Three Cryptocurrencies Causing a Stir in 2019 & Where to Trade Them?

The ball is officially rolling for 2019 and we have already seen a number of new cryptocurrencies generating excitement. We cover some of the main new cryptocurrencies that have entered the scene in 2019.

 

Grin – The Harry Potter Referencing, Privacy Protecting, MimbleWimble Technology Testing Cryptocurrency

 

Grin recently launched in January 2019. It has quickly gained popularity for a number of reasons including its similarities to bitcoin, its privacy-focused blockchain technology, and its Harry Potter references.

The idea for bitcoin originated with the still unknown pseudonymous computer programmer Satoshi Nakamoto. Similarly, the idea for Grin originated as a text file posted on a bitcoin forum in 2016 by the pseudonym Tom Elvis Jedusor who quickly disappeared after sharing the text file. The pseudonym was a reference to Harry Potter and the text file also contained multiple references to Harry Potter. The file was picked up by Andrew Poelstra, an employee at Blockstream, who refined the idea. A GitHub page was started for the project and the project went through several stages of development as an open source project before launching last month.

The blockchain technology for the project is based on a technology termed MimbleWimble. The technology for MimbleWimble was described in the original file shared by Tom Elvis Jedusor. The protocol has a number of features that are designed towards protecting privacy such as CoinJoin and Dandelion. The project has also had one of the fairest launches for a new cryptocurrency with there being no pre-mine, instamine, rewards to founders or pre-sale. The mining algorithm for the cryptocurrency allows both GPU and ASIC mining and the issuance is one grin per second in perpetuity.

Here are the top exchanges that allow you to trade Grin now:
● OKEx
● KuCoin
● Gate.io

All three have trading pairs for Grin against bitcoin, ether, and USDT.

Beam – Another Privacy-Focused Cryptocurrency Implementing MimbleWimble Technology

Beam is another cryptocurrency which has been launched on the MimbleWimble blockchain. Similar to Grin, Beam was launched in a fair manner with no premine or ICO. By using MimbleWimble technology, Beam also protects the privacy of users. No address information is stored on the MimbleWimble blockchain making it private by default.

The main network for Beam launched on January 3rd after nine months of development taking place on the project. The project has big ambitions in terms of future developments to take place shortly. This includes plans to launch a mobile wallet, integration with payment platforms, and integration with bitcoin wallets.

Beam has a different issuance schedule than Grin. While one grin is issued every second in perpetuity, Beam has a highly similar issuance model to bitcoin. However, there are ten times more blocks for beam than there is for bitcoin. Similar to Bitcoin, the block reward halves every four years. Issuance completely stops after 133 years which is similar to bitcoin where all of the bitcoin to be mined into existence is expected to be in supply in around 140 years. Some of the early block rewards in the first few years will go to a foundation which will help fund development of Beam.

Beam is not yet listed on many markets but can be found on the following exchanges:
● Hotbit where it can be traded against bitcoin, ether, and USDT
● BitForex where it can be traded against bitcoin, ether, and USDT
● Gate.io where it can be traded against bitcoin, ether, and USDT
● Bisq where it can be traded against bitcoin

BitTorrent Tokens – Justin Sun’s Newest Project

In 2018, the company behind tron – The Tron Foundation – acquired peer to peer software company BitTorrent. The acquisition made the founder of Tron, Justin Sun, the CEO of BitTorrent.

Moves were quickly made in 2019 with BitTorrent with its own cryptocurrency launching on the Tron blockchain. The cryptocurrency, BitTorrent tokens (BTT), was launched as TRC-10 tokens which are a similar standard to the more well-known ERC-20 tokens of the Ethereum blockchain. There will be a total of 990 billion BTT tokens and the tokens. The use case for the tokens is for those who wish to stream content at a faster pace. The distribution for tokens includes tokens being distributed among investors in the BTT ICO, tron holders, the tron foundation, and other entities such as the team and BitTorrent foundation. The public ICO took place on the 28th of January and quickly raised the $7.2 million hard cap for the ICO.

Since being listed on exchanges, BTT has been undergoing significant price swings. The token reached over 10 times the price it was purchased for during the ICO and tron holders also received airdrops of the token

Here are the top exchanges where you can trade BTT:
● Binance which has trading pairs for BTT against USDT, bitcoin, and BNB
● Bittrex which has trading pairs for BTT against USDT and bitcoin
● KuCoin which has trading pairs for BTT against bitcoin and ether