In the crypto world, vast amounts of funds and technology are being circulated and created. It’s an effort to cut out the middle-man of large banks and corporations, and put the power and wealth back into the hands of the individual owners. HEX, an ERC20 token on the Ethereum network, is another example of a digital currency looking to bring standard financial practices onto the blockchain. HEX describes itself as the first “high-yield blockchain certificate of deposit.” Launched by billionaire, philanthropist, and techy Richard Heart in 2019, HEX aims to replace the bank with the user.
If you are familiar with traditional banking, you know that a certificate of deposit (CD) is when a customer agrees to a fixed period of locking up funds, and those funds yield a return slightly higher than that of a savings account. HEX operates similarly, paying a return to investors who want to lock up their HEX holdings for a set period of time. This length of time can be anywhere from 1 to 5,555 days.
What Is HEX?
HEX was launched in December 2019 by Richard Schueler – better known as Richard Heart. Heart is a serial entrepreneur, author, YouTube personality, philanthropist and the founder of the PulseChain network, for which he raised over $27m for medical research.
According to HEX’s official website, the project is designed to become the first certificate of deposit (CD) in the cryptocurrency world. In traditional banking, a CD is a product that yields a return slightly higher than the average savings account for the customer after the customer agrees to lock up the invested funds for a fixed period.
A HEX CD works in the same way as in traditional banking since it pays a return to investors who decide to lock up their HEX holdings for a set period of one day to several years.
HEX claims to follow a proof-of-wait (PoW) protocol that does not require the participation of miners. Instead, investors mint new coins for holding HEX during the agreed-on holding period. Once the holding period comes to an end, the HEX smart contract is designed to create new coins to pay off the holder, who then becomes a “miner” in this particular ecosystem.
HEX is a second-layer (L2) application (scaling off-chain solution, which helps to increase throughput on the main chain) built on top of the Ethereum network and powered by a smart contract that regulates how tokens are minted and distributed to investors.
At the moment, HEX offers an average annual percentage yield (APY) of 40%, depending on the length of the holding period.
According to CoinMarketCap, HEX prices are up to $0.1505 USD today, a 7% increase, with a 24-hour trading volume of about $28.5 million. Its market cap is $26.123 billion and its circulating supply is $173.41 billion.
HEX is not available on many of the large crypto exchanges. But if you want to purchase it, you can find it on HitBTC, Bitget, BitMart, FMFW.io, and Hoo, among others.
The Future of HEX
HEX has seen a rather steady decline in 2022, starting off the year at $0.2342. In March, it saw its lowest low at $0.1037, but it also surged up to $0.1621 that same month. It dropped again but now has been on the rise, as you see today.
Of course, as with all crypto currencies, if supply increases, the price decreases. This is true of HEX. And if a large volume of tokens is needed to pay off the current certificate of deposit holders, they will be issued and the price will go down. That may have been what caused the drop we saw earlier this year. As always, when investing in high-risk assets like crypto, it’s wise to only invest money you can afford to lose. HEX’s price can fluctuate widely, and the last thing you want is to be forced to sell when the price is lower.