Crypto

The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has warned Aussie investors about speculating on digital assets as it casts doubt over the entire crypto sector. During a Nov. 18 address to the Australian Corporate Treasury Association, the RBA’s head of payments policy Tony Richards offered an overview on distributed ledger tech, crypto assets, stablecoins, and central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). In his speech, Richards raised questions over crypto’s validity and growth in 2021 as he took aim at the amount of capital invested into memecoins such as Dogecoin (DOGE) and Shiba Inu (SHIB): “The recent boom in this area is perhaps best illustrated by the fact that Dogecoin, a cryptocurrency that was started as a joke in late 2013, had an implied market capitalization as high as US$88 billion in June t...

Ether’s (ETH) 330% year-to-date gain has been largely fueled by the growth of decentralized finance and the explosion of non-fungible tokens. Proof of this comes from OpenSea, the largest NFT marketplace, surpassing the impressive mark of $10 billion in accumulated trading volume. However, traders worry that the 15% correction that followed the $4,870 all-time high on Nov. 10 could indicate that a larger bearish movement is in place. The rupture of the 55-day ascending channel reinforces this thesis and Nov. 19’s $550 million Ether options expiry will likely favor bears. Ether/USD price on Bitstamp. Source: TradingView Ethereum’s $86 billion total value locked in smart contract contracts, represents 70% of the market and this metric has increased by 25% over the last two ...

Decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols have gained significant traction in the cryptocurrency sector, with a total value locked surpassing $271 billion, based on data from DefiLlama. One exceptionally popular category of DeFi services is that of decentralized borrowing and lending, where users can pledge their crypto as collateral and take out stablecoin loans (or vice versa) to pay for everyday expenses while their investment continues to grow. Total value locked in DeFi. Source: DefiLlama Such protocols typically charge a spread or difference between deposit and lending rates as a service fee. But then there are protocols like Minterest that seek to distribute a vast majority, if not all, of their profits back to users. Earlier this month, Minterest launched on Moonbeam, an Ethereum...

A bipartisan group of United States lawmakers has introduced legislation to change the tax reporting requirements that will go into effect due to the recently signed infrastructure bill. House Representatives Patrick McHenry and Tim Ryan introduced the Keep Innovation in America Act which would change the definition of broker as defined in HR 3684, the bipartisan infrastructure bill signed into law by President Joe Biden on Nov. 15. The bill proposes pushing back the mandated reporting requirements — which includes digital asset transactions worth more than $10,000 to be declared to the Internal Revenue Service — from 2024 to 2026. I introduced this bipartisan bill w/ @RepTimRyan to fix the new poorly constructed #digitalasset reporting requirements. The Keep Innovation in America Act will...

Five to six-figure-size airdrops have become the new norm in the crypto sector and a growing number of analysts believe there are more to come. In September dYdX distributed a massive airdrop to early users and last week the Ethereum Name Service gave out roughly $17,000 to $30,000 in ENS tokens to platform users. Anticipation of additional “helicopter money” has also led to a flurry of airdrop hunters seeking out the next big score.  The mad dash to engage with protocols and qualify for possible token drops led to an uptick in activity on Polygon, a popular layer-2 platform, and MetaMask. Since last week rumors that MetaMask may release its own token have been circulating and this is reflected in the increased engagement on MetaMask Swap. According to data from ...

Without a doubt, 2021 has been a momentous year for nonfungible tokens (NFT). The nascent market has seen unprecedented growth as sales volume from January to date nears $10 billion — a 14,500% surge from 2020. The NFT marketplace OpenSea is responsible for processing a great chunk of that.  OpenSea controls a majority of NFT sales and has processed more than $10 billion worth of transactions since launching in December 2017. Its 2021 volume alone even topped the revenue earned by Etsy and is comparable to the revenue generated by eBay. But despite this, it appears as though OpenSea and the entire NFT space are just getting started. In the past 30 days, OpenSea processed more than $1.6 billion in transactions, leading all other marketplaces by a wide margin. NFT game Axie Infinity com...

Bitcoin (BTC) chopped and changed on Nov. 18 but held a critical support level to preserve the chance of new all-time highs. BTC/USD 1-hour candle chart (Bitstamp). Source: TradingView $90,000 remains on the table Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView followed BTC/USD as it ranged between $59,000 and $60,000 Thursday, seeing $1,000 swings in minutes. With the pair’s overall range becoming ever narrower, talk turned to a potential “short squeeze” entering to push its spot price to new, higher levels. “Based on the Futures Market structure, the funding rate and OI momentum trends are forming a perfect setting for a ‘Short-Squeeze’ scenario,” one contributor to on-chain analytics firm CryptoQuant argued Wednesday. “Then the question is, what price range would act as a supp...

Crypto.com’s native cryptocurrency, CRO, hit an all-time high of $0.593 on Nov. 18 after the company won the naming rights to Los Angeles’ Staples Center. The cryptocurrency trading platform announced Tuesday night that it had paid $700 million to the Anschutz Entertainment Group to rename Staples Center to Crypto.com for the next 20 years. In doing so, it gained links with the downtown arena’s native sports franchises, including the National Basketball Association’s Los Angeles Lakers and Clippers, and the National Hockey League’s Kings franchise. The deal should boost Crypto.coms public awareness, and this prompted traders to raise their bids for CRO, an intermediary settlement token across various assets inside the Crypto.com ecosystem. CRO faces interim sell-of...

Bitso, a major Latin American cryptocurrency exchange, is collaborating with the USD Coin (USDC) stablecoin operator Circle to launch a new cross-border payment tool between Mexico and the United States. The company announced on Thursday that the integration with payment solutions from Circle aims to provide Mexican people with a new option to send and receive payments to or from the U.S. Called Bitso Shift, the new tool uses cryptocurrency to enable low-cost and instant cross-border payments available 24/7, allowing users to instantly exchange between Mexican pesos and the United States dollar (USD)-backed stablecoins. The new offering intends to unlock easier and more affordable access to the USD for individuals in Mexico, also aiming to increase the transparency of USD transactions in t...

Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle are fighting back against changes to tax reporting rules for crypto brokers and transactions over $10,000 in the newly passed Infrastructure Bill.  Ten U.S. Democratic Congresspeople led by Rep. Darren Soto from Florida called for revisions to the definition of a broker in the infrastructure bill that was passed into law on Nov. 15. The group issued an open letter, signed by Soto along with Representatives Ro Khanna, Stacey E. Plaskatt, Eric Swalwell, Tim Ryan, Susan Wild, Marc Veasy, Jake Auchincloss, Al Lawson, and Charlie Crist calling for updates to section 6045(c)(1) in the tax code under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework (BIF). Experts warned that the contentious new rule could see miners, validators, and wallet developers considered ...

The South Korean people and an increasing number of major companies in the country have begun to embrace and integrate the Metaverse into their everyday lives in new and unexpected ways. Two major retailers in the country have recently introduced Metaverse and AI elements to shoppers to enhance their shopping experience. GS Shop introduced home shopping via the Metaverse on Nov. 16 by showing the inner workings of a food production facility. It aimed to reassure customers of the quality of the facility and the food that was for sale. GS Shop turned scans of the physical facility into 3D representations. This way, customers who had augmented reality (AR) devices, similar to the haptic gloves Meta previewed this week, could tour the facility in the virtual world to see the conditions under w...