Decentralized apps (DApp) continue to be a major focus point for developers in the crypto space. However, 2019 ended with DApps still far off from reaching their much-touted potential of being the “future of the internet.” DApp projects in 2019 continued to suffer from their usual issues like poor user retention and the difficulties of navigating user interfaces (UI), among others. While some projects boast market capitalizations north of $100 million, they fail to attract more than a handful of daily users. In the early weeks of 2020, some analytics firms dedicated to monitoring the DApp ecosystem have released reports …

Tron has made a name for itself in the crypto asset space and DApp world, although a huge portion of the protocol’s transactions rely on the gambling industry. A hefty 17 of the top 25 most-used Tron DApps fall in the gambling category on DappRadar’s list of most popular Tron protocol-based DApps. Top 25 lists The eight non-gambling Tron-based DApps on the list fall in several other categories, such as High-Risk, Exchanges and a general “games” tag. These non-gambling DApps, however, host significantly less volume than their gambling counterparts, with the exception of two other applications listed as exchanges. In …

Adult entertainment website Pornhub has added a new cryptocurrency payment option after PayPal had abruptly stopped servicing its models in late 2019. According to a Jan. 23 blog post, Pornhub now supports Tether (USDT) — a major United States dollar-pegged stablecoin — to allow instant and zero-fee payments via the crypto wallet and browser extension TronLink. Pornhub supports Tron-based USDT TronLink is a native wallet for Tron (TRX), the 12th largest cryptocurrency by market cap that is backed by the Tron Foundation. The USDT token became available on the Tron network after Tether and the Tron Foundation partnered and released …

The total crypto market capitalization has risen from about $190.5 billion at the start of the year to over $243 billion. That is a rise of about 27.55% within 17 days. This shows that the bulls are back in action. Another interesting thing to note is that the rally is led by altcoins, which are outperforming Bitcoin (BTC) by a huge margin. This shows that the current rally is more broad-based, announcing the arrival of altseason. Digital asset management firm Grayscale Investments reported that $225.5 million in investments flowed into its products in Q4 2019. That took the total investment …

Tron (TRX) is set to feature zero knowledge-based privacy through the work of the TRONZ team. A trusted setup ceremony is set to be conducted soon, which Tron claims in a Jan. 17 blog post will “set a new Guinness World Record.” TRONZ is a privacy initiative that is set to integrate Zk-SNARKs, the core privacy technology of Zcash (ZEC), in the Tron blockchain. While the team claims its implementation is the “most efficient, and least resource-consuming privacy protocol in the world,” no technical details were released. Built with the “advancement of blockchain technology” in mind, the TRONZ team has …

The crypto space is making a comeback and the rally is being led by altcoins. While several altcoins might participate in the initial rally, we believe that the market will start differentiating between each cryptocurrency based on its fundamentals. Hence, traders should avoid buying the non-performers expecting a repeat of the previous bull market when every altcoin staged a parabolic rally. When compared against altcoins, Bitcoin (BTC) has been an underperformer over the past few days. Its dominance rate, which had risen above 69% on Jan. 8, dipped below 66% on Jan 15. On Jan. 14 Bitwise Asset Management withdrew …

Bitcoin has seen an uptick in volumes in the new year. A report by cryptocurrency market research firm Arcane Research shows that 7-day average daily trading volume has surged 126% in a week. Along with Bitcoin trading volume, the CME Bitcoin futures contract has also seen increased activity. The Bitcoin futures open interest has skyrocketed to a seven month high, which is only behind the peak seen at the end of June. A pick up in volume and open interest with rising prices or even if prices remain range-bound is usually a sign of accumulation by the stronger hands. This …

Safe haven assets were dumped on Jan. 8, on reports that the US-Iran conflict might not escalate to an all out war. Cryptocurrencies, which had surged alongside gold and oil with also retreated from two-month high. However, the positive sign is that most major cryptocurrencies have held their immediate support levels, which indicates buying on dips. This shows that the sentiment has changed from sell on rallies to buy on dips. With the news-based rally out of the way, the focus will again shift to the fundamentals. A new law governing cryptographic password management came into force in China on …

DappReview published its 2019 insights on the decentralized app (DApp) space in a Jan. 8 report. Just three blockchains accounted for 98.65 percent of total transaction volume, though EOS began to struggle in Q4 2019. Decentralized app aggregator DappReview summarized the main events within the DApp ecosystem in 2019. The value of on-chain transactions amounted to $23 billion, with 1,955 DApps added during the year — bringing the total number to over 4,000. However, the firm notes that in terms of the number of users, the entire space continues to lag significantly behind any single widely used centralized app. The …

On Dec. 18 Cointelegraph reported that Tron (TRX) founder Justin Sun publicly pledged to donate $1 million to Swedish activist Great Thunberg to raise global awareness of the climate crisis. Following the COP25 UN Climate Conference in Madrid, Sun tweeted: Although Sun has pledged a donation of $1 million to Greta Thunberg’s campaign, it was left unclear as to how cryptocurrency would help reduce carbon footprints through the creation of decentralized settlements. Regarding this, Sun told Cointelegraph that decentralized settlements and decentralized finance platforms are run by computers on cloud computing systems. In turn, this eliminates the need for paper …

Peer-to-peer filesharing giant BitTorrent announced on Dec. 30 that DLive, the blockchain-based live streaming platform, will be joining its ecosystem. Through this partnership, DLive will bring peer-to-peer content sharing and live streaming capabilities to BitTorrent's 100 million monthly active users. BitTorrent CEO Justin Sun told Cointelegraph that following YouTube’s crypto-content ban, decentralized content platforms are the future. “It’s unfortunate to see content platforms such as YouTube taking down crypto-related content, this is the issue with centralized agencies. Decentralized content platforms such as TRON’s newest partner DLive are the platforms of the future.” DLive, which was launched nearly 2 years ago, …

As the year comes to an end, the focus will shift to the major events that are expected to influence crypto prices next year. China’s launch of a digital yuan is one such event that can influence crypto prices. The People’s Bank of China’s deputy director Mu Changchun said that the digital form of yuan would not have any room to speculate on its value as it would be different from Bitcoin and stablecoins. Though China has been against cryptocurrencies, it has been making major strides in supporting blockchain technology. The Central Bank of China has used blockchain technology to …