Crypto
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Price analysis 3/18: BTC, ETH, BNB, XRP, LUNA, SOL, ADA, AVAX, DOT, DOGE
Bitcoin (BTC) is facing a challenging environment in 2022 due to the surging inflation and geopolitical turmoil. Although gold has outperformed Bitcoin year-to-date, Bloomberg Intelligence senior commodity strategist Mike McGlone believes that Bitcoin could make a strong comeback. McGlone expects the current circumstances to “mark another milestone in Bitcoin’s maturation.” Another bullish sign for the long term is that the Bitcoin miners have been increasing their Bitcoin holdings since 2021. Compass Mining founder and CEO Whit Gibbs said to Cointelegraph that Bitcoin mining companies are “taking more of a bullish approach to Bitcoin.” Daily cryptocurrency market performance. Source: Coin360 Terraform Labs founder Do Kwon said that its stablecoin TerraUSD (UST) will be backed by mor...
Coinbase Wallet adds support for Solana
Top U.S. crypto exchange Coinbase has added wallet support for Solana (SOL) and its ecosystem of Solana tokens (SPL). Coinbase cited the surging interest in Solana over the past 12 months as investors look for low-cost alternatives to Ethereum as a key reason behind adding support to the network. The expanded wallet support comes just a few days after the firm launched Coinbase Pay, which enables users to fund their wallets directly via a web browser extension. In a March 18 blog post announcing the move, the firm also loosely outlined plans to “further integrate” with Solana by connecting the Coinbase Wallet with decentralized applications (dApps) and NFTs hosted on the network, which is famously championed by FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried. Users of Solana-based wallets such as Phantom and So...
Rare Bears Discord phishing attack nabs $800K in NFTs
Recently launched NFT project, Rare Bears, was hit with an attack, after a hacker posted a phishing link in the project’s Discord channel, stealing nearly $800,000 in NFTs. Analysis from blockchain security firm Peckshield detailed that the attacker was able to steal 179 NFTs, including Rare Bears and other NFTs from various collections, including CloneX, Azuki, a “mfer” from artist sartoshi, and 6 LAND tokens used for The Sandbox metaverse. According to on-chain analysis, most of the NFTs were sold, netting the hacker 286 ETH, worth over $795,500, most of which was promptly put through Tornado Cash, a crypto mixer used to obfuscate the source of funds. A slate of similar phishing scams have occurred in recent months on Discord, suggesting some teams need to more carefully consider t...
Australian competition regulator takes Meta to court over fake crypto ads
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) is taking Meta Platforms, Inc. (formerly Facebook) to the Federal Court, alleging that the firm and its Irish branch engaged in “false, misleading or deceptive conduct” by publishing scam celebrity crypto ads. Some users have lost hundreds of thousands of dollars to the sophisticated and long running scams tied to the ad. The spotlight on Meta has heated up in Australia since the start of February, with Cointelegraph previously reporting that the ACCC was investigating the firm over allegedly fraudulent crypto ads. Aussie mining billionaire Andrew Forrest also took legal action against the company for hosting ads that allegedly used his name to defraud victims. In an announcement posted earlier today, the ACCC asserted that Meta “ai...
Miners that hodl the most Bitcoin are ‘relentlessly expanding’
Bitcoin (BTC) miners are holding more and more Bitcoin while “relentlessly expanding” their operations in 2022. A report by Arcane Research indicates that publicly listed Bitcoin miners are “constantly looking for expansion opportunities,” as they “plan to increase hashrate faster than the whole network in 2022.” Publicly listed Bitcoin miners projected hashrates. Source: Arcane Research 44.95% of the global hash rate derives from North American miners, according to the latest figures from the Cambridge Bitcoin electricity consumption index. With the massive projected increases in target hash rate among the publicly traded Bitcoin miners, it‘s “likely to increase.” Jaran Mellerud, an analyst for Arcane Research, told Cointelegraph that “most publicly listed miners pursue a hodl strat...
DEA launches Cookin’ Burger, fourth title within ecosystem
Digital Entertainment Asset Pte. Ltd. (DEA), a Singapore-based GameFi ecosystem, has launched Cookin’ Burger, its newest blockchain game. It is the fourth title and the first third-party game to be released within its PlayMining ecosystem, CoinText learned from a press release. Its beta version will be unveiled in May. A multitasking cooking game In this game, the user is a burger shop staff member. They take orders from customers and serve them properly and quickly to improve their restaurant’s reputation. DEA announced an NFT presale to celebrate the game’s launch. This will start on March 18 at 11:00 (UTC+8). Intuitive and straightforward gameplay The gameplay is straightforward and intuitive, with players subject to a specific learning curve. They can play and win re...
RBI seemingly wants to ban cryptocurrencies, but not for the reasons you might think
On Thursday, the Reserve Bank of India, or RBI, the country’s central bank, published a critical bulletin regarding the cryptocurrency industry. While the report praised the innovative distributed ledger technology associated with digital currencies, the RBI dismissed arguments calling for the regulation of such assets and called for an outright ban. RBI’s core concerns were related to cryptocurrencies threatening the country’s financial sovereignty. The RBI wrote: “Historically, private currencies have resulted in instability and therefore, have evolved into fiat currencies over centuries. The retrograde step back to private currencies cannot be taken simply because technology allows it without considering the dislocation it causes to society’s leg...
Central Bank of Russia issues digital asset license to Sberbank in apparent policy reversal
Less than two weeks after the Central Bank of Russia, or CBR, reiterated its position proposing to ban the issuance, mining and circulation of cryptocurrencies in Russia, it appears to have reevaluated its policy. In a press release published on Thursday, the CBR added the country’s biggest lender, Sberbank, to its register of information system operators for digital financial assets. As reported by local news outlet Tass, the CBR stated: “Inclusion in the registry allows companies to issue digital financial assets and exchange them between users within their platforms.” Sberbank’s blockchain platform is based on a distributed ledger technology, which can, theoretically, protect against information tampering. Legal entities on Sberbank will soon be able to issue digital financia...
US lawmakers introduce bills that could force crypto exchanges to cut ties with Russian wallets
Representative Brad Sherman will be introducing a bill in the House aimed at cracking down on U.S. businesses handling crypto transactions for Russian banks and individuals. Speaking at a hybrid markup meeting with the House Financial Services Committee on Thursday, Sherman said he will be introducing a companion bill to Senator Elizabeth Warren’s legislation that would give the Biden administration “explicit authority to require that crypto exchanges that are subject to U.S. law stop facilitating transactions with Russian-based crypto wallets.” Warren first announced the legislation on March 8, later saying during a Senate Banking Committee hearing she will be introducing the bill on Thursday. Neither bill’s text is available through congressional records at the time of publication....
Optimism saves users $1B in fees, raises $150M in Series B
Popular Ethereum scaling solution Optimism has announced a $150 million Series B funding round co-led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and Paradigm at a total valuation of $1.65 billion. According to a blog post from Optimism, the Layer 2 (L2) solution has saved users of the Ethereum network over $1 billion in gas fees. The funding will be used to expand the Optimism team and go towards working on reducing network fees even further. Fees on the Optimism network were reduced by a cumulative 30% last year, and now the team is contributing work towards an Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP-4844) for Shard Blob Transactions, which may potentially reduce Ethereum network fees by up to 100x in the near future. Today on Ethereum #AllCoreDevs, our very own @protolambda presented EIP-4844: Shard...
Elrond, Mechanism Capital invest in Itheum, $4M total raised
Elrond, Mechanism Capital, and other key entities in blockchain and crypto have made serious investments in Itheum, CoinText learned from a press release. These extend the earlier $1.5 million round funded by Morningstar Ventures, which incubated Itheum through Elrond’s Dubai Incubator. Itheum turns heads in crypto and blockchain space Among the other prominent VCs and investors are Ascensive Assets, Woodstock, MHC Digital Finance, Spark Digital Finance, Skynet EGLD Capital, and ZBS Capital. The new investments mark another significant milestone for the Itheum team. With this new support, Itheum has now raised a total of $4 million. This will allow the team to work on ownership and trade of personal data in the Metaverse. Mark Paul, founder of Itheum commented: It’s been an ex...
Survey finds that NFT gaming could become an alternative to traditional employment
A recent survey conducted by Balthazar has found that gamers highly consider turning to NFT gaming to earn a living Balthazar CEO said gamers could potentially earn equal or even more than they currently do In what is a sign of increasing utility of NFTs, the inaugural Community Insights Report by NFT gaming platform Balthazar has found that players participating in NFT-based games could potentially quit their real-life jobs to become full-time play-to-earn gamers. The recent survey, which involved 1,103 participants (including current players and those not yet playing), was conducted in the Philippines. 32% of the respondents confirmed that they would straight up leave their jobs or consider leaving them if they could play NFT games as an alternative source of income. On the other hand, 5...
