Crypto

After Thanksgiving Thursday, Black Friday and Cyber Monday comes Giving Tuesday, a day that encourages contributing to charity. 2021 saw a rise in crypto-philanthropy thanks to The Giving Block’s initiative of Crypto Giving Tuesday, which initially began in 2019. The organization that equips nonprofits to accept cryptocurrency donations raised $2.4 million dollars in crypto this year, a 583% increase from Crypto Giving Tuesday 2020.  From charities, universities, faith-based to other mission-driven organizations, 1,071 total nonprofits participated. And the average donation size was $12,600. The majority of donations were done in Ether (ETH), with Bitcoin (BTC) and USD Coin (USDC) in second and third place, respectively. It can be noted that ETH overtook BTC for the top spot in total ...

Bitcoin (BTC) was on repeat on Dec. 2 as markets watched another attack on $60,000 end in defeat. BTC/USD 1-hour candle chart (Bitstamp). Source: TradingView “Nothing has changed” Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC/USD back at $57,000 Thursday, having come full circle in 24 hours. The pair had briefly hit $59,000 into the Wall Street open the day prior, this failing to hold as another round of macro triggers skewed sentiment to the downside once more. Bitcoin thus fell in line with stocks reacting, it seemed, to continued concern over the new coronavirus omicron variant. The S&P 500 ended the day down 1.2%. With a sense of frustration pervading crypto markets, analysts took the opportunity to reassert a longer-range perspective. “It’s very simple. Below $60K...

Bitcoin Capital AG released two new exchange-traded products on the SIX Swiss Exchange: the FiCAS Active Bitcoin ETP (BTCB) and FiCAS Active Ethereum ETP (ETHB), which are actively managed by FICAS AG. Institutional investors, professional, and private investors in Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and the European Union (excluding Hungary) can now invest in the new offerings via their bank or broker just as they would with other listed financial assets such as equities or bonds. “Our purpose is to grant investors safe and easy access to digital assets and are convinced that crypto assets will soon be part of the diversification strategy of many investment portfolios,” says Dr. Luca Schenk, chairman of Bitcoin Capital AG. “The two new products with the most relevant crypto...

United States-based companies are increasingly listing cryptocurrency-based investment products in Europe, with asset manager WisdomTree getting another listing for its crypto basket exchange-traded product (ETP). On Dec. 2, WisdomTree listed its Crypto Mega Cap Equal Weight ETP on Euronext exchanges in Paris and Amsterdam. Trading under the ticker symbol MEGA, the investment product is backed by physical crypto assets including Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) with a quarterly rebalance. Launched in November 2021, MEGA was previously listed on Deutsche Boerse’s digital exchange Xetra and Swiss SIX exchange. Apart from MEGA, WisdomTree also launched two more crypto ETPs recently, including WisdomTree Crypto Market (BLOC) and WisdomTree Crypto Altcoin (WALT). BLOC provides exposure to a basket...

The Matrix’s NFT revelations Soaring demand for the Warner Bros.’ Matrix NFT avatar drop on Nifty’s this week caused the website’s purchasing page to crash. Earlier this month, the film studio announced it would be dropping 100,000 unique Matrix-inspired avatar NFTs for $50 each as part of a promotional campaign for the new Matrix Resurrections film set to hit cinemas in the U.S. on Dec. 22. After more than 300,000 Matrix fans queued up for the drop on Nov. 30, Nifty’s was forced to start and stop the queue multiple times due to max capacity-induced “infrastructure issues.” Hello again everyone. While we are obviously still working through the launch not going the way we had hoped it would, we appreciate every single one of you that have hung in with us, and we want to send a very si...

The Matrix’s NFT revelations Soaring demand for the Warner Bros.’ Matrix NFT avatar drop on Nifty’s this week caused the website’s purchasing page to crash. Earlier this month, the film studio announced it would be dropping 100,000 unique Matrix-inspired avatar NFTs for $50 each as part of a promotional campaign for the new Matrix Resurrections film set to hit cinemas in the U.S. on Dec. 22. After more than 300,000 Matrix fans queued up for the drop on Nov. 30, Nifty’s was forced to start and stop the queue multiple times due to max capacity-induced “infrastructure issues.” Hello again everyone. While we are obviously still working through the launch not going the way we had hoped it would, we appreciate every single one of you that have hung in with us, and we want to send a very si...

The court case between Australian Craig Wright and the estate of his now deceased friend David Kleiman over legal rights to tens of billions of dollars worth of Bitcoin mined by Satoshi Nakamoto could end in a mistrial if jurors remain deadlocked. Wright claims he used the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto when he invented Bitcoin. The case being deliberated began in 2018 when the estate of his associate Kleiman sued him on the grounds the pair were partners who’d invented and mined Bitcoin together By about 5PM UTC on Nov. 2, the jury was deadlocked, having issued the following statement: “Unfortunately we cannot come to a conclusion and we cannot all agree on a verdict on any of the questions.” As of 10PM UTC, the jury remained deadlocked and is set to return tomorrow, accordi...

The court case between Australian Craig Wright and the estate of his now deceased friend David Kleiman over legal rights to tens of billions of dollars worth of Bitcoin mined by Satoshi Nakamoto could end in a mistrial if jurors remain deadlocked. Wright claims he used the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto when he invented Bitcoin. The case being deliberated began in 2018 when the estate of his associate Kleiman sued him on the grounds the pair were partners who’d invented and mined Bitcoin together By about 5PM UTC on Nov. 2, the jury was deadlocked, having issued the following statement: “Unfortunately we cannot come to a conclusion and we cannot all agree on a verdict on any of the questions.” As of 10PM UTC, the jury remained deadlocked and is set to return tomorrow, accordi...

Four blockchain-based Metaverse projects generated more than $100 million worth of virtual land NFT sales last week according to data from DappRadar. A Nov. 30 post from the decentralized application (DApp) analytics firm reported that between Nov. 22 and Nov. 28 activity was “booming” on The Sandbox, Decentraland, CryptoVoxels and Somnium Space with a combined $105.8 million worth of trading volume between them from more than 6,000 traders: “Undoubtedly, Metaverse land is the next big hit in the NFT space. Outputting record sales numbers and constantly increasing NFT prices, virtual worlds are the new top commodity in the crypto space.” The Sandbox represented the lion’s share of volume for the week with $86.56 million, Decentraland accounted for $15.53 million, while CryptoVoxels a...

Four blockchain-based Metaverse projects generated more than $100 million worth of virtual land NFT sales last week according to data from DappRadar. A Nov. 30 post from the decentralized application (DApp) analytics firm reported that between Nov. 22 and Nov. 28 activity was “booming” on The Sandbox, Decentraland, CryptoVoxels and Somnium Space with a combined $105.8 million worth of trading volume between them from more than 6,000 traders: “Undoubtedly, Metaverse land is the next big hit in the NFT space. Outputting record sales numbers and constantly increasing NFT prices, virtual worlds are the new top commodity in the crypto space.” The Sandbox represented the lion’s share of volume for the week with $86.56 million, Decentraland accounted for $15.53 million, while CryptoVoxels a...

There has been no shortage of people and institutions that woefully underestimated the potential of cryptocurrency. Among the ranks of once-were Bitcoin naysayers is Wired, which destroyed the private key to a Bitcoin (BTC) wallet holding 13.34623579 BTC back in 2013 in order to make the point the cryptocurrency was nothing more than an “abstraction”. The Bitcoin in the now inaccessible address is now worth $761,000. Author Robert McMillan (who now is a reporter with the Wall Street Journal) set up a Butterfy Labs Bitcoin mining rig in the corner of his office at Wired to see what all the fuss was about. And at the conclusion of his little experiment, he was far from impressed. Full marks for being early, null points for wise choices. “The world’s most popular digital currency really...