I’ve talked about my early adventures in Bitcoin mining back in 2013. I bought a powerful computing rig from eBay and set it to work mining the “first wave” crypto in an unused upstairs room. The cooling fans were extremely loud, the heat was oppressive, and of course my electric bill headed north in a hurry.
It was all worth it.
But those days are long gone. Nowadays, it takes deeeeep pockets to tap into the kinds of computing and electrical firepower needed to mine Bitcoin. This has led to some sporadic crackdowns and slowdowns on Bitcoin mining. Most recently, Iran told the country’s few authorized miners to knock it off for the winter so there would be enough power to keep the lights and heat on.
That’s an inconvenient reality for the “proof of work” coins.
Fortunately, there’s a whole other class of cryptos – “proof of stake” tokens – out there that are much less energy-intensive and have even more upside potential than Bitcoin. In fact, the market’s third-largest “altcoin” is a proof-of-stake token that rocketed more than 580% in 2021 – and 2022 looks like it’ll be even better.
This is a must-own coin, and, luckily for us, it’s just made a move lower to a key support level.
A chance like this doesn’t happen often at all, so now is the time to move…
This Could Become the Dominant Kind of Coin
Cardano is a newer blockchain platform that is used to showcase and process its ADA coin.
As I mentioned earlier, unlike Bitcoin, which uses what is known in the coin and Blockchain worlds as proof of work, Cardano uses proof of stake.
Proof of work can drive up power consumption, slow down processing and exchanges, and leave it open to non-vested folks to meddle with.
As “proof of stake” implies, folks are only able to contribute and maintain ADA if they indeed have a stake or interest in actual ADA coins. And in doing this, the Cardano Blockchain ledger is much more decentralized for both financial transactions (DeFi), as well as for the applications that utilize ADA via the Cardano ledger (DeApps).
To authenticate an ADA, there must be proof of identity, which significantly reduces fraudulent and illegal users.
All this means the computing power needed to maintain the accounting for ADA doesn’t have to hit every single computing system and network, like what has to happen for Bitcoin. Instead, only stakeholders are involved at the core of transactions.
This reduces the power requirements by a massive scale, with ADA requiring a current estimate of only 6 gigawatts vs 130 terawatts for Bitcoin (a terawatt is 1,000 gigawatts).
And transactions can happen way more efficiently at a rate that is currently running at 51.4 times per second better than Bitcoin.
“Better than Bitcoin” is the key phrase here.
Against this backdrop, Cardano is receiving a great deal of positive attention by institutions, corporations, and even governments – and it shows in the charts.
As you can see, ADA’s 2021 performance has been, well, strong. Really strong. You can see here the coin was flirting with the $3 level earlier this year, but like a lot of other cryptos, the fourth quarter has been marked by selling.
That might be an excuse to stay away from a stock, say, or an exchange-traded fund (ETF), but we know crypto is a different beast.
In fact, it’s a bedrock principle of crypto investing. Once you find a coin you want to own, you BTFD – buy the freakin’ dip! You can see ups and downs on ADA’s chart up there, but the overall trend is only heading in one direction: Up. Buy some Cardano here at market today, or add to an existing position, because 2022 – what could be the biggest year yet for crypto – is right around the corner.
— Tom Gentile
Source: Money Morning