Whitepaper, June 2022 – Cryptocurrency and Token Landscape
“Bitcoin has experienced huge growth, partly due to its first-mover advantage, and has inspired many new blockchain technologies to be developed. Accordingly, this report outlines the major coins and tokens in this landscape that have taken off since Bitcoin and their different functionalities. It also explains the emerging ‘decentralised finance’.
Major Coins & Tokens
Cryptocurrency is often used as an umbrella term for the various types of coins (currencies) and tokens (contracts) that use blockchain technology.
- “A tokenized security is a digital representation of the rights to a traditional security. They operate the same way as traditional securities, except that they can be stored, sold, and exchanged on blockchain networks. This results in a broader market reach and enhanced market liquidity.”
- “Security tokens bring the Distributed Ledger Technology together with new features that are determined by the individual design of each token. In other words, these tokens are programmable, unlike tokenized securities.”
- “Cryptocurrencies are the most common type of digital asset, using cryptography for security, and are designed to work as a medium of exchange.”
- “Utility tokens hold value within an ecosystem and can be used as inputs to produce other outputs.”
DeFi
Decentralized Finance, described as financial services that operate on a public permissionless blockchain.
- Translating monetary banking services (e.g. Issuance of stable coins)
- Providing peer-to-peer (or pooled) lending and borrowing platforms
- Enabling advanced financial instruments such as Decentralized Exchanges (DEX), Tokenization Platforms
“To mitigate the risks attached to the use of a smart contract, additional measures must be put in place. However, such measures increase the cost of doing business through a smart contract. “
“Although this market currently shows high volatility, with the potential of a major downturn, the mid-to-long term opportunities will abound. In a certain way, this phase is salutary as it will consolidate around better projects and weed out the weakest (or fraudulent). But with the massive investment and inflow of initiatives and talent, it has also created a new set of digital asset infrastructure, software and general practices, which will be used in the next innovation phases.” Continue Reading →
Arbitrage Opportunities
Decentralised exchanges offer arbitrage opportunities, as the users may create markets that can exchange any pair of cryptocurrencies.
Moreover, traders can better utilise arbitrage opportunities by using smart contracts to issue automatic transactions when an opportunity arrives, and to program mitigations of the traders financial losses from the price impact.
Money Laundering
The volume of cryptocurrency transactions grew to $15.8 trillion in 2021, up 567% from 2020, a sign that trading digital assets is becoming increasingly mainstream. Illicit transactions totalled $14 billion in 2021, up 79% from $7.8 billion the previous year, although these transactions only made up 0.15% of cryptocurrency transaction volume in 2021. Continue Reading →
“The number of initiatives and the exponential growth of crypto and digital assets, demonstrate the innovative and disruptive nature of the concepts, as well as highlight the underlying technology.
The gold rush mentality of some participants should be taken as a sign of the birth of a new industry where cards are reshuffled and all hope to be king. ”
Visit Cryptocurrency and Token Landscape Whitepaper to read more.
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About Quod Financial
Quod Financial is a multi-asset OMS/EMS trading technology provider focused on automation and innovation – specialising in software and services such as Algorithmic Trading, Smart Order Routing (SOR), and Internalisation of Liquidity. Quod leverages the use of its data-driven architecture to support the demands of e-trading markets by combining AI/ML-enabled decision-making tools and dynamic market access with a non-disruptive approach to deployment. For more information visit: www.quodfinancial.com
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