Is 2019 the Best Time Ever for Crypto Traders?
The cryptocurrency environment lately has been, for many traders, one that has been fairly undesirable for the past two years. These traders have lost interest in trading crypto or have merely been watching cautiously from the sidelines as things develop. But despite the neglect of many, the crypto trading market has still been ticking along, ever evolving.
Even with the two-year downswing, now things are starting to pick up again in crypto. After a much-needed breather, the crypto trading market is primed and ready to boom again; this time (thanks to Volentix, Coinbase, and 0x) with more options, safer infrastructure, and better technological tools than ever before.
Traders have been Rightly Skeptical
Most traders have taken a backseat to crypto in the last couple of years, and this hesitance is completely understandable.
After all, it’s been a chaotic time in the market, and you can see this from just a quick glance at the total cryptocurrency market capitalization chart: an insane year-long market correction where 88% of value was lost. These are, of course, dangerous conditions for trading. This is the kind of market where exchanges close their doors, organizations fail, key influencers leave, people panic, and markets are extremely unpredictable.
On top of the market turmoil, the technological landscape of crypto trading was still in its infancy, and to even begin trading cryptocurrency, you had to figure out how to use and combine complex, disparate tools. Even traders that could successfully navigate the market turmoil experienced great difficulty simply executing their moves quickly, consistently, and cost-effectively. These are the factors that created this undesirable environment for many traders.
Crypto Trading is Picking Up Again, Big Time
While the more cautious traders have been opting to skip crypto, the market certainly hasn’t stopped dead in its tracks. Many traders have been happily trading away. In fact, there’s more cryptocurrency being traded right now than ever before. A lot more.
If you take a look at the total amount of cryptocurrency traded per day over the last couple of years, you’ll see that at the height of crypto-hysteria in January 2018, trading volume reached a 24-hour peak of $60 Billion, when the Bitcoin price spiked as high as $20,000.
Since then, however, the price hasn’t recovered, but what is surprising is that the volume of cryptocurrency trading has picked up dramatically. Total trading volume has been the highest it’s ever been in mid-2019. May 16th of this year saw double the 24-hour trading volume of the 2018 peak.
The story here is that the price may not be back to its peak yet, but the amount of crypto being traded is now at the highest levels we’ve ever seen. This directly translates to highly liquid markets and rising opportunities for crypto traders to profit in 2019.
The Market is Finally Primed for Trading
The key reason for the exploding amount of cryptocurrency trading this year is the maturing of the overall trading environment. The tools, infrastructure, technology, and organizations are quickly falling into place to make for a great crypto trading experience. All these complex and disparate trading tools and platforms we talked about are now starting to merge into fully functional, integrated ecosystems.
The Convergence of Tools in Ecosystems
To effectively trade cryptocurrency, you need three key tools:
- A wallet to store your crypto
- An exchange to trade with others
- Market data to inform your trades
Up until now, combining these criteria have been a manual and messy process. Traders needed to use some combination of exchanges, open-source tools and wallets, and a catalog of resources for market data and ratings. This adds to the complexity of trading and significantly slows down your trading processes. Using multiple disparate tools also adds risks when moving your cryptocurrency around.
Additionally, using decentralized tools have been more difficult to use. It’s difficult to move quickly to take advantage of trading opportunities when you need to use many complex tools that don’t play well with each other.
Now, new integrated platforms are giving traders a much more complete cryptocurrency trading experience. Some of these tools include:
- Volentix — A completely decentralized trading ecosystem
- Coinbase/Pro/Custody — A centralized trading ecosystem
- 0x — A protocol for decentralized token exchanges
These three solutions each represent three very different ways that the cryptocurrency trading landscape is evolving.
Volentix — Decentralized Trading Ecosystem
Volentix is a “digital assets ecosystem” that brings all of the necessary tools under one roof for traders. Its developers describe it as a collection of software tools that are designed to enhance the use of cryptocurrency. The five key tools are:
- VDEX — A decentralized exchange for direct peer-to-peer trading
- VERTO — A multi-currency, multi-blockchain wallet for storing cryptocurrency. Connects to VDEX
- VESPUCCI — A ranking and metric dashboard for traders that uses deep learning algorithms to gather information to give traders ratings and rankings of each cryptocurrency project
- VENUE — A community-based platform for growing and maintaining the Volentix project as a whole
- VTX — The native currency of the entire platform.
Volentix is an open-source project that aims to deliver decentralized governance, decentralized profit, and community transparency. The really unique thing about Volentix is that it combines all of these tools into one system without centralizing them. The team has achieved this by balancing open-source development, exhibiting strong core values, having a decentralized governance model, and by tying everything together with its VTX currency.
For traders, this means a unique trading experience with virtually no parallel in the traditional trading world.
Coinbase — A Centralized Trading Ecosystem
A contrary example to the Volentix decentralized ecosystem is what Coinbase is attempting to do with its centralized ecosystem. Coinbase now offers some advanced services to go with its buy/sell platform for those who want a more traditional trading experience.
First, they’ve integrated their own trading platform, Coinbase Pro for users to use the Bitcoin or Ethereum they bought on their brokerage platform to trade it for all other sorts of cryptocurrencies. It comes with real-time order books, charting tools, and data exporting. Funds are also insured for extra piece of mind.
Coinbase even provides users with their own cryptocurrency holding service called Custody. It’s designed to essentially be an insured, secured bank vault for institutions to store their crypto.
The core difference between Coinbase and Volentix is that it is highly centralized. Users must trust Coinbase with their funds and to govern the rules of play. The upside is that the funds are insured.
Decentralized Token Trading Improvements
Centralized trading ecosystems like Coinbase sacrifice privacy and security, but they come with speed and liquidity.
If you’ve used decentralized exchanges (E.g. IDEX) in the past, you know that they can be clunky, slow, and illiquid. Which is not great for traders, and that’s why many stick with the centralized options. But now Volentix comes with VDEX and other projects, like 0x, are starting to change this now, too.
0x is an open, permissionless protocol allowing ERC20 tokens to be traded more smoothly than ever before. It’s essentially a decentralized infrastructure technology that allows off-chain order broadcasting, shared liquidity pools, and order matching. 0x make it easy for developers and merchants to build trading right into their Apps. With solutions like Instant, Connect, or Launch Kit, it’s now possible to launch your own decentralized exchange in just a few minutes.
We should expect more traders to consider decentralized trading platforms that are faster, more liquid, and seamless to use.
Now is the Most Exciting Time Ever for Cryptocurrency Trading
For the past couple of years, the environment for cryptocurrency trading has been less than desirable for many traders. But things are really starting to heat up again in 2019. Cryptocurrencies are still alive and strong, and the market survived the much-needed course correction that began in 2017. Market sentiment is up, and trading volumes are smashing new records.
You can certainly be forgiven for passing on cryptocurrency trading in the recent past, but we’re now entering a whole new era of advanced cryptocurrency trading. This time, you won’t want to miss out.
