Crypto

Avalanche (AVAX) is now the tenth-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization after more than doubling in price since the start of November. AVAX entered the top-10 crypto index after pushing out Dogecoin (DOGE). In doing so, its circulating market valuation reached $30.60 billion for the first time compared to Dogecoin’s $30.30 billion. AVAX circulating market cap. Source: CoinMarketCap AVAX price hits another record high AVAX price climbed while ignoring price corrections elsewhere in the crypto market after Nov. 10. Notably, Bitcoin (BTC) plunged by nearly 20% from its record high of $69,000, and Ether (ETH) — the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap and Avalanche’s top competitor — slipped by 19% from its all-time high at around $4,867. Nonetheless, their downsid...

A crowd loan is a Polkadot (DOT) crowdsourcing event in Polkadot that allows the community to support project bids in upcoming parachain slot auctions. Users contribute DOT, receive rewards in project tokens and get their DOT back in two years (a standard slot lease duration). This mechanic helps projects raise substantial capital in DOT tokens that may even exceed a few hundred million in dollar notion value. The obvious downside for users is the need to lock their DOT for two years where they don’t have access to their liquidity during this lockup period. In mainstream finance, there are private companies and initial public offering (IPO) lockup agreements. The lockup agreements prohibit company insiders — including employees, their friends, family and venture capitalists — from selling ...

Bitcoin (BTC) hovered near $59,000 as Nov. 21 came to a close after avoiding a retest of its recent lows. BTC/USD 1-hour candle chart (Bitstamp). Source: TradingView BTC challenges $60,000 Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC/USD almost hitting $60,000 before consolidating in a new higher range after sudden gains Saturday evening. The pair had hit lows of $55,650 during the week, these marking its lowest point in over a month, but further retests failed to materialize as sentiment improved. Adopting a calmer perspective into the weekly close, analysts thus looked to the long term to understand the overall health of the market. “Since breaking its black 200-day EMA, BTC rallied to new All Time Highs. Still over +50% above the 200 EMA, despite the recent ...

What is Mimblewimble?  Mimblewimble is a privacy-oriented decentralized protocol that uses a novel way of structuring and storing transactions on the blockchain. It was designed and introduced by an anonymous developer who went by the name Tom Elvis Jedusor, who was a French counterpart for “Voldemort” in mid-2016. How does Mimblewimble work? Taking its name from the Harry Potter books series’ well-known tongue tying spell that ties the victim’s tongue to prevent it from revealing specific information, Mimblewimble protocol literally works like a spell. It provides a framework for a blockchain that offers a new realm of potential in terms of scalability, fungibility, privacy and crypto anonymity, as the protocol allows cryptocurrency information to remain completely anonymous. Mimblew...

Welcome to the latest edition of Cointelegraph’s decentralized finance newsletter. Read on to discover why almost half of the liquidity providers on Uniswap v3 are losing capital due to impermanent loss. What you’re about to read is the smaller version of this newsletter. For the full breakdown of DeFi’s developments over the last week, subscribe below. Acala wins Polkadot’s debut parachain auction Decentralized finance protocol Acala was announced as the winning project in Polkadot’s inaugural parachain auction this week, beating fellow competitor Moonbeam to the finish line with a seismic total of 32.5 million DOT ($1.28 billion) raised from 24,934 contributors. Acala is a multi-functional DeFi platform built on Polkadot that enables developers to build smart contract applications with c...

Coming every Saturday, Hodler’s Digest will help you track every single important news story that happened this week. The best (and worst) quotes, adoption and regulation highlights, leading coins, predictions and much more — a week on Cointelegraph in one link. Top Stories This Week The Bitcoin network welcomes Taproot soft fork upgrade The Bitcoin (BTC) network underwent its first major upgrade since 2017 after the Taproot soft fork went live following a 90% lock-in consensus from miners and mining pools between blocks 709,488 and 709,632.  Taproot will apparently improve the scripting capabilities and privacy of the Bitcoin network by enabling a concept known as Merkelized Abstract Syntax Tree, which can enhance the efficiency of smart contracts without revealing private data behin...

El Salvador continues to lead the Bitcoin (BTC) adoption drive as President Nayib Bukele announces the launch of Bitcoin City, which will be funded initially by $1 billion Bitcoin bonds.  The initiative was first announced by Bukele at El Salvador’s Bitcoin Week conference, which sought to celebrate Bitcoin’s mainstream adoption in the country and increase citizen participation. “Pensé que teníamos que dar un anuncio grande en esta #BitcoinWeek. Así que hoy quiero anunciar que vamos a construir la primera #BitcoinCity“, Presidente @nayibukele. pic.twitter.com/7yHQLyIjBx — Casa Presidencial (@PresidenciaSV) November 21, 2021 In Bukele’s words: “In #BitcoinCity we will have digital and technological education. Geothermal energy for the entire city and efficient and sustainab...

A gubernatorial candidate from Venezuela has promised to offer scholarships for citizens interested to join the Technical Training Center for Mining and Administration of Digital Crypto Assets.  José Alejandro Terán, the aspiring governor who represents the country’s ruling party, started the initiative as a part of the La Guaira Digital program, which aims to fast-track growth and induce economic stability in the country. As Cointelegraph Spanish reported, Terán’s training center will provide specialized training to the scholarship holders in nonfungible tokens (NFT), crypto mining and trading. Moreover, the drive will be supported by four entities, namely the National Superintendence of Cryptoassets (SUNACRIP), Axie Infinity Academy, the political group Independientes con ...

English Premier League football club Manchester City has suspended a partnership with a startup crypto firm after seemingly not doing its due diligence prior to signing. According to Daily Mail reporter Jack Gaughan, Manchester City is currently “conducting further enquiries” regarding 3key Technologies, the crypto firm with which the club inked a deal on Nov. 12. At the time, the football club said it would be collaborating with 3key to raise awareness of its reported decentralized finance, or DeFi, trading analysis products as a regional partner. Manchester City suspend partnership with “3Key”, a start-up cryptocurrency firm whose executives do not seem to appear on internet searches. Partnership was announced last week. pic.twitter.com/Hi02Z2IxAR — Jack Gaughan (@Jack_Gaugha...

Bitcoin’s (BTC) recent foray back below $56,000 sparked a wide-ranging sell-off across the cryptocurrency ecosystem and talks of the price hitting $100,000 by the end of the year quickly morphed into concerns about an impending bear market that could thrust prices into the doldrums for a year or longer.  While there appeared to be absolute carnage in the markets judging by peoples’ reaction to the BTC pullback, not all tokens were negatively impacted and gaming tokens focused on the emerging Metaverse have managed to stay in the green. Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that while the price of Bitcoin dropped below $57,000, the price of Metaverse tokens climbed higher, including a 160% gain for Gala (GALA), a 78% rally for WAX (WAXP), a 62% breakout f...

As 2021 comes to a close, Bitcoin (BTC) has had a tumultuous ride this year, with wild price swings that have seen the pioneer cryptocurrency hit all-time highs only to retrace to lower prices — including a 50% drop that shook the market. Now, Bitcoin is once again back and stronger than ever, even recently going past its previous all-time high. Bitcoin’s dizzying market price swings aside, it seems some politicians have recognized Bitcoin’s potential, with a wave of mayors across the United States expressing bullish sentiments. From Florida to New York, there is a seemingly growing trend of politicians, particularly city mayors, supporting Bitcoin adoption. Here is a look at some of America’s mayors who have expressed bullish sentiments about the leading cryptocurrency. New York City Mayo...

If the words “derivatives trading” conjures up images of men in suits with disheveled white sleeves rolled up to the elbows and exacerbated expressions on their faces — like something out of The Big Short — then the word decentralized exchanges (DEXs) must conjure up, well, nothing.  There are no offices, no floor traders waving papers and certainly no men in suits. DEXs are managed automatically or semi-automatically with the involvement of platform participants in the process of making mission-critical decisions. DEXs are a bulb of a system that is sprouting groundbreaking opportunities for many, but they are not yet suited for the soil of derivatives trading in this season of the crypto market. The technological gap The technology isn’t available right now to have a proper op...