The Tron Network - Issue #13

Jan 18, 2021

In this newsletter, we are profiling Tron [TRX]. In previous newsletters, we have profiled Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Polkadot and many others. Access all our newsletters in our archives at madcapx.substack.com.

The Short of It

TRX is yet another established crypto asset with a huge community and a blockchain that is brimming with features. But it has yet to prove it can keep up with the likes of Bitcoin and Ethereum in value. Will it be a solid investment into the future, or will it continue to see lower lows?

Portfolio

This portfolio section gives you an idea of what sort of return you can get when investing in cryptocurrencies. Over time, we will introduce other portfolios with different crypto assets.

The BTC Hold is up 234% since October 1st, 2020. Since this is a long term holding, it is best kept in cold wallet storage or a safe custody solution. We continue to see a long term hold position as our best stable alternative.
The BTC/USD fund is up 165% since November 2nd. This past week bitcoin has been ranging between $32,380 and $40,100 USD in value. The highs we reached this past week fell short but still pushed past 40k.
FUND 3 started on November 16, 2020, with $1000 USD in value and invested into BTC, LTC, ETH and ADA. The total amount of BTC value from the four coins has a gain of 15% since the start. Against USD, it is up 148% since the start. We will hold these positions to see how well it does against our BTC-only portfolios. LTC has a loss of 3.9% against BTC. ETH is up 23% against BTC since the start. ADA is up 67% since the start against BTC and a whopping 120% since it hit its lows on Jan.3. ADA is back above 1000 sats!!

Profiling

Another great competitor to Ethereum, the Tron network, has seen tremendous development and growth since its mainnet launch in May of 2018. Their goal is to decentralize everything, creating a global and free digital content system with distributed technologies. They aim to become the core infrastructure for a decentralized Internet, listing online engagement, regional outreach, developer community, and education campaign as critical focuses.

The Tron network’s main cryptocurrency is called Tronix (TRX), and their blockchain produces one new block every 3 seconds. Their network can handle up to 2000 transactions per second and has no transaction fees. Consensus, or block and transaction validation, is achieved via Delegated Proof-of-Stake (DPOS), with 27 super representatives (SR) rotating every 6 hours. Each block added awards that SR with 32 TRX, which amounts to a total of 336,384,000 TRX distributed annually. TRX stakers get Bittorrent tokens (BTT, a token on Tron) as airdrop rewards on the 11th of every month.

Tron was founded by Justin Sun, the CEO of BitTorrent Inc. Justin is known for his flamboyant promotions of Tron and excessive hype, which some people hold against him. Tron has made some important partnerships and acquisitions. In October of 2019, they partnered with Samsung in an agreement that saw support added for Tron-based Dapps on their proprietary Galaxy store. It also included support for some on-chain mobile games. Shortly after, in December of 2019, they acquired Dlive.tv, a video streaming service that pays its creators and consumers with Lemon and BTT tokens for participation. In February of 2020, they acquired Steemit, the popular blockchain-based blogging platform.

Smart contracts are a main feature of the network. The Tron Virtual Machine (TVM) gives the ability to create them using Solidity (like in Ethereum) or even with Java or Python, in hopes of gaining a larger pool of developers. Native tokens can easily be written in their two protocols, TRC-10 and TRC-20. Also, developers can access full nodes running in the cloud provided by TronGrid.

They have their own decentralized exchange called Poloniex. Strides have been made in the DeFi space as well, with their “Just Network.” This consists of things like JustStable (including stable tokens USDJ and JST), JustLink (for Oracle access), and JustLend (for lending and borrowing).

This being another network that is mainly based out of China, it is again at risk of government control, a concern that some have. They have built up quite a bit of infrastructure, which is heavily used by Chinese interests but has yet to really take up mainstream adoption worldwide. So if you are interested in another heavy-hitter in the “decentralize everything” arena, Tron is a good bet.

Trends

TRX/BTC since 2018 shows a general downward trend with the top major moves in March/April 2018 of 200% before heading down 80%. The next one in Nov.2018/Jan.2019 of 190% upward movement without the ability to break the previous high; from there, it lost 82%. In September 2019, it started trading flat for the next 12 months. In late August 2020, it broke out for a total of 170% gain from the lows. Since then, it has lost 83% from those highs. Have we seen TRX bottom out against BTC for now? The bottom of this large trend line is well below 0, so we most likely will not see it go to those lows.

This Tradingview user is saying that there is strong support between 33 to 25 sats.

Since we have gone down 83% from the previous lower highs (465 sats) set in September 2020, there could be another lower high around 197 sats for a gain of 170%. If bitcoin continues its bull run, we could see TRX going further down. If Bitcoin stays flat, TRX has a good chance of breaking above the upper resistance line in the daily chart seen below.

Another Tradingview user is analyzing using a Fibonacci chart from the basis that the bottom is in and is seeing the potential to 260 sats, that would be a 252% rise from the lows of 74. Unlikely, but everything is possible in crypto.

About

MadCapX research newsletter is written by the Madbyte Team. You can learn more about Madbyte and MadCapX on our websites. This weekly newsletter is a paid subscription and supports the team and the Madbyte projects. Subscribe for free and get a limited-time complimentary paid subscription and access to all our archives. The regular cost is $5/month or $50/year. Cancel anytime.

Disclaimer: Nothing in this newsletter is intended to serve as financial advice. Therefore, do your own research and due diligence before applying any of the techniques highlighted in this post. Any risks or trades based on this newsletter are committed at your own risk.