Tezos (XTZ) has been in my long-HODL portfolio, alongside other suggestions that have been really flying lately, including KCS, Stellar and EOS cryptocurrencies.

A bit of context

Despite the infancy of the blockchain space, and the continued – and sometimes suspicious – ignorance of mainstream media towards Bitcoin (even The Economist recently),  real growth and excitement across the space continues non-stop. Knowing how Bitcoin remains so integrated with all this, allows the more seasoned crypto-fan to stop reading ‘those’ articles half-way through.

And if my spot-on selections continue, I may have to consider changing Ade’s Crypto Press into a full-time trading desk that monitors pull-backs and trades for interested investors only, via Binance API.

However, I don’t believe in focusing on price 24/7, and, although it’s hard to ignore the swings, one should at least allow time for investments/hodl choices to breathe. And with crypto, you shouldn’t want to spoil the fun by not putting in time into discovering the tech, and many a new, very promising ecosystem. Not just ‘shit-coins’, but coins that clearly tap into a vast arena that will begin to cut out ads and reward creators and users more directly (just now, Civil for journalism is getting underway, and looks v. interesting. More on that coming soon.)

You should have faith that many of these major DLT projects are set to grow. You should only sell something if it’s had a very rapid rise, the tech has no big reputation, and a correction is clearly due. BNB has always been a good buy, and recently it’s run away from many a trader (ha ha!). KCS was clearly set to go the same way, as both have IEO capability to rejuvenate the ICO rush again. However, ‘decentralised finance’ (or de-fi) will begin to surpass centralised, especially with exchanges. So Binance DEX is the reason for the high BNB price. KCS will also need to announce plans for a dex, for its own good.

Bitcoin meanwhile has had a nice period of stability but is one coin that’s ever-impossible to predict. Everyone saying it was due to go down, but personally, I’d say it’s spent enough time going down. Who cares anyway, it’s here to stay, and now earning interest on it via BlockFi, looks here to stay too. There’s some potentially big news for Bitcoin around every corner.

Anyway, onwards to… TEZOS

The mainnet for Tezos, ‘the self-amending cryptographic ledger’ launched in September 2018.

Here in late March 2019, it seems US-developed Tezos and its platform token XTZ (or ‘Tezzie’) is now rising, partly thanks to the continued weakness of Ethereum (although ETH in my view is here to stay). Tezos just clipped Ethereum out of a juicy opportunity to tokenise real-estate.

What interested me particularly in Tezos (besides its huge backing, including the Winklevoss twins) was its self-evolving protocol and passive income potential, as stakers of the coin can join a ‘baking’ pool from within certain Tezos wallets [see my more recent post here].

With so much talk about the different flaws of various chains throughout 2018, it seemed very future-proof to see a decentralised project that separates its platform into three layers: the network, transactions, and consensus. Therefore, all ‘components are modular in order to make their replacement easier.’ The consensus algorithm is:

Tezos’ unique proof-of-stake consensus algorithm gives every stakeholder the opportunity to participate in the validation of transactions on the network and be rewarded by the protocol for doing so.

What does this mean? It means that when you buy XTZ you can then ‘stake’ it to help secure the network, vote on changes and quietly accumulate more coins. This varies from EOS and can be done easily within certain wallets like the Tezbox via delegation.

The big news was that Coinbase Custody moved on this coin, to allow major institutions to stake, for the first time ever, a blockchain crypto within their account. So it won’t be much longer before it becomes more available.

But, how this coin has been pumping here at the end of March. What’s it doing right now?

Final note

It’s early days, and EOS is further down the road, but is also less adaptable and still with unresolved governance issues. It’s worth researching in closer detail the distinctions between these dapp platforms, before picking one to support, or many.

You hear many a scammy website promising the next big opportunity for ‘passive income’. However, for those who truly know about blockchain and crypto, Tezos is the real deal, here in the early days of major networks that require dedicated, long-term stakeholders. It’s also an opportunity to influence the direction and nature of a fascinating decentralised dapp platform itself. Time now to get involved?

Ade’s (Crypto) Press will be watching dapps, deals and developments, and will highlight the more exciting ones. In the meantime, good luck to Tezos. Go forth and multiply!

Main Website for Tezos
Learn about Tezos on Medium
Tezos Foundation, Switzerland
Choose your baker: My Tezos Baker

March 2019. Slightly amended May 2019. 

Got any views on Tezos? See below. Sign up to Ade’s Crypto Press for sporadic posts, highlights and roundups across the space, especially relating to art, content creation, games and passive income. PS. No plans to annoy anyone with pop-up notification boxes just yet.