The markets are going green once more after hours of rolling back gains made for much of this week. Reports on Thursday that Binance would be shut down by Japanese authorities rattled the highly volatile market with losses of more than $20 billion.
Bitcoin slid 6.8% in early Asian trading to trade below $8500 in the wake of the crackdown. As is customary, most altcoins also took a beating.
However, Verge went against the tide to gain more than 8% to trade at $0.041 as others were fast losing ground. It has since lost some of these gains to trade at $0.037.
Things are not so pretty however when we look at the monthly charts. The coin has lost more than 40% in the period. It was trading at $0.06 on February 24. At its peak in January, Verge was trading at $0.25 and has been sliding ever since.
The current hype seems to have been triggered by an alleged upcoming big partnership. Apparently, the community is trying to crowd fund 75 million XVG before Monday in order to bag a big partnership.
65% Traded on Binance
Much of XVG tokens are traded on Binance which has been facing some problems in Japan over its licensing. The exchange handle about 65% of the daily volume of more than $72 million. There is a circulating supply of 14.745 billion. XVGs are capped at 16.555 billion. It’s market cap is estimated at $541 billion according to CoinMarketCap.
Massive Gains
Verge made an astounding 1,581,942% gain in 2017. According to CoinMarketCap each coin was valued at just $0.000019 at the start of 2017 with a daily volume of just 200 coins.
Its fortunes changed when the focus of investors shifted to privacy coins. Verge is one such coin with a focus on maintaining the anonymity of transactions with untraceable funds. It has since been discovered that the transactions are not as anonymous after all after IRS ordered Coinbase to turn over records. Some investors were found to have not been paying tax on capital gains.
Anonymity Feature Cast in Doubt
Although Verge claims it uses “multiple anonymity-centric networks such as Tor and I2P,” that hide IP addresses, a whistle-blower has since published a list of IP addresses associated with the digital currency, casting serious doubt about the claims by the network.
The whistleblower website wrote that most of the IP addresses it published were correct although some might have been used to relay transactions for other people.
“If your TX appears in the list with an IP that isn’t yours it means your TX was relayed by someone else before reaching the site. This doesn’t mean all your future transactions will,” the site said.
The website has continued to cast doubt on the many upgrades on the network including the most recent Wraith protocol update.
The fear of missing out however seems to have also played a big role in its rise.
Other Gains
A less known Storm also made a massive 41% gain of Friday to trade at $109 a unit, whilst Tron also printed its highest price this year. Its market cap however just stands at a little less than $147 million. BitcoinDark also climbed 40% in value. But the biggest gainer is 46th ranked Veritaseum which gained 46% to trade at $146. It has a market cap of nearly $310 million.