Biz Builder Mike

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Adoption

Enterprise-level partnerships send VeChain (VET) price to new highs

Real-world partnerships and integrations into thriving industries are some of the best forms of validation for blockchain projects that are seeking long-term sustainability and widespread adoption. They also have the ability to spark rallies that trigger long-term price appreciation as brand awareness spreads. 

Since February enterprise-level adoption and a wide array of use cases have worked in favor of VeChain (VET), a blockchain-powered supply chain platform that seeks to use distributed governance and Internet of Things (IoT) technology to optimize supply chain management systems.

VET/USDT 4-hour chart. Source: TradingView

Data from Cointelegraph Markets and TradingView shows that the price of VET has increased more than 400% over the past two months, climbing from a low of $0.0263 on Feb. 8 to a new record high at $0.1344 on April 9

Major collaborations ignite VeChain price

A scroll through the project’s Twitter feed shows that VET’s price growth in 2021 has largely been stimulated by the adoption of its supply chain tracking technology. On April 8 the team announced a collaboration with the software company Salesforce.

VeChain’s technology has also been utilized on several projects that are managed by its partner DNV. DNV uses VeChain’s blockchain solution to manage the data from projects with the Danish company ReSea and the Norwegian industrial company Hydro.

The increase in VET price and adoption since the beginning of February has also led to a 1,000% increase in the price of VeThor Token (VTHO), which is used to pay for transactions and smart contract interactions on the network.

An early March NFT-related collaboration with VIMworld also helped bring extra attention to VET and VTHO and was followed by a steady increase in price. 

The positive benefits of these partnerships were reflected in data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro, which shows that the market conditions for VET have been favorable for some time. 

The VORTECS™ Score, exclusive to Cointelegraph, is an algorithmic comparison of historic and current market conditions derived from a combination of data points including market sentiment, trading volume, recent price movements and Twitter activity.

VORTECS™ Score (green) vs. VET price. Source: Cointelegraph Markets Pro

As seen in the chart above, the VORTECS™ Score for VET turned bullish and reached a high of 73 on April 3, about two days before a smaller price spike on April 5. Following this move, the VORTECS™ Score increased to a high of 87 and remained in the green zone over the next three days as VET price gaine 35%.

Now that institutional investors now taking a serious interest in the crypto sector and the ways that blockchain technology can be integrated into various sectors, VeChain’s real-world use cases and growing list of enterprise-level partners indicate that there is potential for further upside.

The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph.com. Every investment and trading move involves risk, you should conduct your own research when making a decision.

Enterprise-level partnerships send VeChain (VET) price to new highs

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Fidelity’s Tom Jessop says crypto has hit a ‘tipping point’

Executives at investment giant Fidelity are confident that cryptocurrency market momentum will continue for the foreseeable future.

Speaking to MarketWatch on April 8, Tom Jessop who heads the investment firm’s crypto division said that he believes crypto has opened a new chapter in traditional finance circles and things have reached a tipping point for the industry.

Jessop stated that the maturation and adoption of crypto assets as an investment class will continue at a rapid pace in the coming years. There are a number of reasons according to the finance manager, one of which is extremely low interest rates in traditional finance.

This, coupled with an environment stimulated by monetary policies, has driven momentum for crypto markets. The Fidelity executive said that this environment is unlikely to change any time soon:

“I think we’ve reached a tipping point. I think you’ve had the accumulated experience of now roughly 12 years of the Bitcoin blockchain being operative since the genesis block in early 2009. And the pandemic, quite frankly, was a catalyst for institutional adoption, and specifically Bitcoin and the narrative, or use-case, around digital gold,”

Jessop added the narrative has been exacerbated by the unprecedented monetary stimulus from central banks and governments in response to the pandemic.

Since the pandemic began, U.S. stimulus packages have topped $6 trillion with much of that money being freshly minted by the Federal Reserve.

Jessop is not the only finance executive to believe that Bitcoin and crypto has reached a tipping point. In early March, Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz used the same phrase while commenting on the CI Galaxy Bitcoin ETF on Bloomberg:

“Bitcoin adoption has hit a tipping point and investors don’t want to sit on the sidelines,”

On March 24, Fidelity filed paperwork with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to list a new Bitcoin exchange traded fund (ETF). The Wise Origin Bitcoin Trust aims to track the asset’s daily performance using the Fidelity Bitcoin Index PR, an index derived from several price feeds.

Analyst at CFRA Research, VanEck, and Fidelity Investments, Todd Rosenbluth, opined that the SEC is likely to approve an ETF in the coming year or two.

Fidelity created the digital asset unit in 2019 and has been integrating digital assets into traditional investment portfolios ever since.

Fidelity’s Tom Jessop says crypto has hit a ‘tipping point’

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Bitcoin (BTC) Price Prediction: BTC/USD Struggles To Reclaim the $58,000 Support As Bulls Regain Bullish Momentum

Bitcoin (BTC) Price Prediction – April 9, 2021
Since March 14, Bitcoin bulls have been struggling to break the $60,000 psychological price level but to no avail. For the past week, the BTC/USD price has been trading near the resistance zone to break the overhead resistance. It is argued that consolidation near a resistance zone increases the chances of a breakout.

Resistance Levels: $58,000, $59,000, $60,000
Support Levels: $40,000, $39,000, $38,000

BTC/USD – Daily Chart

BTC price now fluctuates between $57,000 and $60,000 as buyers attempt to push Bitcoin above the $60,000 overhead resistance. About 48 hours ago, the bears succeeded in sinking Bitcoin to the low of $55,681. Nevertheless, Bitcoin has recovered as bulls buy the dips. Besides, buyers are attempting to break the $58,000 resistance. Today, if buyers reclaim the $58,000 support, the upside momentum will resume. The $60,000 overhead resistance will be retested again. In the previous attempts, buyers breached the overhead resistance but could not sustain the bullish momentum above it. Today, the BTC price is trading at $58,043 at the time of writing.

More Russians Disclose Their Incomes From Cryptocurrency Operations
According to a Consulting firm, such as PwC Russia, Russians have been reporting their income from cryptocurrency operations. The Russian news agency Izvestia indicated that Russians disclose their income from crypto trading for tax purposes. Evgeny Sivoushkov is the director of PwC Russia’s division of individual taxation. The director indicated that interest in disclosing crypto holdings has increased during the ongoing tax declaration period which ends on May 1. According to Sivoushkov,” the new trend was fueled by the adoption of Russia’s crypto law “. According to the new legislation, Russian residents are to pay income tax from cryptocurrency trading. The bill which had its first reading in February required residents to report crypto transactions if their total amount exceeds 600,000 rubles ($7,800) on an annual basis.

BTC/USD – Daily Chart

Meanwhile, buyers are struggling to break above the $58,000 resistance. If successful, a retest at the $60,000 overhead resistance is likely. Secondly, the Fibonacci tool analysis is likely to hold. On March 15, a retraced candle body tested the 61.8% Fibonacci retracement level. This retracement gives the impression that BTC price will rise to level 1.618 Fibonacci extension or the high of $70,938.10.

Bitcoin (BTC) Price Prediction: BTC/USD Struggles To Reclaim the $58,000 Support As Bulls Regain Bullish Momentum

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Digital Asset Custody Provider Hex Trust Finalizes $6M Round led by QBN Capital

Hong Kong-headquartered crypto-asset custody service provider Hex Trust reveals that it has secured $6 million in capital via a Series A round that was led by QBN Capital.

As part of its latest investment round, Hex Trust also received contributions from Cell Rising, Radiant Tech Ventures, Kenetic Capital, HashKey, MD Labs, Fenbushi Capital, Borderless Capital, Genesis Block Ventures and Henri Arslanian.

Hex Trust’s management noted that the funds raised would allow it to further scale its business operations while being able to recruit new talent to work at its Hong Kong and Singapore offices.

Hex Trust further noted that during 2021, they’ll make plans to  expand operations into the European market, where the company has teamed up with SIA, an established provider of banking tech infrastructure.

Hex Trust said the capital secured will also be directed towards making enhancements to its proprietary, bank-grade custody solution, called Hex Safe™. The technology-driven service provides a wide range of custody and treasury management solutions for digital assets, security tokens, and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) as well.

Alessio Quaglini, CEO and Co-founder at Hex Trust, stated:

“We are past the inflection point, as blockchain has established itself as the next financial markets infrastructure. Financial institutions are quickly making their moves, and the next 12 months will be critical to define the structure of the overall market. Hex Trust is now perfectly positioned to accelerate its growth and play a leading role in this space, enabling digital assets adoption for a broad range of regulated financial institutions. We are thrilled to be accompanied in this journey by such established investors.”

As noted by its management team, Hex Trust claims to be one of Asia’s leading digital asset custodians. The company says it’s “fully licensed, insured, and provides bank-grade custody for digital assets.”

Hex Trust is reportedly led by experienced banking technologists and “award-winning” financial markets. The company has developed a proprietary platform – Hex Safe™ – that “delivers a flexible custody solution for banks, financial institutions, asset managers, exchanges, and corporations to safely, securely, and efficiently operate in the digital asset ecosystem.”

As explained by Hex Trust:

‘”Through Hex Safe™, clients can access liquidity providers, exchanges and lending & staking platforms, enabling seamless access to services while assets are held in our highly-secure and regulated platform. Hex Trust has offices in Hong Kong and Singapore.”

As covered in April 2020, Hex Trust became the very first licensed crypto-asset custodian in Hong Kong to integrate its services with R3’s Corda platform.

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Gartner 2021 Market Guide for Mobile Threat Defense

Gartner 2021 Market Guide for Mobile Threat DefenseGartner 2021 Market Guide for Mobile Threat Defense

“Security and risk management leaders who need to strengthen their mobile security posture should adopt MTD products to improve their overall security hygiene.” – Gartner

Gartner recently published the 2021 Market Guide for Mobile Threat Defense report, and the analyst firm continued to highlight the importance of enterprise adoption of Mobile Threat Defense (MTD) solutions for the evolving workforce. Zimperium is once again recognized by Gartner as a Representative Vendor, providing an advanced MTD solution to organizations of all sizes and bringing security confidence to mobile endpoints.

You can read Gartner’s 2021 Marketing Guide for Mobile Threat Defense here.

The past year has proven that as mobile endpoints continue to be part of the larger, evolving attack surface, the number of threats against them continues to rise as well. And as mobile continues to be adopted into everyday workflows, the avenues of attack will continue to be shown. The mobile endpoint’s security posture connected to corporate networks, both managed and unmanaged, needs to be addressed early on to avoid any of these devices becoming the starting point for a much larger security incident.

“MTD products not only prevent attacks but also detect and remediate them. MTD focuses on identifying and thwarting malicious threats, rather than relying on device management configuration to protect against simple user mistakes.” – Gartner

Mobile Devices Supporting Zero Trust

The last year also saw enterprises adopting more advanced security architectures, with many focusing on zero trust architectures. But as they address security gaps with various security technologies, they must also normalize mobile device security. Properly configured and integrated, advanced MTD solutions can enhance existing zero trust controls by providing mobile device risk attestation. 

“Emerging use cases envisage MTD as a component of zero-trust network access (ZTNA) architecture and of an extended detection and response (XDR) system for detection and response, which can serve as a pilot for unified endpoint security. This is in addition to the use of MTD for mobile phishing protection.” – Gartner

Mobile Forensics in XDR

According to the Market Guide for Mobile Threat Defense, enterprises need to adopt mobile defense solutions into their security stack supporting their zero trust architectures and extended detection and response (XDR) technologies. And as organizations continue to evolve with both remote and distributed workforce policies, so must their cyber hygiene and security mindset.

This integration and extended security capabilities are vital to shoring defenses for enterprises evolving from EPP to XDR security solutions. Advanced MTD solutions provide the features, workflow, and capability that complement XDR capabilities on mobile devices.

UEM & SIEM Integrations

Gartner also highlights the importance of UEM and SIEM integrations with the rise in MTD deployments, integrating as seamlessly as possible into existing security workflows. While EPP vendors are deploying lightweight mobile security applications, they often do not have the capabilities, strengths, and maturities to match existing MTD solutions’ effectiveness. Integration into existing systems, from UEM to EPP dashboards, is key to providing effective mobile security outcomes for security and IT teams. 

“[Enterprises should] integrate MTD with incumbent unified endpoint management (UEM) tools. They should favor the app-based option and leave proxy-based deployment for corporate-owned business-only (COBO) scenarios.” – Gartner

“Usage of an MTD solution on top should aim not only to address advanced malicious threats but also to improve enterprise security hygiene.” – Gartner

Case for Purpose-Built Applications

IT and security leaders responsible for their enterprise’s mobile endpoint security should be aware that purpose-built mobile security applications are designed to do more than prevent attacks and bring a whole host of other advanced security features to the mobile devices. Zimperium zIPS, for example, is a hybrid machine learning endpoint application, providing both online and offline protection against phishing attempts, misconfigurations, malicious applications, and more across iOS, Android, and Chromebook devices.

“At the device level, the ability to assess postures, such as OS version, security updates, system parameters, device configuration, firmware and system libraries, to identify security misconfigurations, device vulnerabilities, and suspicious or malicious activity. For example, MTD tools can check for modification of system libraries and configurations, as well as for privilege escalation, such as a jailbreak or rooting.” – Gartner

And while legacy mobile security tools do exist, they lack the advanced approach to mobile endpoint security necessary to keep up with modern-day threats.

“[W]e see no value in adopting antivirus solutions that do not provide behavioral anomaly prevention and detection, as the underlying mobile platforms already perform signature-based scans to look for malware.” – Gartner

As enterprises of all sizes evolve their security posture and workforce in unison, the priority to adopt advanced mobile threat defense toolsets like Zimperium continues to rise among security and IT leaders. The only way enterprises can shore up their zero trust to XDR architecture and gather the data they need to make informed decisions with their UEM and SIEM, is with advanced mobile endpoint device security.

What Now?

If you want to learn more about how Zimperium can help secure your devices and apps in all the frequent use cases and more, please contact us for a free mobile risk assessment and security consultation

1 Gartner, Market Guide for Mobile Threat Defense, 29 March 2021. Dionisio Zumerle, Rob Smith.
Document ID: G00736793
Gartner Disclaimer

This graphic was published by Gartner, Inc. as part of a larger research document and should be evaluated in the context of the entire document. The Gartner document is available upon request from https://get.zimperium.com/gartner-market-guide-for-mtd-2021/

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Gartner 2021 Market Guide for Mobile Threat Defense

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