Tezos On the Up and Up
Tezos (XTZ) is an altcoin name often thrown about Crypto Twitter. Despite this, most of the cryptocurrency community know little of the project, especially in terms of how it is doing from a development standpoint.
According to prominent Bitcoin- and Ethereum-centric industry investor and Twitter commentator Spencer Noon, the project has had quite the 2019. In the tweet seen below, Noon laid out a number of reasons why Tezos isn’t a load of vaporware, a criticism pushed on a number of the industry’s top blockchains.
- The project has an 80% staking (baking) ratio, which implies the existence of a group of longer-term HODLers and a strong governance protocol and consensus incentive mechanism.
- Tezos recently was the beneficiary of a $1 billion deal that is centered around Security Token Offerings (STOs), which some crypto analysts suggest is the next frontier of digital asset technology and application, not to mention finance as a whole.
- The blockchain’s diversity of programming of languages is increasing.
- The developer toolset is improving, which should incentivize firms to use the chain for whatever purpose they can build.
- Zero-Knowledge Succinct Non-Interactive Argument of Knowledge, the privacy protocol better known as ZK-Snarks, are purportedly going to soon be integrated into the Tezos base layer.
While most of the crypto public is sleeping on Tezos, likely disregarding the project for the majorly outperforming Bitcoin, XTZ has actually fared quite well this year. Noon points out that it is up 215% against the U.S. dollar this year, basically performing many assets, save for something like the recently-IPOed Beyond Meat. It is also up 15% against BTC this year
Boosted by Coinbase
Tezos’ recent outperformance seems to stem from the latest case of the so-called “Coinbase Effect”, which is when the massive cryptocurrency giant makes mention of a cryptocurrency, which surges in price after said mention. In fact, since Coinbase Pro started mentioning XTZ, the project has grown by some 30%.
For those who missed the memo, the prominent cryptocurrency startup has added support for the up-and-coming altcoin to both its professional trading platform and its institutional-centric custody platform, which allows for XTZ governance support. This marked a great step forward in the institutional accessibility of the digital asset, which isn’t as liquid or adopted as, say, Bitcoin or Ethereum.
Tezos is purportedly facing a lawsuit, however, which could put its strong performance this year at risk.
Title Image Courtesy of Émile Perron via Unsplash.com