got more funding in Q1 than all of last year.

Next week is also shaping to be a significant one as Coinbase gears up to make its stock market debut. And ahead of Wednesdays direct listing, we got an insight into the companys finances revealing that revenues hit $1.8 billion from January to March.

The exchanges numbers seem very healthy, indeed, undoubtedly because of the bull run that emerged during the first quarter. Net income has been estimated at between $730 million and $800 million for the period with monthly active users now exceeding 6 million.

But not everyone is cracking open the champagne. Some analysts have warned that Coinbases $100-billion valuation is far too high.

David Trainer, CEO of the investment research firm New Constructs, wrote in a note to clients: Its hard to make a straight-faced argument that the firm can justify the lofty expectations baked into its valuation given increasing competition in a mature cryptocurrency trading market and the lack of sustainability in its current market share and margins.

Paris Hilton drops surprisingly well-informed article about NFTs

Paris Hilton has written an impassioned article about NFTs, declaring that she sees them as the future of the creator economy.

The entrepreneur and former reality star appears to be aiming to position herself as an authority on the NFT space, at least for a mainstream audience, as she readies to release a new drop soon.

Celebrating their role when it comes to digital art and fashion not to mention bringing the world of trading cards into the 21st century she wrote:

Some of these applications might even change the way we live. What if we could use NFTs as collateral for physical items? Or as a way to trade for them?

Hilton sold her first NFT in August 2020 before the mania arrived in 2021 an NFT depicting a painting of her cat, which sold for $17,000. She donated all the proceeds to charity.

Couple gets married on Ethereum blockchain for $587 in transaction fees

Coinbase employees Rebecca Rose and Peter Kacherginsky have gotten married using the Ethereum blockchain adding a whole new meaning to the vows for richer or poorer.

In addition to a traditional Jewish wedding ceremony, Kacherginsky wrote an Ethereum smart contract named Tabaat that issued tokenized NFTs, the rings.

The ceremony itself consisted of two transactions: the transfer of the NFT rings from the contract to Rose and Kacherginsky. In total, the ceremony took four minutes to be validated by the Ethereum network and incurred $50 in miner fees.

By contrast, the average physical wedding in the United States costs roughly $25,000.

The NFTs depict an animation of two circles merging to become one and were illustrated by artist Carl Johan Hasselrot.

Rose wrote on Twitter: The blockchain, unlike physical objects, is forever. It is unstoppable, impossible to censor, and does not require anyones permission. Just as love should be. What could possibly be more romantic than that?

Announcement of the week

Markets Pro delivers up to 1,497% ROI as quant-style crypto analysis arrives for every investor

Its now been a month since Cointelegraph Markets Pro launched bringing professional crypto market intelligence to every investor.

New figures this week showed that 41 of the 42 trading strategies tested by Markets Pro are currently beating Bitcoins investment returns, and 36 of them are winning against an evenly weighted basket of the top 100 altcoins.

Two key features are offered to subscribers. The first is the VORTECS Score, which is derived from an algorithm that examines multiple different variables (including sentiment, tweet volume, price volatility and trading volume) and compares those with historically similar marketscapes.

And the second is NewsQuakes: alerts on events that have historically had a significant impact on an assets price over the following 24 hours.

Cointelegraph Markets Pro is available exclusively to subscribers on a monthly basis at $99 per month, or annually with two free months included.

Winners and Losers

At the end of the week, Bitcoin is at $60,531.89, Ether at $2,165.46 and XRP at $1.31. The total market cap is at $2,054,795,567,223.

Among the biggest 100 cryptocurrencies, the top three altcoin gainers of the week are Bitcoin Gold, KuCoin Token and XRP. The top three altcoin losers of the week are Klaytn, Holo and Dent.

For more info on crypto prices, make sure to read Cointelegraphs market analysis.

Most Memorable Quotations

Fascinating to see that since inception ETH has outperformed BTC by 250%. It only fell below its initial price in BTC for the first 5 months of its existence in 2015.

Raoul Pal, Real Vision co-founder

The pandemic, quite frankly, was a catalyst for institutional adoption, and specifically Bitcoin and the narrative, or use-case, around digital gold.

Tom Jessop, Fidelity

Industries from across the global economy are beginning to decarbonize their operations. We can do the same in crypto. We have the opportunity to decarbonize the industry.

Crypto Climate Accord

What we need is for the United States to be the leader here. We need to embrace this, so we need to make sure that we use this technology to continue to be a leader on the global stage.

Anthony Pompliano, Morgan Creek Digital co-founder

Even though Im a pro-crypto, pro-Bitcoin maximalist person, I do wonder whether if at this point, Bitcoin should also be thought of in part as a Chinese financial weapon against the U.S.

Peter Thiel, PayPal co-founder

Im not using crypto to buy fiat; Im not using crypto to buy houses. I just want to keep crypto. And I dont plan to convert my crypto into cash in the future.

Changpeng Zhao, Binance CEO

Not for nothing, $XRP technically has taken all necessary strides to be bullish. After the exchange delistings and write-off by most of CT, this essentially left the market short from both a positional and sidelined standpoint. This can move much higher.

Cantering Clark, crypto derivatives trader

If you look at gold as a $10 trillion market cap, Bitcoin is about 10% of that, and if we believe Bitcoin is a 100 times better version than that, then its fairly safe to say that theres a stark chance that Bitcoin captures a lot of gold and market share, and more.

Yassine Elmandjra, Ark Invest analyst

Prediction of the Week

Ark Invest and JPMorgan expect Bitcoin to hit $130,000$470,000

JPMorgan Chase expects Bitcoin to reach $130,000, while Ark Invest anticipates the market valuation of BTC to surpass that of gold.

The optimistic macro prediction from both funds revolves around the scarcity of Bitcoin, which has buoyed its popularity as a safe-haven asset.

Bloomberg Intelligence also has high hopes when it comes to the second quarter of 2021. This week, it predicted that the second quarter was more likely to deliver a further surge to $80,000 than a capitulatory move to $40,000.

FUD of the Week

Bitcoin to zero? Not while this Redditor has $187,000 to spend

There have long been doomsday predictions that well see Bitcoin prices plummet to zero, but one person has vowed that this wont happen, not on their watch.

Reddit user u/Substantial-Ad-5012 wrote: Bitcoin will never go to zero in my lifetime. Because I am willing and able to buy all the Bitcoin ever mined at one cent each.

In the unlikely event that Bitcoin does in fact drop to $0.01, it would cost a mere $187,000 to pick up every coin in circulation not accounting for the fact that up to 20% of all Bitcoin are inaccessible.

Theyre not alone. Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao told his followers last March that they shouldnt be worried about BTC hitting zero. So long as I have a penny left, it wont happen, he wrote.

Paxful denies reports of customer data leak

An anonymous online source was recently spotted trying to sell private customer and employee data allegedly obtained from crypto exchange Paxful.

However, a spokesperson from the company has told Cointelegraph that no customer data has been jeopardized.

Explaining that Paxful hasnt fallen victim to a data breach, the spokesperson added: The employee data that the person claims to have was obtained illegally from a third party supplier that Paxful previously used; Paxful terminated its contract with this supplier in September 2020.

The person attempting to sell the information claimed to have phone numbers, names and addresses, as well as other private information belonging to users and the dump purportedly boasted more than 4.8 million entries.

Ledger faces class action from phishing scam victims

Ledger and Shopify have been hit by a class-action lawsuit over a major data breach that saw the personal data of 270,000 hard wallet customers stolen between April and June 2020.

Phishing scam victims John Chu and Edward Baton filed the lawsuit in California against the crypto wallet provider and its e-commerce partner Shopify on Tuesday.

The plaintiffs alleged that the firms negligently allowed, recklessly ignored, and then intentionally sought to cover up the data breach.

The data was stolen when rogue employees of Shopify accessed the companys e-commerce and marketing database for Ledger, with the hackers then selling the data on the dark web.

Had Ledger acted responsibly during this period, much of that loss could have been avoided, they claim.

Chu lost $267,000 worth of Bitcoin and Ether, and Baton lost $75,000 worth of Stellar in phishing scams that impersonated correspondence from the firms.

Best Cointelegraph Features

DeFis critical missing piece: Credit scores

Traditional finance is built not on collateral but on reputation, and DeFi will grow by following suit, Rafael Cosman argues.

You dont own me: XRP price surge defies SECs clampdown on crypto

Since the start of April, the surge in price of XRP has been backed by high tweet volumes, which approached relative highs.

Crypto at risk after Facebook leak: Heres how hackers can exploit data

Attacks on digital asset exchanges and trading platforms have decreased drastically in recent years, but data leaks still leave users vulnerable.

ETH

I noted last week that the Ethereum price was “looking to make another drive towards the highs at $2,000.” The number two cryptocurrency by market cap did just that and blew through the previous obstacle to see new all-time highs above $2,100. 

The last two weeks saw the amount of staking in the coin reach a new high near 4 million ETH. Another development in the works is the release of Uniswap (UNI) v3, which is being targeted for May 5th. UNI v3 will launch on the Ethereum mainnet and the developers have said it will be, “the most flexible and capital-efficient automated market maker ever designed.”

Uniswap has said that a new feature will give liquidity providers up to 4000x capital efficiency relative to the current version, which will see higher returns on their capital. Multiple fee tiers will also be added, which will allow users to be “appropriately compensated for taking on varying degrees of risk.”

It is also hoped that the new upgrade could solve the problem with high Ethereum gas fees. Uniswap says that gas costs on v3 swaps will be “slightly cheaper” than the current version of the decentralized exchange. The highly-anticipated Optimism layer-two scaling solution will also follow soon after the v3 launch.

Transactions made on the Optimism deployment will likely be significantly cheaper.

Ethereum now has a line in the sand at the $2,000 level for the next path ahead. A dip below could lead to a deeper correction, while the coin can push higher if support keeps the coin elevated above the previous highs.

BTC

The Bitcoin price has stalled below the $60,000 price level despite a JP Morgan report talking of a $130k price target.

The investment bank noted that increased institutional investment was, “likely to arise from the recent change in the correlation structure of bitcoin relative to traditional asset classes”.

The coin’s volatile dips have always been a headwind to the coin’s acceptance as an asset class but as more come to the sector, higher volumes have smoothed out the volatile moves.

“Considering how big the financial investment into gold is, any such crowding out of gold as an ‘alternative’ currency implies big upside for bitcoin over the long term,” JP Morgan said. 

Mechanically, the bitcoin price would have to rise to $130,000, to match the total private sector investment in gold.

In other BTC news, Binance’s crypto derivatives platform Binance Futures has seen big growth in its popularity as retail money continues to pour in. Binance runs lucrative trading competitions and this will be enticing traders to take their chances for a chance to win a stash of coins.

Open interest on the exchange’s derivatives platform hit a record high of over $10 billion on Saturday, relating to year-on-year growth of almost 4,000%.

Another development coming for BTC is the launch of a micro futures contract on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. The contract will launch on May 3rd will allow investors to start trading with 0.1 BTC, rather than the 5 BTC needed on the full-size contract.

This will be an important week for BTC after a failure to get back above $60k. There is a risk of a further correction if buyers don’t emerge at these levels.

WRK

The Binance-backed WazirX cryptocurrency exchange has also been growing in popularity and the native WRX token has soared with an 850% rise in the last week alone.  

WazirX has moved higher on news that the platform was launching a marketplace for non-fungible tokens (NFTs) for Indian artists. Nischal Shetty, founder of WazirX said:

It will truly transform the market in our rapidly digitising world with a growing interest in NFT across the globe.

The price of WRX has rallied to $5.00 with a market cap of $5 billion, but it is only a couple of weeks ago that we noted a story about the potential for the Indian government to ban cryptocurrencies in the country.

Investors should await some clarity on the government’s stance before considering WRX at these prices. The coin is currently ranked at number 83 in the list of the top valued coins.

HOT

Holo has been another strong performer recently with a surge into the top 30 coins by market cap. The HOT token closed out January at $0.00073 but has rocketed higher to $0.027 for a return of 3,500%.

The latest push higher was driven by the March 25th announcement that Holo Limited was granted a U.S. patent for the rrDHT networking innovations within Holochain. The project developers said,

…this patent represents an easy way to represent complex distributed data models, and manage them with high resilience.

Holo clarified in a blog post that the patent was filed to prevent trolls from filing patents on this innovation and also to protect the “rights of the users to have sovereignty over their data.” While this is a positive step, only time will tell if Holochain can offer a reliable alternative to blockchain technology. The coin has seen a big surge from just 1 cent in February to a current high above $0.20. 

Holo’s decentralized data platform seeks to let users own their own data and control their identity. Holo now has a market cap of $5 billion after its recent push higher.

Litecoin Rebrands to Bitcoin Lite

On April Fools’ Day, Litecoin rebranded itself as “Bitcoin Lite.” The joke was a thorough effort, with a completely revamped website and Twitter account. Though the change was a joke, it contained a bit of truth: Litecoin really is based on Bitcoin’s code.

The project’s original site has been restored, but you can still view the “rebrand” here.

Litecoin is NOW BITCOINLITE! Read more about this historic transformation… https://t.co/byi1HGRaHj #BitcoinLITE #BitcoinLiteFAM pic.twitter.com/KE0OlXRfkE

— BitcoinLite (@litecoin) April 1, 2021

Ethereum Introduces “Sudo” Function

Ethereum developers on GitHub proposed a “sudo” opcode, referring to the Unix command that gives admin users full control of the system. Such a feature would be disastrous to the Ethereum blockchain, which is designed so that none of its participants have full control over the network or its transactions.

The tongue-in-cheek proposal reads, “Security Considerations: It will be fine.”

EIP-3455 is even more important than EIP-1559, please support!https://t.co/bRqqrsViTe pic.twitter.com/22kLmIIak9

— Andre Cronje (@AndreCronjeTech) April 1, 2021

Kucoin Lists Suez Token

Crypto exchange Kucoin announced that it is listing a new token, Suez Token, supposedly created to solve the recent Suez Canal blockages.

The were a few clues that hinted at the nature of the joke. The project supposedly planned to raise funds by selling NFT tokens with photos of Japanese movie monsters, while the team operated from an unlikely base: King Kong’s Skull Island.

📢 NEW LISTING

World Premiere! @Suez_Token $SUEZ gets listed on #KuCoin! 🚢

Suez Token was created to speed up the process of dredging the #SuezBlock and prevent similar issues from happening again.

Read more about Suez Token: https://t.co/UjhRHpOca0 pic.twitter.com/LFYu99uRta

— KUCOIN (@kucoincom) April 1, 2021

Circle Says U.S. Treasury Will Adopt USDC

Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire reported that the U.S. Treasury plans to adopt his firm’s USDC stablecoin as its digital dollar. Though Allaire is clearly not serious, the joke is apt, given that U.S. regulators and banks are warming up to stablecoins.

BREAKING NEWS: US @federalreserve and @USTreasury announce that US Government will adopt USDC as new Dollar Digital Currency standard, accelerating US role in global digital currency.

— Jeremy Allaire (@jerallaire) April 1, 2021

The Teletubbies Introduce a Crypto Token

Canadian media company WildBrain announced a Teletubbies-themed token called “TubbyCoin,” along with an ICO sale to distribute the new cryptocurrency. Although fictional, the company is actually planning to donate money to charity based on how much the April Fools joke circulates on Twitter.

The TubbyCoin BigHugs! Token, an official Teletubbies cryptocurrency made with special HugTech from WildBrain Labs is here. For every like, share, comment of #TubbyCoin, the TubbyCoin becomes more valuable! Let’s take it to the moon. 🚀: https://t.co/CZJn5R7NI9 pic.twitter.com/B1Nt8OjFXe

— Teletubbies (@TeletubbiesHQ) April 1, 2021 

Beeple Art Vandalized With Spray Paint

The Onion reported that Beeple’s NFT art was vandalized with spray paint. Though the piece of art actually exists and was auctioned for $69 million in early March, editing the image in Microsoft Paint does not make any changes to the crypto token itself.

The joke was retweeted by Riccardo “FluffyPony” Spagni of Monero.

Truly shocking.https://t.co/vzKOmHuqcm

— Riccardo Spagni (@fluffypony) March 30, 2021 

Peercoin Migrates to Ethereum

Peercoin announced that it is moving to Ethereum—an unlikely move for a project that preceded Ethereum by over two years and is based on Bitcoin’s code.

After much deliberation, the Foundation, has decided to migrate #Peercoin to #Ethereum as an ERC721 token. 100 billion new coins will also be generated to help fund development and marketing efforts. Stay tuned for more updates!$PPC #ETH #blockchain #cryptocurrency #crypto pic.twitter.com/KiXGKAZlRK

— Peercoin (@PeercoinPPC) April 1, 2021 

0x Rebrands With Extensive Makeover

0x, a decentralized exchange protocol, rebranded itself. It says that after years of research, it has decided to make its logo blue.

We just rebranded👇 pic.twitter.com/USVJouG7zi

— 0x 🍵 (@0xProject) April 1, 2021 

Flipkart Accepts Bitcoin

On March 31, Indian commerce site Flipkart tweeted that it had added support for Bitcoin payments. Hours later, the company followed up with another tweet: it crossed out “Bitcoin” and stated that the announcement was in fact an April Fools’ joke.

The future is here. We now accept Bitcoin as a convenient mode of payment. Update your app now. pic.twitter.com/l3MlY2qwRd

— Flipkart (@Flipkart) March 31, 2021 

Not a Joke: Chipotle Runs Bitcoin Giveaway

Mexican food restaurant Chipotle began a $100,000 “Burritos or Bitcoin” giveaway on April 1st. Despite the unlikely giveaway theme, the contest is legitimate. World Burrito Day falls on the first Thursday of every April, and this year, it happened to fall on April Fools’ Day. The contest’s extensive terms and conditions also show that it is legitimate.

https://t.co/VMdOHpnSpd

— Chipotle (@ChipotleTweets) April 1, 2021

As Bitcoin rises in popularity, concerns are being raised about the environmental impact of Bitcoin mining. However, there may be solutions.

Bitcoin Mining’s Environmental Impact

Bitcoin is produced through mining, an energy-intensive process that introduces new cryptocurrency into circulation by rewarding those who contribute computer power.

Though mining was originally done by individuals, the industry has grown highly competitive, meaning that a large portion of Bitcoin mining is done by large firms such as Bitmain. Individually-sold ASIC mining devices also contribute to energy usage.

Recent estimates suggest that Bitcoin mining worldwide requires more mining power than entire countries. An analysis from Cambridge University published in February 2021 suggests that mining consumes about 121.36 terawatt hours (TWh) of energy per year globally. That amount is equivalent to about 0.6% of global power consumption, and comparable to the consumption of nations like Norway or Argentina.

Transparency In Mining

Shark Tank host Kevin O’Leary has drawn attention to the problem of Bitcoin’s energy usage. Though O’Leary has warmed up to Bitcoin and decided to make the asset 3% of his investment portfolio, he is still concerned about energy consumption.

In conversation with crypto news site Coindesk in March, O’Leary stated that he wants to ensure that his Bitcoin is mined efficiently. He compared parts of the Bitcoin mining industry to unethical diamond mining companies that produce blood diamonds.

“There’s a whole new metric around the concerns people have around sustainability about the origins of the coin…was it mined in China, was it mined in a country under tariff or restrictions with the U.S government?” O’Leary noted. “How do I know I’m not supporting mining a country where human rights are abused, like China?”

O’Leary suggested that he is now investing directly in mining companies themselves, which give him a portion of their Bitcoin output. This ensures that ethical mining is profitable. It remains to be seen whether other companies will follow suit.

Eco-Friendly Power Sources

In December 2020, Bitcoin and cash payments firm Square announced that it is planning to offset carbon emissions by supporting clean Bitcoin mining operations.

Through its Bitcoin Clean Energy Investment Initiative, Square has committed $10 million in order to support energy mining companies. That initiative and the funds that it distributes could offset some of the ecological costs of mining Bitcoin.

Though Square does not mine Bitcoin itself, it will reduce its own energy consumption. The firm aims to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2030.

Square co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey stated that his payments firm “believe[s] that cryptocurrency will eventually be powered completely by clean power.” He also hopes that Square’s decision will “accelerate this conversion to renewable energy.”

Better Mining Regulations

Though some crypto companies are taking it upon themselves to confront Bitcoin’s energy consumption, other changes are coming from regulators. In March, China’s Inner Mongolia region announced plans to ban Bitcoin mining.

Though the region was previously one of the most popular areas for Bitcoin mining due to cheap energy prices, it has failed to meet China’s energy targets. Now, several facilities will shut down and new facilities will be prevented from opening.

Over the past several years, various other regions have taken similar stances. Though the EU has no plans to ban cryptocurrency mining entirely, Bitcoin mining could be subject to rules around “energy efficiency, the power sector, and greenhouse gases emissions,” according to statements made by EU regulators in 2018.

Elsewhere, in the U.S., New York’s NYDFS is asking firms to pay attention to climate change, noting that mining’s energy cost “is sizable compared to the value of the virtual currencies.” It remains to be seen if these guidelines will be enforced.

Altcoins and Indirect Investments

Bitcoin’s energy consumption will also be offset as the crypto industry grows around it. Though Bitcoin will always rely on mining, other cryptocurrencies like Ethereum are moving to alternate systems that consume little energy, such as proof-of-stake.

Additionally, Bitcoin derivatives mean that institutional investors can invest in assets that track the price of Bitcoin without actually holding BTC itself. Though that doesn’t reduce the amount of energy that Bitcoin uses, it does mean that investors will likely have a way to invest in Bitcoin even if its ecological footprint becomes a bigger issue.

This month’s non-fungible token (NFT) craze also provides a way to invest in crypto without any connection to Bitcoin mining. Whereas Bitcoin mining’s scarcity comes from electrical costs, NFTs are rare because they are unique items by design.

Is Bitcoin Ecologically Sustainable?

Though concerns of Bitcoin’s environmental impact are widespread, there are plenty of ways to improve on current mining practices. Regulation, transparency, offsets, and alternative crypto investments can help reduce Bitcoin’s ecological impact while still leaving room for the competition that the mining industry requires.

It is that time of year again and we are happy to announce our Annual Cryptocurrency Market Survey. It has been an exceptional year for crypto and our editorial staff cannot wait to hear what you think.  

Share your thoughts. 

The survey takes just a few seconds, your answers are completely anonymous, and once you have submitted your thoughts you will get full access to the full range of our readers’ opinions. 

2021 has been the biggest year in crypto history. We want to understand what’s driving this latest Bitcoin-led explosion by asking our thousands of daily readers their views on the cryptocurrency market today. 

When the survey is complete look for expert analysis from our editorial staff. We will team up to create the most comprehensive report on views in the cryptocurrency community in 2021. 

Remember it only works if you participate and share your views. Do not forget to spread the word to your crypto-loving friends. 

CLICK HERE TO TAKE THE QUICK SURVEY.

When the survey is complete, we will publish the full results with our analysis here on Bitrates. Our editorial team will also conduct interviews with a few select readers to get a better understanding of your views. 

If you are interested in participating in our interviews, please email editor@bitrates.com!

A sincere thank you from all of us at Bitrates,

Editorial Team.