El Salvador will build a “Crypto City” near the volcano

On Saturday, President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador announced El Salvador’s plans to build a “Bitcoin City” near the volcano. The project will be funded by cryptocurrency.

The city will be equipped with everything: residential and commercial areas, services, entertainment, restaurants. It will even have an airport built near the Conchagua Volcano in the southeast of El Salvador.

The Construction work is planned to start in 2022. Surprisingly, the city will not levy taxes except for value-added tax (VAT).

In June, El Salvador passed a law making it the world’s first country to accept Bitcoin as legal tender. However, not all the population supports this initiative.

Thousands of people have protested the new law in September. They have been worrying that the introduction of cryptocurrency might cause instability in this Central American country.

El Salvador has also released Bitcoin wallets allowing citizens to use this cryptocurrency.

Mr. Bukele has not provided a construction or completion date for the city. However, he said that the estimated cost of most of the public infrastructure is about 300,000 bitcoins. The current trading price of a Bitcoin is slightly less than $60,000.

El Salvador plans to cooperate with Blockstream, a digital asset infrastructure company, to raise approximately US$1 billion through “Bitcoin Bonds.”

The government stated that half of the funds would be used to purchase bitcoin. The other 500 million US dollars is planned to be used for energy and mining infrastructure.

El Salvador also stated that they would use the volcano’s geothermal energy to power the mining.

Samson Mow, the chief strategy officer of Blockstream, said that the bond has a five-year lock-up period and aims to withdraw $500 million of Bitcoin from the market during this time.

Blockstream stated that investors in the bond would receive an annual special dividend.

Lydia app launches crypto and stock trading feature

Later this year, French startup Lydia will enter a whole new category by adding transactions to its super financial app. The company is working with Bitpanda to develop this feature. Lydia users will be able to buy, hold and sell U.S. and European stocks, precious metals, cryptocurrencies, and ETFs.

Lydia started as a peer-to-peer payment application that allows you to send and receive funds instantly through a mobile application. Since its launch, Lydia has added more features, such as debit card, IBAN, fund pool, cashback, donations, personal loans, etc.

Like Venmo or Cash App in the United States, the company attracts new users through peer-to-peer payments and then exposes them to more features and financial products that can be accessed directly from the app. And it works well because Lydia now has 5.5 million users.

Several months ago, Lydia released a savings account backed by Cashbee. This is an excellent old-fashioned fixed-rate savings account that offers 0.6% interest. 

With Lydia’s trading features, traders can create a trading account too. Users can trade, convert stocks into cash and spend with Lydia card 24/7. The funds arrive in the trader’s Lydia account immediately.

After that, users can buy their first share or part of it at a price as low as 1 Euro. Lydia and Bitpanda provide fractional shares of French, European and American companies. Traders can buy precious metals such as gold, platinum, silver, and palladium; invest in Bitcoin, Ethereum, and dozens of other crypto assets. 

SHIB fans, be aware of the scam alert!

Some active scam attacks have recently occurred around meme-based cryptocurrency Shiba Inu. SHIB’s founders have issued a public warning against ongoing online scams targeting SHIB investors.

Active fraud alerts appear in the form of tweets detailing various methods used to deceive unsuspecting victims from the Shiba Inu community.

Although Shiba Inu has attracted aspiring crypto millionaires and billionaires, bad actors have stepped up their efforts to target careless investors on social media platforms such as Twitter and Telegram. Attackers seem to target accounts that use hashtags like #shib #shibarmy #leash #shibaswap and #bone.

Shiba Inu’s official Twitter account has spread a scam alert video emphasizing that the community does not provide any form of promotional activities, including airdrops, bonuses, gifts, or gifts, to prevent the ongoing scam. They suggest investors should avoid sharing wallet keys, credentials, or joining and following fake social media accounts.

Drawing inspiration from the success of Shiba Inu, many dog-themed tokens began to flood the cryptocurrency market. Recently, SHIB hit an all-time high of US$0.000086 on October 28 but has been working hard to maintain its value.

Shiba Inu’s development team also released another token called Doge Killer (LEASH), which recently gained a 130.3% increase.

In addition to the mainstream adoption of tokens, more and more investors are placing SHIB on some of the most popular cryptocurrency exchanges, including Binance.US and Crypto.com.

Avalanche ($AVAX) is on its record highs: will it surpass Ethereum?

On Sunday, the cryptocurrency Avalanche (traded at $AVAX) reached a record high of US$144.96 per token. This surge made Avalanche one of the world’s top ten most valuable cryptocurrencies, with a maximum market value of US$31.5 billion.

As of Monday, the price of Avalanche has fallen by about 7%. Though, it is still the tenth most valuable cryptocurrency before Dogecoin, with a market value of $29.8 billion.

A new agreement between Avalanche and consulting firm Deloitte may help stimulate further interest in tokens and their underlying technologies.

Last week, Deloitte announced that it would cooperate with Ava Labs. This company developed Avalanche and launched its token in September 2020, using Avalanche’s blockchain to support Deloitte’s cooperation with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

Deloitte and Avalanche announced that they would deploy a new Close As You Go platform that will help simplify FEMA’s process of aggregating and verifying federal disaster claims.

Avalanche’s tokens are backed by its blockchain platform, which promises faster speeds, lower fees, and less environmental waste than competitors such as Ethereum. 

 

Avalanche claims to be the fastest smart contracts platform in the blockchain industry

 

 Smart contract is a blockchain-based technology allowing buyers and sellers to automatically enter the terms of the agreement into the automatically executed contract. 

Ethereum is the first smart contract platform for cryptocurrencies. Its token is currently the world’s second most valuable token after Bitcoin, with a valuation close to 500 billion U.S. dollars. But the recent rise of Avalanche has convinced some investors that competitors are launching a more severe challenge to Ethereum’s dominance.

According to the founder of Avalanche, Ethereum platform users often complain about high gas fees, referring to transaction costs. If Ethereum doesn’t adapt quickly enough, they may look for other platforms, such as Avalanche or Solana. 

Avalanche claims that its Gas fees are lower than Ethereum because it can process transactions faster than competitors. It stated that its blockchain could process 4,500 transactions per second, while Ethereum can process 15 transactions per second.

However, some users pointed out that the recent upgrade to Ethereum technology, Ethereum 2.0, might exceed Avalanche easily. Ethereum 2.0 is expected to be fully launched next year, which will improve the user experience and make it difficult for smaller competitors to keep up.