COTI, the Layer 2 privacy blockchain, has recently announced that the Bank of Israel has invited the project to participate in the Digital Shekel Challenge; something that has prompted many crypto investors to look closely at $COTI (the project's native token) as a potential investment with big growth potential.
But as is often the case in the world of crypto, there's a lot more than just partnerships that gives a blockchain and token value, and it is important to have a more holistic insight into all the variables at play.
For this reason, this article will provide a digestible breakdown of the COTI project, what it does and what makes it a unique value-proposition, and ultimately, whether $COTI is a good investment based upon the information presented. We’ll take a look at:
What is COTI Crypto?
Let's dive right in!
COTI (currency of the internet) v2 is a "privacy centric" Layer 2 on Ethereum that uses unique privacy technology that allows fast, secure and scalable access to Ethereum, and that can be run on any device. COTI's main goal is to unlock innovative new use cases for the Web3 economy through confidentiality; and in doing so, removing a key barrier to blockchain usage and adoption.
It's important to note that COTI v2 is an upgrade from its former v1 offering which revolved around DAG technology, private payment networks, treasury, tokens and more. However, everything that was offered on COTI v1 has also been included alongside v2's new offerings, and $COTI v1 holder's were allowed to swap their tokens for $COTI v2 tokens at a 1:1 ratio.
The COTI team is led by a mix of Israeli tech and marketing entrepreneurs. Leading the project is Shahaf Bar-Geffen, who has been COTI's CEO for more than 6 years, and was one of the original founding team members. Bar-Geffen previously Co-Founder and CEO of digital advertising company WEB3, and Co-Founder and Director of mobile video Supply-Side Platform; both of which were acquired. He is also currently the Chairman of UNKJD, a Web3 soccer game.
Now, with regards to who's in charge of the tech side of things, Nir Haloani is COTI's CTO, whose first notable experience was as a Research Team Leader at IBM. Since then he has been CTO and Co-Founder of Articoolo Research (current), Co-Founder of UNKJD (current), and Co-Founder and CTO of Frequants; technology investment company (current).
It is important to note that whilst both people leading the charge both have extensive entrepreneurial experience, there are a few people who may question why both still have obligations to other projects other than COTI; especially Haloani.
The $COTI v2 token is integral to the COTI ecosystem, serving several purposes that contribute towards the network's privacy value proposition.
Firstly, $COTI is used for allowing confidential transactions across existing DeFi applications (dApps), or to create new (and previously unfeasible) privacy-focused DApps. Existing use cases include ensuring the privacy of stablecoin transfers, decentralised exchanges (DEXs), real world assets (RWA), and even central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).
The token's privacy features, powered by advanced cryptographic methods like Garbled Circuits, also enable secure on-chain data management and machine learning processes, ensuring that sensitive information remains confidential while still being operationally useful.
There is then COTI's governance token to be aware of — gCOTI.
gCOTI holders have the ability to participate in decision-making processes, such as voting on proposals related to network upgrades, treasury management, and the allocation of transaction fees. gCOTI can also be used to boost Annual Percentage Yield (APY) within COTI's treasury, providing holders with additional incentives for participating in the network.
Below is information regarding $COTI's token unlock, burn progress and allocation according to data by COTI's treasury page and CoinMarketCap.
Market cap -$142,5m
Total locked - $34.4m
Total treasury - 423,533m $COTI & 70,056m gCOTI
$COTI treasury APY - 48.18%
Unlocked - No Data
Untracked - No Data
Burn per day - N/A (the smart contract behind COTI bridge is currently not able to burn tokens)
Allocations - ABC Growth Fund = 400m $COTI (ambassadors, builders and creators)
Below are details regarding $COTI price history:
The current price of $COTI (at this time of writing) - $0.08207
$COTI All-time high (Nov 26, 2021) - $0.6826 (-88.04%)
$COTI performance YTD (Year to date) - +103.40%
$COTI performance all-time: -9.45%
COTI sets itself apart in the blockchain space with its pioneering approach to privacy and scalability. At its core, COTI V2 leverages Garbled Circuits, a cutting-edge cryptographic technology that offers privacy solutions far superior to current alternatives. This enables COTI V2 to be not only 1000 times faster but also 250 times lighter than other privacy-focused solutions, making it a game-changer for applications requiring confidentiality, such as payments, decentralised finance (DeFi), and artificial intelligence.Moreover, COTI's commitment to accessibility and developer engagement is evident through its support for Solidity-based environments and its provision of developer tools like TypeScript or Python SDKs, a Hardhat development environment, and on-chain analytics explorers. These tools make it easier for developers to build on COTI, fostering innovation and expanding its ecosystem.
This combination of advanced privacy technology, unmatched performance, and developer-friendly infrastructure makes COTI a truly unique and promising project in the rapidly evolving blockchain landscape.
With regards to recent activities, COTI has been keeping busy through some strategic partnerships and announcements that highlights the project's forward trajectory.
COTI MPC integration (08/02/24): In February of this year, the project announced that it had successfully designed and integrated the Multi-Party Computation (MPC) protocol of COTI v2. The integration of MPC endpoints into the Extended-EVM architecture signifies a notable advancement in blockchain technology, offering enhanced security and privacy for complex computations.
$COTI 280% spike in February (29/02/24): Later in February, $COTI experienced a significant price surge, seeing a whopping 280%, surge that was arguably driven by its previous tech developments, and anticipation to its developer network launch. It's important to note, however, that this was also around the time the crypto market was anticipating the Bitcoin halving, and a lot of investor confidence that a bull run would occur.
COTI developer network launch (23/05/24): Additionally, there was the launch of the COTI v2 Developer Network in May, marking a major milestone for the project, and day 1 of the journey to unlock new privacy-centric use cases. This launch also saw the introduction of the ABC growth fund (the largest privacy-related growth funds in the Ethereum ecosystem), which included a Builders Program to encourage developers to build on COTI, and provide them with the tools and resources needed to do so.
COTI invited to participate in Bank Of Israel’s Digital Shekel Challenge 24/07/24: COTI was recently confirmed as the first blockchain project to participate in the Bank of Israel's Digital Shekel Challenge; a groundbreaking initiative aimed at exploring the potential of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). Having started in August, and expected to end in October, this initiative can potentially see COTI being used as a go-to privacy solution for CBDCs.
Quite surprisingly, there doesn't seem much to write about when it comes to recent controversies regarding COTI.
But to play devil's advocate, ever since the migration from COTI v1 to v2, some might argue that this shift away from the project's original mission is a slap in the face of v1 token holders, as many invested based upon the proposals and promises in the v1 whitepaper. Some might also argue that this U-turn is an indication that COTI are making things up as they go along, and that the project will change again if the current focus fails, or a new crypto buzzword comes along.
However, on a more positive note, COTI's change of focus could also be a sign of maturity and respect for their community, as the demands of the Web3 space are constantly evolving, and staying rigid could potentially result in stagnancy; something that will negatively impact token holders.
Either way, relative to other projects, COTI doesn't appear to have suffered from any huge controversies of late that should worry investors.
Looking ahead, COTI is gearing up to significantly expand its ecosystem through several key initiatives according to their Medium post.
1) Enhanced Security Framework:
2) Efficient L2 Off-Ramp:
3) MainNet Execution (Q4, 2024):
4) Evolution: Enhanced Mainnet Release (Q1, 2025)
Moreover, COTI is continuing to explore partnerships with traditional financial enterprises to integrate its privacy technology, beyond just the digital shekel initiative. This strategic direction could open up new avenues for COTI in regulated markets, positioning it as a critical player in the intersection of traditional finance and blockchain privacy technology.
Now for a price prediction for 2024, 2025.
As we normally say when writing price prediction articles, providing a 100% accurate future price prediction is virtually impossible, and the same applies for a $COTI price forecast for 2024 and 2025. What we can do, however, is provide sentiment as to what we believe could happen (price-wise) based upon past and current indicators.
Going off COTI's recent tech developments and future plans, it does appear that COTI is right at the forefront when it comes to privacy preserving blockchain technology. This appears to be an extremely important and currently missing piece of Ethereum's technology, and this has been notably reinforced by Ethereum Co-founder Vitalik Buterin who said, "One of the largest remaining challenges in the Ethereum ecosystem is privacy. By default, anything that goes onto a public blockchain is public." So given COTI's constant tech breakthroughs and notable initiatives (Digital Shekel Challenge), the project appears to be on the right track to gain further partnerships, accreditation and usage, which could have a positive price impact.
In terms of technical analysis, $COTI coin's price has appeared to enjoyed surges anytime Bitcoin does well, yet simultaneously suffers when it goes on a downward spiral. But this is nothing new, and is typical of most cryptocurrencies. What is important to note is that $COTI's price has demonstrated surges off the back of upcoming tech rollouts. However, $COTI has also consistently seen big downward spirals right after price spikes, which raises questions as to the stability of any short-term pumps.
In terms of what the current charts tell us, there appears to be continued horizontal support that goes all the way back to August 2021. $COTI has also lost 73% from the highs at the start of the year, and made a series of lower lows and higher lows. The price is also way below the 200 week EMA, and it needs to go above that. That being said, the stochastic RSI has crossed up, which is a bullish signal for strong momentum into the upside price.
It is the conclusion of the author that with COTI's upcoming mainnet launch, combined with the stochastic RSI having crossed up, that there could be a small surge in price before 2024 ends. But unless there is some major movement from Bitcoin, it doesn't look likely that $COTI will rise above (or close to) the $0.269 it saw earlier in the year; and any small surges could be short lived.
But when it comes to $COTI's price in 2025, the author of this article believes that if COTI continues to release important tech that further strengthens their industry-leading privacy-preserving solution, and they make a success of the Digital Shekel challenge, then the price could possibly eclipse $0.269; especially if Bitcoin does well. By how much, only time will tell.
If you would like to invest in $COTI, then it is important to first consider your motivations, risk adversity, investing timeframe and strategy.
The price of $COTI is still far off its all-time highs back in late 2021. But it is important to note that just because a token might not get back to its all-time highs, doesn't mean it can't bring about an impressive ROI; especially if you choose your timing. One could even argue that the price being low right now makes it an attractive investment; especially with what the project has planned in 2025 and beyond.
So it is the opinion of the author that COTI is worth a small investment (with a mid to long-term focus), as they are solving a very important issue within the financial industry, and have industry-leading privacy preserving blockchain technology to facilitate this. What's more, CBDCs will undoubtedly be one of the hottest topics within the world of Fintech in years to come, yet many CBDC projects are publicly admitting their struggle to find privacy-preserving solutions for their needs. So if COTI can make a success with the Digital Shekel initiative, then there could be significant potential for COTI to be used with other CBDCs/financial platforms; as well as within the Web3 space.
But due to the uncertainties of what 2025 has in store for COTI, if you do want to make an investment, then it may be recommended to include $COTI as part of a diversified portfolio to mitigate any risk.
If you are a European crypto investor or enthusiast, and you want to invest in $COTI, then ICONOMI is ideal, as it is an FCA (Financial Conduct Authority) regulated crypto investing platform, and is best known for its crypto strategies offering.
If you want to purchase $COTI on ICONOMI, you can do so in just a few easy steps.
All you will need is to register an account with ICONOMI, and once approved, you can easily purchase $COTI by doing the following:
And there you have it, you've now bought $COTI. You can then either leave it on the platform, or send it to a crypto wallet.
Alternatively, if you want to have a more risk-averse approach to investing in $COTI, then you can do one of two things:
1) Create your own crypto strategy, and allocate a small percentage to $GALA
2) Find an existing crypto strategy that has $GALA as part of its basket, and simply join the fund.
The latter is perhaps the easiest way to invest in $GALA, as you will be investing in a hands-off manner, and entrusting the investment management process to the owner of the strategy.
In conclusion, COTI emerges as a noteworthy project within the blockchain landscape, particularly due to its industry-leading privacy-preserving technology, constant tech activities, and involvement in notable initiatives such as the Digital Shekel Challenge. The project's advanced cryptographic methods, and potential role in the Ethereum ecosystem and Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), position it as a significant player in the evolving intersection of blockchain and traditional finance.
However, while COTI's technology and partnerships show promise, the project is not without its uncertainties. The migration from COTI v1 to v2, though innovative, has raised questions about the project's long-term direction and stability. This, coupled with the inherent volatility of the cryptocurrency market, suggests that a cautious approach is warranted.
For investors considering $COTI, it may be worth a small allocation within a diversified portfolio, particularly for those with a mid to long-term outlook. However, as with any investment in the crypto space, it's essential to stay informed and critically assess ongoing developments within the COTI ecosystem to make well-informed decisions.
If you enjoyed this article, you may be interested in our other titles:
Crypto Business Accounts You Should Know About [2024]
Best Crypto Fund Option in the UK [2024]
4 Best Crypto-Friendly Banks in the UK [2024]