CoinMarketCap: Daily digest for Crypto Breaking News, on January 4, 2022

The number of countries banning crypto has doubled in three years

by Crypto Breaking News

Although 2021 was a good year for the cryptocurrency industry in terms of market performance, the number of jurisdictions banning crypto has more than doubled since 2018.

A report by the Library of Congress (LOC) details the nine jurisdictions that have now applied an absolute ban on crypto and the 42 with an implicit ban. This is up from eight and 15 respectively in 2018 when the report was first published.

The LOC is the research library for the United States Senate, acting as the national library for the country.

In the context of the LOC report, an absolute ban means any "transactions with or holding cryptocurrency is a criminal act", whereas an implicit ban prohibits cryptocurrency exchanges, banks, and other financial institutions from "dealing in cryptocurrencies or offering services to individuals/businesses dealing in cryptocurrencies."

The nine new jurisdictions with an absolute ban include Egypt, Iraq, Qatar, Oman, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Bangladesh, and China. China's crypto ban received the most attention in 2021.

The dramatic increase in jurisdictions banning or regulating cryptocurrency over the past three years is not showing signs of slowing as several governments are currently reviewing their options. Aside from the 51 jurisdictions with a crypto ban, 103 have applied anti-money laundering and combatting the funding of terrorism (AML/CFT) laws, a three-fold increase from the 33 jurisdictions with such laws in place in 2018.

A Swedish financial watchdog and the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency called for a ban on Proof of Work (PoW) mining in November due to the power demands and environmental costs of keeping networks running. This was met with harsh criticism from Paris-based Melanion Capital, which called the claims against mining "completely misinformed."

Sweden's EU neighbor, Estonia, is set on implementing AML/CFT rules in February. These new rules are expected to change the definition of what a virtual asset service provider (VASP) is and apply an implicit ban on decentralized finance (DeFi) and Bitcoin (BTC).

India's government created a scare when lawmakers there considered a crypto ban last year. The outcome was not an outright ban, but a push to regulate cryptocurrencies as crypto assets, with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) which oversees the regulation of local crypto exchanges. An outright ban, however, is not out of the question.

Source: Cointelegraph.com

Crypto Breaking News | January 4, 2022 at 1:39 am | Categories: News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t4w

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This key trading pattern hints at the continuation of Fantom's (FTM) 125% rebound

by Crypto Breaking News

Fantom (FTM) looks poised to hit a new record high in the coming sessions after its 125% price rebound from $1.23 on Dec. 14, 2021, to $2.84 on Jan. 3, 2022 triggered a classic bullish reversal setup.

Dubbed inverse head and shoulders (IH&S), the setup appears when an asset forms three troughs below a so-called neckline resistance, with the middle trough (the head) deeper than the left and right shoulder.

The price of FTM has recently undergone a similar price trajectory, as shown in the chart below. As a result, FTM has a common resistance in the range defined by $2.55 to $2.74, which encompasses the length of the inverse head and shoulders pattern.

*FTM/USD daily price chart featuring inverse head and shoulders pattern. Source: TradingView*

Could Fantom rally by another 50%?

In a perfect world, an IH&S pattern would normally result in a bullish breakout once the price closes decisively above the neckline level. Ideally, the upside target be equal to the maximum distance between the head and the neckline, when measured from the breakout point.

On Monday, FTM almost completed its IH&S formation by reaching its neckline. As a result, the Fantom token's next move could be a bullish breakout above the $2.55 to $2.74 resistance range. In doing so, it would pursue a run-up toward $4.33, based on the setup presented in the chart below.

*FTM/USD daily price chart featuring the IH&S's breakout setup. Source: TradingView*

A sharp price pullback from the neckline range, accompanied by a spike in volume, would risk invalidating the IH&S setup. In that case, the next ideal support line may come near $2.08. This would be based on FTM's volume profile visible range (VPVR), a metric that displays trading activity over a specified period at specified price levels.

*FTM/USD daily price chart featuring volume profile target. Source: TradingView*

Are there risks of overvaluation?

Downside risks in the Fantom market also appeared in the form of its relative strength index (RSI), a metric that measures the magnitude of the asset's recent price changes to evaluate its overbought or oversold conditions.

*Relative Strength Index in a nutshell. Source: Investopedia*

In detail, FTM's daily RSI entered an overbought territory on Jan. 3 as its reading marginally jumped above 70. The technical indicator suggests FTM is overbought and that it should undergo a certain degree of correction to neutralize its market sentiment.

In layman's terms, an RSI reading above 70 is usually seen as a signal to sell. However, the sell-offs typically do not necessarily come right after RSI jumps into the overbought zone.

Based on multiple RSI corrections spotted between August and September 2021, the FTM price appears to extend its upside momentum even after the indicator crosses above 70. At its best, the daily RSI had reached almost 89 on Sep. 9, coinciding with the FTM price hitting the then-record high of $1.99.

*FTM/USD daily price chart featuring RSI-led corrections. Source: TradingView*

That somewhat leaves FTM with the possibility of pursuing its IH&S profit target of $4.33 despite its overvaluation risks. What could follow is a correction towards its 20-day exponential moving average (20-day EMA; the green wave in the chart above) around $2.09.

This would bring the price near to the VPVR support at $2.08, as discussed above.

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.

Source: Cointelegraph.com

Crypto Breaking News | January 4, 2022 at 1:30 am | Categories: Altcoin, News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t4u

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CFTC Fines 'Decentralized' Prediction Market Platform Polymarket $1.4 Million, Shuts Down Noncompliant Markets

by Crypto Breaking News

CFTC Fines 'Decentralized' Prediction Market Platform Polymarket $1.4 Million, Shuts Down Noncompliant Markets

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has ordered a "decentralized" prediction market platform to shut down non-compliant markets and pay a fine of $1.4 million. "Polymarket had been operating an illegal unregistered or non-designated facility for event-based binary options online trading contracts, known as 'event markets,'" said the derivatives regulator.

CFTC Takes First Crypto Enforcement Action of the Year

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has taken the first crypto enforcement action of the year in the U.S. The derivatives regulator announced that it entered an order Monday "filing and simultaneously settling charges against Delaware-registered Blockratize, Inc. d/b/a Polymarket."

The company was charged "for offering off-exchange event-based binary options contracts and failure to obtain designation as a designated contract market (DCM) or registration as a swap execution facility (SEF)," the CFTC wrote. The regulator detailed:

The order requires that Polymarket pay a $1.4 million civil monetary penalty, facilitate the resolution (i.e. wind down) of all markets displayed on Polymarket.com that do not comply with the Commodity Exchange Act (CEA) and applicable CFTC regulations.

The New York city-based company must also "cease and desist from violating the CEA and CFTC regulations, as charged."

According to the order, "By January 14, 2022, [the] respondent shall cease offering access to trading in markets displayed on Polymarket.com" unless they comply with the CFTC's rules.

Polymarket describes itself as "a decentralized information markets platform, harnessing the power of free markets to demystify the real-world events that matter most to you." It advertises that users can "bet" on their beliefs about the outcome of real-world events.

The site lists a number of markets that users can bet on, such as "What percent of US Covid-19 cases will be from the Omicron variant on January 1, 2022?" and "Will annual inflation in the European Union be 5.4% or more in December?"

However, its website notes: "The markets listed here are for informational purposes only. We take no profits from them."

According to the derivatives watchdog, "Polymarket had been operating an illegal unregistered or non-designated facility for event-based binary options online trading contracts, known as 'event markets'" since approximately the beginning of June 2020.

Noting that the platform "has offered more than 900 separate event markets since its inception while deploying smart contracts hosted on a blockchain to operate the markets," the regulator described:

Polymarket creates, defines, hosts, and resolves the trading and execution of contracts for the event-based binary option markets offered on its website.

The CFTC explained that "Polymarket's markets cover a large variety of binary options, including cryptocurrency [and] digital assets, current events, and financial conditions, among other events."

The regulator emphasized that event market contracts offered on the Polymarket platform "constitute swaps under the CFTC's jurisdiction, and therefore can only be offered on a registered exchange in accordance with the CEA and CFTC regulations." The platform's civil monetary penalty has been reduced due to its "substantial cooperation with the Division of Enforcement's investigation of this matter," the CFTC noted.

Following the CFTC's announcement, Polymarket issued a statement, explaining:

We are pleased to confirm that we have successfully agreed to a settlement with the CFTC … the three markets set to resolve after January 14, 2022 that do not comply with the Act will be prematurely wound down and participants refunded.

What do you think about the CFTC's action against this prediction marketplace? Let us know in the comments section below.

Source: Bitcoin.com

Crypto Breaking News | January 4, 2022 at 1:30 am | Categories: News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t4s

First Mover Asia: Bitcoin Slips Under $46K As Volume Across Major Centralized Exchanges Remains Low

by Crypto Breaking News

(Edited by Greg Ahlstrand)

Good morning. Here's what's happening:

Market moves:

Bitcoin opened lower on the first trading day of U.S. equities market, while the stock market gained with Apple briefly hitting a $3 trillion market capitalization.

Technician's take: Price indicators suggest limited downside for BTC over the short-term as selling pressure slows.

Catch the latest episodes of CoinDesk TV for insightful interviews with crypto industry leaders and analysis.

Prices

Bitcoin (BTC): $46,343 -2.29%

Ether (ETH): $3,755 -1.84$

Markets

S&P 500: 4,796 +0.64$

DJIA: 36,5856 +0.68%

Nasdaq: 15,832 +1.2%

Gold: $$1,803 -1.38%

Market moves

Bitcoin, the oldest cryptocurrency, was trading below $46,000 at the time of writing. Its price was also down by nearly 3% in the past 24 hours.

"It's pretty much been choppy since that big drop in the beginning of December," Andrew Tu, business development manager at crypto quant trading firm Efficient Frontier, told CoinDesk in a Telegram message. Bitcoin has "been ranging $46,000-$51,000 for a month or so now… most of major [tokens] have been following the trend."

Bitcoin's spot trading volume across major centralized exchanges remained low on Monday, nowhere near its pre-holiday level, based on data compiled by CoinDesk.

Credit: CoinDesk/CryptoCompare

An "absence of trading activity is likely to be one of the reasons for the overall crypto market's "bearish pullback" over the past week, according to crypto trading data firm Kaiko.

While bitcoin is viewed by some market participants as "a risk-on asset" similar to stocks, S&P 500 opened its first trading day higher, with electric car maker Tesla's stock skyrocketing. Apple's market value briefly touched $3 trillion because of the stock rally.

Risk-on refers to a situation where investors are willing to invest in assets with higher risks like equity markets, commodity currencies. That typically happens when the economy is expected to fare well. But according to Wall Street Journal, Monday's stock rally is also associated with the new year: stocks tend to rally at the start of new calendar periods due to "new money" like pension funds that invest when a new period starts.

Efficient Frontier's Tu said "macro uncertainty" remains the main factor of bitcoin's choppy move. The Federal Reserve in the U.S. in December signaled three interest rate hikes in 2022, and would move faster to wind down its bond purchases in response to elevated inflation pressures.

As CoinDesk reported, a tightened monetary policy is typically considered as bearish for assets, bitcoin included.

Technician's take

Bitcoin Stuck in Range Between $45K Support and $52K Resistance

Bitcoin is off to a slow start as traders ring in the new year. The cryptocurrency is down about 8% over the past week as demand from buyers slowed. The current price around $46,000 is near the bottom of a two-week long price range, which previously led to higher bids for BTC.

The relative strength index (RSI) on the daily chart is rising from an oversold level reached on Dec. 10. This suggests selling pressure is starting to wane, especially as downside exhaustion signals appeared on the daily chart for the first time since July.

BTC will need to return above its 200-day moving average, currently at $47,962, to yield further upside targets. The next level of resistance is seen around $52,000, which could limit short-term gains.

For now, price momentum is slowing ahead of the Asian trading day, as buyers and sellers appear to be in a stalemate.

Important events

10:00 a.m ET (2 p.m. HK/Sing) ISM manufacturing index 10 amISM manufacturing indexDec.

10 a.m. ET (2 p.m. HK.Sing) ISM manufacturing index

10 a.m. ET (2 p.m. HK/SING) Job openings November

CoinDesk TV

In case you missed it, here are the most recent episodes of "First Mover" on CoinDesk TV:

Crypto Markets Update and Outlook, Layer 2 Solutions to Improve Ethereum Performance

"First Mover" dove into crypto markets on the first day stock markets opened in the new year. Joining us to discuss the general 2022 crypto outlook, questions about the inflation-hedge narrative, correlation to the stock market, volatility, DeFi and more was Greg Magadini, CEO of Genesis Volatility. Also, Jan Hartmann of Banxa Labs on the progress in deploying Layer 2 solutions to lower Ethereum gas fees and speed up transaction times.

Latest headlines

Should Western Union Worry About Stablecoins? For now, stablecoins are used mostly in the speculative crypto economy. Will that change?

Salvadoran President Bukele Expects Bitcoin to Reach $100K This Year El Salvador adopted bitcoin as an official currency last year.

LinksDAO NFT Sale Books First $10M Toward Buying an Actual Golf Course The project sold out a collection of over 9,000 NFTs with a token airdrop for members penciled in for 2022.

Longer reads

Welcome to the new WIRED

Today's Crypto explainer: How Does Ethereum Work?

Source: CoinDesk.com

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 11:31 pm | Categories: News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t4q

3 reasons why Phantasma (SOUL) is chasing after new all-time highs

by Crypto Breaking News

Nonfungible tokens and blockchain-based gaming projects saw a breakout in popularity over the course of 2021. This was due to their widespread appeal which attracted the attention of crypto newbies and experienced hodlers alike. This trend helped to further initiate the mass adoption of blockchain technology and from the look of things, its likely to extend throughout 2022.

One project is making moves in 2022 is Phantasma (SOUL), a layer-one blockchain protocol that specializes in the creation of SmartNFTs and decentralized gaming applications. Its prices reflect that it's about to make a run for a new all-time high.

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that since hitting a low of $2.30 on Dec. 30, the price of SOUL has climbed 61.73% to a daily high at $3.72 on Jan. 3 as its 24-hour trading volume increased from an average of $3 million to $12 million.

*SOUL/USDT 1-day chart. Source: TradingView*

Three reasons for the surging price of SOUL are the launch of several new protocols on the Phantasma network, the addition of cross-chain support for multiple networks, and the overall increase in popularity of NFTs and blockchain-based gaming.

New projects launch on Phantasma

One of the biggest developments to come out of the Phantasma ecosystem over the past couple of weeks has been the launch of several projects on the network. This includes the role-playing card game Blood Rune, the mobile game Ghost Festival and the NFT marketplace GhostMarkets.

The GhostMarket NFT marketplace is currently conducting its initial decentralized exchange offering (IDO) on Flamingo Finance and will have its GM token available to operate on the six different networks that GhostMarket supports, but including Ethereum (ETH), Binance Smart Chain (BSC), Phantasma, Avalanche, Polygon and NEO N3.

One of the main draws of using Phantasma over other chains is its dual token system where SOUL token holders can stake their tokens to earn Phantasma Energy (KCAL). These in turn can be used to pay for transaction fees. This essentially makes transactions free for SOUL holders.

Phantasma is also certified as a carbon-negative blockchain which has helped attract positive attention. This sets it apart from other networks like Ethereum, which notoriously has a higher carbon footprint since it utilizes mining.

Cross-chain interoperability

A second reason for the building strength of Phantasma has been the addition of cross-chain interoperability with multiple blockchain networks including Ethereum, BSC and NEO.

On the 5th day of Christmas #Phantasma gives to you a Layer 1 smart contract ecosystem, quad-chain interoperable with $ETH, #BSC and $NEO for fungible tokens and soon for Non-Fungible Tokens(#NFTs)$SOUL $BNB #smartNFTs #blockchaingaming #GameFi pic.twitter.com/vcpXmqO66r

— Phantasma (@PhantasmaChain) December 29, 2021

On top of the addition of interoperability with other networks, the Phantasma chain itself is capable of reaching high levels of throughput. This is due to the ability to host infinite sidechains while the network as a whole benefit from having native oracles built directly into the core of its design.

With interoperability looking to be one of the major themes in the cryptocurrency ecosystem for 2022, projects that have already started making it a focus of development are likely to outperform the competition that doesn't. This will incentivize crypto users to become increasingly comfortable with transacting across multiple networks.

NFT and gaming popularity

The third reason for the building strength of Phantasma is the overall popularity of gaming and NFT projects as blockchain adoption is on the rise.

According to data from Google Trends, interest in NFTs has been rising since early 2021 and hit a peak in the middle of December as Phantasma was introducing new projects and touting its low-cost capabilities.

*Interest in NFT searches over time. Source: Google Trends*

On top of the generalized rise in interest in NFTs, popular blockchain-based games like Axie Infinity have led to the emergence of play-to-earn games across the crypto ecosystem. The high throughput, low-cost capabilities of Phantasma make it an attractive option for gamers looking to maximize their earnings while minimizing transaction costs.

With the interest in gaming and NFTs showing no signs of disappearing in the near future, projects that focus on facilitating their growth and adoption could continue to see their values rise as NFTs become more mainstream.

Source: Cointelegraph.com

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 11:30 pm | Categories: News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t4o

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What's Next for Bitcoin and Crypto: 5 Trends to Watch in 2022

by Crypto Breaking News

2021 was a volatile yet highly fruitful year for cryptocurrencies. The crypto market capitalization tripled from under $800 billion on January 1 to around $2.2 trillion today, with some assets doing astronomical returns in terms of both price and users. And those increases were distributed across the ecosystem, as Bitcoin and Ethereum went from making up 80% of the market cap to just over 60%.

Moreover, the continued prosperity of DeFi (decentralized finance) applications and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) indicate that the upcoming year could be even more profitable.

Here are five major crypto storylines to look for as we kick off 2022.

1. More regulation

The crypto industry has thus far thrived thanks to (or despite) its decentralized structure and unregulated nature. But many in the industry will tell you they are open to regulations as long as the rules are transparently applied.

Governments have been trying to find a way to regulate cryptocurrencies in a way that hampers cybercriminals and increases retail investor safety. China has demonstrated one (unpopular) way of doing that, which is to make crypto activities within its borders all but illegal, except those sanctioned by the government. (See: China's digital yuan.)

Crypto investors and entrepreneurs are hoping for a more moderate approach stateside, where the SEC, CFTC, and offices under the Treasury Department have all been advocating for new regulations. For investors, regulations could mean clearer taxation guidelines and even the ability to incorporate crypto investments into retirement accounts. And if prominent cryptocurrency trading tools tailor themselves to regulations, they could help boost adoption by providing an extra layer of security to investors.

2. Bitcoin ATMs multiply

The intangible nature of cryptocurrencies has long worked against them; many people have trouble seeing Bitcoin as real money since they can't see or touch Bitcoins. But now that the installation of Bitcoin ATMs is slowly becoming a reality in various parts of the world, people will be able to perceive digital assets as palpable investment instruments.

The number of Bitcoin ATMs has been increasing steadily since 2015 and reached new highs in 2021. Today, there are more than 33,000 Bitcoin ATMs across the globe, according to Coin ATM Radar.

Bitcoin ATMs essentially allow people to purchase BTC using their credit or debit cards. This makes cryptocurrencies highly accessible for enthusiasts and newbies alike. Bitcoin ATMs can actually eliminate the need for crypto brokers as people can carry out crypto transactions easily using them—though fees may still have people looking elsewhere for better rates.

3. Environmental improvements

Crypto skeptics have targeted the environmental impact of blockchain networks, and the issue even haunts some crypto enthusiasts.

Bitcoin mining does require a lot of computational power, which uses a lot of energy. Since most of the cryptocurrency market cap is generated by coins that use proof of work for their mining process, any major shift on energy costs is unlikely for 2022. In addition to the high energy costs of Bitcoin mining, the process also generates high e-waste from discarded mining rigs.

On the other hand, newer cryptocurrencies such as Cardano and Solana have been lauded for adopting a proof-of-stake method, which does not entail high use of energy. And Ethereum, the No. 2 coin by market cap, is on the cusp of shifting to proof-of-stake, which should lead other cryptocurrencies to follow suit and make their processes a lot more environmentally friendly. If adoption of environmentally-friendly crypto grows in 2022, it will be beneficial to the space, even if Bitcoin's energy use doesn't improve.

4. Continued Bitcoin price volatility

Bitcoin is by far the largest cryptocurrency in the world and its price remains the most widely accepted benchmark for the crypto market.

In 2021, Bitcoin displayed a consistently volatile performance by setting an all-time high in April above $60,000, then crashing to less than $30,000 in July, then setting a new all-time high of nearly $70,000 in November, then dropping down to its current level well below $50,000.

That volatility—the characteristic Bitcoin bears point to when dismissing the seriousness of the asset—is likely to continue well into 2022 and beyond considering that the crypto market is not yet fully mature.

The volatility is one reason why many sophisticated traders like Bitcoin—its fluctuations allow for arbitrage opportunities—but also why many asset managers advise caution, and tell clients to only allocate 5% of their portfolio to crypto. Investors should be fully prepared for Bitcoin to plunge just as often as it soars.

What crypto bulls expect is that Bitcoin and others will continue to be volatile in the short term, but will steadily grow in value over the long term, despite periodic steep corrections. Hence, investors need to be patient and not fret over temporary ups and downs, and commit to a long-term outlook.

5. Crypto ETF approvals

When BITO, the first Bitcoin futures ETF (exchange-traded fund), hit the New York Stock Exchange this year, it reached nearly $1 billion in trades on its first day, edging up toward a record debut. It was an immediate confirmation of the long-building investor interest in a crypto product they can buy and trade on regular exchanges.

But BITO does not hold any Bitcoin—it's a way for retail investors to get exposure to Bitcoin futures, not actual BTC. It is not a "spot" ETF. The SEC has been inundated with applications for ETFs that are based on the current price of cryptocurrencies, but has never allowed one. However, based on the performance of BITO and the faith that investors are putting in it, a Bitcoin spot ETF looks highly likely to get through in 2022 or very soon after—along with potential ETFs tied to other cryptocurrencies, which could bring in a flood of new retail investors.

Disclaimer

The views and opinions expressed by the author are for informational purposes only and do not constitute financial, investment, or other advice.

Source: Decrypt.co

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 11:04 pm | Categories: News, Opinion | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t4l

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The Boston Fed Is Hiring a New Director for Its CBDC Project

by Crypto Breaking News

The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston is on the hunt for a new director of product management for Project Hamilton, its ongoing central bank digital currency (CBDC) pilot program.

The new director will work to "forward the Federal Reserve System's efforts to build, manage, and test software to further its understandings of digital currency…[and] continue our efforts to build a hypothetical general purpose digital currency," according to an online job posting.

In partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) Digital Currency Initiative, the Boston Fed has been researching CBDC technology since August 2020.

The project was initially slated to run two to three years. In September, Boston Fed senior vice president Jim Cunha said the project's initial stages were "basically done," but the search for a new director signals that the work is far from over.

Alongside the Digital Dollar Project – led by former Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) chair Chris Giancarlo – Project Hamilton is one of several large-scale attempts to develop and test a CBDC in the United States.

But progress is slow going, especially when compared with the research and implementation of CBDCs outside of the United States, and Fed Chair Jerome Powell has been reticent about the Fed's stance on whether it intends to issue a CBDC.

As private stablecoins like Tether and USD Coin continue to grow in popularity, many on Capitol Hill have raised concerns about their financial backing. Others have expressed doubts about whether private stablecoins and CBDCs can coexist.

Source: CoinDesk.com

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 10:54 pm | Categories: News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t4k

Good Shill Hunting: Why Matt Damon's Crypto.com Ad Is Trending

by Crypto Breaking News

In brief

In a commercial, actor Matt Damon says, "Fortune favors the brave."
He's talking about buying cryptocurrency.

Those highly attuned to the crypto space have been seeing Matt Damon's face on Crypto.com ads since late October, when the Oscar-nominated actor first appeared as the pitchman for the spot and derivatives exchange.

In the ad, Damon tells viewers that "fortune favors the brave" while comparing crypto investors to arctic explorers, the Wright brothers, and astronauts. Several months on, that message is starting to resonate with the larger ad-viewing public, as Matt Damon broke into Twitter's trending topics today.

Though not entirely in a good way.

Adam Johnson, host of the Citations Needed podcast, wrote: "Saddest thing about Matt Damon's macho-baiting crypto pitch where the viewer must ACT NOW or he's a weak pussy is that this is a top 3 classic pitch all financial schemes have used to goad men into forking over their paltry savings. Nothing has changed in 150 years."

saddest thing about Matt Damon's macho-baiting crypto pitch where the viewer must ACT NOW or he's a weak pussy is that this is a top 3 classic pitch all financial schemes have used to goad men into forking over their paltry savings. Nothing has changed in 150 years

— Adam H. Johnson (@adamjohnsonNYC) January 3, 2022

The Guardian writer Carole Cadwalladr said, "There isn't enough yuck in the world to describe Matt Damon advertising a Ponzi scheme."

And anti-crypto programmer Stephen Diehl wrote, "I just can't get over the unfiltered nihilism that suggests that investing in dog coins is like the moon landing."

(Crypto.com declined to comment about the backlash.)

The renewed interest in the ad relates to a targeted advertising push by Crypto.com, which has been going head to head with rival exchange FTX to compete for sports fans. Last evening's Sunday Night Football matchup between division rivals Minnesota Vikings and Green Bay Packers provided many with their first glimpse of the commercial; the telecast is consistently one of the top-rated shows on television, alongside other football telecasts.

Crypto.com and FTX have already announced they will air ads during this year's Super Bowl on February 13. Companies are shelling out up to $6.5 million for 30 seconds of air time. By contrast, a typical 30-second spot for a regular season game would go for between $500,000 and $1 million.

Advertising to sports fans has several advantages in addition to the numbers above, according to sports marketing professor and researcher Kirk Wakefield. First, there's evidence that sports fans are more receptive to ads. A YouGov poll found that they are more likely to enjoy watching ads with favorite celebrities and use advertising in their calculus of what products to buy. Moreover, that ad money can go even further when advertisers act as team sponsors.

Perhaps even more important, U.S. sports fans also like to gamble more than average Americans; they're more supportive of the legalization of online gambling and use betting as a way of connecting with their sport. Crypto's profile as a high-risk investment works to its advantage with such an audience.

Crypto.com knows this. In November, the Singapore-based company helmed by Poland-born CEO Kris Marszalek. spent $700 million to purchase the naming rights to the home of the Los Angeles Clippers and Los Angeles Lakers, the most storied franchise in the NBA. It has a $100 million sponsorship deal with Formula 1 racing, a $175 deal with UFC, and individual deals with the Philadelphia 76ers, French soccer club Paris Saint-Germain, and the NHL's Montreal Canadiens.

FTX is also spending big—it bought the naming rights to the Miami Heat arena and has its own deals with the Golden State Warriors and Washington Wizards, while U.S.-based Coinbase last year became the official cryptocurrency partner of the NBA and WNBA.

Damon's affiliation with Crypto.com—and the exchange's embrace of sports fandom—appears to be working. Data site CoinMarketCap ranks it ahead of FTX and a hair behind Coinbase for spot trading volume over the last 24 hours—though it ranks behind the former for derivatives volume.

Source: Decrypt.co

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 10:46 pm | Categories: News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t4i

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Turkey's Inflation Jumps to 36%, Lira's Value Plummets, Citizens Flock to Stablecoins

by Crypto Breaking News

The Republic of Turkey's economy and the country's native fiat currency the Turkish lira continue to experience turmoil as inflation has risen to 36%. Since this time last year, the lira has lost 44% of its value against the U.S. dollar. Meanwhile, the use of stablecoins in Turkey has skyrocketed and today, 28.96% of all trades with tether are paired against the Turkish lira.

Inflation in Turkey Rises to the Highest Level in 19 Years, TRY Is Tether's Top Pair Capturing 29% of All Trades, TRY Commands 7.20% of BUSD Trades

Reports from the Turkish Statistical Institute on Monday detail that inflation in Turkey has soared to 36%, which is the highest rate it's been in 19 years. Reuters explains that during the month of December a basket of consumer prices shot up to 13.58%.
During the last 12 months, the Turkish lira has lost 44% of its value against the USD. The current inflation has never been higher during Tayyip Erdoğan's rule. Just recently the nation's central bank introduced a concept that encourages people to convert gold into lira time deposits.
Turkey's central bank has slashed the country's benchmark interest rate down four months in a row. The rate cut in mid-December dropped the Turkish lira to a record low of 15.5 against the USD.
2021 has shown that demand for bitcoin (BTC) in Turkey has risen a great deal. At the time of writing, TRY represents 0.69% of all BTC trades and 0.72% of all ETH swaps.

Turkey's demand for stablecoins is much larger than the traditional crypto assets like BTC and ETH. Data shows on January 3, 2021, that the stablecoin tether's (USDT) largest fiat trading pair is TRY with 29.42% of USDT swaps.
The stablecoin issued by Binance BUSD has recorded 7.20% of all trades with the Turkish lira today and TRY is BUSD's second-most traded pair. Turkey doesn't use USDC much, as TRY only represents 0.36% of all USDC swaps today.
Reports have shown that the lira's sluggish year has contributed to a great deal of crypto-asset trades with the fiat currency. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, however, has clarified Turkey's stance on cryptocurrencies and said "we have a separate war, a separate struggle against them."

Metrics indicate that the Turkish inflation is due to a number of factors including the cost of transportation, food and beverage costs, and household items "skyrocketing" in comparison to a year ago today.
In addition to the gold conversion ploy, Erdoğan has urged Turkish businesses and high net worth individuals to help protect the country's native currency. "As long as we don't take our own money as a benchmark, we are doomed to sink. The Turkish lira, our money, that is what we will go forward with. Not with foreign currency," Erdoğan stated on Friday.

What do you think about Turkey's inflation soaring to 36% and the country's demand for stablecoins? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Source: Bitcoin.com

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 10:30 pm | Categories: News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t4c

Ethereum Founder Vitalik Buterin Calls Bitcoin Cash 'Mostly a Failure'

by Crypto Breaking News

In brief

The Ethereum co-founder took to Twitter to recap and update previous views.
During the tweetstorm, Buterin shared a not-so-flattering take of Bitcoin Cash.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin took to Twitter on New Years Day to highlight some of what he's written and said about the blockchain space over the last 10 years and how those views have evolved. During the tweetstorm, Buterin also shared his current thoughts on Bitcoin Cash, an altcoin that was created in 2017 by forking the original Bitcoin blockchain.

"I was optimistic about Bitcoin Cash specifically, because I agreed with the big-blocker arguments in the scaling war more than the small-blocker argument," Buterin wrote on Saturday in response to a 2017 tweet he wrote about BCH.

9. I was optimistic about Bitcoin Cash specifically, because I agreed with the big-blocker arguments in the scaling war more than the small-blocker arguments.https://t.co/PgVHuFGadM

— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) January 1, 2022

The Russian-Canadian programmer who wrote the Ethereum whitepaper in 2013 then laid out why he sees Bitcoin Cash as "mostly a failure."

"Today, I would call BCH mostly a failure," Buterin tweeted. "My main takeaway: communities formed around a rebellion, even if they have a good cause, often have a hard time long term, because they value bravery over competence and are united around resistance rather than a coherent way forward."

Crypto Twitter was quick to respond to Buterin's critique. "It was not a good cause," wrote Blockstream co-founder and CEO Adam Back. "It was a rejected corporate takeover attempt. Learn history man. You supported it even. Meh."

It was not a good cause, it was a rejected corporate takeover attempt. Learn history man. You supported it even. Meh.

— Adam Back (@adam3us) January 2, 2022

"Projection is a bitch," wrote The Bitcoin Matrix Podcast host Cedric Youngelman.

"That is a very interesting characterization of rebellions," wrote Id Software founder John Carmack.

"Failure?" wrote author, programmer, and Bitcoin Cash maximalist Cyprian, formerly known as Vin Armani. "How much gas would I pay to send $1 in USDT on Ethereum right now? (Hint: $20). Sending $1 in USDT on BCH costs less than a cent. What was the mission, again?"

Failure? 🤔

How much gas would I pay to send $1 in USDT on Ethereum right now? (Hint: $20)

Sending $1 in USDT on BCH costs less than a cent. 🤷

What was the mission, again? https://t.co/1s0nVJgYRZ

— Cyprian (@cyprianous) January 2, 2022

Buterin co-founded Ethereum in 2015 alongside Gavin Wood, Charles Hoskinson, Anthony Di Iorio, and Joseph Lubin. In 2017, Bitcoin Cash (BCH) hard forked (or split) from the main Bitcoin network. The following year, Bitcoin Cash saw a split of its own into Bitcoin ABC (Adjustable Blocksize Cap), which retained the name "Bitcoin Cash," and Bitcoin SV (Bitcoin Satoshi Vision). Supporters of both altcoins have claimed each to be "the real" Bitcoin.

Source: Decrypt.co

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 10:16 pm | Categories: News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t4g

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Happy Birthday, Bitcoin! Industry players share a few words

by Crypto Breaking News

To celebrate the Bitcoin network 's 13th anniversary, Cointelegraph gathered birthday messages from industry players to mark the occasion. Following a hash rate all-time high, Bitcoin (BTC) has officially reached its adolescent years and industry experts weigh in on its future.

Beimnet Abebe, VP of Principal Trading at Galaxy Digital:

"13 years ago Bitcoin was released. Although its creation garnered little fanfare, drawing the eyes and attention of only a few esoteric coders, its release would prove monumental, enabling anyone, anywhere in the world to access digitally scarce money for the first time and opening the door to protocols that would go on to power the next iteration of the Web."

Hassan Bassiri, VP of Portfolio Management at ARCA Funds:

"BTC is the gateway drug which opened everyone's eyes to how bug digital sets can truly be. As the BTC ecosystem grows and it becomes a more productive asset in terms of lend/borrow and yield, we can expect more entrants, research and opportunities with other currencies and blockchains."

Laura Vidiella, Operations at FTX US Derivatives and former VP of Institutional Sales at Paradigm:

"The BTC ecosystem will continue to see increased growth in products and capital in 2022. With the increasing offering in derivatives and structured products, traditional entities are deploying more capital by investing in yield generating strategies they are familiar with."

Ian Kane, CEO & Co-Founder of Unbanked.com:

"Its creation transcended time zones, borders, and governments - and financially empowered millions of people across the world. It is a testament to human ingenuity and that one person (or group of people) anywhere in the world can create something with an impact bigger than themselves. The next 13 years are going to be even more influential than the last as everyone moves towards a Bitcoin standard."

Marc Yaklofsky, Head of Communications and Public Relations at Genesis Capital:

"There is an old Japanese proverb that goes, 'Beginning is easy, continuing is hard.' The journey to change the world has only just begun. Continue on, Bitcoin!"

Rich Rosenblum, Founder of GSR Markets:

"It is appropriate that Bitcoin is celebrating its bar mitzvah today. 2022 will be its first full year with an ETF, and wide spread participation and adoption. Mazel Tov!"

Meanwhile, President of El Salvador Nayib Bukele and Bitcoin proponent speculated that BTC will hit $100,000 this year.

2022 predictions on #Bitcoin:

•Will reach $100k
•2 more countries will adopt it as legal tender
•Will become a major electoral issue in US elections this year
•Bitcoin City will commence construction
•Volcano bonds will be oversubscribed
•Huge surprise at @TheBitcoinConf

— Nayib Bukele (@nayibbukele) January 2, 2022

BTC rang in the new year below $47,000 and was $46,100 at time of publication. Whether you are bullish or bearish, the asset has come a long way in terms of adoption and security.

Source: Cointelegraph.com

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 10:13 pm | Categories: News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t4e

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Ethereum Inventor Starts 2022 Revisiting Ideas, Where Was He Wrong?

by Crypto Breaking News

The inventor of Ethereum Vitalik Buterin has come out of a self-imposed Twitter hibernation period, as he called via his personal account. On his first post of 2022, Buterin reviewed some of the ideas, proposals, and thoughts from this past decade to find if he maintains the same position as when he first talked about them.

The inventor of Ethereum listed over 10 ideas, many of which have been a source for controversy amongst the crypto community. Buterin begun his "mini-tweetstorm" with Bitcoin, a project in which he was very active during its early stage.

In 2013, Buterin published an article talking about Bitcoin's capacity to help people suffering from inflation and central bank money policy in places like Iran and Argentina. At the time, the inventor of Ethereum said that the cryptocurrency was capable of offering respite, but due to its "internationality" and not its limited supply.

In that sense, he predicted the rise of stablecoins and assets with less volatility than Bitcoin in such places. Now, he said:

I actually went to Argentina! My verdict: generally correct. Cryptocurrency adoption is high but stablecoin adoption is really high too; lots of businesses operate in USDT. Though of course, if USD itself starts showing more problems this could change.

Moreover, Buterin revisited his position on regulation. Around the same time as when he published his article on Bitcoin's supply, he wrote about this cryptocurrency's potential to "resist governments" and circumvent regulations.

Now, Buterin believes the crypto industry must use a combination of technological robustness, public legitimacy, and decentralization in other to "thrive". The alternative, a fully hostile environment, could stagnate Bitcoin and any other cryptocurrency.

Conversely, the inventor of Ethereum admitted that in 2015 his estimation from when this cryptocurrency was going to be able to migrate to a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) were wronged. At that time, Buterin expected Ethereum to transition in 6 month or 1 year.

The migration ended up taking much longer with the deployment of the Beacon Chain, the PoS blockchain that will support Eth 2.0, taking place in 2020. Buterin said:

My projections from 2015 of when we will get PoS and sharding. Honestly, these were very wrong and worth laughing at (…)

How Ethereum And Its Developers Have Evolved In A Decade

In that sense, Buterin admitted that he underestimated the "complexity of software development" as he classified his 2014 ideas as "too complex". He added:

Today the Ethereum research team values simplicity much more – both simplicity of the final design *and* simplicity of the path to getting there. More appreciation of pragmatic compromises.

In the same tone as the rest of his Twitter thread, where Buterin showed transparency and the capacity to admit mistakes, he addressed the congestion and high transaction fees that have affected the Ethereum blockchain. In 2017, Buterin famously said that "the internet of money" needs to be able to process cheap transactions.

Buterin claims this remains one of the goals for this blockchain. Therefore, why "we're spending so much time working on scalability".

Buterin also admitted he was wrong on Bitcoin Cash and called the cryptocurrency a failure. He also admitted feeling "proud" about its proposals to build Uniswap, or more specifically a decentralize exchanges on this network, and many other use cases for Ethereum which "basically predicted DeFi".

In that sense, he summarized his experience across a decade by calling out his early "naiveness" and lack of appreciation for the challenges that come out of running large organization with complex politics and cultures.

* On tech, I was more often right on abstract ideas than on production software dev issues. Had to learn to understand the latter over time
* I have a deeper appreciation now of the need for even more simplicity than I thought we needed

— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) January 1, 2022

Related Reading | Bullish Signal? Ethereum Market Dominance Sitting Above 20%

As of press time, ETH trades at $3,775 with sideways movement in the past day.

Ethereum ETH ETHUSD — ETH moving sideways in the 4-hour chart. Source: ETHUSD Tradingview

Source: NewsBTC.com

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 10:00 pm | Categories: Ethereum, News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t4a

Ethereum Betting Site Polymarket Hit With $1.4M Fine, Ordered to Shut Down: CFTC

by Crypto Breaking News

Polymarket, a cryptocurrency betting website, was today hit with a $1.4 million fine by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and ordered to shut down by January 14.

The regulatory body said in a statement Monday that Polymarket offered "off-exchange event-based binary options contracts" and "failed to obtain designation as a designated contract market (DCM) or registration as a swap execution facility (SEF)."

In other words, the website allegedly let people make bets without being registered.

Polymarket lets its users make simple yes or no bets with cryptocurrencies on a number of different topics. These include anything from whether annual inflation in the USA will be 7.0% or more in December 2021 to if Donald Trump will be the 2024 Republican presidential nominee.

"All derivatives markets must operate within the bounds of the law regardless of the technology used, and particularly including those in the so-called decentralized finance or 'DeFi' space," acting director of enforcement Vincent McGonagle said in the statement, referring to the non-custodial lending, borrowing and trading applications that exist mostly on Ethereum.

"Market participants should proactively engage with the CFTC to ensure that our markets remain robust, transparent, and afford customers the protection provided under the CEA and our regulations."

The CFTC said that Polymarket had been illegally offering event-based binary options since June 2020. It added that Polymarket had offered 900 different event markets since it started and binary options constitute swaps under the CFTC's jurisdiction. They can then only be offered on a registered exchange.

The CFTC is no stranger to coming down hard on crypto companies that fall foul of U.S. trading regulations: it last year fined Tether $41 million and launched an investigation into the world's biggest exchange, Binance.

Source: Decrypt.co

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 9:49 pm | Categories: News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t47

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Garry Kasparov: Crypto Means Freedom

by Crypto Breaking News

Garry Kasparov knows math. He knows logic, strategy and decision-making. Widely regarded as the greatest chess player in the history of mankind, the Russian grandmaster – ranked No. 1 from 1984 to 2005 – sees the world with a certain clarity.

So it will delight many in the blockchain industry to learn that Kasparov, easily one of the smartest people alive, is now a champion of cryptocurrency. And it's partly because of math. Kasparov has spent his "retirement" opposing Russian President Vladimir Putin (a defiance that once got him tossed in jail), fighting for humanitarian causes and serving as chairman of the Human Rights Foundation (a nonprofit that strongly supports bitcoin as a freedom-giving tool). Now he views crypto as a way to check government power. Bitcoin offers protection against rampant government spending, says Kasparov, "because you're protected by math" – by the logic of the code itself.

Read more: Jeff Wilser – Mobile Bitcoin Gaming Is Powering Up on Lightning

Kasparov also sees merit in non-fungible tokens. In December, in partnership with 1Kind, he dropped a series of 34 NFTs that showcase iconic moments from his life: the 1985 match that crowned him as the youngest world chess champion, the epic battle against International Business Machines' artificial intelligence-powered "Deep Blue" and speeches against totalitarian governments.

It's this battle against totalitarianism that has defined the current chapter of his life, and Kasparov sees crypto as part of that struggle. Or as the grandmaster puts it, "I believe that supporting crypto is an important part of my contribution to the future of humanity."

This interview has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.

CoinDesk: How'd you get into the crypto space?

Kasparov: If you followed my career and read about my early interest in computers and technology, you should not be surprised that I was very excited when I recognized the value of cryptocurrencies and NFTs.

This goes all the way back to the '80s; I always tried to be at the cutting edge. It started with chess. But I also saw an opportunity to use computers and new tools to advance individual freedoms. It's my belief that technology should help people fight back against the power of the state.

How do cryptocurrencies fit into that?

Cryptocurrencies become an inseparable part of or progress, because the whole world is moving digital. And if the economy becomes more digital, so does the money. Another philosophical reason is that … governments [have] unlimited opportunities to print money. And printing money is the most exquisite form of borrowing from us and from future generations.

And I believe that cryptocurrencies – with bitcoin as a standard – offer a protection against this onslaught of the government, because you're protected by math. You're protected by the limited number of any code behind the respective currency. Cryptocurrencies, and all the products related to cryptocurrencies, are absolutely vital for the future development of our world.

Garry Kasparov's analysis notebook from January 1976, part of his recently issued NFT collection. (Garry Kasparov/1Kind)

How, specifically, did you first get involved?

My first indirect involvement was through the Human Rights Foundation. Because in the Human Rights Foundation, we had a few experts that have been advocating cryptocurrencies at a very early stage. And as an organization, we offer support to the dissidents around the world.

We thought about using crypto as a way to help them to get material help, because in many countries it was impossible – and it's still impossible – to actually get proper funding. So crypto offered an opportunity to support these activists indirectly. And the more I learned about it, the more interested I got in the whole mechanism.

Can you elaborate on why this is important to you?

Look, crypto is a controversial thing. Because you hear a lot of people say, "Oh, that's money laundering. That helps bad guys." True. I mean, no technology is uniquely good, because it's technology. Humans still have a monopoly for evil.

So, I've been doing a lot of talks about it, and I'll say, "Look, it's not the magic wand or the terminator. It's not a harbinger of utopia or dystopia. It's a tool." Crypto is a tool. And of course it could benefit some bad guys with maligned intentions. But it's about the balance, it's about trade-offs. And I think the balance is so much in favor of progress.

It's like the dot-com bubble. 99.9% will be gone. But those that survive will become the Googles of the world.

You mentioned crypto's ability to help protect human rights in undemocratic countries. What do you see as the benefits in democratic countries?

In the democratic countries in America and Europe, trillions of dollars will be printed. I'm an American taxpayer. And I understand that you need to build new infrastructure. But I'm not happy to see that the government has a free hand to use my taxes, basically to devalue [the dollar].

So I think it's very important that technology would offer me an opportunity to fight back, to protect my hard-earned fortune. And I think that bitcoin – which I believe is online gold – and other cryptocurrencies are the way to the future. I'm not a financial expert, but I would not be surprised if, I would not be surprised if, in 10 years' time, the dollar will be replaced by the basket of coins as a standard.

I'm guessing it's safe to say you own bitcoin?

I'm a great believer in the future of coins.

I suppose if you believe that, then it would almost be foolish not to be buying Bitcoin?

Yes.

Thoughts on the future of bitcoin?

Well, I think bitcoin will remain as a standard. But of course it cannot stay alone. So that's why you have more coins coming in. It's a natural process. Now we have thousands and thousands of coins. It's like the dot-com bubble. Ninety-nine point nine percent will be gone. But those that survive will become the Googles of the world. I'm not here to judge which one, but there will be few that will survive – that's why I said basket of coins.

In the past, your championing of human rights has gotten you in trouble with the Russian authorities. Given that background, are you concerned that your support for cryptocurrency can get you in hot water?

Well, this is definitely a no. [In the past,] I was in hot water. To give you an idea, one of the NFTs is a picture of my first arrest in Russia. So it's all reflected in my NFT. Look, this is much less perilous than to attack Putin directly.

I grew up in the Soviet Union, and learned from my mother and my teacher the motto of Soviet dissidents, "Do what you must, and so be it." And I believe that supporting crypto is an important part of my contribution to the future of humanity. And, again, I [view it] as a much less risky endeavor than speaking publicly about Putin or other dictators.

How would you describe your NFT project?

I don't pretend to be a great expert in NFTs, but I'm not aware of anything similar that exists. It's a collection of 30-plus NFTs that are related to special events in my life and special people in my life. This is a story that connects you to very personal moments. Every NFT has a video message.

It's all connected to the physical assets, like my notebooks from the '70s. Thanks to my late mother, who preserved this archive, you can actually look at me scribbling in 1973.

The NFTs all reflect the moments of me growing up, learning from my mother, and from my teachers, and then fighting for the title, and then shifting my life and moving into human rights and computers.

Interesting. This feels almost like a memoir, in a sense. I've worked with CEOs before to collaborate on their memoirs, and one thing I've found is that the process can almost be emotional, or even a bit therapeutic. Did you have any sense of that?

The whole story starts from a very emotional moment, though it's a tragic one. My mother died on Christmas day last year, from COVID. And I couldn't be next to her, and that was a really big blow because we were so close.

While she was alive, I didn't even know that she preserved all these archives. She was not happy to talk about the past. That's why I [held off] on any major publication that would highlight [the past]. I wrote two books, but not the one that could tell everything.

After she died, I thought it would be right for me [to honor] her memory to actually start doing things. I'm doing a documentary now; it's in Russian. The first segment will be ready early next year. And I hope I can cover my entire chess career, and it's for her. It's dedicated for her. And this [NFT] project was inspired by this tragedy. I thought it was very important to show my personal life and her connection, and why she was so important.

And so I spoke to 1Kind, and 10% of the sales will go to Kasparov Chess Foundation, and this will be a scholarship under her name for all the great talents raised by single mothers.

Amazing. Congrats on the NFT project, and best of luck.

Source: CoinDesk.com

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 9:35 pm | Categories: News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t44

Ape Theft Is an Expensive Way to Learn About Crypto's Security Philosophy

by Crypto Breaking News

Last week, an NFT trader named Todd Kramer made a simple plea on Twitter.

"I been hacked," he wrote. "All my apes gone. This just sold please help me."

Kramer was referring to his cache of Bored Ape Yacht Club non-fungible tokenss – now the single most valuable franchise of crypto collectibles. They'll run you about $276,000, at the cheapest, and Kramer had eight of them, along with seven from a spin-off collection called the Mutant Ape Yacht Club, before his tokens were siphoned away in a phishing scam.

Almost immediately, Kramer's "apes gone" post went viral.

This article is excerpted from The Node, CoinDesk's daily roundup of the most pivotal stories in blockchain and crypto news. You can subscribe to get the full newsletter here.

NFTs already have a terrible reputation among the non-crypto crowd (which is to say, most people), thanks to their fraught relationship with the concept of "digital property rights" and the environmental impact of proof-of-work blockchains like Ethereum. More than a few brands have reneged on planned NFT drops after facing intense backlash on social media.

And while it's not exactly surprising that the anti-NFT crowd would find a little schadenfreude in Kramer's tweet, what's more so is that crypto's true believers – the kinds of people who are already immersed in NFTs – were equally derisive.

When people don't put there collection in cold wallets.... rip. It really is your fault.

— The Grambino Pionke (@PionkeThe) December 30, 2021

That's because the culture of crypto places an outsize emphasis on personal responsibility. One of the nice things about banks and other centralized financial institutions is that they're required to take certain steps to protect your money. Those protections can come in the form of deposit insurance and fraud protection, but also little security features like "forgotten password" mechanisms.

So-called "unhosted" crypto wallets like MetaMask ask users to keep track of their own private keys; if you lose them, there's no way of getting them back. "Not your keys, not your coins," goes one longtime crypto mantra.

user error, not a hack

— cryptohuntz 🧙‍♂️ (3,3) (🎩,🎩) (@cryptohuntz) December 30, 2021

There's something inherently silly about having a significant chunk of your net worth (Kramer claims it was around $2.2 million) tied up in illiquid JPEG files. But for me, the "apes gone" controversy mostly speaks to a kind of widespread hypocrisy in the NFT market.

The billionaire Mark Cuban, who spent the first half of last year breathlessly championing DeFi ("decentralized finance") programs and pumping his crypto investments in appearances on major TV news networks, made a similar plea last summer after some of his holdings went to zero. In a statement to Bloomberg, Cuban explicitly called for greater regulation of the crypto space. He was a lot quieter in the second half of the year.

"Good always defeats evil" pic.twitter.com/rjTs5YwujG

— Cyime (@CyimeFox) January 1, 2022

Consumer protection laws, though they're never perfectly conceived or enforced, exist for a reason. Saturated, unregulated markets like crypto are natural targets for scammers, and even the savviest traders can lose millions with a stray click.

OpenSea, the largest NFT marketplace, was able to halt trading on the stolen assets and flag them as having been involved in a scam. But because OpenSea is mostly just a front-end trading interface, and Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs are hosted on the Ethereum blockchain, the company couldn't actually return any of the tokens.

See also: NFT Forgeries Aren't Going Away | The Node

He did get some of them back, though. And ironically, the Twitter users dunking on Kramer may have played a crucial role, amplifying Kramer's plea and rallying members of the Bored Ape community to help retrieve the tokens.

Kramer isn't the first trader to lose his Bored Apes to a phishing scam. Another NFT enthusiast, Calvin Becerra, made a similar splash on Twitter after losing three tokens in November. He even wrote a note to the apes' captors, asking to work out a deal for their safe return (he also listed the note as an NFT, naturally).

Accepting decentralized infrastructure means accepting these risks. If you're going to advocate for a new, independent financial system – one without regulation, fraud protections and many of the other safeguards that help people hang onto their money – then there's no point in appealing to centralized mediators when the system starts to work against you.

Source: CoinDesk.com

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 9:14 pm | Categories: News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t3W

Market Wrap: Bitcoin Celebrates Birthday on Dull Note, Analysts Expect Sideways Trading

by Crypto Breaking News

Bitcoin traded sideways at around $46,000 on Monday and is down about 8% over the past week.

Bullish sentiment appears to be low despite bitcoin marking its 13th birthday. On Jan. 3, 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto mined the first block, the Genesis Block, which marked the beginning of the Bitcoin blockchain.

For now, technical indicators suggest nearby support could encourage short-term buying activity. Still, long-term momentum has slowed, which could point to low or negative crypto returns this month.

Some analysts are monitoring blockchain data for clues on BTC's future price direction. For example, net exchange flows have increased recently, signaling a bearish shift in investor sentiment similar to the one seen before the price crash last May.

Other metrics, however, show improvements that could boost overall market sentiment.

The Bitcoin blockchain's hashrate set new highs on Sunday night after crossing previous highs from mid-2021. Hashrate refers to the amount of computational power used by miners dedicated to the minting of new bitcoins and verification of new transactions on the Bitcoin network.

Latest Prices

Bitcoin (BTC): $45,941, -2.18%
Ether (ETH): $3,701, -2.76%
S&P 500: $4,796, +0.64%
Gold: $1,801, -1.46%
10-year Treasury yield closed at 1.63%

Lower blockchain transactions

The chart below shows the recent decline in transaction counts on Bitcoin's blockchain. In previous cycles, an initial burst of activity supported rallying prices, but recently, transactions failed to sustain any meaningful momentum, according to crypto data firm Glassnode.

"Until there is further expansion in demand for Bitcoin block space, it can be reasonably expected that price action will be somewhat uneventful, and likely sideways at a macro scale," Glassnode wrote in a blog post on Monday.

Bitcoin number of transactions (Glassnode)

Altcoin roundup

Shiba Inu launches beta version of DAO: The dogecoin rival is aiming to provide its users with more control over crypto projects and pairs on the ShibaSwap platform. The first phase called "DAO 1″ will be implemented within the next few days.
Convex Finance crosses $20B in locked value: The decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol allows users to earn fees without locking Curve's native tokens, a feature that has helped attract billions of dollars in capital. Convex's native token (CVX) traded at $47 at the time of writing, down about 4% over the past week.
Altcoins outperformed in 2021: Tokens linked to the metaverse, "Ethereum-killers" and meme coins dominated gains during another bullish year for cryptocurrencies. Prices for the top-performing coin rose 162-fold. Read more here.

Relevant News

Other markets

Most digital assets in the CoinDesk 20 ended the day lower.

Largest winners:

Asset	Ticker	Returns	Sector
Algorand	ALGO	+9.3%	Smart Contract Platform
Cosmos	ATOM	+6.4%	Smart Contract Platform
Chainlink	LINK	+2.7%	Computing

Largest losers:

Asset	Ticker	Returns	Sector
Solana	SOL	−4.1%	Smart Contract Platform
Polygon	MATIC	−3.6%	Smart Contract Platform
Filecoin	FIL	−3.4%	Computing

Sector classifications are provided via the Digital Asset Classification Standard (DACS), developed by CoinDesk Indices to provide a reliable, comprehensive, and standardized classification system for digital assets. The CoinDesk 20 is a ranking of the largest digital assets by volume on trusted exchanges.

Source: CoinDesk.com

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 9:13 pm | Categories: News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t3X

LinksDAO NFT Sale Books First $10M Toward Buying an Actual Golf Course

by Crypto Breaking News

Country clubs and NFTs collided Sunday when LinksDAO, a decentralized autonomous organization, became one step closer to buying its own crowdfunded golf course.

The DAO successfully sold out of its debut collection of non-fungible tokens, raising $10.5 million to fund the project's operations. Further capital will have to be raised to buy the actual golf course, said project lead Mike Dudas.

LinksDAO, of course, comes in the wake of ConstitutionDAO, a crypto-enthused group that raised over $40 million in ETH to purchase an original copy of the U.S. Constitution in November.

While the ConstitutionDAO effort ultimately failed, its PEOPLE token lives on with a market cap north of $600 million, netting initial investors some serious gains and spawning spin-off efforts hoping to learn from its mistakes. (As for PEOPLE, it exists as a governance token with nothing to govern.)

Wen token?

In addition to the completed NFT sales, LinksDAO says it will launch a LINKS governance token soon.

"I'm not able to promise a specific date, but the goal is to launch the governance token as early in 2022 as possible," said Dudas, a staffer at blockchain infrastructure firm Paxos and the founder and former CEO of crypto media outlet The Block. "We need to do it in a compliant way and one where the token distribution and governing rights are such that we can ensure broad participation in governance."

Governance tokens are used to determine influence and power within DAOs. Holders of LINKS (not to be confused with Chainlink's LINK token) could decide the geographic location of the proposed golf club, vote on proposals related to the project or simply resell their tokens on the open market – as many did with ConstitutionDAO's PEOPLE token when the project itself was promptly scuttled.

Holders of either of LinksDAO's two NFTs are expected to receive an allocation of LINKS, with holders of the higher-tier Global Membership receiving four times the number of tokens awarded to the lower-tier Leisure Membership.

"We aim to show that literally anything is possible when you have a passionate group of people who move with inspiration and conviction at exceptional speed," said Dudas. "We hope it shows sports communities that folks in crypto have passion, new ideas, capital and conviction to create new models of membership, fun and participation."

A DAO for golfers

LinksDAO's mission is to "create the modern golf and leisure club" and "reimagine the country club," offering a sports-centric experiment amid a burgeoning DAO ecosystem.

"We were looking at Gary Vaynerchuk's Flyfish Club model – purchase an NFT to join the membership club at a restaurant – and had recently seen the ConstitutionDAO model of collective organization and funding of a common goal," Dudas told CoinDesk.

"We thought that we could combine the best of both of those initiatives into something really large and special, creating the world's best golf and leisure club," he said.

The mission in a nutshell pic.twitter.com/JV17oWXdHf

— LinksDAO (@linksdao) December 18, 2021

The group's vision comes as DAOs increasingly eye real-world assets, thinking up creative projects to onboard first-time crypto users. It also draws from NFT projects like Bored Ape Yacht Club, which have proven that inclusion in an exclusive community is a winning value-add.

Since launch, LinksDAO has built a fervent following on social media, raking up over 16,000 followers on Twitter and almost 12,000 members in its Discord chat.

Membership NFTs

On Sunday evening, the public minting of LinksDAO's two NFTs – the "Leisure Membership" and higher tier "Global Membership" – sold out in mere hours, generating $10.5 million in funds from a collection of 9,090 NFTs. (LinksDAO held back 10% of its NFTs at auction. The group plans to use the reserve NFTs for giveaways and to build partnerships with incumbent golf organizations and athletes.)

LinksDAO says buying the NFTs would provide their holders exclusive perks, such as the right to purchase a membership at the first physical club LinksDAO acquires, discounts on golf tee-times and access to members-only Discord channels, including guest appearances by golf, business and celebrity luminaries.

The higher-tier Global Membership would have all the benefits of the Leisure Membership, as well as the right to purchase one additional membership at the first physical LinksDAO club, and four times the governance rights via a prospective token drop, among other additional perks.

While the geographic location of the course will ultimately be decided by a vote of its token holders, a representative told CoinDesk the preliminary interest is largely concentrated in the greater New York and Miami areas.

At mint, Leisure Memberships sold for 0.18 ETH (approximately $676) and Global Memberships sold for 0.72 ETH (approximately $2,703).

Just minted a @linksdao membership because I love golf 🏌️‍♂️⛳️ pic.twitter.com/yt8RaePXgD

— Leo 🌄🔺 (@Best_coder_NA) January 2, 2022

As of Monday afternoon, the NFTs were trading on secondary marketplace OpenSea at a floor price of 0.3 ETH (approximately $1,126) for the Leisure Membership and 0.89 ETH (approximately $3,341) for the Global Membership.

Since launch, the project has generated over 875 ETH (approximately $3.3 million) in sales volume on OpenSea, with 7.5% of trading volume royalties awarded back to the LinksDAO treasury.

'We are buying a golf club'

The first and perhaps largest challenge for LinksDAO is raising the funds to purchase a PGA-certified golf course, which can run upwards of tens of millions, before even factoring in operational costs.

"It is not cheap to buy and operate a world-class golf operation," said Dudas. "To do so, we will absolutely need additional funding."

We are buying a golf course

— LinksDAO (@linksdao) January 2, 2022

If it succeeds, LinksDAO will also need to do some clever accounting.

DAOs may not hold traditional assets such as real estate or corporations for compliance reasons. The group is currently in talks with legal experts to create a separate operating entity called LinksDAO Inc., which will own the physical asset as well as serve as the day-to-day operating company for the prospective golf course.

LinksDAO's inability to skirt centralization speaks to an issue many DAOs have faced – their fundraising ability often dwarfs their operational capacity.

Pending legal nuances, LinksDAO also plans to give its DAO members the first opportunity to purchase into the operating company. If realized, some NFT purchasers could ostensibly receive equity ownership of a physical golf course and receive cash flows from the operation.

The group has floated the idea of turning to traditional capital markets to fund its prospective purchase, such as private equity and venture capital firms.

Source: CoinDesk.com

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 9:05 pm | Categories: News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t3U

President Bukele Predicts BTC At $100k With Hope That More Countries Adopt It As Legal Tender

by Crypto Breaking News

El Salvador President Nayib Bukele tweeted his forecasts for Bitcoin in the year on New Year's Day 2022, making some rather bullish predictions.

Bukele Make Bullish Predictions On Bitcoin

Under Bukele's presidency, El Salvador became the first government to embrace Bitcoin as legal tender last year as a countermeasure to the country's rising inflation. Since the country's legalization, the president has purchased 1,370 BTC for the country's reserve and spent the unrealized gains in new infrastructure projects like a hospital and a school.

In 2022, President Bukele expects two more countries to join El Salvador in adopting Bitcoin as legal tender. He also predicted a bull run that would push the price of Bitcoin to a new all-time high of $100,000.

2022 predictions on #Bitcoin:

•Will reach $100k
•2 more countries will adopt it as legal tender
•Will become a major electoral issue in US elections this year
•Bitcoin City will commence construction
•Volcano bonds will be oversubscribed
•Huge surprise at @TheBitcoinConf

— Nayib Bukele 🇸🇻 (@nayibbukele) January 2, 2022

Out of the six predictions he made, it appears that "two more countries will adopt it as legal tender" is rather cogent.w On September 7, 2021, El Salvador became the first government to make BTC legal tender, igniting a revolution that drew the attention of many other world leaders. This is an intriguing statement, especially after El Salvador's ambassador to the United States, Milena Mayorga, stated that if Bitcoin adoption is successful in El Salvador, other countries "will follow."

Another point worth noting is that he believes Bitcoin will become a big election topic in the United States this year. Parliamentary elections will be held in the country, and this might be one of the key issues of conversation in the United States. This might have a significant impact on the cryptocurrency industry and how businesses manage virtual currencies.

Many politicians have expressed support for the asset class, including 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang and Republican senators Cynthia Lummis and Warren Davidson. Other politicians in the United States have expressed their concerns about the issue. Senator Elizabeth Warren, for example, believes it favors just the wealthy. As more lawmakers get educated on the subject, it will be fascinating to see how Bitcoin regulation develops in the United States.

bitcoin el salvador

BTC/USD Fall further from christmas high. Source: TradingView

Bitcoin City To Begin

El Salvador is also planning to begin development on the so-called Bitcoin City in 2022. This might be critical for Bitcoin businesses and investors looking to develop across the continent. He predicts that volcano bonds will be oversubscribed and that there is going to be a huge surprise at the Bitcoin Conference this year.

Late last year, El Salvador announced plans to issue $1 billion in bonds to fund the purchase of more bitcoin as well as electricity and mining infrastructure. The project's geothermal energy will be aided by the future city's proximity to the volcano.

In a follow-up tweet, the President stated, "This tweet will age well." Bukele's predictions appear to be certain, but we'll have to wait and see when and if they all come true this year.

Featured image by BBC, Chart from TradingView.com

Source: NewsBTC.com

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 9:02 pm | Categories: Bitcoin, News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t3S

CFTC Fines Crypto Betting Service Polymarket $1.4M for Unregistered Swaps

by Crypto Breaking News

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) fined crypto betting service Polymarket $1.4 million, ordered it to shut down its various markets and offer users full refunds on charges the company failed to register with the regulator.

The CFTC announced the penalties Monday, ordering Polymarket (the operating name for Blockratize, Inc.) to wind down all of its markets because it did not seek a Designated Contract Market (DCM) or Swap Execution Facility (SEF) registration, two requirements under the Commodity Exchange Act for companies offering binary options in the U.S.

Polymarket is a crypto betting service which allows users to pick one of at least two options on given trades, such as who might win the 2020 presidential election. According to an order published by the CFTC, Polymarket offered at least 900 such markets over the last 18 months.

These markets are swaps under federal law.

Polymarket cooperated with the investigation, according the CFTC's press release, leading to a reduced fine. The company will stop offering markets by Jan. 14, 2022 and commit to making all funds available to users by Jan. 24, according to the order. Polymarket will also cease and desist any further violations of the CEA, though it does not appear the company itself will be shut down.

In a statement, Acting Enforcement Director Vincent McGonagle said "all derivatives markets must operate within the bounds of the law regardless of the technology used, and particularly including those in the so-called decentralized finance or 'DeFi' space."

A Polymarket spokesperson did not immediately provide a comment.

Bloomberg reported that Polymarket was under investigation in October 2021.

Source: CoinDesk.com

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 8:53 pm | Categories: News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t3O

Bitcoin traders expect $60K by month's end, marking $45K as 'accumulation'

by Crypto Breaking News

The bearish pressures facing the cryptocurrency market at the end of 2021 have continued into the first week of 2022 after the price of Bitcoin (BTC) dropped below $47,000 on Jan. 1 and the asset still faces stiff headwinds on the shorter timeframe charts.

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that, after climbing above $47,500 to start the new year, the price of BTC fell under pressure in the afternoon on Dec. 3. Currently, the price has dropped to $46,500 where bulls now look to mount a defense.

*BTC/USDT 4-hour chart. Source: TradingView*

Here's a look at what several analysts in the market are saying about the path ahead for Bitcoin in 2022 as the global economic system continues to grapple with inflation.

BTC needs to reclaim support at $48,670

Analysis of the weekly price performance for BTC was addressed by crypto trader and pseudonymous Twitter user Rekt Capital, who posted the following chart highlighting the main support and resistance area at $48,670.

As shown in the above chart, "BTC has successfully retested the black diagonal as support" according to Rekt Capital, and "has been doing so for three weeks straight."

The weakness to start the year has positioned BTC below the established support zone highlighted by the red horizontal line. Rekt Capital sees this as a potential target to keep an eye on in the near term.

Rekt Capital said,

"However, recent weekly close means that the red horizontal (~$48,670) has been lost as support. BTC could bounce soon in an effort to reclaim red as support."

Look out for $46,000 in the short term

The current weakness for BTC was also addressed by analyst and Cointelegraph contributor Michaël van de Poppe, who posted the following tweet that suggests that the rejection at $48,000 could lead the price to slide below $46,000.

#Bitcoin rejected at the $48K level, through which it's still seeking support to be hit.

Looking at the region at $46K. pic.twitter.com/z0v88Ls58v

— Michaël van de Poppe (@CryptoMichNL) January 3, 2022

Despite the short-term struggles for Bitcoin, the long-term outlook continues to look bullish for many investors. Among them includes analyst and pseudonymous Twitter user GalaxyBTC, who posted the following chart outlining a possible breakout in Q1 of 2022.

*BTC/USDT 6-hour chart. Source: Twitter*

GalaxyBTC said,

"It's just a matter of time before BTC breaks out, and the longer it takes, the harder it will pump. Q1 is up only."

Bullish cup and handle formation hints at moon by March

This positive future outlook for BTC expressed by GalaxyBTC was echoed by crypto trader and pseudonymous Twitter user Bobby Axelrod, who posted the following chart outlining the predicted trajectory of a cup and handle formation on the Bitcoin chart in the months ahead.

Bobby Axelrod said,

"The "HANDLE" will end up looking something like this imo: $58,000–$60,000k mid to late January; a pullback to $48,000–$50,000 first week of February; Retest ATH end of February or very early March; Small pullback early March, then rocket."

The overall cryptocurrency market cap now stands at $2.234 trillion and Bitcoin's dominance rate is 39.6%.

Source: Cointelegraph.com

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 8:30 pm | Categories: Bitcoin, News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t3M

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Smart TVs and NFTs Collide: Samsung Introduces World's First Television-Based NFT Platform

by Crypto Breaking News

Smart TVs and NFTs Collide: Samsung Introduces World's First Television-Based NFT Platform

The well known electronics giant Samsung, the manufacturer of LCD and LED panels, laptops, mobile phones, memory chips, and televisions, revealed that the firm's upcoming smart TVs will incorporate non-fungible token (NFT) technology.

Samsung Reveals Smart TV With NFT Capabilities

One of the largest electronics manufacturers worldwide, Samsung Electronics, has noticed how popular NFTs are today and the company believes there's something needed to view these digital artworks. The U.S. Samsung Newsroom published a summary of the company's latest lineup of MICRO LED, Neo QLED, and Lifestyle TVs with "cutting-edge personalization options."

The NFT description is toward the end of the announcement which explains that "Samsung's 2022 Smart TVs come with a new Smart Hub." In addition to features like the "Gaming Hub," "Watch All," and an NFT Platform. "This application features an intuitive, integrated platform for discovering, purchasing and trading digital artwork through MICRO LED, Neo QLED and The Frame," Samsung's announcement details.

Samsung also spoke about the NFT Platform with the news publication The Verge as the company said it has noticed the popularity of NFT technology. The electronics giant says the new TVs will be the first of their kind with an NFT explorer and market.

"With demand for NFTs on the rise, the need for a solution to today's fragmented viewing and purchasing landscape has never been greater. In 2022, Samsung is introducing the world's first TV screen-based NFT explorer and marketplace aggregator, a groundbreaking platform that lets you browse, purchase, and display your favorite art — all in one place," Samsung said.

Samsung's entry into the world of NFTs has come as a great number of well known brands and celebrities have jumped on the NFT bandwagon. Last year, single NFTs sold for multi-millions in crypto-assets and a number of NFT projects have gathered billion-dollar market caps.

What do you think about Samsung introducing the world's first smart television with NFT technology? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Source: Bitcoin.com

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 7:30 pm | Categories: News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t3z

Ethereum NFT Market Soars in First Days of 2022 After OpenSea Marks Another $3B Month

by Crypto Breaking News

In brief

The NFT market is booming in the early days of 2022, with OpenSea seeing its best day of Ethereum trading volume since August.
The Bored Ape Yacht Club and Mutant Ape Yacht Club are leading the recent charts.

After a year of explosive growth, the market for NFT collectibles and artwork is showing no signs of slowing down so far in 2022. Ethereum NFT trading volume on leading marketplace OpenSea is soaring in the early days of the year, following the platform's second-largest month to date in December.

On January 2, OpenSea recorded more than $243 million worth of Ethereum trading volume, according to public blockchain data curated by Dune Analytics. That's a jump from nearly $170 million on January 1 and $124 million on December 31, 2021.

Sunday's tally marks the third-best day of trading to date on OpenSea in U.S. dollars, behind the all-time record of nearly $323 million set on August 29, 2021, and $267.5 million the following day. In other words, yesterday was OpenSea's best day in more than four months, after the August surge gave way to gradually diminishing NFT trading volume into the fall.

However, it continues a recent uptick that saw OpenSea post more than $3 billion worth of Ethereum trading volume in December. The month's tally of nearly $3.25 billion in volume is second only to the August record of over $3.4 billion. It's also a nearly 37% increase from November's $2.37 billion worth of Ethereum trading volume on the platform.

Interestingly, OpenSea's NFT trading volume on Polygon is on the rise. Polygon is a sidechain scaling solution for Ethereum that allows for lower fees and speedier transactions, and OpenSea had a record $76.1 million worth of Polygon NFT trading in December. It's been three straight months of growth for OpenSea on that stat, per data from Dune Analytics.

An NFT is a blockchain-backed token that serves as a deed of ownership to a digital item. It can represent things like profile pictures, digital illustrations, video clips, and interactive video game items. Ethereum is currently the leading platform for NFT artwork and collectibles, with more than 90% of the market (including sidechains and layer-2s), per data from venture fund 1confirmation.

As of mid-December, blockchain analytics platform DappRadar estimated that there had been $22 billion worth of NFT trading volume across all of 2021, rising from about $100 million worth of volume the previous year. Final numbers for 2021 have yet to be released.

Apes on top

The Bored Ape Yacht Club profile picture project has been one of the biggest recent beneficiaries of the NFT boom. Over the last seven days, the Mutant Ape Yacht Club collection has yielded $89 million worth of trading volume, per data from CryptoSlam, with the original Bored Ape collection adding more than $83 million in volume.

Yuga Labs' original collection of 10,000 NFT avatars—and the subsequent Mutant Ape Yacht Club collection—have drawn in an increasing number of celebrity owners, including Jimmy Fallon and Stephen Curry. Over the last couple weeks, rappers Eminem and Snoop Dogg also joined the club, although Snoop was already an avid NFT collector.

Launched last April, the original Bored Ape Yacht Club collection is most valuable with a current price floor—or cheapest available NFT—of 73.5 ETH (about $276,000) on the secondary market. It has even surpassed the influential CryptoPunks project, which has a current price floor of 67.7 ETH (almost $255,000).

However, the later Mutant Ape Yacht Club project has seen larger recent gains in value, with its current price floor of 15 ETH (about $56,500) representing a 119% increase over the last 14 days. The Bored Ape Yacht Club's floor is up nearly 44% over the same span.

A single Mega Mutant Serum NFT—which is burned (or destroyed) to create a Mutant Ape NFT from an original Bored Ape—sold for 1,542 ETH ($5.66 million) on Saturday. Last week, other Mega Mutant Serums sold for 999 ETH ($3.8 million) and 888 ETH ($3.6 million), respectively, representing significantly rising demand for the Mutant Ape NFTs.

It's not just Apes on the move, however. Yesterday, a piece of Ethereum digital artwork by the artist XCOPY called "All Time High in the City" sold for 1,630 ETH, or nearly $6.2 million, on the SuperRare marketplace. Last month, via his NFT-collecting Cozomo de' Medici alias, Snoop Dogg purchased a different XCOPY piece for 1,600 ETH (over $7 million at the time).

Also this week, a Gala Games 3D dragon avatar sold for 10.85 million GALA, or over $5 million at the time of purchase. Meanwhile, a single MekaVerse NFT sold for 500 ETH (over $1.8 million), marking the largest sale to date for the robot-themed profile picture project, which rolled out amid controversy in October.

Leading Ethereum game Axie Infinity has seen a dropoff in trading volume of late. The monster-battling game generated more than $301 million worth of trading volume in December, per data from CryptoSlam, making it the leading project during that span. However, it marked an approximately 60% drop from November's tally of about $754 million.

Source: Decrypt.co

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 7:03 pm | Categories: News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t3x

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Exchange Whale Ratio Suggests Bitcoin Dump Incoming

by Crypto Breaking News

On-chain data shows Bitcoin exchange whale ratio has started rising, suggesting that a dump of the crypto may be coming soon.

Bitcoin Whales Now Account For 90% Of Inflow To Exchanges

As pointed out by a CryptoQuant post, the exchange whale ratio has risen above 0.9, implying that dumping may be going on in the market.

The "exchange whale ratio" is an indicator that measures the ratio between the total Bitcoin amount of top 10 transactions to exchanges and the total inflows.

In simpler terms, the metric tells us how the ten largest transactions to exchanges compare with the total amount of coins moving to exchanges.

When the indicator has values lower than 0.85, it means that the ten largest transactions to exchanges (which are assumed to belong to whales) make up for less than 85% of the total Bitcoin inflow amount. Such values have been historically healthy for the market.

On the other hand, when the metric reaches high values, it implies the top ten transactions make up for most of the inflows to exchanges.

Investors usually move their Bitcoin to exchanges for selling purposes. So, this trend may show that whales are currently dumping as they are moving vast amounts of coins to exchanges.

Related Reading | Year 2021 Data Cements Bitcoin As Risk-On Asset

Now, here is a chart that shows the trend in BTC exchange whale ratio over the past few months:

Bitcoin Exchange Whale Ratio

Looks like the value of the indicator has risen recently | Source: CryptoQuant

As you can see in the above graph, the Bitcoin exchange whale ratio has now exceeded values of 0.9. This means that the top ten transactions now make up for more than 90% of the inflows.

Whenever the indicator has reached high values recently, the price of the coin has suffered downtrend soon after, as the chart shows.

This could mean that the current high values of the exchange whale ratio may also prove to be bearish for the price of Bitcoin.

BTC Price

At the time of writing, Bitcoin's price floats around $47.3k, down 7% in the last seven days, Over the past month, the crypto has lost 16% in value.

The below chart shows the trend in the price of the coin over the last five days.

Bitcoin Price Chart

BTC's price seems to be consolidating again | Source: BTCUSD on TradingView

Bitcoin looked to have finally broken out of consolidation some days back, but the crypto has now once again fallen back down into the $45k to $50k price range. It's unclear at the moment when the coin may beat this stagnation, or which direction it may break in.

However, if the exchange whale ratio is anything to go by, more decline in the price of BTC could soon be coming.

Featured image from Unsplash.com, charts from TradignView.com, CryptoQuant.com

Source: NewsBTC.com

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 7:00 pm | Categories: Bitcoin, News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t3t

Bitcoin Whales Were Active on Coinbase Amidst a Quiet Holiday Week

by Crypto Breaking News

Just like the 24/7 crypto market, some traders, especially some whales, did not take last week off for the holidays.

While overall trading volume was lower last week, some traders executed large bitcoin trades on crypto exchange Coinbase, according to crypto trading data firm Kaiko, causing a spike in overall bitcoin trading activity on Coinbase.

Among those trades, the most notable one was executed on Dec. 30, which turned bitcoin's prices temporarily bullish for the day. By charting the second-by-second volume of buy versus sell orders for all trades greater than five bitcoin, Kaiko found a large concentration of such buy orders on Dec. 30, with Coinbase's market share of bitcoin spot volume among major crypto exchanges jumping from 45% to 68%.

Bitcoin's spot trading volume market share among major centralized exchanges (Credit: Kaiko)

This is abnormal, according to Clara Medalie, strategic initiatives and research director at Kaiko. She pointed out that Coinbase "never" had such a high market share of volume. During normal market circumstances, exchanges keep a relatively steady market share day-to-day.

"Prices had been low this [past] December, which could be one reason the trader sought to make a large buy order now rather than wait," Medalie told CoinDesk via an email.

According to data from TradingView and Coinbase, the price of the BTC/USD trading pair rose 1.4% on Dec. 30 after dipping to $46,094.02 from $52,100 over the previous three days.

Traders who usually conduct large-volume transactions may choose to split their orders into smaller sizes over a longer period of time to avoid price slippage or potentially impacting the spot price, as CoinDesk reported previously. Business intelligence software company MicroStrategy, for example, reported that it bought 1,914 bitcoins between Dec. 9 and Dec. 29 for about $94.2 million in cash.

Medalie said that Coinbase's high liquidity could be one of the reasons why the trader, or group of traders, chose to conduct this trade on the exchange.

"Coinbase works with many large investors through their professional execution services, and they often source liquidity directly from their professional exchange order book," Medalie noted.

But following the big buys, both large buy and sell orders for bitcoin were placed on Coinbase right before the expiry of bitcoin's options contract on Dec. 31. On Jan. 1, on the other hand, sell orders with more than five bitcoin dominated Coinbase's BTC/USD trading pair volume. These large trades, however, did not cause any spikes in Coinbase's spot market share, according to Kaiko's Medalie, meaning that similar activity was taking place on other exchanges over the same time period.

BTC/USD pair's trading volume on Coinbase (Credit: Kaiko)

It is unknown why there was increased whale selling activity on exchanges on Jan. 1, but it is not uncommon to see more trading activity before the expiration of options contracts.

In Coinbase Institutional's last weekly market newsletter in 2021 dated Dec. 24, it warned about the risks of low liquidity during the holidays that could see the convergence of the spot price towards a maximum pain price.

This convergence price move trend usually comes from spot market manipulations by option sellers (mostly institutional traders) to push the spot price closer to the strike price at which the highest number of open options contracts expire worthlessly. That creates maximum losses – so-called max pain – for option buyers. The max pain point for last Friday's option expiration was at $48,000 as of Dec. 28, according to Cayman Islands-based crypto financial services firm Blofin.

At press time, bitcoin was changing hands at $46,473.73, down 1.07% in the past 24 hours, according to CoinDesk price data.

Source: CoinDesk.com

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 6:59 pm | Categories: News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t3v

Cardano became the most developed crypto on Github in 2021 — Santiment

by Crypto Breaking News

According to data compiled by CryptoRank and Santiment, Cardano (ADA) was the most developed crypto on Github in 2021, with over 140,000 events.

Rounding out the top three were Kusama (KSM) and Polkadot (DOT) at second and third places, respectively, with roughly the same number of events over the year. Cardano beat Ethereum's development activity by a wide margin, with the latter coming in fourth place. Santiment defines a Github event as either creating an issue, creating a pull request, commenting on an issue or pull request, and forking/starring/watching a code repository, among others.

The Most Developed Cryptos on @Github in 2021

According to @Santimentfeed, @Cardano, has become the most developed project in the industry, followed by @Kusamanetwork, and @Polkadot.

https://t.co/gjKPmOazyB pic.twitter.com/JHXmWSe0YS

— CryptoRank Platform (@CryptoRank_io) January 3, 2022

In a live Youtube session last week, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson revealed that there are approximately 127 projects under development on the Cardano blockchain. In addition, Hoskinson expects the number of ADA users to grow ten-fold from the existing 2 million, thanks to the growing popularity of non-fungible tokens.

Cardano's technological advancement is also gaining traction post-Alonzo. One of the blockchain's notable works in progress is the layer-two Hydra upgrade, which channels transactions off-chain to staking pools without partitioning the ledger itself. Theoretically, it could enable advanced linear scaling of the network with hundreds of "hydra nodes" each processing hundreds of transactions.

Another notable mention is a novel fintech funding mechanism, known as the initial stake pool offering (ISPO), that's unique to the Cardano blockchain. In this setup, blockchain enthusiasts delegate their cryptos in a protocol and receive tokens of the new project they fund as rewards. In contrast, the ADA staking rewards go to the developers. Funds do not leave the delegator's wallet, making the process rather secure. One such project, Genius Yield, saw its ISPO pools surpass $118 million within 24 hours.

Source: Cointelegraph.com

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 6:46 pm | Categories: Cardano, News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t3r

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Market Research Report: Crypto Market Gets Bogged Down In A Range While Stocks Rise

by Crypto Breaking News

The end of the year has quite often spelled big gains in the cryptocurrency space, but the final week of 2021 bucked that trend as continued dips through December seemed to push things bearish. The final week saw the price of Bitcoin fail to hold onto its small gains earlier in the week.

The entire month of December left Bitcoin down nearly 20 percent, and this was at the same time that the traditional stock markets were celebrating the end of the year with some of their own impressive gains.

Many feel there is evidence that the pressure from China on the crypto space is helping this bearish trend develop. However, there is also on chain data that shows the more experienced hands and bigger Bitcoin whales are seeing this as an opportunity to accumulate more Bitcoin at a reduced price.

While crypto has been flailing in December, in the last trading week of the year, stocks continued inching higher until the final two days where traders took profit before the long new-year holidays. For the week, the Dow gained 1.1%, the S&P 500 increased 0.9%, but the Nasdaq ticked 0.1% lower.

Despite a mixed closing, the month of December was a positive month, while the year 2021 was even better in comparison. The S&P 500 rose 26.89% in 2021 and notched 70 record closes this year, the second-highest annual tally behind 1995′s 77 closing highs. The Dow and Nasdaq weren't far behind either, making gains of 18.73% and 21.39% respectively, making it the third straight year of rises.

The markets were boosted last year as the global economy began its recovery from the 2020 COVID lockdowns, while the FED maintained supportive measures first implemented at the onset of the pandemic. Moving forward into the new year, traders' minds will continue to be focused on COVID, economic growth, company results, as well as FED actions with regards to interest rates could take centre stage.

When traders are back this new week in the new year, focus will immediately turn to the FED minutes to be released on Wednesday as well as the employment numbers out on Friday.

With Inflation fears appearing to have ebbed, the USD fell on the last trading day of the year, giving a chance for oil and precious metals to move higher into the new year. Gold gained 1.5% in the last week of the year and looks poised to start the new year continuing higher, while Silver was 3% higher in the same period.

Oil also gained 3.5% last week on the back of the weaker USD. For the year, Oil managed to stage a fantastic rebound from the depths it fell into in 2020 due to COVID. In 2021, Brent ended up 50.5% for the year, its biggest gain since 2016, while Crude posted a 55.5% gain, the strongest performance for the benchmark contract since 2009.

As Asian traders stream back in after the new year today, the USD is gaining back some strength, causing precious metals to inch back a little. However, the markets will need a couple of days to settle back in and moves today may not be indicative of future direction.

Things have not been as rosy over in the cryptocurrency space, be it for the closing of 2021 or the opening of the new year, with the price of BTC not able to hold onto its early last week gains. December had been a negative month for BTC, even when stocks were faring well. BTC lost around 18% in December at the same time when stock indices staged an average 5% gain, and continues to be under pressure in the first month of the new year.

Final Leg of China Ban Pressuring Bitcoin Price

After the brief weekend rally that sent the price of BTC back above $50,000, sellers from Asia immediately took the opportunity to sell the moment traditional markets opened. Some market watchers attributed this weakness to the China ban on cryptocurrency, as 31 December was the date where all crypto exchanges would have to stop all forms of service to users based in China. Some investors may have waited till the very last moment to sell their crypto holdings. One such investor was Justin Sun, the founder of Tron blockchain.

Rumours that Sun sold around 165,989 ETH ($592 million worth) at Binance on Wednesday scared a lot of traders who subsequently dumped ETH ahead of him, causing ETH to dip below $3,600, dragging BTC to also drop below $46,000 at one stage on Wednesday, liquidating around $400 million worth of positions.

Sun subsequently said that this move was the internal deployment of wallets, and regardless of ETH, TRX, and the entire blockchain industry, he is highly optimistic and will continue to build. Indeed, the deadline of the last installment of the China ban is now behind us and will no longer have a significant impact on crypto prices.

Top Bitcoin Whales Continue to Accumulate

While news of Justin Sun selling his ETH may dampen market sentiment, investors can take delight that the third largest BTC whale has taken the dip to accumulate more BTC again. On Wednesday, when the price of BTC fell, this whale bought another 120 BTC at the price of $46,961 after he last bought on the 17 and 20 December.

Market Research Report: Crypto Market Gets Bogged Down In A Range While Stocks Rise - 3rd largest whale purchase

Other than this whale, another BTC proponent, MicroStrategy, has also taken the dip to purchase more BTC. On 29 December, Michael Saylor took to his twitter account to announce that MicroStrategy had purchased an additional 1,914 BTC for $94.2 million in cash at an average price of $49,229 per BTC.

This purchase takes the total holdings to 124,391 BTC acquired for a total of $3.75 billion at an average price of $30,159 per BTC. The current market price of the stash stands at around $5.8 billion, meaning MicroStrategy is making paper profit of around $2 billion.

Other than whales regularly accumulating in the spot market, futures-based ETFs in the USA also continued to see inflows in December. The first two BTC ETFs launched in the USA are still getting fund inflows despite the lacklustre price action of BTC. This shows that investors are still interested to buy BTC, albeit with inflows having fallen from their October launches.

Market Research Report: Crypto Market Gets Bogged Down In A Range While Stocks Rise - BTC ETF Inflows

Tax Selling Another Reason For Crypto Weakness

Another reason for crypto's poor performance in December could be due to wash sales, where an investor sells his asset at year-end at a loss to avoid paying capital gains tax and subsequently buy it back again once the new year arrives. While wash sales are not allowed in other asset classes, it is not banned for crypto.

Even though many long-term investors of crypto may not have losses, new crypto investors who entered the market after May 2021 may be sitting on paper losses which they could use to their tax advantage by selling in December and buying back in January. We will know if December's weakness was in part caused by this phenomenon in the days ahead since we have already entered the new year.

ETH Whales Reducing Their Ethereum Holdings

Other than Justin Sun, other ETH whales have also been reducing their ETH holdings as the number of ETH whale wallets have been on the decline this year. The number of ETH wallets with more than 1,000 have been on a steady decline this year, falling especially sharply in the second half of December.

Market Research Report: Crypto Market Gets Bogged Down In A Range While Stocks Rise - ETH Add with 1k

Even the number of larger whales who hold at least 10,000 ETH have fallen this year by around 4.5%.

Market Research Report: Crypto Market Gets Bogged Down In A Range While Stocks Rise - ETH add with 10k

As the number of these so-called whales drop, it reflects an ongoing selling trend among the richest ETH wallet owners. This could be negative for the price of ETH in the near-term as whales like Justin Sun continue to dump, and traders may also be taking the opportunity to short ETH.

The overall crypto market has remained range bound in quiet trading over the New Year weekend and may continue to be so as the first week of the new year arrives since many traders could still be on the side lines, not taking any new positions until they see how the market reacts in the first few trading sessions.

Risk Disclaimer:

Investing in or trading gold or other metals can be risky and lead to a complete loss of capital. This guide should not be considered investment advice, and investing in gold CFDs is done at your own risk.

The information provided does not constitute, in any way, a solicitation or inducement to buy or sell cryptocurrencies, derivatives, foreign exchange products, CFDs, securities, and similar products. Comments and analysis reflect the views of different external and internal analysts at any given time and are subject to change at any time. Moreover, they can not constitute a commitment or guarantee on the part of PrimeXBT. The recipient acknowledges and agrees that by their very nature any investment in a financial instrument is of a random nature and therefore any such investment constitutes a risky investment for which the recipient is solely responsible. It is specified that the past performance of a financial product does not prejudge in any way their future performance. The foreign exchange market and derivatives such as CFDs (Contracts for Difference), Non-Deliverable Bitcoin Settled Products and Short-Term Bitcoin Settled Contracts involve a high degree of risk. They require a good level of financial knowledge and experience. PrimeXBT recommends the consultation of a financial professional who would have a perfect knowledge of the financial and patrimonial situation of the recipient of this message and would be able to verify that the financial products mentioned are adapted to the said situation and the financial objectives pursued.

Source: PrimeXBT Blog

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 6:24 pm | Categories: News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t3p

Price analysis 1/3: BTC, ETH, BNB, SOL, ADA, XRP, LUNA, AVAX, DOT, DOGE

by Crypto Breaking News

Bitcoin's (BTC) price action has been uneventful in the first few days of the new year and it continues to languish below the psychological level at $50,000. The Crypto Fear and Greed Index is in the fear zone registering a value of 29/100.

On-chain analytics resource Ecoinometrics said stages of extreme fear rarely remain for long, which means "there is a limited downside at 30 days."

Bitcoin continues to garner support from various quarters. Wharton School finance professor Jeremy Siegel said in an interview with CNBC that Bitcoin has replaced gold as an inflation hedge in the minds of Millennials.

*Daily cryptocurrency market performance. Source:* *Coin360*

Savvy investors have been turning to Bitcoin to protect their portfolios against the possible debasement of fiat currencies. Hungarian-born billionaire Thomas Peterffy advocated putting 2% to 3% of one's portfolio in crypto to hedge in case fiat "goes to hell."

Could Bitcoin shed its range-bound action and start a trending move? Let's study the charts of the top-10 cryptocurrencies to find out.

BTC/USDT

Bitcoin's failure to rise above the 20-day exponential moving average ($48,449) suggests that bears are selling on every minor rally. Both moving averages are sloping down and the relative strength index (RSI) is in the negative zone, indicating advantage to bears.

The bears will now try to sink the price below the strong support at $45,456. If they succeed, it will suggest the resumption of the down-move. The BTC/USDT pair could first drop to the Dec. 4 intraday low at $42,000 and if this level cracks, the next stop could be $40,000. The longer the price sustains below the 20-day EMA, the greater the possibility of a move down.

Conversely, if the price turns up and breaks above the 20-day EMA, it will suggest that bulls are attempting a comeback. The pair could then rise to the 50-day simple moving average ($51,938), which may act as a strong barrier. If bulls thrust the price above this level, it will suggest a possible change in trend. The pair could then start an up-move to $60,000.

ETH/USDT

Ether's (ETH) rebound off the $3,643.73 to $3,503.68 support zone has reached the 20-day EMA ($3,899) where the bears are mounting a stiff challenge.

The gradually downsloping moving averages and the RSI in the negative zone indicate that bears have the upper hand.

If the price continues lower, the bears will again try to pull the ETH/USDT pair below the support zone. If they manage to do that, the pair could start its downward journey to $3,270 and then to $2,800.

On the contrary, if bulls push the price above the moving averages, it will suggest that the corrective phase could be over. The pair could then rally to $4,488

BNB/USDT

Binance Coin (BNB) bounced off the strong support at $500 and reached the 20-day EMA ($536) where the recovery is facing resistance. Both moving averages are turning down and the RSI is in the negative zone, suggesting a minor advantage to the bears.

If bulls push the price above the 20-day EMA, the BNB/USDT pair could rise to the overhead resistance at $575. This level may again act as a stiff resistance. If the price turns down from this level the pair could extend its stay inside the range between $500 and $575 for a few more days.

Conversely, if the price turns down from the 20-day EMA, the bears will again attempt to sink the pair below $500. If they manage to do that, the selling could intensify and the pair could start a new downtrend to $450.

SOL/USDT

Solana (SOL) has been trading between $167.88 and the 20-day EMA ($180) for the past few days but this tight range trading is unlikely to continue for long.

Both moving averages are turning down and the RSI is in the negative zone, indicating that bears are in control. If sellers pull the price below $167.88, the SOL/USDT pair could drop to $148.04 and then to $120.

Conversely, if bulls thrust the price above the 20-day EMA, the pair could rise to $204.75. This level may again act as a resistance but if bulls overcome this hurdle, the pair could rise to the resistance line of the falling wedge pattern.

ADA/USDT

Cardano (ADA) has been trading close to the 20-day EMA ($1.37) for the past few days, which suggests a stalemate between the bulls and the bears.

If bulls propel the price above the 20-day EMA, the ADA/USDT pair could rise to the overhead resistance at $1.59. A break and close above this level could push the pair to the resistance line of the descending channel.

The bulls will have to push and sustain the price above the channel to indicate that the downtrend could be over. Conversely, if the price turns down from the current level, the bears will again try to pull the pair below $1.18 and retest the critical support at $1.

XRP/USDT

XRP bounced off $0.80 but the bulls are struggling to push the price above the 20-day EMA ($0.87). This suggests that the sentiment remains negative and traders are selling on rallies.

If the price continues to slide lower, the bears will try to pull the XRP/USDT pair to the strong support at $0.75. If this level cracks, the pair could start the next leg of the downtrend to $0.60.

On the contrary, if the price rises above the moving averages, the pair could rally to $1. This level may act as a strong resistance and if the price turns down from it, the pair could remain range-bound for a few more days.

A break and close above $1 could indicate that the downtrend could be over. The pair could then start its march toward $1.41.

LUNA/USDT

Terra's LUNA token is in an uptrend. Both moving averages are sloping up and the RSI is in the positive territory, indicating that bulls have the upper hand.

The bulls are attempting to push the price above the minor resistance at $93.81. If the price sustains above this level the LUNA/USDT pair could retest the all-time high at $103.60. A break and close above this level could signal the resumption of the uptrend.

The pair could first rally to $135.26 and then reach $150. Contrary to this assumption, if the price turns down from the current level and breaks below the 20-day EMA ($83), it could signal the start of a deeper correction to the 50-day SMA ($66).

AVAX/USDT

Avalanche (AVAX) bounced off the $98 support and rose above the moving averages on Dec. 31 but the bulls have not been able to clear the downtrend line. This suggests that bears are defending this level with vigor.

If bears pull the price below the moving averages, the AVAX/USDT pair could drop to $98. A break below this level could open the doors for a possible drop to $75.50.

On the contrary, if the price rebounds off the moving averages, it will suggest that the sentiment has turned positive and traders are buying on dips. That will improve the prospects of a break above the downtrend line.

The pair could then rise to $128. A break and close above this level could complete an inverse head and shoulders pattern, which has a target objective at $177.50.

DOT/USDT

Polkadot (DOT) rose above the 20-day EMA ($28) on Jan. 2 and the bulls will now attempt to clear the overhead resistance zone at $31.49 to $32.78.

The 20-day EMA is flat and the RSI has jumped into the positive territory, indicating that buyers are attempting a comeback. If bulls drive the price above $32.78, the DOT/USDT pair could rise to $40.

If the price turns down from the overhead zone, it will suggest that the pair could consolidate between $22.66 and $31.49 for a few more days. The bears will have to pull and sustain the price below $22.66 to start the next leg of the downtrend.

DOGE/USDT

Dogecoin's (DOGE) bounce to the 20-day EMA ($0.17) is facing strong resistance from the bears. The moving averages continue to slope down and the RSI is in the negative zone, suggesting that bears are in control.

The sellers will now try to pull the price to $0.15. If the price rebounds off this level, the bulls will again try to push the DOGE/USDT pair above the 20-day EMA. If they do that, the pair could rise to the overhead resistance at $0.19.

A break and close above $0.19 will be the first sign that bulls are back in the game. The pair could first rally to $0.22 and then to $0.24.

Alternatively, if the price plummets below $0.15, the downtrend could resume. The pair could drop to $0.13 and then slide to the psychological level at $0.10.

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

Market data is provided by HitBTC exchange.

Source: Cointelegraph.com

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 6:19 pm | Categories: Binance Coin, Bitcoin, Cardano, Ethereum, News, Ripple | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t3n

Comment

DeFi Startup Earnity Accused of IP Fraud in Cred Bankruptcy

by Crypto Breaking News

Decentralized finance (DeFi) startup Earnity has been pulled into the ongoing legal case of crypto lending platform Cred, which filed for bankruptcy in Nov. 2020 with up to $500 million in liabilities. A new court motion accuses Earnity of hiding its ties to Cred in order to steal intellectual property.

In a motion to compel filed last week with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware, the trust acting in the interest of Cred lenders said that former Cred executives "secretly conspired" to form Earnity. The new DeFi company, under its beneficial owner Dominic Carosa, then purchased Cred's electronics, computers and other assets from the trust without disclosing its ties to Cred.

When the trust learned of the connection, Earnity was subpoenaed but only provided a list of Cred employees currently working at the company and one consulting contract.

The trust is investigating whether the former Cred execs "smuggled" intellectual property (IP) to Earnity and then covered the theft with the electronics purchase. The trust has the legal right to all of Cred's IP.

The trust is asking the court to force Earnity to comply with the subpoenas for additional information and wants financial reimbursement for the related legal costs.

When Cred filed for bankruptcy, the company primarily blamed alleged fraud by an outside investment manager who was entrusted with 800 bitcoin. Former Cred employees, however, told CoinDesk the company was also hurt by a soured $39 million credit line that was extended to a Chinese lender at the behest of Cred CEO Dan Schatt.

In early December, Earnity announced it had raised $15 million in a funding round led by bitcoin mining company BitNile to launch a curated financial marketplace for tokens.

Source: CoinDesk.com

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 6:05 pm | Categories: News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t3k

VeChain Foundation Announces New Stablecoin, Could It Create Fresh Demand For VET?

by Crypto Breaking News

The VeChain Foundation has started 2022 with a potential major announcement. Via their official Twitter handle, the organization hinted at the possible released of a new native stablecoin called VeUSD.

The Foundation little details on this new product but announced its followers that it'll be "something special (…). Something that will allow us to take VeChainThor to the next level in multiple ways".

The stablecoin VeUSD will be a tool to "unleash" DeFi capabilities for the VeChain ecosystem. The digital asset, according to the official post, was designed following core principles of this ecosystem: sustainability, versatility, scalability.

The blockchain VeChainThor seemed to have been preparing for these new era of DeFi for a while. As NewsBTC reported, 3 months ago this network was upgraded after a community vote approved the implementation of Proof-of-Authority (PoA) 2.0.

Designed to support a "new wave of blockchain mass adoption", according to the VeChain Foundation, the update was supposed to mitigate any tradeoffs on the consensus layer for the blockchain VeChainThor. At the time, the organization said:

(…) the VeChain Research and Development teams have been working on a massive upgrade of the VeChainThor blockchain called SURFACE (PoA 2.0), standing for a Secure, Use-case-adaptive, Relatively Fork-free Approach of Chain Extension.

In that sense, VeUSD could become one of the first products to leverage the power of this blockchain post the update.

VeChain's Own Stablecoin, Potential Benefits And Concerns

The VeChain community celebrated the announcement. Recently, a user called "EffortCapital" proposed the possibility for the Foundation to create an algorithmic stablecoin, such as LUNA with VeThor Energy (VTHO) as collateral.

Thus, creating a burning mechanism, similar to the one introduced in Terra with the Colombus-5 upgrade. This mechanism supports a constant demand for the underlying asset and contributes with its appreciation.

Proposal for #Vechain Foundation to create an algorithmic stablecoin backed by $VTHO seignorage style (like LUNA).

More VUSD demand -> burn VTHO -> value accrual to $VET @PeterZh47977516 @sunshinelu24

— D⚡️ (🏌🏻,⛳️) (@EffortCapital) December 30, 2021

This idea saw interest from Sunny Lu, CEO at VeChain. Via Twitter, he asked the community for a tokenomics design for the potential token.

However, not everyone in the community agrees with a stablecoin as the one announced by the Foundation. Some believe VeUSD could change the dynamics in the ecosystem and replaced VTHO, the utility used to power transactions on this blockchain.

Other straight out said that the Foundation and the blockchain has "failed to fulfill their core products". The network has been implemented in supply chains, and other corporate sectors, but is has rarely focused on developing a DeFi ecosystem.

This approach seems to be changing, as mentioned, with the new upgrades, the DeFi related products, and the stablecoin. Despite the detractors, most users seem to have taken the announcement as bullish.

The Foundation will share more details in days to come, until then everything remains as speculation. As of press time, VET trades at $0.085 with a 1.95% loss in the past day.

VET VETUSDT VeChain — VET trades to the downside in the 4-hour chart. Source: VETUSDT Tradingview

Source: NewsBTC.com

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 6:00 pm | Categories: News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t3l

As US Inflation Skyrockets White House Blames Monopolies, Economist Calls for Price Controls

by Crypto Breaking News

As US Inflation Skyrockets White House Blames Monopolies, Economist Calls for Price Controls

U.S. inflation is red hot and a number of analysts and economists are predicting America will face further economic issues as politicians and the Biden administration blame corporations. This perspective on rising inflation has led finance authors like Isabella Weber to believe that price controls could ease America's economic burdens.

Biden Administration Blames Inflation on Corporate Greed, Monopolistic Behavior

America is dealing with the worst inflation in over four decades and the White House thinks that tougher anti-monopoly policy could fix the situation. Furthermore, a few congressional leaders want to stifle online ecommerce giants like Amazon with proposals like Senator Amy Klobuchar's (D-Minn.) American Innovation and Online Competition Act. Senator Tom Cotton's (R-Ark.) Platform Competition and Opportunity Act (PCOA) is also aimed at reforming anti-trust laws.

The White House is blaming the loss of purchasing power in America on monopolistic behavior. Last month, the White House shared data that claimed four corporate entities in the meat-processing industry have been fueling inflation. NYU professor Marion Nestle told the New York Times in an interview that "their goal is to control the market so that they can control the price." Despite the opinion from Biden's administration, the North American Meat Institute says the claims are false.

Economist Believes It's Time to Consider Price Controls

This has led to a raging debate and just recently finance author Isabella Weber published an opinion editorial via the Guardian that says "we have a powerful weapon to fight inflation: price controls. It's time we consider it." Weber's editorial says that during World War II, U.S. economists "recommended strategic price controls." Essentially, price controls restrict free market activity as mandated prices and restrictions are set in place and enforced by governments. It means that the manufacturer has no say in pricing goods and services and the government has full control.

Weber ideas are not very popular and even the Nobel laureate and economist Paul Krugman blasted the concept. In a now-deleted tweet, Krugman wrote: "I am not a free-market zealot. But this is truly stupid." However, the following day, Krugman apologized to Weber and said he deleted the tweet. Krugman said:

Deleting, with extreme apologies, my tweet about Isabella Weber on price controls. No excuses. It's always wrong to use that tone against anyone arguing in good faith, no matter how much you disagree — especially when there's so much bad faith out there.

Price Control Concept Mocked, Harvard Economist Insists There's 'No Basis Whatsoever Thinking That Monopoly Power Has Increased'

Another individual mocked the price controls idea and said: "We've gone from 'inflation is temporary' to 'f***, we need price controls' in the space of a quarter." "Anyone calling themselves an economist who is also a proponent of price controls deserves to be mocked, shamed, and spoken down to," the Twitter account dubbed Hazlitt tweeted. The host of the "Smart People Sh*t" podcast Dennis Porter said:

Price controls are the thing every government does before the whole thing collapses.

Even the Democrat economist and senior official for the Obama administration, Larry Summers, insists bolstering antitrust laws will not help the U.S. economy. In a tweetstorm, Summers said: "The emerging claim that antitrust can combat inflation reflects 'science denial.' There are many areas like transitory inflation where serious economists differ. Antitrust as an anti-inflation strategy is not one of them." Lastly, the Harvard economist stressed that monopolistic behavior has not accelerated like inflation.

"There is no basis whatsoever thinking that monopoly power has increased during the past year in which inflation has greatly accelerated," Summers tweeted.

What do you think about the rising inflation in the U.S. and the White House blaming monopolistic behavior? What do you think about the concept of leveraging price controls? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Source: Bitcoin.com

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 5:40 pm | Categories: News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t3f

Why is Web3 So Crucial for Avalanche Dapps?

by Crypto Breaking News

With the rapid pace of progress and innovation, blurred together with at least as much buzz-word saturated hype, it can become easy to get lost in the growing wave of news, advertisements, and social media blasts around the next big thing.

Two of these buzzwords driving conversation are "Web3" and "Dapp". What makes it more difficult is that you can't just dismiss the news on either term. There are genuinely world-changing innovations that are being developed, and entire ecosystems are growing so rapidly that they feel like they are appearing overnight.

It might be worthwhile to pause, review these buzzwords, and take a sample snapshot of how they are being used—not next month, not years from now, but today—in ways that show just how important Web3 is, Dapps are, and just how interconnected the two have become.

While there are many large ecosystems that could be examined, we'd like to target the Avalanche Blockchain ecosystem here because of its architecture, which makes it require the innovations Web3 offers even more than competing ecosystems. However, that dependency also leverages even more benefits through its client platform Dapps.

Why Web3?

While you can find a number of great in-depth descriptions of Web3 characteristics (and what exactly Web1 and Web2 were), we are going to assume you know the basics here and will focus on a few key elements that make Web3 truly unique over the current version of the internet.

A key feature—and key promise—for Web3 is its decentralization. This seems interesting on the surface, but just keeps getting better the further you dig. Decentralization means users can't be easily censored because control is decentralized; though if the dispersed community all felt the same way, a member of the community could indeed be censored. The difference is that the control is highly democratized, and coercion to conform simply has no teeth. Decentralization means that a payment service can't be denied or restricted; payments can often be completed with no personal data, and can't be shut down because the payments are conducted peer-to-peer. Decentralization means robustness; Web3 servers are nearly immune to crashing because it is made of a network of many, many computers worldwide.

Why Avalanche?

The Avalanche ecosystem is similar to competing ecosystems, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, in many ways. However, we wanted to look specifically at Avalanche Dapps because it is built not just on one blockchain, but on three interconnected blockchains. The Avalanche Exchange Chain (X-Chain) focuses on creating new digital assets for the platform; the Contract Chain (C-Chain) focuses on maintaining the ecosystem's smart contract and its Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) implementation; and the Platform Chain (P-Chain) works to build the foundation for validators, platforms, and subnets.

This complex coordination of interlocking and dependent chains is incredibly important, and relies heavily on the characteristics of Web3 to operate. Without true decentralization, the ecosystem would not be able to scale up to its massive 4,500 transactions/second capacity—compared to Bitcoin's 7 Tx/sec and Ethereum's 14 Tx/sec. The three chains working in harmony, using an advanced smart contract and a wider-than average consensus distribution, create a decentralized ecosystem nearly impervious to hacks, censorship, and downtime.

These elements firmly cascade to Avalanche's many Dapps, where they utilize Web3 to operate in ways impossible with Web1 or Web2. Namely, they are able to thrive autonomously using programmable business logic by building on the smart contract, which saves development time and ensures a stable, predictable system. They benefit their customers greatly through direct ownership (self-custody), where there is no need for an intermediary to hold a user's assets on their behalf. And they are able to operate without the threat of censorship or a centralized body targeting a user.

Colony

What it is: Colony brings Ecosystem Farming solution. As viable projects across the ecosystem are cultivated, and the invested members of the DAO are able to reap the yield.

Colony is a platform that combines the elements of DeFi, token-based economy, and yield-bearing investment; with a DAO-based approach that utilizes and is driven by the community. Colony uses these elements for the purpose of supporting early platforms through venture capital (VC) programs raised and determined by the DAO.

You think early- stage #airdrops are the coolest thing about @Colonylab's staking mechanism?🤔

Airdrops are just 1 out of the 5 features staking gives you access to!

We didn't call it #EcosystemFarming for nothing!#CLY provides exposure to the entire #Avalanche ecosystem. pic.twitter.com/RWvEiiQesL

— COLONY 🔺 (@Colonylab) December 13, 2021

Why Web3 is critical: Normally (Web2), none of these elements would be possible. Traditional VC's are highly centralized structures, with often oblique decision-making processes that eliminate many great platforms from ever getting off the ground. This platform enables normal investors of all sizes to become part of the VC, generating capital for the projects they vote on, and sharing in the rewards when those platforms bear fruit. And without a Web3-enabled wallet, users would not be able to connect, invest, and reap the high yields possible with a community-driven VC platform.

NFTrade

What it is: NFTrade is a wide-ranging NFT marketplace, which opens the possibility for users to create a fully decentralized NFT, or decide to create an entire collection of NFTs for sale. Once listed on the marketplace, users can attract buyers, conduct peer-to-peer transactions using Web3-driven wallets, and keep those assets in their own hands instead of having to delegate their custody to the platform.

Why Web3 is critical: The platform relies heavily on the Web3 aspects of decentralization and smart contracts to empower anyone to build their own NFT, which is a complex process without the proper tools. The average user can utilize the platform to create a unique digital asset, connect it to a smart contract, and make that asset available for sale on a fully decentralized platform that connects them to many other buyers/sellers around the world.

Cryptoblades

What it is: Cryptoblades is an immersive, battle-style blockchain game where users can buy characters, weapons, and fight other players for real rewards. The heroes and weapons they purchase are NFTs, and they are purchased using tokens in order to ensure a decentralized platform and marketplace. When players sell assets for tokens, they can even stake the tokens to exercise DeFi style yields.

Why Web3 is critical: As with the other two Dapps, Cryptoblades relies on its smart contract to manage the various players, their marketplace interactions, and token purchase/sale/stake actions. Users have Web3 wallets in order to maintain protection and custody of their NFTs and tokens from the game, and certain gaming elements are recorded on-chain to ensure fairness and transparency despite the decentralized nature of the game.

Wrapping Up

Though Web3 and Dapps are all the buzz right now, it's rewarding to see examples where they are hard at work supporting real platforms, real users, and real ecosystems. Without Web3 none of this would be possible, and as Web3 matures, Avalanche and other blockchain ecosystems will continue to find use cases and support platforms that will bring further innovations leveraging Web3 on their dapps.

Photo by Shubham Dhage on Unsplash

Source: NewsBTC.com

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 5:27 pm | Categories: News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t3i

Samsung uses blockchain technology to address climate change

by Crypto Breaking News

Samsung Electronics America announced Monday at the CES tech conference in Las Vegas its partnership with veritree, a blockchain-based climate solutions platform, to plant 2 million mangrove trees in Madagascar over the next three months. Veritree uses blockchain technology to manage the reforestation process and verify each tree that is planted.

The tree-planting initiative is part of Samsung's nature-based action plan on environmental sustainability, specifically to capture and sequester carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere. The goal is to restore roughly 200 hectares of land and sequester roughly 1 billion pounds of CO2 over a 25-year period.

Veritree, developed by tentree, a sustainable apparel company that plants 10 trees for every item of clothing sold, will handle the logistics. Built as an accounting system, veritree attempts to provide greater transparency of the entire process from field-level data collection, site planning, tree inventory and impact monitoring. Tree planters use their phones to track trees that a sponsor has paid to plant, essentially creating a digital map of the corresponding digital trees.

Samsung's head of corporate sustainability Mark Newton said that investing in innovative technology and so-called "nature-based solutions" is vital for combatting climate change.

According to Samsung, mangrove trees are some of the world's most effective nature-based carbon sinks. Mangrove roots, which are usually covered by water, capture and store CO2 in the soil. Samsung plans to work with local community members of the Mahajanga region of Madagascar, a region faced with large deforestation, to reach its 2 million tree goal by the end of the first quarter.

The tree-planting initiative is part of Samsung's growing efforts around sustainability. In addition to using renewable energy in the U.S., the company recently unveiled a new smart TV lineup with an integrated NFT platform.

Source: Cointelegraph.com

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 5:14 pm | Categories: News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t39

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2022: The Year The Secular Bitcoin Bull Run Could End

by Crypto Breaking News

When the December 31, 2021 candle came to a close in Bitcoin, it didn't just begin a new calendar year – it triggered a sell setup of epic proportions. Here is why the secular bull run in cryptocurrency could come to an end this year, and the first true bear market emerge.

Bitcoin Yearly Chart Triggers First Ever Sell Setup

You wouldn't know it based on the recently bearish price action, but Bitcoin has been in an ongoing bull market since the second the genesis block was generated exactly thirteen years ago today.

In the span of a normal childhood growing into a teenager, the price per coin has ballooned and bubbled its way from zero to $68,000 per BTC.

The trajectory hasn't always been up, as the price chart has shown, but the asset has been outrageously bullish nonetheless. Many indicators back up this theory, having never crossed into bear territory ever once since price was recorded.

For example, the monthly MACD hasn't made it below the zero line since 2015 despite the 2018-2019 "bear market." The monthly Directional Movement Index had only a month-long temporary bear cross around mid-2015, but aside from that has never been bearish for an extended phase.

However, the sequence of ups and downs experienced over the years, like any thirteen-year-old would experience, has resulted in a specific sell setup according to the TD Sequential. The tool is a market timing indicator developed by Thomas DeMark – which on other timeframes has been useful in calling reversals.

BTCUSD_2022-01-03_11-09-07

The signal that makes you want to scream "nine!" | Source: BTCUSD on TradingView.com

At thirteen years since the asset's debut, the first ever TD9 sell setup has appeared on the BTCUSD yearly price chart. On the TradingView BTCUSD Index, price action began in 2010. Bear market years of 2014-2015 and 2018-2019 excluded, there have been exactly 9 candles with a higher open than the previous candles – triggering the sell setup.

Theorizing The End Of The Secular Bull Run

Despite the ominous signal, all is not lost for the current bull cycle – although it does give more credence to another bull market-ending pattern that could be developing.

According to Elliott Wave Theory, markets grow in five waves. These five impulse waves are broken down into similarly-behaving sub-waves that alternate between uptrend and corrective phases. In the larger cycle, these corrective phases are what we call bear markets. In smaller timeframes, corrections often feel just as severe as the current sentiment would confirm.

bitcoin BTCUSD_2022-01-03_11-34-56

The good news and the bad news in one chart | Source: BTCUSD on TradingView.com

Bitcoin appears to be well into its fifth impulse wave in the major motive wave cycle. The current count would suggest that the cryptocurrency is also within wave four of five sub-waves, hinting that the grand finale should unfold the in the year ahead.

If Bitcoin price does make it to $100,000 or higher, given the TD9 sell setup on the yearly, and the potential wave structure, this might be a sell signal worth taking. But when?

Follow @TonySpilotroBTC on Twitter or join the TonyTradesBTC Telegram for exclusive daily market insights and technical analysis education. Please note: Content is educational and should not be considered investment advice.

Featured image from iStockPhoto, Charts from TradingView.com

Source: NewsBTC.com

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 5:12 pm | Categories: Bitcoin, News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t3b

SPACE to Lead the Way in the Social Commerce Arena

by Crypto Breaking News

The Metaverse is changing the way we interact with one another, turning the two-dimensional world of the internet into a 3-D world where we can meet, communicate, engage, and even play games together. SPACE has taken this one step further with their own virtual world, which propels the user into colorful and friendly environments to meet, exhibit art, and hold our global conference. SPACE is set to become one of the biggest names in Metaverse technology, powered by their latest fundraising round. The innovative company has raised $7 million from a variety of tier-1 venture capital funds, including names like Coinfund, Dapper Labs (creators of NBA Top Shot and Flow), Digital Currency Group, Animoca Brands and Hof Capital.

The Early Access Alpha version of SPACE has already onboarded over 10,000 early adopters and boasts integrations with over 100 different leading companies from the worlds of art, fashion and music.

Go to destination for commerce and social pursuits

SPACE will be the destination for new virtual worlds bringing visitors to engage in both social and work-based pursuits, an area for brands and users to mingle and collaborate, with exhibitions, showrooms, stores and hang-out areas.

The Founder of SPACE, Batis Samadian said, "As the metaverse continues to gain mass adoption and becomes a place where a lot of people meet up to socialize, a natural evolution is commerce, which is what Space is focused on. Users will want to be able to view shows, buy items, sell items, and engage with digital goods within the metaverse. Space is building the Shopify for the metaverse to enable creators to sell their digital items in a turn-key fashion and allow users to purchase it."

Polygon Studios is keen on backing projects like Space. According to Polygon's founder, Sandeep Nailwal "The race is on for the few players who will bring the future of work and commerce to web3, and the SPACE team is one of the most promising ones to be leaders in building the commerce virtual world."

The future is bright and not just for gaming Metaverse worlds like Axie Infinity and Sandbox, with leaders like SPACE backing the commerce world inside the Metaverse, the possibilities are endless.

Source: NewsBTC.com

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 5:10 pm | Categories: News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t3d

Web 3.0 Is Too Complicated

by Crypto Breaking News

One of the most important goals and benefits of the Web 3.0 revolution is for the world's information technology ecosystems to re-decentralize. The internet, when it started, was a highly decentralized system. Centralized systems have, in time, layered themselves very successfully across this decentralized ecosystem.

The economics of the software business and the power of network effects is the foundation for the centralization of the Web 2.0 era, and they are helped along by liberal use of dark patterns on users as well (i.e. Web 2.0 tricks to get people to give up personal data). If we are not careful, we risk repeating some of the same patterns in the Web 3.0 era.

Paul Brody is EY's global blockchain leader, and a CoinDesk columnist.

I see two major risks to a sustainably decentralized future. The first, and by far the biggest, is the immense complexity that's involved in building good blockchain interaction tools. Interacting with distributed systems is complicated, all the more so when you layer in additional requirements like managing multiple signatures or using zero knowledge proofs to maintain privacy.

The easiest way to manage that complexity today, is to do so through an application programming interface (API). Want to mint a token? There's an API for that. Want to get some transaction history? There's an API for that, too. Those APIs, in turn, write to and from the blockchain, handling all the complexity that is involved. APIs simplify building blockchain tools, but nearly all of them rely upon centralized software and infrastructure. In other words: Extensive use of APIs will lead to the centralization of many critical blockchain functions.

EY blockchain infrastructure is no different, and it not only makes heavy use of API-based services from other companies, but also offers services as APIs to enterprise users that would otherwise find all that complexity too much to manage. While I know that APIs will certainly have a role to play in the future, especially when it comes to interfacing the Web 3.0 world with the Web 2.0 world, I'd prefer to see a future where many applications run and interact natively in the blockchain ecosystem. We have our own ongoing priority inside of EY to keep putting more genuinely decentralized infrastructure in our blockchain business, and I hope our peers do, too.

To avoid excessive centralization through dependency on APIs and SaaS (software as a service) applications, the most important work is for developers to build libraries and tools that make it easy to access Web 3.0 ecosystems directly and keep code up to date without having to rely upon APIs. That sounds easy but it is actually very hard. I have discovered in my career how fiendishly difficult it is to manage the distribution of software and how easy it is to maintain control and consistency through a software-as-a-service API. Some projects like Stereum, funded in part by the Ethereum Foundation, are a good start because they make starting and running your own node at home as easy as installing any other piece of package software.

A second big concern I have is that in our efforts to build Web 3.0 offerings that run and perform just like Web 2.0 offerings, we're going to end up centralizing Web 3.0 to a high degree. Protocols that support "decentralized" compute and file storage are designed to reward the participants with the most highly available, high-performing systems. Those are usually located in centralized data centers run by large companies.

This is essential if we want Web 3.0 applications to be as fast and responsive as Web 2.0 applications. But is that a useful objective? The most successful new technologies address new workloads rather than migrating old ones on to new platforms. Web 3.0 is better at some very specific things, like moving value with tokenization and enabling complex integrations with smart contracts.

Perhaps we can leave the synchronous interactions and instant user interface gratification to the Web 2.0 world? The "30″ in "net 30″ on a corporate invoice refers to days, not milliseconds. For most enterprises, business and financial applications, a cycle time of a few minutes to a day is more than adequate. Maybe we should leave gaming and virtual reality for Web 2.0?

If we want a truly distributed and decentralized future, we will have to resist the twin temptations of instant user interface gratification, the kind that can be delivered only by always-on data centers, and extremely simple API integrations. The payoff will be a fairer, more competitive and more resilient financial and technology ecosystem.

The views reflected in this article are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the global EY organization or its member firms.

Source: CoinDesk.com

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 4:57 pm | Categories: News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t38

Ariane Capital Launches ARBA Spin, A Crypto Fund to Offer Absolute Performance

by Crypto Breaking News

Ariane Capital, a traditional family office involved in the cryptocurrency market since 2014, is launching an ARBA SPIN, a certificate actively managed with a long-term directional objective.

The fund mixes the fundamental analysis of the crypto with the ability to seize opportunities identified within for best returns.

Over the past two years, the crypto industry gained mainstream attention and mass adoption, and traditional financial institutions increasingly started seeking exposure to this new asset class as well.

(Image Source)

With demand for crypto assets evolving, Ariane Capital noted that its clients have been seeking out long-term directional exposure, and to cater to this rising demand, the firm launched ARBA SPIN to offer absolute performance.

The ARBA SPIN yielded +12.5% in its first month after launch and in a bear market. Ariane Capital attributes this performance to the "alpha generator qualities of the management team, who were able to identify several significant opportunities."

Despite being a conservative family office, it has been seeing "growing demand" from its clients, said Benjamin Guez, co-founder of the multi-family office Ariane Capital, in an interview. The fund applies a risk management methodology with existing tools such as options or futures.

"The market is now aware of the underlying assets' volatility and wishes to have a dedicated risk allocation given the strong potential of the crypto asset class in this universe," Guez said.

Being Early and Strong

Ariane Capital, one of the very few operators in the European financial market, already has its arbitrate fund ARBA FUND available, whose objective is to be decorrelated from the market. It was the first regulated and structured arbitrage fund on the market.

During the downturn of May last year, where the crypto market reported losses of more than 50%, the ARBA Fund had a monthly performance of 0.12%. But as the crypto sector evolves and continues to gain adoption, arbitrage gaps and opportunities are shrinking, resulting in a 15% return in 2021 compared to 2020's performance of +41.75%.

The technology-focused family office, Ariane Capital, got into crypto at an early stage about eight years back. At the time, the cryptocurrency sector was still opaque and new, and it took a few years for the firm to open a bank account and offer liquidity to its clients.

The firm has since then gathered a team of financial market professionals and experienced fund managers specializing in a proper risk management approach to offer services ranging from legal structuring to the opening of depositories.

It now also has the internal capability to analyze the crypto universe, invest in it, and support its development.

Being early in the game means, "it allowed us to be ahead of and in sync with the whole crypto universe," said Guez.

Source: NewsBTC.com

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 4:47 pm | Categories: News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t36

Polygon and Matic: What's the Difference?

by Crypto Breaking News

Polygon is a secondary scaling solution for the Ethereum blockchain. These types of solutions work on top of an existing blockchain network rather than using their own blockchain. In this instance, Polygon works on top of Ethereum which has become slow and expensive to use as it becomes ever more popular.

As of December 2021, the Ethereum blockchain can process about 14 transactions per second with each transaction costing on average around $25. However, these fees can spike during times of high network congestion, making life difficult and unpredictable for all but the richest of users. In May, the average Ethereum fee skyrocketed to $71.

This is a big problem for anyone wanting to use Ethereum-based decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols and non-fungible token (NFT) marketplaces or transfer tokens over the network, as the fees can quickly mount up and cost hundreds of dollars.

Scaling solutions like Polygon make things cheaper by processing some of those transactions elsewhere. In Polygon's case, batches of transactions are processed on Polygon's proprietary proof-of-stake blockchain.

This cuts costs since you only have to pay for a fraction of a single Ethereum transaction (plus Polygon's own network fees), and saves time. Polygon claims to be able to process up to 65,000 transactions each second with fees costing less than a fraction of a cent.

What's MATIC?

Over 2021, you may have seen the blockchain project Polygon used in conjunction with Matic Network. This is because Matic Network was the original name of Polygon before the project was rebranded in February 2021. Matic Network initially launched in 2019.

The main source of confusion comes from the fact Polygon decided to retain the ticker MATIC for its native utility token after the rebranding. This means the two words are interchangeable. Polygon is to Matic as Ethereum is to ETH.

There are 10 billion total possible MATIC coins, and as of December 2021, 7.16 billion of them are in circulation. The rest will be minted by stakers – users who deposit their MATIC tokens into a staking smart contract in order to become validators. Polygon is a proof-of-stake network that randomly selects stakers to validate new transaction data.

The surging popularity of Ethereum in 2021, sparked by the bull run for NFTs, play-to-earn games and decentralized finance protocols, sent the prices of scaling solutions like Polygon/MATIC skyrocketing. MATIC rose from $0.018 and a market capitalization of $81 million at the start of 2021 to a market cap of $20 billion and an all-time high price of $2.92 on Dec. 27. This was also supplemented by news that the leading decentralized exchange platform Uniswap was preparing to deploy on Polygon.

🦄💜 https://t.co/kWG2jBBEud

— Polygon | $MATIC 💜 (@0xPolygon) December 23, 2021

Scaling solutions: the bigger picture

Polygon is a layer 2 solution, which means it is a piece of software that sits atop blockchains (known as layer 1s). Other examples of layer 2 solutions include the Bitcoin Lightning Network, which cuts the costs of Bitcoin transactions, and Loopring.

Polygon plans to expand beyond Ethereum. It pitches its services as a framework for an "Internet of blockchains," which means it can connect any Ethereum-interoperable blockchain together and be used to cut transaction costs and increase speeds.

However, Polygon is not the only project that attempts to hasten transactions on Ethereum. There are a number of rival blockchains that also support "bridges" and let people trade variants of Ethereum tokens. These include:

Avalanche
Solana
Cosmos

According to a dashboard on Dune Analytics, Polygon's bridges, which hold $6.6 billion in total value locked (TVL), are second to Avalanche, which holds $7.78 billion. Arbitrum, another popular layer 2 solution, holds $2.5 billion, and Ronin Bridge, a bridge for the Axie Infinity ecosystem, has $6.1 billion in TVL.

The future of scaling solutions like MATIC is uncertain. At press time, Ethereum is the largest smart contract network in the world; its native currency, ETH, has a market cap of $438 billion. Its rivals are picking up speed but still lag at some distance: Solana, for instance, has a market cap of just $53 billion.

Ethereum will speed up and become cheaper after the launch of Ethereum 2.0. It's expected to launch in full within the next few years, although the project has been beset by numerous delays over the years. That said, when ETH 2.0 comes, it may make scaling solutions redundant – or at least less important.

Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum's co-founder, has said that the technologies may co-exist. It's difficult to place too much emphasis on Ethereum 2.0 when considering MATIC's future, given that the protocol plans to expand to other blockchains, and that interoperability solutions like Cosmos may make the industry less reliant on protocols like Ethereum, naturally spreading the load of computational work across other blockchains.

Source: CoinDesk.com

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 4:19 pm | Categories: News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t35

Leading DeFi Tokens Post Fresh Gains as Wider Crypto Market Stalls

by Crypto Breaking News

While the market's largest cryptocurrencies are mostly trading sideways, decentralized finance (DeFi) tokens, including Yearn Finance, Uniswap, Aave, and Compound, are all on the rise on Monday.

Leading the charge is YFI, the governance token for the Yearn Finance protocol, which is up 8.3% over the last day to $41,159, according to CoinGecko.

The token has jumped an impressive 32% over the last week and 49% in the past month, following the launch of a new buyback program. The program has introduced a new tokenomics structure to the protocol, likely boosting the price as the asset becomes scarcer on the open market.

DeFi tokens see new updates, price rises

UNI, the governance token of the leading decentralized exchange Uniswap, is among the other top gainers of the day. It's up 5.2% over the last 24 hours and is trading at a current price of $18.50 per CoinGecko.

One possible reason for UNI's recent price spike is the launch of CivTrade, a new trading solution for Uniswap v3.

Available on the Ethereum mainnet and Polygon, CivTrade, as detailed in a blog post, enables traders to set limits and create an order book the same way they would on a centralized exchange. The tool also lets users specify the desired trade volume and the target price.

The project is also going multi-chain, thanks to the recent deployment of Uniswap v3 on Polygon, a scaling solution for creating Ethereum-compatible blockchains and Layer-2 scaling solutions.

AAVE, the native token of the popular decentralized lending platform Aave, is also on the rise of late.

The token is up 6.1% in the last day, trading hands at $276, with the recent addition of a new market for real-world assets among possible factors behind the price surge.

Similarly, COMP, the token powering the DeFi lending platform Compound, is up 4.6% over the past 24 hours to the current $222.9, per CoinGecko.

As major DeFi tokens rise, so does the combined total value locked (TVL) in the DeFi protocols, which is now back above the $254 billion mark, according to DefiLlama.

This figure is $6 billion from the all-time high set in early December 2021.

Source: Decrypt.co

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 4:06 pm | Categories: News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t33

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Should Western Union Worry About Stablecoins?

by Crypto Breaking News

Remittances are small transfers, usually $1,000 or less, that people living in diaspora make to loved ones back home. These payments have become a vital form of survival not only for families left behind, but also for the developing countries themselves, which over the years have received shrinking amounts of development assistance and direct investment. Total remittances have reached $589 billion this year, according to the World Bank.

J.P. Koning, a CoinDesk columnist, worked as an equity researcher at a Canadian brokerage firm and a financial writer at a large Canadian bank. He runs the popular Moneyness blog.

At the moment, stablecoins are used mostly in the speculative crypto economy, not the bricks and mortar economy. Cryptocurrency exchanges that lack access to the banking system rely on stablecoins such as tether (USDT) and USD coin (USDC) as substitute proto-dollar accounts. Stablecoins also serve as the building blocks for decentralized financial (DeFi) tools.

Significant real-world usage of stablecoins, particularly remittances, would be a big "get" for the stablecoin sector. But there are some big challenges to address before this happens.

To be fair, crypto does already serve as a remittance vehicle, albeit a niche one. In a recent paper, economists Ken Rogoff, Carmen Reinhart and Clemens Graf von Luckner found that a lower-bound of 1.3% of all trades on LocalBitcoins, a peer-to-peer exchange, were related to usage of bitcoin for cross-border payments. The authors note that bitcoin remittances often involve countries like Nigeria that have exchange controls, which bitcoin is useful for evading.

The advantage that stablecoins have over bitcoin is that they don't suffer from bitcoin's wild volatility. Indeed, remittance company MoneyGram is currently experimenting with them.

The first of the two major hurdles to ubiquitous stablecoin remittances is the double-hop problem.

The double-hop problem

Much of the world lives in a bank account world. Our salaries arrive in our bank account. We purchase our necessities like shelter or food with a debit card or bank transfer.

Everyone else lives in a cash world. We earn money in cash and buy stuff with physical currency.

But no one lives in a stablecoin world. Except for a few privileged denizens of the crypto economy, no one receives a salary in stablecoins. Certainly no one buys supper with them. (Using a crypto-linked payment card to make purchases doesn't count, since these cards sell crypto for fiat at the last instant and pay with bank money.)

This is the core of the problem. For most of the world's remittance users, a stablecoin remittance forces them to temporarily leave their preferred financial environment. A sender must jump out of cash or bank accounts onto stablecoin rails. The person who receives the stablecoins must then hop back into the world of bank accounts or physical cash.

These extra hops are inconvenient. First, they require a certain level of technical and financial expertise to expedite. No internet access? Forget about it. Secondly, they are expensive. A hop into and out of stablecoins doubles the foreign exchange transaction fees involved in remitting money.

In her recent testimony to the U.S. Senate, financial regulatory expert Alexis Goldstein crunched how much the stablecoin double-hop costs. Using the U.S.-to-Europe remittance corridor as her example, Goldstein found that a remittance sender in the U.S. who buys $200 worth of tether stablecoins with dollars on Coinbase must pay a fee of $2.99. The $200 is then sent to a European recipient, who must pay $2.99 to sell tether on Coinbase for euros.

That's already $6 in fees. Goldstein's numbers didn't include slippage – the gap between the bid and ask price for tether on Coinbase – which amplifies the all-in costs of a stablecoin remittance.

By contrast, a traditional $200 remittance carried out by Wise, MoneyGram or Western Union is just a single-hop transaction. Dollars must be sold for euros, and that's it. A single-hop will always be cheaper than a double-hop.

The user fee problem

The double-hop problem that bedevils stablecoin remittances is compounded by the user fee problem. Platforms like Ethereum that are based on proof-of-work require that crypto miners be paid a fee to validate transactions. At the time of writing this article, it would have cost me a whopping $23 in mining fees to transfer $100 worth of USDP stablecoins that I own. That's an awfully pricey remittance.

Read more: JP Koning - The Race for Stablecoin Transparency

The user fee problem can be avoided by dispatching stablecoin remittances over Ethereum's emerging layer 2 architecture, say the Optimism or Polygon protocols. However, graduating stablecoins from the main level of Ethereum over to layer 2 and back down again incurs costly mining fees. It is also technically complex and takes time.

Competing blockchains Tron, Avalanche and Solana offer an alternative route for avoiding Ethereum's user fee problem. These blockchains rely on proof-of-stake for security, which is much cheaper than proof-of-work.

But even if the parties to a remittance manage to route a stablecoin in a way that minimizes the user fee problem, the nagging double-hop problem remains. The jump into stablecoins and back out again will always be more costly than a single-hop remittance.

A few developments might minimize the double-hop problem and help make stablecoin remittances more competitive with regular ones.

Banks and stablecoins closer

One way to solve the double-hop problem would be a tighter fusion between stablecoins and bank accounts. If banks allowed customers to automatically withdraw stablecoins from their accounts without a fee (like we already do with cash), and also freely deposit stablecoins, then people making stablecoin remittances would no longer have to pay double the fees.

For example, say that Manuel – an immigrant living in the U.S. – wants to send money to Maria in Honduras. He'd start by withdrawing $200 in Wells Fargo-approved stablecoins from his Wells Fargo bank account, for free. He then sends them to Maria, who deposits the $200 worth of stablecoins directly into her Honduran bank account at no charge. Maria then asks her bank to convert the funds into Honduran lempira so she can pay rent. This foreign exchange swap is the only transaction in the entire circuit that incurs a bank fee.

While no-fee bank-to-stablecoin transactions would allow for cheap remittances, it's not evident that this option will ever emerge. Banks don't want to lose business to stablecoin issuers, after all, unless they themselves are the issuer of stablecoins.

Stablecoins invade the real world

A second way to minimize the double-hop problem would be to increase the number of real-world situations where stablecoins are accepted.

If Manuel's real-world U.S. salary was paid in stablecoins, say tether, then he wouldn't have to do a U.S. dollar-to-tether conversion when he sends a remittance to Maria. Alternatively, if Maria could purchase food and other basics with stablecoins, then she wouldn't have to do a stablecoin-to-lempira conversion.

Broadening the range for real-world stablecoin transactions is not as easy as it sounds. What makes a payments network useful is the fact that other people are already connected to it. Lacking an initial set of users, a new payment network's chances of breaking through are tiny.

Growing the crypto economy

If real-world acceptance of stablecoins is unlikely to occur, there's a third way towards stablecoin ubiquity: increase the amount of people inhabiting the nascent crypto economy.

Right now the crypto economy is occupied by crypto fans, speculators and people who work in the industry. If there were more things to do in the crypto economy – entertainment, job opportunities, socializing – then people would increasingly "immigrate" there from the real world. New arrivals would be obliged to adopt the de facto payments standard, stablecoins.

If Bob, who occupies one region of the crypto economy, wants to remit $200 to Alice in another region of the crypto economy, USD coin or tether are the most convenient options. Interposing a non-blockchain intermediary like Western Union into the mix would be a step backwards. That would introduce an expensive double-hop, much like a stablecoin remittance in the real world introduces a double-hop.

For now, the double-hop and user fee problems prevent stablecoins from being a competitive remittance vehicle. Plenty of work remains to be done if they are to ever get to ubiquity.

Source: CoinDesk.com

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 3:51 pm | Categories: News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t32

Kickstarting the Bitcoin Network: A Look at the Genesis Block and Source Code That Sparked a Financial Revolution

by Crypto Breaking News

Kickstarting the Bitcoin Network: A Look at the Genesis Block and Source Code That Sparked a Financial Revolution

13 years ago today, the anonymous creator of the Bitcoin protocol kickstarted the network by mining the genesis block. Satoshi started the genesis block on Saturday, January 3, 2009, at precisely 1:15 p.m. (EST), and since then more than 700,000 blocks have been mined into existence.

Kickstarting the Bitcoin Network

Today, bitcoiners and cryptocurrency advocates worldwide are celebrating the 13th anniversary of the Bitcoin network's launch. On this day, 13 years ago, Bitcoin's inventor Satoshi Nakamoto launched the genesis block, otherwise known as "block zero." There are several unique characteristics of the genesis block that make it different than the blocks that followed.

For instance, the genesis block has a 50 BTC block reward subsidy that can never be spent. Block zero also has two more leading hex zeroes in the hash which was common for bitcoin blocks mined in the early days. The genesis block also contains a special message stored in the coinbase parameter. The message derives from a London Times January 3, 2009 headline and reads:

The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.

Seven-Day Theory, Timechain, Virtual Poker

Many people are unaware that the Bitcoin protocol did not produce another block until six days after the genesis block was mined. It is assumed Satoshi had a reason for this wait time, as it resembles something out of Machiavellian folklore or the King James Bible's Genesis tale when the earth was created in seven days.

Satoshi Nakamoto mined the Bitcoin network with a standard personal computer or central processing unit (CPU). It is assumed Nakamoto was a Microsoft user, and the protocol's codebase was written in the coding language C++. In addition to the coding language, users leveraged a Windows GUI mining application to mine BTC blocks back then.

When bitcoiners examined a pre-code release prior to Jan. 3, 2009, distributed to bitcointalk.org member "Cryddit," a number of interesting findings were discovered. For instance, the document mentioned the term "bitcoin miner" for the first time, and it also referred to the blockchain as a "timechain." The pre-release Bitcoin source code also contained an early framework for an IRC Client, a peer-to-peer (P2P) marketplace, and a virtual poker game.

Additionally, according to Bitcointalk.org user Deepceleron on Dec. 23, 2013, and a few other armchair sleuths, "there's no source code to recover off Sourceforge through the Internet Archive, but here's a screenshot from January 3, 2009, (same date as genesis), with an unreleased blockchain at block 213 and three other connections." It is assumed by some people that Nakamoto and some early users may have tested the blockchain launch prior to January 3, 2009.

Bitcoin Protocol Sees Many Milestones in 13 Years, Computational Power Achieves Exponential Growth

Last year, on the 12th anniversary of the genesis block, a mystery miner spent 1,000 BTC from 2010 after letting the bitcoin sit idle for well over a decade. The 13th anniversary follows BTC's lifetime price high on November 10, 2021, when the crypto asset tapped $69K per unit. Furthermore, on January 1, 2022, the network's hashrate reached an all-time high of over 200 exahash per second.

On January 9, 2009, Bitcoin's hashrate was around 68.96 kilohash per second (KH/s) or 68,000 (sixty-eight thousand) hashes per second (H/s). That also equates to around 0.068 megahash per second (MH/s) or 0.000068 gigahash per second (GH/s), too low of a denomination to measure in terahash per second (TH/s).

Whoever was mining at this time on January 9, 2009, and the following week (we assume it was Satoshi Nakamoto), was still dedicating more computational power than it would take to mine bitcoin (BTC) with paper and pencil (0.67 hashes per day) or a Nintendo Game Boy (0.8 H/s). Since that day on January 9, 2009, the network's hashrate has grown exponentially stronger by a whopping two hundred sixty-seven quadrillion percent.

What do you think about the 13th anniversary of the Bitcoin network's genesis block? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Source: Bitcoin.com

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 3:40 pm | Categories: Bitcoin, News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t30

Bitcoin dips below $47K as US dollar surge dampens BTC price performance

by Crypto Breaking News

Bitcoin (BTC) crisscrossed $47,000 on Jan. 3 as the first Wall Street trading days of 2022 got off to a modest start.

*BTC/USD 1-hour candle chart (Bitstamp). Source: TradingView*

Ethereum steals the limelight

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC/USD acting in a narrow range as the week began, with traders split over short-term outcomes.

"It's just a matter of time before BTC breaks out, and the longer it takes the harder it will pump," popular Twitter account Galaxy summarized.

"Q1 is up only. You heard it here first."

Such optimism was far from universal, however. For Cointelegraph contributor Michaël van de Poppe, the time had come to look closer at altcoins than BTC.

"Good bounce from Ethereum and I think this one is bottomed," he said about the state of ETH/USD Monday.

"Still need additional confirmation, but shows more strength than Bitcoin at this point. Ultimate confirmation above $4,100."

ETH/USD was up over 2% in 24 hours at the time of writing, with BTC/USD conversely showing no inclination to tackle even daily highs.

*ETH/USD 1-hour candle chart (Bitstamp). Source: TradingView*

On macro markets, the S&P 500 was up a touch at the Wall Street open, amid predictions that the first half of the year would be a further boon for equities across the board thanks to the prospect of key interest rate hikes.

The U.S. dollar, meanwhile, saw a sudden boost Monday, with the U.S. dollar currency index (DXY) rapidly gaining — as is customary, to Bitcoin's detriment.

*U.S. dollar currency index (DXY) 1-hour candle chart. Source: TradingView*

Never mind the bearish divergence

Among Bitcoin-focused analysts, meanwhile, TechDev led calls to quash bearishness, arguing that on-chain indicators do not support a bearish thesis.

Concerns about both the relative strength index (RSI) and moving average convergence/ divergence (MACD) pale in comparison to more fundamental indicators still yet to print a bearish outlook, he said at the weekend.

4/

The 2 points are valid to point out, but I don't focus on them as they've not been historically accurate at identifying macro cycle trend changes.

2 that have? Macro LLs and 2W RSI floor breaks. Neither of which have happened.

If they do, my macro outlook will change. pic.twitter.com/qUedP5juZ8

— TechDev (@TechDev_52) January 3, 2022

With conviction remaining high and selling declining, TechDev was in good company.

"In case no-one noticed, we have come a long way from nerdy retail HODL'ers being the buyers of last resort," entrepreneur Alistair Milne added.

"We now have billionaires, multinationals and countries waiting to buy the dips. Whoever is taking the other side of the trade needs their head examined IMO."

A fresh influx of institutional interest is considered by some to be ready to begin this month.

Source: Cointelegraph.com

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 3:17 pm | Categories: Bitcoin, News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t2U

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What's ahead for crypto and blockchain in 2022? Experts Answer, Part 3

by Crypto Breaking News

Alex is a writer, speaker, investor and adviser focused on the impact of emerging technologies such as blockchain and cryptocurrencies. He is the general manager of Ninepoint Digital Assets Group, an investment management services provider in the field of blockchain technology and cryptocurrency. 

“I think 2022 is the year of multichain. 2021 saw the rise of new layer-one protocols like Solana and Avalanche that promised to improve on Ethereum with faster throughputs and lower fees. But these benefits may prove impermanent. As they become more popular, they may suffer the same fate as Ethereum. Remember, Ethereum fees used to be cheap too until the network found a product-market fit with the rise of liquidity mining and other DeFi applications. 

With a tsunami of new users coming into the ecosystem, it became a victim of its own success. Fees skyrocketed, turning Ethereum into a ‘whalechain,’ meaning only the wealthy could afford the fees. The same thing could happen to other layer ones. That’s OK. I believe the scarcest resource in the world for the next few years will be block space. All these layer ones will probably fill up, meaning we need better ways to interconnect different protocols. 

Most new crypto users will only interact at the application layer, not knowing or caring what base chain they run on. That means making interoperability a reality. A few groups are working on multichain, including Cosmos, which supports hundreds of crypto assets worth tens of billions of dollars. 2022 is the year of Multichain Maximalism, and Cosmos is leading the way.”

Source: Cointelegraph.com

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 3:15 pm | Categories: Bitcoin, News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t2W

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South Korean presidential candidate to use NFTs to raise funds for campaign

by Crypto Breaking News

Democratic Party (DP) presidential candidate Lee Jae-myung prepares to use nonfungible tokens to raise funds for his campaign.

The party will issue NFTs to those who donate money for the campaign for the upcoming presidential elections. The NFTs will contain images of the candidate and his pledges.

In an interview with Yonhap News, campaign official Kim Nam-kook said the party is doing this to appeal to the younger generation.

"As the young generation in their 20s and 30s are interested in emerging technologies, including virtual assets, NFTs and the metaverse, this type of fundraising could appeal to them," said Nam-kook.

The DP also points out that it is exploring new ways to utilize new technologies, including using NFTs in campaigns and accepting crypto donations.

Just recently, another member of the DP also announced that he would be accepting donations in crypto. Representative Lee Kwang-jae mentioned that he would take crypto donations in mid-January.

"It is high time that we undertake innovative experiments to enhance our understanding of these future technologies and change perceptions of digital currencies and NFTs," wrote Lee.

Aside from this, Lee underscored that politicians should be leaders in embracing digital transformation. He noted that policies and laws fail to catch up to digital developments.

Meanwhile, the South Korean Financial Services Commission announced back in early November that NFTs would not be regulated. However, a few weeks later, the FSC backpedaled by announcing that NFTs would be taxable in January 2022.

The law amendment will require a 20% tax payment on digital asset income that goes above 2.5 million won ($2,100). However, the implementation of the tax was delayed for one year due to flaws pointed out by the DP.

Source: Cointelegraph.com

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 3:00 pm | Categories: News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t2Y

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Ertha to Prime List Huobi on January 4th

by Crypto Breaking News

Ertha's Listing and TGE will be hosted on Huobi as a Prime List on the 4th of January, 2022. Listing on Huobi ensures that ERTHA Metaverse becomes the leading token in the GameFi & NFT space.

Gaining a Primelist brings new levels of visibility and prestige to the project, introducing us to a wider demographic of investors and supporting the value and longevity of the token. It also provides the community a convenient way to access the $ERTHA token.

Huobi is the industry's leading digital asset exchange in both liquidity and real-trading volume. It ensures that ERTHA continues to be the world's most in-demand and highly anticipated Metaverse.

This news comes shortly after the conclusion of three record-breaking IGOs hosted by GameFi, Seedify, and RedKite. Each community pool sold out in under one minute, and to date, the project has raised $5.4 million from a number of world-renowned VC investors including:

LD Capital
Polygon Syndicate
OKEx Blockdream Ventures
Shima Capital
GD10
Genblock Capital
Dialectic
Momentum 6
X21
Terranova
AU21
Zen Capital
& Many others.

Ertha's Gameplay

Ertha's world is a complex and intricately designed playspace ripe for the creation of new governments, economies, and shaky alliances between its playerbase. The Metaverse is divided into 350,000 land plots, each of which collects taxes, fees, and other forms of revenue from the transactions taking place on them.

Ertha has been designed to replicate a real-life environment with a player-driven economy. A Player's actions, whether political or environmental, in times of conflict or peace, can create real change and have far-reaching consequences.

Owners have a say in everything from international trade laws to taxes on the transactions being conducted in their territory. Just like in the real world, each HEX owner will profit from their real estate investment. You can see the mechanics in the new gameplay trailer.

If you're to get involved in Ertha, or expand their portfolio of HEX plots, you can visit our marketplace where our land sale continues with the recent addition of South Africa and increased availability in Brazil and India.

Social Media Channels:

Twitter : https://twitter.com/ErthaGame
Discord : https://discord.gg/ertha
Medium : https://erthium.medium.com/
YouTube : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHiXL-GSDqd9jIa1hsr20Kw
Telegram : https://t.me/erthagame

This is a sponsored post. Learn how to reach our audience here. Read disclaimer below.

Source: Bitcoin.com

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 2:00 pm | Categories: News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t2Q

El Salvador's Bukele Tweets 6 Bitcoin Predictions, Including a $100,000 All Time High

by Crypto Breaking News

The President of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, has shared his 2022 Bitcoin predictions on Twitter.

In total, there are six claims made.

He believes Bitcoin will hit $100,000, two more countries will adopt Bitcoin as legal tender, Bitcoin City—an envisioned Salvadoran city funded by Bitcoin—will commence construction, Bitcoin will become a "major electoral issue" in U.S. elections, Volcano bonds—used to finance Bitcoin City—will be oversubscribed, and there will be a "huge surprise" at The Bitcoin Conference this year.

Bukele's bullish set of predictions should not be much of a surprise, given his embrace of the leading cryptocurrency throughout 2021.

El Salvador's Bitcoin experiment

Ever since Bukele announced Bitcoin would become legal tender in El Salvador during last year's Bitcoin Conference, the authoritarian president has doubled down on the leading cryptocurrency despite widespread opposition.

In September, Bitcoin formally became legal tender in El Salvador, flying in the face of several anti-Bitcoin protests, warnings from the IMF, World Bank, JP Morgan, and the Bank of England. The launch was also met by a lawsuit filed from opposition politicians and citizens, illegal arrests, and unanswered calls for transparency.

Since the experiment began, Salvadorans have also been reporting that their Bitcoin balances have been vanishing from their Chivo wallets, without explanation nor recognition from the government.

Chivo wallets are the government-backed cryptocurrency wallets for citizens. It was through these wallets that Bukele's administration began distributing Bitcoin.

Elsewhere, El Salvador's citizens have been asking for transparency when it comes to the criteria Bukele uses to buy Bitcoin, as well as clarity when it comes to who owns the country's Bitcoin private keys.

To date, there is no evidence to suggest those answers will come any time soon.

For now, they'll have to follow the president's Twitter account for updates on the nation's Bitcoin balance.

Source: Decrypt.co

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 1:38 pm | Categories: News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t2O

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Argentinian Government Inquires About Energy Bitcoin Mining Companies Use Amidst Power Cuts

by Crypto Breaking News

argentinian

The Argentinian government is starting to inquire about the power consumption of bitcoin mining companies after some provinces in the country faced power cuts during the last days of 2021. Cammesa, the state-owned power wholesaler, has sent a memo to big power consumers to reveal whether they are mining cryptocurrency. If so, the companies should reveal their actual power consumption so a price hike can be coordinated, and they will need to invest in power infrastructure.

Argentinian Government Sets Sights on Bitcoin Mining

The Argentinian government is trying to pinpoint the exact power usage that bitcoin miners require from the national power grid, in order to take measures to improve the current power crisis the country is facing. Cammesa, the state-owned energy wholesaler, has sent a letter to all registered large-scale consumers, requesting they report the energy consumption of possible mining operations they may host, including the power consumed by what the company calls the "server group," the refrigeration equipment to cool the miners, and other associated equipment.

According to local media reports, the Argentinian government — via the Undersecretary of Electric Energy — could be planning to take action to get miners to pay more for this energy, launching a new tariff scheme and making cryptocurrency miners invest in the power system directly. This with the objecting of relieving the stress these operations are said to be causing the national grid, which in some cases has faced power cuts affecting more than 80,000 citizens and provoking protests.

Covert Mining Operations

Local cryptocurrency experts explained some companies have migrated to offer their space to host cryptocurrency mining operations, something that has affected the grid negatively. An unnamed source disclosed that these businesses were common and that there are more than 200 farms of this kind in the country, with at least half of them operating in Buenos Aires, the Argentinian capital.

The reason for the covert operations popping up is said to be the profitability investors can achieve by avoiding taxes. Doing things covertly can speed up return on investment (ROI) times for mining investors, who can reportedly recover their investment in six months, compared to ROI times of up to 18 months for other operations.

Bitcoin mining companies have been eyeing Argentina due to its affordable power costs. One of these groups is Bitfarms, which is already building a mega-mining complex in a partnership with a private third party that will ostensibly provide the power without impairing the national grid.

What do you think about the new measures the Argentinian government is planning to take regarding bitcoin mining? Tell us in the comments section below.

Source: Bitcoin.com

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 1:30 pm | Categories: Bitcoin, News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t2M

ADALend Listed On CardanoCube

by Crypto Breaking News

ADALend, a decentralized lending platform utilizing the Cardano blockchain, has recently been listed on CardanoCube.io, a platform that makes information on dApps available by providing an overview of all projects and dApps building on Cardano. The listing is preceded by ADALend's announcement, where they shared the intention of using Plutus Application Backend (PAB) to continue the development of the platform.

About CardanoCube.io

CardanoCube.io is the go-to resource for information about the Cardano Blockchain and its ecosystem. They are offering retail customers unbiased, high-quality, and reliable information so they can make their own educated decisions about the products they purchase.

What Does This Mean For ADALend?

ADALend has recently been hitting the shelves as a Cardano essential dApp that has high potential to impact the DeFi market with its launch. ADALend has had a busy couple of months with development and providing information to the communities about the project and what it is set out to accomplish. ADALend plans to continue revealing what the developers are working on as more information comes out, involving the community and allowing them to be part of the platform as it progresses towards launch.

About ADALend

ADALend is developing a scalable, trustless, and decentralized lending protocol that harbors users within a self-governed environment. ADALend protocol is based on the Cardano blockchain, which will enable the lending platform to aggregate protocols that support business models that give economic support to billions of users.

ADALend will bring back the balance of power between lenders and borrowers. By allowing the use of digital assets as collateral, the use of the platform will be diversified to the benefit of the user.

By leveraging the Cardano blockchain, ADALend will be able to tap into the vast digital cash management market. By creating a technology that allows anyone to delegate their digital cash and make it available for a loan, ADALend is opening up the potential for blockchain-powered liquidity.

Input-Output Hong Kong (IOHK) has listed ADALend on their "Essential Cardano List" of projects that are considered part of the ecosystem supporting and providing Cardano users with products and services.

Source: NewsBTC.com

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 1:14 pm | Categories: News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t2K

Square Enix CEO reveals plans for blockchain, metaverse, NFTs

by Crypto Breaking News

Wider adoption of nonfungible tokens (NFT) and play-to-earn games may be on the way, as one of the world's largest gaming companies sees them as the future of the industry.

Yosuke Matsuda, CEO of Square Enix, revealed the company's intentions for blockchain and NFT spheres in his new year's message on Saturday. In his letter, Matsuda begins with a discussion of the metaverse before noting that Facebook's renaming to Meta is proof that the concept isn't a passing fad. He expects 2022 to be a year of hype for the metaverse as society begins to slowly embrace virtual worlds and their ability to connect individuals across geographical boundaries.

He thinks that extended reality (XR) technology, the growing use of cloud computing and 5G will all lead to the metaverse's existence. While discussing the concept, Matsuda wrote:

"As this abstract concept begins to take concrete shape in the form of product and service offerings, I am hoping that it will bring about changes that have a more substantial impact on our business as well."

a New Year's letter from the Square Enix president talks about new tech/concepts including NFTs, the metaverse, and particularly how blockchain games "hold the potential to enable self-sustaining game growth" https://t.co/qtdFCvQdeB pic.twitter.com/FOG4S9Hpgb

— Wario64 (@Wario64) January 1, 2022

He goes on similarly about NFTs, then blockchain and play-to-earn. Matsuda points out that 2021 was "year one" for NFTs and the metaverse, during which time there was a lot of wild trading that didn't always correspond with market speculations.

Investments in blockchain are still rising at a rapid rate, and some of the most adamant in trying to legitimize blockchain technology have been companies from the gaming business. Square Enix initially invested in the metaverse by taking part in a $2 million funding round for The Sandbox, an Ethereum-based metaverse game. Matsuda's annual letter indicates that the firm is doubling down on several developing technologies.

Matsuda's letter appears to be a reaffirmation of Ubisoft's position that it will remain committed to its NFT/blockchain ambitions. Another big name in the gaming industry, Andrew Wilson, CEO of video game company Electronic Arts, agreed that NFTs and play-to-earn games are the future of gaming despite the fact that it's still early to figure out how they'll function.

Source: Cointelegraph.com

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 12:57 pm | Categories: News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t2I

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Bitcoin is new gold for millennials, Wharton finance professor says

by Crypto Breaking News

Bitcoin (BTC), the world's most-valued cryptocurrency, has replaced gold as an inflation hedge for young investors, according to Wharton's finance professor.

Gold's performance was "disappointing" in 2021, Wharton School finance professor Jeremy Siegel said in a CNBC Squawk Box interview on Friday.

On the other hand, BTC has been increasingly emerging as an inflation hedge among younger investors, Siegel argued:

"Let's face the fact, I think Bitcoin as an inflation hedge in the minds of many of the younger investors has replaced gold. Digital coins are the new gold for the Millennials. I think that the story of gold is a fact that the young generation is regarding Bitcoin as the substitute."

Siegel also reminded that older generations witnessed how gold had soared during the inflation of the 1970s. "This time, it is not in favor," he added.

Gold, which traditionally emerged as an asset class providing a hedge against inflation, failed to meet investors' expectations in 2021, recording its worst year since 2015 and dropping around 5% to close the year at $1,800. Despite massive price fluctuations over the course of 2021, BTC had surged around 70% by the end of 2021.

Several prominent global investors supported BTC over gold in 2021, with Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban arguing that Bitcoin was "better than gold" in October 2021. Starwood Capital Group co-founder Barry Sternlicht also said that gold was actually "worthless" and that he is holding BTC because every government was printing massive amounts of money.

But despite BTC becoming an increasingly popular asset against gold, many financial and crypto experts believe that it is yet to prove inflation hedge status.

Source: Cointelegraph.com

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 12:04 pm | Categories: News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t2G

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Bitcoin's Net Exchange Flows Flip Bearish As Cryptocurrency Struggles For Directional Bias

by Crypto Breaking News

A blockchain indicator tracking the flow of coins in and out of centralized exchanges is signaling a bearish shift in investor sentiment similar to the one seen before the May 2021 crash.

Glassnode data shows the 90-day moving average of net exchange flows has turned positive, meaning more coins are entering exchanges than leaving.
Sustained net inflows, if any, would be a cause for concern for the bulls.
Net inflows imply investor intention to sell, while consistent outflows represent strong holding sentiment and take out circulating supply from the market, paving the way for price rallies.
The 90-day average of net flows turned positive on May 13, 2021, following which bitcoin crashed from $50,000 to $30,000, extending the pullback from the then-record highs above $64,000.
The metric consistently signaled outflows with a negative print throughout bitcoin's 10-fold rally to over $60,000 observed in 11 months to April 2021.
A similar pattern was observed in October 2021 when bitcoin rallied 40% to new record highs above $65,000.
Bitcoin was last seen trading largely unchanged on the day near $47,100. The cryptocurrency has been restricted to a range of $45,500 to $52,000 since early December.
The Federal Reserve's December meeting minutes and the U.S. jobs data scheduled for release later this week may inject volatility into the bitcoin market.
According to FXStreet, the U.S. economy is expected to have added 400,000 jobs in December after November's 210,000 additions. Strong data may strengthen the dollar and weight over bitcoin and asset prices, in general.

Source: CoinDesk.com

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 11:51 am | Categories: News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t2D

Square Enix President Reiterates Focus on Blockchain Games, 'Play-to-Contribute' Trend

by Crypto Breaking News

Yosuke Matsuda, president of Square Enix, the Japanese developer behind video games like Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts, has set his sights firmly on NFTs and blockchain technology.

"I see 2021 not only as 'Metaverse: Year One,' but also as 'NFTs: Year One,' given that it was a year in which NFTs were met with a great deal of enthusiasm by a rapidly expanding user base," Matsuda said in a New Year's Letter.

The president also attributed much of the metaverse momentum to "sophisticated blockchain technology," before reiterating Square Enix's changing strategy to meet this new environment.

"To address these changes in our business environment, the medium-term business strategy that we unveiled in May 2020 identified AI, the cloud, and blockchain games as new domains on which we should focus our investments," he said, adding that Square Enix has been "aggressive" in research and development in these areas.

The announcement is not the first time Square Enix has focused on the link between blockchain and games.

In November last year, the gaming company first signaled its intention to explore the NFT space by offering consumers collectibles and blockchain video games. In March of 2020, the Japanese developer also invested in Ethereum-based Sandbox.

The future of gaming?

According to Matsuda, there is a fundamental contrast between traditional games and blockchain games.

"Games have traditionally involved an unidirectional flow whereby creators such as ourselves provide a game to the consumers that play them," he said.

"By contrast, blockchain games, which have emerged from their infancy and are at this very moment entering a growth phase, are built upon the premise of a token economy and therefore hold the potential to enable self-sustaining game growth," he added.

Matsuda also recognized the perceived tension between gamers or people who "play to have fun," according to Matsuda, and those who "play to contribute."

That demographic refers to people who play to "help make the game more exciting," he said.

"Traditional gaming has offered no explicit incentive to this latter group of people, who were motivated strictly by such inconsistent personal feelings as goodwill and volunteer spirit," he added.

That, however, may change in 2022, at least if Matsuda has anything to say about it. "By designing viable token economies into our games, we will enable self-sustaining game growth," he also said.

Blockchains and the gaming industry

Despite Matsuda's enthusiasm, there has been an ongoing controversy between blockchain technology, NFT advocates, and the traditional gaming industry.

Before Christmas, Ubisoft said that it would continue its video game NFT initiative despite significant pushback from fans. Ubisoft called NFTs a "major change" for video game enthusiasts.

However, the same can't be said for GSC Game World, which abandoned pre-existing plans to incorporate NFTs into their upcoming STALKER 2 title.

Source: Decrypt.co

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 11:50 am | Categories: News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t2E

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Jamaica Completes CBDC Pilot, Expects Rollout Later This Year

by Crypto Breaking News

The Jamaican central bank, Bank of Jamaica (BOJ), announced that it has successfully completed the trial of its central bank digital currency (CBDC).

The 8 month pilot was initially delayed for unspecified reasons, according to a report from CoinDesk. The announcement does not mention anything about the delay, only stating that the pilot began in May and ended on Dec 31, 2021.
Jamaica is set to roll out the CBDC in the first quarter of 2022.
The BOJ had been working with Ireland-based technology firm eCurrency Mint on the sandbox project. The scope of the pilot was limited to wallet providers who indicated readiness to participate within the timeframe.
The National Commercial Bank (NCB) also came onboard to test the range of services which can use the CBDC solution, according to the announcement.
The services tested included minting J$230 million (circa $1.5 million) worth of digital currency, issuing CBDCs to wallet providers such as the BOJ's banking department (J$1 million worth of CBDC to be distributed to staff). The first CBDC issuance to a deposit institution was worth J$5 million, made to NCB.
The NCB also onboarded 57 customers who conducted person to person, cash-in and cash-out transactions through 37 accounts. This included transactions with small merchants such as local craft jewellers, footwear designers and fashion and garment boutiques, the BOJ said.
The rollout will see a continuation of onboarding existing customers and new customers, allowing two additional wallet providers, who are currently conducting testing, to distribute CBDCs to their customers, and the testing of transactions between customers of various participating wallet providers.

Source: CoinDesk.com

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 11:45 am | Categories: News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t2C

Yearn Finance risks pullback after YFI price gains 100% in less than 3 weeks

by Crypto Breaking News

Yearn Finance (YFI) looks poised for a price correction after rising five days in a row to approach $42,000. Notably, an absence of enough buying volume coupled with overbought risks is behind the bearish outlook.

The YFI price rally so far

YFI price surged by a little over 47% in five days to $41,970 as traders rotated capital out of "top-cap" cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) and looked for short-term opportunities in the altcoin market.

#DeFi assets are showing some nice signs of growth to kick off 2022. $YFI, $UNI, and $AAVE are all ticking up nicely thus far with the first Monday of the year looking #bullish for several #altcoins. https://t.co/8ujolCvt5z pic.twitter.com/ASpf1dUbtn

— Santiment (@santimentfeed) January 3, 2022

Yearn Finance was among the beneficiaries of the so-called capital migration, given its value against BTC and ETH rose almost 47% and 41.50% in just five days. Meanwhile, at the core of traders' sudden buying interest in the YFI markets was a token buyback program.

*YFI/ETH and YFI/BTC daily price performance after token buyback program announcement. Source: TradingView*

On Dec. 16, the Yearn Finance team announced that they had purchased more than $7.5 million worth of YFI tokens from the open market at an average price of $26,651 per unit. They also revealed $45 million extra cash in their Treasury that they would use to continue their YFI buyback spree.

Additionally, the Yearn Finance community also proposed that the YFI treasury direct a portion of the token buyback to reward YFI holders who actively participate in Yearn Governance. The proposal (full details here) is currently in its voting phase.

1/8

Since the cat is out of the bag here:

-Yearn has started massively buying back YFI.

-They are revisiting their tokenomics to do a fee distribution to holders, currently looking at veCRV model and xSushi models.

-The ratios are insane. https://t.co/CzuHhbNuhx

— Adam Cochran (@adamscochran) December 16, 2021

YFI price surged by more than 100% against the U.S. dollar after the token buyback announcement.

YFI price correction risks

However, YFI trading volume fell despite the rall, suggesting the low conviction among traders in its upward movement.

*YFI/USD daily price chart featuring price-volume divergence. Source: TradingView*

Typically, a bearish divergence between price and volume leads to either correction or consolidation till conviction increases. As a result, the likelihood of YFI at least pausing its ongoing price rally is high, with its daily relative strength index (RSI) also entering its overbought zone above 70, a sell signal.

Additionally, the Yearn Finance token's latest price rally has brought it closer to a known inflection zone near $40,000, as shown via the Fibonacci retracement graph in the chart below.

*YFI/USD three-day price chart featuring Fib entry and exit levels. Source: TradingView*

In detail, the 0.618 Fib line near $40,113 has been limiting YFI's upside attempts intraday. The same level was instrumental in stopping the Yearn Finance token's price rally between October and November, which later led the YFI price to its 12-month low near $17,000.

Nonetheless, if the bulls manage to push the YFI price above the 0.618 line decisively, they may also take the token out of its multi-month range defined by circa $25,500 as support and $40,000 as resistance. In that scenario, YFI's next upside target may move towards the 0.5 Fib line around $51,000.

Source: Cointelegraph.com

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 11:22 am | Categories: News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t2w

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Slim Shady buys Bored Ape 'EminApe' NFT for $460K

by Crypto Breaking News

Marshall Mathers III, better known as Eminem, joined the "Bored Ape Yacht Club" (BAYC) by purchasing one of the nonfungible token (NFT) Bored Apes for $462,000 on OpenSea's NFT marketplace. Eminem's Bored Ape depicts a gold chain necklace and khaki army cap that he wears in real life and has been officially added to his portfolio by OpenSea.

The NFT nicknamed the "EminApe" was created by GeeGazza in collaboration with Bored Ape. The transaction was completed by digital agency Six, which has previously worked with other celebrities in the NFT sector, including Wu-Tang Clan, Tycho and Galantis.

Congrats! This aged well https://t.co/s82B6sZOAf

— 0xFastly.eth (@0xFastly) December 31, 2021

This is not the first time that Eminem has invested in NFTs. The Missouri-born rapper currently owns several OpenSea NFTs with the handle "Shady Holdings." Eminem's portfolio also comprises a number of "Lil Baby Doodles X" NFTs, with "Ditaggdogg#1," the rapper's stencil artwork, and "Superlative Apes #3880" being one of them.

The "Bored Ape Yacht Club" NFTs rose to popularity in 2021, generating more than $1 billion in trade volume worldwide, according to Defi Llama.

The NFT market gains ground every day, and several people, including athletes, are joining in. A number of celebrities have expressed interest in NFTs and revealed their own projects already. A$AP Rocky, Snoop Dogg, Kings of Leon and The White Stripes are among the musicians who have embraced the NFT movement.

Source: Cointelegraph.com

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 11:20 am | Categories: News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t2y

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Bitcoin Hashrate Hits New All-Time High

by Crypto Breaking News

Bitcoin is now as secure as ever after the network's hashrate soared to a new record of 203.5 exahashes per second (EH/s) on January 2, according to data from Bitinfocharts.

Hashrate refers to the total combined computational power used to mine and process transactions. The higher the hashrate, the more secure the network is as the computing power required to successfully attack also increases.

Over the last 12 months, Bitcoin's hashrate has increased by 49% from the 136.5 EH/s recorded on January 2, 2021.

The growth is even more impressive—a whopping 199.2%—when compared to the values seen in July last year, when the hashrate plummeted as low as 68 EH/s following China's massive crackdown on the mining industry.

The network has been on a steady rebound since, with several major Bitcoin mining operators relocating to other jurisdictions, including the U.S. and Kazakhstan.

Meanwhile, Bitcoin mining difficulty—a measure of how difficult it is to mine new coins—is projected to increase by another 2.57% later this week. According to BTC.com, this would be spitting distance from its previous record high recorded last May, according to BTC.com.

Bitcoin Genesis Block Day

The network's new milestone came just in time to mark the 13th anniversary of Bitcoin's Genesis Block Day.

On January 3, 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin, generated the network's block zero, also known as the Genesis Block, with its coinbase data containing the famous headline from the British newspaper The Times: "Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks."

While Nakamoto never revealed the meaning of the message, many Bitcoin enthusiasts see it as a reference to the actual motives behind Nakamoto's invention: to create a new digital currency without intermediaries like banks.

13 years ago these words were stamped in the Genesis block of the #Bitcoin blockchain:

"Chancellor on Brink of Second Bailout for Banks"

It was the start to the peaceful revolution that has changed millions of lives, and soon will change billions of lives

Thank you Satoshi. pic.twitter.com/WUwKZQr5h6

— Blockstream (@Blockstream) January 3, 2022

"It was the start to the peaceful revolution that has changed millions of lives, and soon will change billions of lives," Bitcoin infrastructure company Blockstream wrote in a tweet on Monday.

Notably, the Bitcoin Genesis Block was not actually "mined" the same way the subsequent Bitcoin blocks were. Instead, it was hardcoded into the protocol software, with the first block arriving six days later on January 9, 2009.

Bitcoin has since become an $893 billion network, with almost 15,000 nodes holding a full or a partial copy of the world's first blockchain.

Whether these figures continue to grow into 2022 remains to be seen.

Source: Decrypt.co

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 11:17 am | Categories: News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t2A

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Samsung Adds NFT Support to 2022 TV Lineup

by Crypto Breaking News

Electronics giant Samsung is adding support for non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to its 2022 TV lineup, including a screen-based explorer and an NFT marketplace aggregator.

According to a press release from the South Korean electronics manufacturer, "In 2022, Samsung is introducing the world's first TV screen-based NFT explorer and marketplace aggregator, a groundbreaking platform that lets you browse, purchase, and display your favorite art — all in one place."

Samsung Electronics Unveils Its 2022 MICRO LED, Neo QLED and Lifestyle TVs, With Next-Generation Picture Quality and Range of Cutting-Edge Personalization Optionshttps://t.co/RIRFxFpdjY

— Samsung Electronics (@Samsung) January 3, 2022

The platform will feature "an intuitive, integrated platform for discovering, purchasing and trading digital artwork" through Samsung's MICRO LED, Neo QLED, and The Frame TV ranges. It will include the ability to preview NFT art before purchasing it and explore its history and blockchain metadata.

"With demand for NFTs on the rise, the need for a solution to today's fragmented viewing and purchasing landscape has never been greater," Samsung wrote in its announcement.

The TVs will also include support for smart calibration, enabling NFT creators to create preset values for display settings; the smart TVs will then automatically adjust their display settings to match the presets, "so you can have peace of mind that your work looks impeccable, with true-to-the-original image quality."

Non-fungible tokens have boomed over the past year, with NFT trading volumes hitting over $10 billion in the third quarter of 2021, increasing an astonishing 38,000% year-over-year. Art NFTs have spearheaded the explosion of interest, with digital artist Beeple making headlines worldwide in March 2021 with the $69 million sale of a single NFT artwork.

NFTs were the talk of the town at Miami's Art Basel, while art galleries around the world have wrestled with the question of how to display NFT artworks.

Samsung and crypto

This isn't the first move that Samsung has made in the crypto space; as far back as 2019, the company added support for crypto assets to its smartphones, introducing the Samsung Blockchain Wallet on its Galaxy S10 model.

A year later, the company added crypto-powered video streaming platform Theta.tv to its Samsung Galaxy phones, and in 2021 it enabled support for crypto hardware wallets in its Samsung Blockchain Wallet.

Later in the year, the Bank of Korea announced a central bank digital currency (CBDC) pilot through Samsung Galaxy phones.

Source: Decrypt.co

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 11:06 am | Categories: News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t2u

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Presidential Candidate in South Korea to Raise Funds in Cryptocurrency, Issue NFTs

by Crypto Breaking News

Presidential Candidate in South Korea to Raise Funds in Cryptocurrency, Issue NFTs

Lee Jae-myung, nominated by the ruling party in South Korea for the upcoming presidential elections this spring, is preparing to raise funds in cryptocurrencies and issue non-fungible tokens for supporters. His campaign hopes that the initiative will woo young and tech-savvy Korean voters whose interest in digital assets is growing.

Ruling Party of South Korea to Collect Crypto Funds for Presidential Bid

The Democratic Party of Korea, the country's leading political force, is going to raise election funds through cryptocurrency and issue receipts to donors in the form of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), Korean media reported on Sunday. The money will be used to finance the campaign of the party's presidential nominee, Lee Jae-myung.

Bitcoin (BTC), ethereum (ETH), and up to three other cryptocurrencies are now under consideration. The final list of coins to be accepted will be announced in mid-January, the committee managing Lee's run unveiled, quoted by the Korean Herald and the Yonhap news agency.

The NFTs will feature photos of the candidate and his election pledges to those who donate to the fundraising campaign for the presidential vote on March 9. The tokens are expected to serve as a new medium for communication with younger voters, especially the generation of digital natives. Campaign official Kim Nam-kook elaborated:

As the young generation in their 20s and 30s are interested in emerging technologies, including virtual assets, NFTs and the metaverse, this type of fundraising could appeal to them.

The reports note that the Democratic Party has been exploring ways to accept cryptocurrency donations and issue NFT receipts to highlight its bet on technology and attract millennial voters. Lee Kwang-jae, who heads the committee on future economy in the campaign team, said that the DP was told by the National Election Commission that it doesn't violate any election laws by accepting crypto.

On Thursday, the lawmaker announced he will himself start to take digital coins from supporters. "With politics, we should break the regulations and foster new industries such as metaverse and NFT and give hope to the young people," Lee Kwang-jae insisted.

Party officials claim that if Lee Jae-myung's initiative is successful, he will become the world's first candidate to issue NFTs as part of efforts to finance a presidential bid. The non-fungible tokens, representing political memorabilia, could also hold future value and serve as an investment for the donors. The donated digital money will be converted into Korean won through a crypto exchange and then deposited into the campaign's account.

Do you expect more Korean politicians to start accepting cryptocurrency donations? Tell us in the comments section below.

Source: Bitcoin.com

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 11:00 am | Categories: Cryptocurrency, News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t2s

Time For The Apes: Mutant Ape Yacht Club And BAYC Sales Surge, Floor Prices Spike More Than 40%

by Crypto Breaking News

Both BAYC and Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC) NFT sales have risen since Eminem disclosed that he purchased a Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) non-fungible token (NFT) for $452K.

Time For The Mutant Apes To Eat

Last week, Mutant Ape Yacht Club topped other NFTs with a massive increase in sales volume. The initiative, which began at Bored Ape Yacht Club, saw two serum sales of more than $3.5 million each, helping Bored Ape Chemistry Club to make the top ten list.

The Mutant Ape Yacht Club floor price has continued to grow, and additional serum sales could keep the NFT collection in the spotlight. MAYC's seven-day trade volume of $93.02 million was up 93.41 percent on Sunday, January 2, 2022, according to metrics, while BAYC's weekly volume of $78.26 million was up 150.97 percent.

BAYC has witnessed $78.26 million in seven-day volume from 434 dealers, according to statistics. While BAYC volume has increased by 150.97 percent, the number of dealers has increased by 101.86 percent, despite the fact that BAYC sales have increased by 122.95 percent.

Over the last week, the MAYC project has seen a nearly 500 percent spike in trading volume. The average sale price of a Mutant Ape NFT has risen from around 8 ETH (over $32,000) on December 21 to over 12.3 ETH (around $50,250) yesterday. The project's price floor—or the cost of the cheapest-available NFT—has grown by about 40% in the last seven days, reaching 9.9 ETH as of this writing.

The Mutant Ape Yacht Club is an Ethereum NFT project with a total avatar image count of up to 20,000.

Mutant Ape ETH

Despite rise in NFT sales, ETH/USD price plunges. Source: TradingView

Yuga Labs And Their Mutant Apes Sales

In August, Yuga Labs sold 10,000 Mutant Ape Yacht Club NFTs, producing $96 million in ETH in less than an hour. At the same time, the developers gave each of the 10,000 current Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT holders a free Mutant Serum NFT, allowing them to produce a new Mutant Ape NFT image that looked like it had mutated from their original owned figure.

BAYC's overall market value is currently $2.73 billion, according to all-time metrics. The floor price of a single BAYC in ETH is roughly $273,420 at the time of writing, however the average price today is $287,740 per BAYC.

While BAYC has seen a significant increase, the Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC) NFT collection had the most volume this week. Today's MAYC volume is $93.02 million, up 93.41 percent. This week, there were 2,234 MAYC dealers, and while an individual MAYC's floor price is $59,180 per NFT, MAYCs are selling on average for $54,270.

According to DappRadar, the NFT market has exploded in 2021, with almost $10.7 billion in trade activity in Q3 and an estimated $22 billion year-to-date as of earlier this month.

Featured image from Pexels, chart from TradingView.com

Source: NewsBTC.com

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 10:25 am | Categories: News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t2q

Samsung announces NFT platform for smart TVs

by Crypto Breaking News

South Korean tech giant Samsung revealed a new smart TV lineup with an integrated NFT platform. Samsung's 2022 smart TVs such as Micro LED, Neo QLED and The Frame will have an NFT Platform app that can be used "for discovering, purchasing and trading digital artwork," according to the announcement on Monday.

"With demand for NFTs on the rise, the need for a solution to today's fragmented viewing and purchasing landscape has never been greater," the company noted.

In 2022, the company aims to introduce the first smart TV NFT explorer and marketplace aggregator. The upcoming platform would enable viewers to browse and also trade NFTs without leaving the couch. While it's unclear exactly which NFT platforms or marketplaces would be included for aggregation, Samsung promised its smart TVs will not tamper with the image quality, keeping the NFT creator's preset values.

Other than integrating NFTs in their products, the South Korean multinational conglomerate has been actively investing in NFT and metaverse projects through its venture capital arm, Samsung Next. Last Wednesday, the firm participated in the investment round for a metaverse gaming platform.

Aside from Samsung, other big companies have also boarded the NFT train. Back in July 2021, Coca-Cola got into NFTs for charitable purposes. A month later, Visa purchased a CryptoPunk NFT for $150,000.

Meanwhile, digital art collections and digital collectibles NFT sales dominated last year comprising 91% of total NFT sales. As the sales rise, more and more NFT and metaverse-based companies are raising significant amounts to fund their projects. Blockchain gaming companies also raised more than a billion in investments last year.

Source: Cointelegraph.com

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 10:16 am | Categories: News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t2o

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Bitcoin Hashrate Mints New All-Time Highs

by Crypto Breaking News

Hashrate figures for Bitcoin set new highs on Sunday night after crossing previous highs from mid-2021, data from analytics tool Glassnode show.

Hashrate refers to the amount of computational power used by miners dedicated to the minting of new bitcoins and verification of new transactions on the Bitcoin network. Millions of calculations are solved each second to 'win' new blocks, in a process broadly called mining.

Higher hashrates mean a stronger and more secure network, making it hard for a group of attackers to execute an ill-fated 51% attack and gain control of the network.

But the upkeep of such intensive machinery is costly and requires high technical knowledge – which has historically led miners to set up in inner regions of China, where manpower is affordable and climate conditions are conducive.

The Chinese government, however, isn't big on crypto. A crackdown on local miners and mining businesses last year saw Bitcoin hashrates plummet to as low as 61 exahashes per second in June 2021, from over 190 exahashes per second in April 2021.

Data at the time estimated that over 46% of Bitcoin's requisite computing power was supplied by Chinese miners. The ban has since led to an exodus of Chinese miners to other regions, such as Kazakhstan, Iran, and the U.S.

But Bitcoin has since bounced back and the network has not taken very long to recover: Glassnode data shows hashrates spiked to 201 exahashes on January 1, surpassing April 2021 levels.

Some engineers say the recovery showcases the network's resilience after a plummet last year. "Weathering and completely recovering from a 50%+ drop due to a mining ban by the country with the most hashpower was a major milestone for network resilience," said Casa wallet founder and Bitcoin developer Jameson Lopp in a tweet on Sunday night.

Bitcoin's network hashrate increased by 10% during 2021, from 159 to 175 exahash per second.

But that's not noteworthy. Weathering and completely recovering from a 50%+ drop due to a mining ban by the country with the most hashpower was a major milestone for network resilience. pic.twitter.com/yw8HwXm9pG

— Jameson Lopp (@lopp) January 2, 2022

Bitcoin hashrates hover at 189 exahashes per second on Monday morning at the time of writing, data shows.

Source: CoinDesk.com

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 10:09 am | Categories: News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t2n

Bank of Jamaica completes first CBDC pilot

by Crypto Breaking News

The Bank of Jamaica (BoJ) has successfully completed its first central bank digital currency (CBDC), targeting a national rollout in the first quarter of 2022.

After proceeding with initial CBDC prototype testing in March 2021, Jamaica's central bank finished an eight-month-long pilot last Friday, the Jamaica Information Service reported.

As part of the pilot, the BoJ minted 230 million Jamaican dollars ($1.5 million) worth of the CBDC for issuance to deposit-taking institutions and authorized payment service providers on Aug. 9, 2021.

The central bank then issued 1 million JMD ($6,500) worth of digital currency to the staff at BoJ's banking department. On Oct. 29, the bank also issued 5 million JMD ($32,000) worth of CBDC to the National Commercial Bank (NCB), one of the largest financial institutions in Jamaica.

According to the report, the NCB was the first wallet provider in Jamaica's CBDC pilot, onboarding 57 customers including four small merchants and 53 consumers. Customers were able to conduct person-to-person, cash-in and cash-out transactions at an NCB-sponsored event in December 2021.

The BoJ now plans to proceed with a nationwide rollout in Q1 2022, expecting to add two new wallet providers. These providers have already been conducting virtual simulation testing and would be able to order CBDC from BoJ and then distribute it to their customers. The central bank also plans to focus on interoperability by testing transactions between customers of different wallet providers, the report notes.

As previously reported, the central bank of Jamaica selected the Irish cryptography security firm eCurrency Mint as the technology provider for its digital currency project in March 2021. The firm is known for being involved in the CBDC development in countries like Senegal. The BoJ previously invited technology providers to submit applications for its CBDC project in July 2020.

Source: Cointelegraph.com

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 9:33 am | Categories: News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t2l

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DeFi Protocol Convex Finance Crosses $20B in Locked Value

by Crypto Breaking News

Yield-boosting application Convex Finance crossed $20 billion in total value locked (TVL) this Sunday, days after becoming the second-largest decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol by TVL.

DeFi projects rely on smart contracts instead of middlemen for financial services such as lending, trading, and borrowing.

Data from DeFi Llama shows that the platform locked just $68 million after its launch in May 2021, surpassing older projects in later months. The project took a month to attract $1 billion, and five months to reach $10 billion. Increased demand for the product led to an additional $10 billion in liquidity in the last two months.

Convex TVL has increased steadily since its launch in May 2021. (DeFi Llama)

Convex allows users to access liquidity and earn fees from Ethereum-based stablecoin exchange Curve Finance, the largest DeFi protocol with a TVL of $23 billion.

Curve tokens (CRV) are issued as yield farming rewards to liquidity providers on Curve Finance, and can be converted into vote-escrowed CRV (veCRV). Holding veCRV allows users to participate in platform governance, earn higher rewards and fees, and receive airdrops.

The tokens are time-locked, meaning users are incentivized to lock their CRV for a long time to receive more veCRV and more platform rewards. However, this mechanism effectively locks up liquidity, creating opportunity costs for users.

To solve this problem, Convex pools all user assets together so that it can purchase curve tokens, convert them into veCRV, and maximize rewards for its liquidity providers. This allows Convex users to receive Curve rewards without locking up curve tokens for lengthy periods.

Convex's native tokens (CVX) trade at $47 at the time of writing, down 6.6% in the past 24 hours. The network is worth over $2.2 billion by market capitalization, as per data from CoinGecko.

Source: CoinDesk.com

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 9:23 am | Categories: News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t2j

Square Enix President Talks NFTs, Metaverse, Blockchain Gaming in New Year's Letter

by Crypto Breaking News

Square Enix

Yosuke Matsuda, president of Square Enix, a leading game developing company, has voiced his opinion about the rise of new technologies and trends like NFTs, blockchain gaming, and the metaverse concept in the gaming space. Matsuda explains the business strategy around these, detailing how Square Enix is moving to include them in their upcoming games.

Square Enix Reveals New Tech Strategy

Yosuke Matsuda, the president of Square Enix, the game company behind million-dollar franchises like Final Fantasy, has detailed the next steps when it comes to including new, blockchain-based technologies in his plans for the new year. In a new year's letter, Matsuda explains that these new technologies, including non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and the concept of the metaverse, had a rise during the last year, and that these will evolve to a more actionable phase during this year.

Matsuda remarked the importance of these to their overall business strategy, stating:

As this abstract concept begins to take concrete shape in the form of product and service offerings, I am hoping that it will bring about changes that have a more substantial impact on our business as well.

As a consequence of this, the president pointed that the company is conducting aggressive research and development (R&D) efforts and investments in areas that include blockchain gaming and artificial intelligence (AI).

The Incentives of Decentralized Gaming

Matsuda makes a distinction between traditional gaming (what he calls "play-for-fun"), and the new blockchain gaming that has been called "play-to-earn," (P2E) giving the incentives that some of these games have to earn a token through game actions. This is what distinguishes centralized gaming, which focuses on a unidirectional data flow (from creator to consumer) to craft stories, from decentralized gaming, where the user will have a more involved role through the economy created by the token incentives.

This will enable modders, that are third parties that modify games in order to make them better or include more elements, to go from a purely contributional scheme to really earning by their constructions in the game. Matsuda explains:

From having fun to earning to contributing, a wide variety of motivations will inspire people to engage with games and connect with one another. It is blockchain-based tokens that will enable this. By designing viable token economies into our games, we will enable self-sustaining game growth.

However, the inclusion of these new elements in traditional gaming has been received negatively thus far. GSC Game World, a smaller company, had to recently abandon its intention of including NFT elements in Stalker 2, an upcoming game, after facing a negative reception from the public. Ubisoft, another leading developer, faced a similar problem, when the reveal of its NFT marketplace, Quartz, received 95% of negative reactions on Youtube.

What do you think about the vision of Square Enix about blockchain elements in traditional gaming? Tell us in the comments section below.

Source: Bitcoin.com

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 9:00 am | Categories: News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t2h

Bitcoin network turns 13, celebrates with new hash rate all-time high

by Crypto Breaking News

Today marks the 13th year since Bitcoin (BTC) creator Satoshi Nakamoto mined the genesis block or block 0 of the Bitcoin network, and for the first time mined a reward of 50 BTC back on Mon, 2009. Fast-forward to 2022, the BTC network shows no signs of slowing down by reaching a new all-time high hash rate of 207.53 million tera hashes per second (TH/s).

The Bitcoin hash rate, which correlates to the strength of the network based on the number of active miners, saw a temporary downfall after China banned citizens and businesses from pursuing crypto mining and trading activities. As a direct result of China's blanket ban on crypto a sudden shortage of miners, the Bitcoin hash rate fell to 58.46 million TH/s.

BTC hash rate in June 2021. Source: YCharts

As evidenced by the above graph, the Bitcoin hash rate saw an eventual comeback as Chinese miners began migrating to friendly jurisdictions. On Jan. 1, 2022, the Bitcoin network recorded a new all-time high of 207.53 million TH/s, reclaiming the network's security by increasing the mining difficulty.

BTC hash rate in January 2022. Source: YCharts

At the time of writing, the Bitcoin network hash rate stands at 190.64 million TH/s, down 8.14% from its all-time high.

BTC holdings of private corporations have significantly increased in the previous year, as revealed by on-chain analyst Willy Woo.

Since MicroStrategy's "Bitcoin for Corporations" conference in Feb 2021, public companies* holding significant BTC have gained market share from spot ETFs** as a way to access BTC exposure on public equity markets.

* MicroStrategy & public mining companies
** Mainly Grayscale pic.twitter.com/e18OEfgiEW

— Willy Woo (@woonomic) January 2, 2022

A Cointelegraph report on the matter highlights that purchases made by Michael Saylor's MicroStrategy exceed $6 billion in crypto assets. In December alone, the firm purchased a further 1,914 BTC worth $94 million.

Source: Cointelegraph.com

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 8:43 am | Categories: News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t2d

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BLOCKS: Industry Agnosticity in Blockchain

by Crypto Breaking News

BLOCKS is an innovative decentralized autonomous organization that offers blockchain solutions to companies that need to alter their modus operandi. The core objective of BLOCKS is to help companies revolutionize the way they operate and make industries benefit from blockchain technology, considered as the future of finance. One of its aims is to migrate traditional, existing businesses onto the blockchain.

The business space is undergoing a massive transformation in terms of how enterprises are run, thanks to blockchain. This technology is continually evolving, and it's only logical that companies tap into this new world of evolution to compete and better the services rendered to customers/clients.

Technology has accelerated automation in such a way that human input has become minimal. Blockchain has even made it better due to the concept of decentralization. Businesses don't need to depend on human endeavors to implement a decision or carry out a task. The technology has made performing tasks effortlessly and in a decentralized manner. But, not all businesses have been able to capitalize on the opportunities presented by blockchain.

More than 80% of businesses in various industries globally are still stuck to the old infrastructures, which are gradually fading out. This will only make these businesses go extinct and lose clients to others that operate on a more agnostic blockchain solution. The BLOCKS, as a blockchain agnostic, intends to onboard these businesses as well as industries by providing scalable, speedy, and secure solutions to improve automation. By leveraging its solutions, enterprises can interact with the blockchain and facilitate transactions.

BLOCKS Agnosticism

Blockchain has led to the development of several DeFi applications for various use cases. However, many applications presently are designed to suit specific industries and use cases. This makes such an application rigid and unable to adapt to the constantly evolving ecosystem.

This is one of the issues some businesses already leveraging blockchain solutions face in the DeFi space. Many blockchain solutions lack interoperability. That is, they can't effectively communicate with other blockchains and facilitate interaction between different ledger technologies. An agnostic blockchain solution will take a business in the right direction by enabling flexibility of use and interaction between different ledger technologies.

Blockchain is an emerging technology, which implies that it isn't developed fully yet. It will continue to evolve as time goes on, just like many digital technologies that emerged before it. Therefore, enterprises should leverage on solutions that facilitate interaction between different ledger technologies for different use cases instead of depending on just one and then investing a huge amount of resources to develop more for other use cases.

This is what BLOCKS will offer. It offers a solution that can be utilized for various use cases, so the company has the freedom to deploy the technology that suits their needs at that particular point in time. This maximizes efficiency, reduces complexities, saves the cost of building a new solution for another use case, and ensures that the variety of the business is taken care of.

BLOCKS seeks to revolutionize the way companies interact with blockchains by offering a solution that solves the trilemma – speed, security, and scalability. The autonomous entity provides a simplified infrastructure that makes it more convenient for industries to come onboard seamlessly through a Web3 network. With this, businesses in various industries can interact better with blockchains, further improving the overall structure of the enterprise.

BLOCKS As a Decentralized Autonomous Organization

BLOCKS runs on peer-to-peer software that empowers a group of people to make decisions pertaining to shared resources and funding. It's the world's first registered DAO LLC, backed by the regulatory laws of Wyoming. The DAO evolved from being self-managed to a progressive decentralized autonomous body.

It is a fully democratic organization. Every member has a say in the running of the organization. It is based on transparency and decentralization. Interestingly, BLOCKS will be giving out grants to automotive, defense, entertainment, real estate, and many other industries seeking to delve to the blockchain.

One can become a member of the community by acquiring either 300,000 $BLOCKS tokens or one million $BLOCKS tokens. 300,000 $BLOCKS tokens qualify a member for The Silver tier, while one million tokens qualify for the Gold tier. Silver membership gives you access to voting a nominated ambassador and winning free airdrops.

As a gold stakeholder, you enjoy the benefits of being voted as an ambassador. Ambassadors are given the chance to meet with the BLOCKS team to discuss proposals and make decisions that can impact the organization. Members also get the opportunity to purchase tokens at a discount. $BLOCKS are available for purchase on Uniswap.

Source: NewsBTC.com

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 8:16 am | Categories: News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t2f

Eminem Buys Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT That Looks Like Him For $452K

by Crypto Breaking News

Eminem, the Grammy Award-winning rapper, has joined the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), purchasing one of the non-fungible token (NFT) apes for 123.45 ether ($462,000) on the OpenSea platform.

Eminem Buys BAYC NFT

Eminem, the famed Detroit rapper, has joined the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC).

The NFT, named "EminApe," depicts Eminem's iconic Bored Ape figure wearing a khaki army cap and a gold chain necklace, both of which he frequently wears in real life. BAYC member GeeGazza sold the digital artwork for 123.45 ETH, which is around $450,000 USD. In November 2021, GeeGazza tweeted, "I still think Eminem is destined to buy my @BoredApeYC one day."

Six, a digital agency that has previously worked with celebrities in the NFT industry including as Wu-Tang Clan, Tycho, and Galantis, was responsible for the transaction. It's also not Eminem's first foray into NFTs: under the moniker "Shady Holdings," the musician now owns 15 NFTs on OpenSea.

In a tweet, BAYC member GeeGazza, who sold the ape, thanked the entertainer for purchasing the NFT. "I'm living in a simulation," he wrote, adding: "Madness. Let me write a lyric in your next single."

I'm living in a simulation.

Thank you @Eminem for buying my ape and joining the club!

Madness. Let me write a lyric in your next single 🤣 pic.twitter.com/myGNRmMLeD

— GeeGazza  (@Gee__Gazza) December 31, 2021

eminem btc

BTC/USD plunge from $50k. Source: TradingView

Related article | Eminem's Latest Album Kamikaze Name-Checks Bitcoin

The Rapper Holds NFTs From Different Collections

Slim Shady has 166 non-fungible token (NFT) assets from 32 collections, according to dappradar.com stats. After purchasing BAYC #9055 for 123.45, the address currently possesses 1.52 ether. Eminem received 124 ether from an account known as georgio.eth on ENS. That account owns 504 NFTs from 51 different collections, including Bored Ape Yacht Club #4936, and it spent 43.98 ether ($164,832) on two Cryptopunks.

SABC #2615, Shaq Gives Back #4077, and Adult Fantasy Sub-Dude (130/151) are among Eminem's other NFTs. The Shady Holdings address, in reality, contains a slew of ERC721 NFTs.

Eminem's NFT spending binge comes on the heels of his beat-inspired animated NFTs for Stans, which he released in April. Eminem's NFT sale took place on the Nifty Gateway NFT platform. Slim Shady and Paul Rosenberg also joined a host of venture funds that invested $30 million in the NFT market Makersplace in August.

Eminem has officially joined the second-largest NFT project on OpenSea by volume with his new EminApe. According to CryptoSlam, the BAYC has sold 284,765 ETH ($977.6 million) in secondary transactions so far, and the floor price is now at 60 ETH ($220,000).

The rapper joined the ranks of a slew of other celebrities, including NBA player Stephen Curry and talk show presenter Jimmy Fallon.

Bored Apes recently overtook CryptoPunks in terms of floor price, which is a huge accomplishment for a project that only began in April 2021.

Featured Image from Shutterstock | Charts by TradingView

Source: NewsBTC.com

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 7:21 am | Categories: News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t2a

Ethereum Co-Founder Vitalik Buterin Talks Argentina, BCH, Stablecoins, Scaling in Tweetstorm

by Crypto Breaking News

Ethereum Co-Founder Vitalik Buterin Talks Argentina, BCH, Stablecoins, Scaling in Tweetstorm

Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum, the second-biggest cryptocurrency by market cap, has reacted to some of his earlier beliefs in a new year's tweetstorm. The developer touched on some subjects including the rise of cryptocurrency in Argentina and how stablecoins are thriving in the country, how ethereum scaling is still a pressing concern for him, and the performance of bitcoin cash.

Vitalik Buterin Reflects on Earlier Takes

Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum, touched on some of his earlier opinions about some subjects and how these fare against the current state of affairs of the crypto landscape in a new year's tweetstorm. Buterin started by remembering an article that talked about how bitcoin could help Argentinians and Iranians back in 2019, where he concluded this was due to its uncensorable and international character instead of due to its scarcity that this could happen.

Buterin's vision on this was "generally correct", according to its views. On this, he stated:

My verdict: generally correct. Cryptocurrency adoption is high but stablecoin adoption is really high too; lots of businesses operate in USDT. Though of course, if USD itself starts showing more problems this could change.

The stablecoin sector has grown significantly this year, with Tether, the biggest stablecoin project, reaching a market cap of $78 billion. Decentralized alternatives like UST, the main stablecoin of the Terra environment, also thrived, reaching a market cap of $10 billion.

Scaling and Bitcoin Cash

On the other hand, Buterin recognizes he was wrong when he considered the problem of Ethereum scaling back in 2015. He shared a screenshot of an Ethereum slideshow roadmap where the time estimated to implement proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus was of 6 to 12 months. However, it was just last year that the beacon chain Ethereum 2.0, which will implement the change of proof of work to proof of stake consensus, was launched.

He attributes this to an underestimation of the complexity of software development and states that now, the Ethereum team is focused on simplicity, in the design of these solutions, and in the final product. Buterin also addressed his famous five cents commentary, stating:

I 100% stand by my comment that "the internet of money should not cost more than 5 cents per transaction". That was the goal in 2017, and it's still the goal now. It's precisely why we're spending so much time working on scalability.

He also commented on the current state of bitcoin cash (BCH), and while he was more inclined to support the big block side in the scaling war and was optimistic about the project, he now considers it "mostly a failure." Extending on this, he explained the reasoning behind his current opinion, declaring that:

Communities formed around a rebellion, even if they have a good cause, often have a hard time long term, because they value bravery over competence and are united around resistance rather than a coherent way forward.

What do you think about the opinions of Vitalin Buterin on his early beliefs? Tell us in the comments section below.

Source: Bitcoin.com

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 7:00 am | Categories: Bitcoin, Ethereum, News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t27

Salvadoran President Bukele Expects Bitcoin to Reach $100K This Year

by Crypto Breaking News

El Salvador President Nayib Bukele foresees bitcoin reaching the long-elusive six-digit price this year amid increasing adoption as a sovereign currency.

In 2022, bitcoin will reach $100,000 and two more countries will adopt the digital asset as legal tender, Bukele tweeted on Sunday, adding that the cryptocurrency will also become a major issue in the U.S. midterm elections to be held on Nov. 8.

El Salvador embraced bitcoin as the official currency in September last year, venturing into uncharted waters and drawing the ire of the International Monetary Fund. Bukele went a step further in November, announcing plans to issue a $1 billion "Bitcoin Bond" with a 10-year maturity on the Liquid Network. Half of the proceeds from the bond issue will fund the construction of a new "Bitcoin City" along the Gulf of Fonseca near a volcano.

According to Blockstream projections, the annualized yield offered by the bond could reach as high as 146% in the 10th year, subject to bitcoin rallying to $1 million in the next five years – a somewhat farfetched target given that the cryptocurrency is currently trading around $47,000, having peaked near $69,000. El Salvador has been a consistent buyer of the dip, a sign of confidence in the cryptocurrency's long-term price prospects.

While bitcoin rallied nearly 60% in 2021, outperforming traditional assets by a significant margin, the widely-anticipated price target of $100,000 remained elusive, thanks to the U.S. Federal Reserve's hawkish shift and broad-based risk aversion in financial markets in November and December.

2022 predictions on #Bitcoin:

•Will reach $100k
•2 more countries will adopt it as legal tender
•Will become a major electoral issue in US elections this year
•Bitcoin City will commence construction
•Volcano bonds will be oversubscribed
•Huge surprise at @TheBitcoinConf

— Nayib Bukele 🇸🇻 (@nayibbukele) January 2, 2022

While Bukele expects bitcoin to regain its mojo this year, some observers foresee the cryptocurrency underperforming coins associated with layer 1 blockchains like Ethereum, Avalanche, Fantom, Solana.

Singapore-based QCP Capital recommended diversification out of bitcoin and into as basket of layer 1 coins as one of the trades for 2022.

According to Jeff Dorman, chief investment officer at Arca Funds, thematic investing is expected to drive most gains in 2022. "From an investment standpoint, Arca remains thematically focused on DeFi, sports and entertainment as it pertains to fan engagement, gaming and NFTs, and web 3," Dorman said in a blog post published on Dec. 22.

"As institutional capital enters the market in an exponential fashion, the marginal buyer will far outpace the marginal seller," Dorman added.

Source: CoinDesk.com

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 6:59 am | Categories: News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t29

Bitcoin holdings of public companies have surged in 2021

by Crypto Breaking News

The quantity of Bitcoin held by private corporations has increased significantly during 2021, building on increases from the previous year.

In a Jan. 3 tweet, on-chain analyst Willy Woo claimed that public companies holding "significant BTC have gained market share from spot ETFs as a way to access BTC exposure on public equity markets".

This has been more noticeable since MicroStrategy's "Bitcoin for Corporations" conference on Feb. 3 and 4, 2021. The online seminar aimed to explain the legal considerations for firms seeking to integrate Bitcoin into their businesses and reserves.

Michael Saylor's MicroStrategy is a leading business intelligence firm and is known for being particularly bullish on BTC, owning almost $6 billion in crypto assets.

On Dec 30, Saylor's firm purchased a further 1,914 BTC worth $94 million. The company has gained more than $2.1 billion in profit since its initial BTpurchase in August 2020.

Woo referenced a chart of BTC holdings inside ETFs and public company treasuries available for public ownership via equity markets, based on crowdsourced corporate treasury data.

Spot Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) hold BTC, as opposed to Futures, in which companies purchase exposure via contracts from the CME futures market.

Since MicroStrategy's "Bitcoin for Corporations" conference in Feb 2021, public companies* holding significant BTC have gained market share from spot ETFs** as a way to access BTC exposure on public equity markets.

* MicroStrategy & public mining companies
** Mainly Grayscale pic.twitter.com/e18OEfgiEW

— Willy Woo (@woonomic) January 2, 2022

The data shows that digital currency asset management company Grayscale has gained the highest market share by a landslide, at 645,199 BTC by the end of 2021. This took up 71% of the wider market, as holdings of all spot ETFs and corporations together totaled 903,988 BTC according to the chart.

MicroStrategy is the largest corporate investor, holding 124,391 BTC valued at around $5.8 billion according to BitcoinTreasuries. Second-placed Tesla holds around 43,200 coins worth roughly $2 billion at current prices.

During 2020, the amount of BTC held by public companies surged 400% in 12 months to $3.6 billion as reported by Cointelegraph.

Source: Cointelegraph.com

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 6:36 am | Categories: Bitcoin, News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t25

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New year, same 'extreme fear' — 5 things to watch in Bitcoin this week

by Crypto Breaking News

Bitcoin (BTC) begins its first full week of 2022 in familiar territory below $50,000.

After ending December at $47,200 — far below the majority of bullish expectations — the largest cryptocurrency has a lot to live up to as signs of a halving cycle peak remain nowhere to be found.

With Wall Street set to return after stocks conversely ended the year on a high, inflation rampant and interest rate hikes looming, 2022 could soon turn out to be an interesting market environment, analysts say.

So far, however, all is calm — BTC/USD has produced no major surprises for weeks on end.

Cointelegraph takes a look at what could change — or continue — the status quo in the coming days.

Stocks could see 6 months of "up only"

Look no further than the S&P 500 for an example of the state of play when it comes to U.S. equities.

The index achieved no fewer than 70 all-time highs in 2021, rounding out the year with a flourish, even as risk assets looked far less appetising.

Bitcoin was among them, trailing below the $50,000 mark with the only noticeable events coming in the form of peaks and troughs around thin holiday liquidity.

With that said, central bank policy is widely tipped to provide a potential cat among the pigeons in the coming months. The Federal Reserve has signaled two interest rate hikes this year, and the market's ability to absorb them is seen as a key test for asset performance.

For the first chunk of the year, however, it may well be a continuation of the latest flavor of "business as usual" — stocks adding to all-time highs.

"History suggests the beginning of rate rise regimes actually result in stock market strength for 6 months," Charles Edwards, founder of asset manager Capriole, noted in a series of tweets this week.

"10 of the 13 regimes (77%) since the 1950s had positive stock market returns over the first six months, averaging +5.1%. We are approaching the start of a new regime now."

Edwards said that while such circumstances are generally "good" for Bitcoin, upheaval further down the line would likely mean that stocks take a beating in the long term thanks to the rate hikes.

"Without significantly higher economic growth (yet to be seen), it is unlikely any rate rise programs by the Fed will have a long runway," he continued.

"Bitcoin will be volatile in this period, both an effect of stock market volatility, but also from sharp Fed course corrections."

Inflation will be on the radar again next week, with Jan. 12 scheduled for the latest U.S. consumer price index (CPI) data for December.

*U.S. inflation chart. Source: Tradingeconomics.com*

$40,000 stays support floor

Bitcoin spot price action has provided precious little by way of interesting cues lately, staying in a well-defined range.

A tussle between bulls and bears has in fact been somewhat underwhelming in nature beyond rhetoric found on social media — volumes are thin, interest from retail low, and large players continue to maintain sell levels nearby.

Two levels I find important for #Bitcoin.

▫️ $48,000, the one we're currently rejecting on.
▫️ $49,400, the one that caused the latest correction and should flip for a bullish test of potentially mid $55k. pic.twitter.com/zISQu2IcDV

— Michaël van de Poppe (@CryptoMichNL) January 2, 2022

Responding to levels to watch from Cointelegraph contributor Micha¹el van de Poppe Sunday, popular trader and analyst TechDev agreed that $48,000 represents "a little brick wall."

To the downside, Van de Poppe said that he was eyeing the area between $40,000 and $42,000, with action above that corresponding to "accumulation."

Bitcoin, however, has a habit of upending even the strongest trend at the least expected moment.

For fellow trader Pentoshi, there is little cause for celebration at levels much below $60,000, these last appearing over a month ago.

"I will long logical areas in a downtrend. I will be macro bearish until 58-60k reclaim. And bullish at local areas," he summarized about his position over the weekend.

Pentoshi and others urged a pivot to Ether (ETH) on the basis of altcoin strength, thus providing a convenient way to "de-risk" with Bitcoin underperforming.

That strength is captured in Bitcoin's market cap dominance, which has now slipped under 40% for the first time since May, data from TradingView shows.

*Bitcoin dominance 1-week candle chart. Source: TradingView*

On-chain metrics predict "sustainable price trend"

For those looking for a silver lining to the uninspiring price action, on-chain metrics provide no shortage of relief.

The further away the market gets from last month's snap correction, the more enticing Bitcoin looks as an investment punt based on historical trends.

In its latest newsletter issued Dec. 31, Capriole director Ryan McCoy highlighted the shifting tide in investor selling habits as aligning with the latter stages of previous corrections.

Of particular interest is Short Term Holder spent profit output ratio (SOPR) from on-chain analytics firm Glassnode, which shows the extent of gains or losses from recently-spent coins — specifically those which last moved in the past 155 days.

Currently with a median score below 1, SOPR shows that coins spent at a loss are declining in numbers — a potential form of seller exhaustion.

"Typically, when this metric starts to bottom and then rise, a more sustainable price trend has begun," McCoy explained.

"The 30-day median is still below 1 (implying that the average price of the coins moved is lower than the price they were purchased at), but signs of life like this after a substantial corrective event suggest we are likely in the latter stages of the current correction."

*Bitcoin short-term holder SOPR (30-day moving average) chart. Source: Capriole*

Cointelegraph has reported extensively on hodlers' habits when it comes to BTC, and long-term investors remain steadfast in their conviction not to sell.

"Despite the -38% drop since November, Long-Term Holders continue to diamond hand Bitcoin," McCoy summarized.

"The last time Bitcoin was at $47K, long-term holdings were 10% lower. To date there has been insignificant distribution despite the volatility. That's bullish."

Fundamentals have (almost) never been better

Continuing the positivity, network fundamentals underscore the strong belief of another cohort of essential Bitcoin market participants.

Miners, despite seeing all-time highs of $69,000, are accumulating, not selling, their coins.

At the same time, the network hash rate is at all-time highs of its own, these last seen in March and April before the upheaval of the Chinese ban sparked months of migration.

Should the old adage of "price follows hash rate" remain true, miners' faith in long-term profitability of Bitcoin provides a key indicator of where the market is going.

"Metrics like this are effectively old-guard fundamental outlook material and are largely overlooked by newer and sexier methods of explaining price dynamics, supply and demand, but cannot be ignored for their ability to explain institutional and infrastructural support for securing the protocol that at this point effectively underpins the entirety of the crypto economy," Capriole added.

*Bitcoin hashrate chart. Source: MiningPoolStats*

Hash rate is currently over 190 exahashes per second (EH/s), according to estimates from MiningPoolStats.

Later this week, meanwhile, Bitcoin network difficulty is set to increase by around 2.4%.

*Bitcoin difficulty chart. Source: Blockchain*

This reflects the competitiveness of the current mining landscape, and difficulty should shortly tackle 25 trillion again for the first time since the pre-China peak, data from Blockchain shows.

With every increase, difficulty reinforces network security, creating an even more robust ecosystem.

How sustainable is "extreme fear" this time?

Bitcoin sentiment began 2022 with serious cold feet, the Crypto Fear & Greed Index measuring "extreme fear."

As Cointelegraph reported, investor emotions have become highly sensitive to even smaller price movements within the current range.

Fear & Greed reflects this, moving up 8 points since the weekend despite price action offering little change.

At the time of writing, the Index measured 29/100, nevertheless in the "fear" zone.

*Crypto Fear & Greed Index. Source: Alternative.me*

As noted by on-chain analytics resource Ecoinometrics, meanwhile, such sentiment has historically failed to play out for long.

"Bitcoin is back in extreme fear. Historically that means there is limited downside at 30 days," it tweeted alongside a chart compiling the index and BTC/USD.

*Crypto Fear & Greed Index vs. BTC/USD chart. Source: Ecoinometrics/ Twitter*

Source: Cointelegraph.com

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 6:05 am | Categories: Bitcoin, News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t23

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TA: Ethereum is Showing Early Signs of Fresh Rally, But 100 SMA is the Key

by Crypto Breaking News

Ethereum started a fresh increase above the $3,750 level against the US Dollar. ETH price is now struggling to gain pace above the $3,850 zone.

Ethereum started a steady increase above the $3,700 zone and $3,750.
The price is trading above $3,750 and the 100 hourly simple moving average.
There is a key bullish trend lien forming with support near $3,780 on the hourly chart of ETH/USD (data feed via Kraken).
The pair must stay above the 100 hourly SMA to avoid a fresh decline in the near term.

Ethereum Price Starts Decent Increase

Ethereum formed a base above $3,600 and started a fresh increase. ETH was able to climb above the $3,750 resistance zone to move into a positive zone.

There was a clear move above the $3,800 level and the 100 hourly simple moving average. A new weekly high was formed near $3,854 and the price is now consolidating gains. There was a minor decline below the $3,840 and $3,820 levels.

The price traded below the 23.6% Fib retracement level of the recent increase from the $3,622 swing low to $3,854 high. It is now trading near $3,800 and the 100 hourly simple moving average.

Source: ETHUSD on TradingView.com

An immediate resistance on the upside is near the $3,820 level. The next major resistance is near the $3,850 level. A clear upside break above the $3,850 level could pump the price towards $4,000. Any more gains could send the price towards the $4,120 level. The main resistance is near the $4,200 level.

Downside Break in ETH?

If ethereum fails to start a fresh increase above the $3,850 level, it could start a downside correction. An initial support on the downside is near the $3,780 level or the trend line. The first key support is now forming near the $3,865 and the 100 hourly SMA.

A downside break below the 100 hourly SMA could put a lot of pressure on the bulls. In the stated case, the price could decline towards the $3,740 support zone in the near term. It is near the 50% Fib retracement level of the recent increase from the $3,622 swing low to $3,854 high.

Technical Indicators

Hourly MACD – The MACD for ETH/USD is now losing pace in the bullish zone.

Hourly RSI – The RSI for ETH/USD is near the 50 level.

Major Support Level – $3,750

Major Resistance Level – $3,850

Source: NewsBTC.com

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 5:18 am | Categories: Ethereum, News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t21

Bored Ape, Mutant Ape Yacht Club NFT Sales Skyrocket — Floor Prices Spike More Than 40%

by Crypto Breaking News

Bored Ape, Mutant Ape Yacht Club NFT Sales Skyrocket — Floor Prices Spike More Than 40%

After Eminem revealed that he purchased a Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) non-fungible token (NFT) for $452K, both BAYC and Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC) NFT sales have skyrocketed. Metrics indicate that on Sunday, January 2, 2022, MAYC's seven-day trade volume of $93.02 million is up 93.41% and BAYC's weekly volume of $78.26 million is up 150.97%.

BAYC and MAYC Weekly Volumes Jump 93% to 150% Higher

Bored Ape Yacht Club and Mutant Ape Yacht Club, are two particular NFT projects that have seen significant trade volume during the last seven days. Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) is an NFT project that consists of 10,000 unique apes and today, 6,067 unique addresses hold at least one BAYC.

At the time of writing, one ethereum address holds roughly 105 BAYC NFTs. Statistics show that BAYC has seen $78.26 million in seven-day volume among 434 traders. While the BAYC volume is up 150.97%, the number of traders is also up 101.86%, alongside the 122.95% increase in BAYC sales.

Currently, all-time metrics indicate BAYC's overall market valuation is $2.73 billion. At the time of writing, a single BAYC's floor price is around $273,420 in ether but the average price today is $287,740 per BAYC.

While BAYC has seen a major boost, the sister project Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC) NFT collection commands this week's top volume. MAYC volume today is $93.02 million which is up 93.41%. There's been 2,234 MAYC traders this week and an individual MAYC's floor price is $59,180 per NFT, but MAYC's are selling for $54,270 on average.

Mutant Apes Capture $707 Million in Volume — Bored Ape Kennel Club, Bored Ape Chemistry Club, Prime Ape Planet NFT Sales Spike

MAYC is an NFT collection of 20,000 mutant apes and the only way to create one is by tethering a BAYC to mutant serum or during the public sale's mint process. MAYC's rewarded BAYC holders with a mutant version that can be traded on the open market. To date, there's been approximately 7,623 mutations.

Across 21,956 in lifetime MAYC sales, the project has seen 184,791 ether or $707 million in all-time volume. Furthermore, at the time of writing, there's 11,148 unique ethereum wallets that hold at least one MAYC.

During the last seven days, Bored Ape Yacht Club #3562 sold for 430 ether or $1.64 million five days ago. That was the most expensive BAYC sale this past week, while Eminem's recent BAYC purchase was this week's 30th most expensive BAYC sale.

On January 2, 2022, MAYC #2209 sold for 26.69 ether or $102K, MAYC #4627 sold for 26.26 ether or just over $100K the same day. In addition to BAYC and MAYC sales on the rise, Bored Ape Kennel Club, Bored Ape Chemistry Club, and Prime Ape Planet PAP all command today's top NFT collection volume.

What do you think about BAYC and MAYC trade volume rising this week? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Source: Bitcoin.com

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 5:00 am | Categories: Ethereum, News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t1X

40,000 member players guild raises $6M to make P2E gaming easier

by Crypto Breaking News

Play It Forward DAO (PIF DAO) has kicked off 2022 by announcing it has raised $6 million from private investors, only six months after launching.

The DAO includes a guild of over 40,000 players and 3,000 scholars across the Philippines and Indonesia, all of which are managed via a play-to-earn (P2E) scholar management program.

Currently, the DAO has players across several notable Metaverse P2E games, including Axie Infinity, Thetan Arena, Pegaxy, and Dragonary.

Co-founder Cholo Maputol told Cointelegraph that the funds will be used to scale the DAO's scholarship programs, scale up its P2E board platform, and finance some early-stage investments in P2E games and infrastructure projects.

"PIF DAO's objective is not to take a larger piece of the pie, but to grow the pie and increase rewards for players."

In a Jan. 2 announcement, the DAO stated that the fundraising round represents its next phase of "building a platform that will transform Play-to-Earn into a Plug-and-Play experience for more guilds and players globally."

Maputol explained to Cointelegraph that P2E gaming can be inaccessible to many players because it requires a lot of technical know-how to get started such as setting up a wallet and purchasing tokens.

"We want to build an ecosystem that abstracts all that away so any manager or player can get started in play-to-earn seamlessly (plug-and-play)."

Major investors who signed up to the table included Signum Capital, which has also backed other notable projects including Polkadot and Ren.

Other partners who signed up included Kyber Ventures, UOB Venture Management, Jump Capital, GBV, LD Capital, Great South Gate, Octava, 975 Capital, Arcane Group, Tokocrypto, AU21, Double Peak Group, Faculty Group, NxGen, DWeb3 Capital, GSR, SL2 Capital, and Mintable.

Kyber founder Loi Luu stated that they had "confidently invested in PIF because of their unique guild gaming system, which can drive value to the Play-to-Earn economy as a whole," before adding:

"We believe the P2E movement will continue strong, and onboard tens of millions of new users to the Metaverse."

PIF DAO was previously known as Railings University, before changing its name in December 2021.

Source: Cointelegraph.com

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 4:58 am | Categories: News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t1Z

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More billionaires turning to crypto on fiat inflation fears

by Crypto Breaking News

Previously anti-crypto investors are increasingly turning to Bitcoin and its brethren as a hedge against fiat currency inflation concerns.

One example is Hungarian-born billionaire Thomas Peterffy who, in a Jan. 1 Bloomberg report, said that it would be prudent to have 2-3% of one's portfolio in crypto assets just in case fiat "goes to hell". He is reportedly worth $25 billion.

Peterffy's firm, Interactive Brokers Group Inc., announced that it would be offering crypto trading to its clients in mid-2020 following increased demand for the asset class. The company currently offers Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and Bitcoin Cash, but will be expanding that selection by another 5-10 coins this month.

Peterffy, who holds an undisclosed amount of crypto himself, said that it is possible that digital assets could reap "extraordinary returns" even if some could also go to zero according to Bloomberg. "I think it can go to zero, and I think it can go to a million dollars," he added before stating "I have no idea."

In early December, the billionaire predicted that Bitcoin could spike as high as $100,000 before markets begin to retreat.

Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio is another renowned billionaire that revealed his portfolio contained some Bitcoin and Ethereum last year. This revelation came just a few months after he questioned crypto's properties as a store of value.

He has now changed that stance and views crypto asset investments as "alternative money" in a world where "cash is trash'' with inflation eroding purchasing power.

In late December, Dalio commented that he was impressed at how crypto as lasted, before stating "Cash, which most investors think is the safest investment is, I think, the worst investment."

Billionaire hedge fund manager Paul Tudor Jones also bought Bitcoin last year, labeling the move as a hedge against inflation.

Pandemic-induced stimulus packages have caused economic turmoil across the globe, the fallout from which could linger for decades. In the United States, inflation is at a 4 decade high of 6.8%. This has resulted in a surge in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) as the costs of daily goods continue to increase.

The billionaires are already seeing the danger signs with fiat currencies and central bank manipulation, and they are increasingly turning to crypto assets. The year 2022 could see more wealthy investors join their ranks if the trend continues.

Source: Cointelegraph.com

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 3:42 am | Categories: News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t1V

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TA: Bitcoin Consolidates Below $48K: What Could Trigger A Sharp Decline

by Crypto Breaking News

Bitcoin is struggling to recover above the $48,000 resistance against the US Dollar. BTC could decline heavily if there is a clear break below $46,000.

Bitcoin started a consolidation phase below the $48,500 and $48,000 resistance levels.
The price is trading below $48,000 and the 100 hourly simple moving average.
There is a connecting bearish trend line forming with resistance near $47,600 on the hourly chart of the BTC/USD pair (data feed from Kraken).
The pair remains at a risk of a larger decline unless it surges above the $48,000 barrier.

Bitcoin Price Remains At Risk

Bitcoin price failed to recover above $48,500 and started another decline. BTC traded below the $48,000 and $47,500 levels to move into a bearish zone.

The decline gained pace below the $47,000 level and the 100 hourly simple moving average. A low was formed near $45,530 before the price started an upside correction. Bitcoin was able to recover above the $46,500 and $47,000 levels.

The price climbed above the 50% Fib retracement level of the key decline from the $48,591 swing high to $45,530 low. However, the price failed to clear the $48,000 resistance zone.

Besides, there is a connecting bearish trend line forming with resistance near $47,600 on the hourly chart of the BTC/USD pair. The trend line is near the 76.4% Fib retracement level of the key decline from the $48,591 swing high to $45,530 low.

Source: BTCUSD on TradingView.com

A clear move above the $48,000 resistance zone could start a fresh increase. The next major resistance is near the $48,500 level. Any more gains could send the price towards the $50,000 level in the near term.

Fresh Decline In BTC?

If bitcoin fails to recover above $48,000, it could continue to move down. An immediate support is near the $46,400 zone. The first major support is near $46,100.

A downside break below the $46,100 level could push the price towards the $45,500 support. Any more losses may possibly spark a larger decline below the $45,000 support zone. In the stated case, the price may possibly decline towards the $43,200 level.

Technical indicators:

Hourly MACD – The MACD is now gaining pace in the bearish zone.

Hourly RSI (Relative Strength Index) – The RSI for BTC/USD is below the 50 level.

Major Support Levels – $46,100, followed by $45,500.

Major Resistance Levels – $47,500, $48,000 and $48,500.

Source: NewsBTC.com

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 3:08 am | Categories: Bitcoin, News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t1T

Bitcoin Will Be Legal Tender in 2 More Countries This Year, El Salvador's President Predicts

by Crypto Breaking News

Bitcoin Will Be Legal Tender in 2 More Countries This Year, El Salvador's President Predicts

El Salvador's president has made six predictions relating to bitcoin for 2022. He expects two more countries to adopt bitcoin as legal tender this year. Meanwhile, he expects El Salvador's Bitcoin City to commence construction during the year and his country's volcano bonds to be oversubscribed.

Bitcoin Predictions 2022 by President Bukele

The president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, tweeted on Jan. 1 his six predictions relating to bitcoin for the year 2022. El Salvador made bitcoin legal tender alongside the U.S. dollar in September last year.

Firstly, President Bukele expects the price of BTC to reach $100,000. Secondly, he believes that two more countries will adopt bitcoin as legal tender.

El Salvador has purchased about 1,391 BTC altogether since bitcoin became its national currency.

Bukele is not the only one who expects more countries to adopt bitcoin as legal tender by the end of 2022. The CEO of crypto exchange Bitmex, Alex Hoeptner, predicted in October last year that by the end of this year, "we'll have at least five countries that accept bitcoin as legal tender." He noted that "All of them will be developing countries."

Furthermore, the Salvadoran president expects Bitcoin City to commence construction this year. He announced his plan to build the world's first bitcoin city powered by a volcano and financed by bitcoin bonds in November. He also said there would not be any taxes in the bitcoin city except for value-added tax (VAT). Another prediction Bukele made was that the volcano bonds will be oversubscribed.

His Bitcoin City announcement came one day before the International Monetary Fund (IMF) issued a report warning El Salvador against using bitcoin as legal tender due to various risks associated with cryptocurrency. Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey also raised concerns about bitcoin being used as legal tender in El Salvador.

Bukele also predicted there will again be a "huge surprise" at the Miami Bitcoin Conference 2022 and that BTC "will become a major electoral issue in U.S. elections."

What do you think about the 2022 predictions by El Salvador's president? Let us know in the comments section below.

Source: Bitcoin.com

Crypto Breaking News | January 3, 2022 at 3:00 am | Categories: News | URL: https://wp.me/papzAO-t1R

Monday, January 3, 2022

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