Crypto

News that two teams of Chinese scientists have achieved quantum advantage — a technical term for when a computer can perform functions beyond that of a classical computer — may be the signal that we have truly entered a new era. While Google’s 54-qubit quantum processor, Sycamore, became the first widely known example of early-stage quantum computing, the latest news out of the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei is the best proof yet that we have crossed the information rubicon. But despite many reasons to be excited by these developments, there are reasons to be concerned, too. While we might all eagerly await the day when we can predict traffic jams, consign animal testing to the history books, or pinpoint someone’s likelihood of getting cancer and then engineer a uni...

Bitcoin’s (BTC) bullish sentiment received a minor setback on Nov. 12 afte the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) rejected VanEck’s Bitcoin exchange-traded product that planned to track Bitcoin’s spot price. However, this negative development was followed by the successful activation of the Taproot soft fork on November 13. Bitcoin developer Hampus Sjöberg, who runs a Taproot dedicated website, told Cointelegraph that the “greatest win” was that Taproot showed that Bitcoin could do network upgrades and that was important for the longevity of the network. Crypto market data daily view. Source: Coin360 Analysts from Decentrader also pointed out that Bitcoin’s last major upgrade was the implementation of Segwit in August 2017 and this was followed by a sharp rally from $4...

Imagine an institutional investor like an insurance company or pension fund decides that it wants to test the cryptocurrency waters. Or maybe a large corporation is looking to buy some Bitcoin (BTC) to diversify its treasury holdings. One thing they’re unlikely to do is announce their intention beforehand.That could drive up the price of the digital asset they are trying to buy. Thus, there’s often a lag between a large institution’s action — purchasing $100 million in Bitcoin, say — and its public announcement of such. “Institutional participation flows in cycles,” Diogo Mónica, co-founder and president of crypto custody bank Anchorage Digital, told Cointelegraph. “By the time you’re hearing about a new company adding crypto, we’ve typically been talking to them for many months.” Has some...

Welcome to the latest edition of Cointelegraph’s decentralized finance (DeFi) newsletter. Ethereum Name Service announced a retroactive token airdrop this week to a fanfare of crypto enthusiasts. If you happen to own a .eth domain, read on to discover how you can claim your eligible tokens. 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. “The DAO space has matured,” says ENS’ director of operations Domain protocol Ethereum Name Service distributed its native ENS governance token this week in an airdrop event to early adopters of the protocol and announced the formation of a decentralized autonomous organization, or DAO. Users who registered Ethereum addresses, such as Cointele...

We have seen a steep adoption of crypto-based systems this year, including decentralized finance (DeFi) applications, nonfungible tokens (NFTs) such as digital art, crypto-centric gaming, and increased adoption of cryptocurrencies as investment and payment tools. One of the more recent developments is the emergence of decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). DAOs have existed since 2016, when The DAO organization, a new form of investment vehicle that attracted a sizable portion of Ethereum (ETH) tokens, raised more than $150 million at the time. Many saw The DAO as the ultimate form of human coordination. Yet, due to a reentrancy exploit, hackers stole $50 million of the organization’s funds. Despite the initial setback, DAOs have seen a second birth in the past months. This was pri...

Bitcoin (BTC) traded above a key zone into the weekly close on Nov. 13 after the successful activation of the Taproot soft fork. BTC/USD 1-hour candle chart (Bitstamp). Source: TradingView What ETF rejection? Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC/USD holding above $64,000 at 10 am UTC Sunday. The pair had gained in the latter part of Saturday after briefly acting below $63,000 thanks to U.S. regulators rejecting what would have been the first spot-based exchange-traded fund (ETF). Seemingly unfazed by the move, however, Bitcoin then returned to form, seeing local highs of $65,350 on Bitstamp before consolidating. Far from lamenting the ETF news, Sunday was all about positive steps for Bitcoin, with market participants celebrating Taproot’s launch. The biggest upgra...

Bears swooped in to seize the upper hand on Nov. 12 after news that the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) had rejected the VanEck spot Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded fund (ETF) application made ripples through the crypto sphere and deflated the bullish momentum that had been building throughout the week.  While many investors had high hopes that the passage of a spot BTC ETF would send the price of Bitcoin to the coveted $100,000 price level, its denial was expected by others, including Bloomberg senior ETF analyst Eric Balchunas, who placed the odds of the SEC approving the VanEck fund at less than 1%. Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that after holding support at $65,000 on Nov. 11, the bull’s defensive line began to break early on ...

In a live recording with Reddit’s r/CryptoCurrency Talk Thursday, Shark Tank celebrity Kevin O’Leary discussed how cryptocurrencies now make up 10% of his investment portfolio: “At the beginning of the year, I was at 3% weighting; the target was to get 7% by year-end. However, because of the appreciation of so many of the assets I have now, we’re almost at 10% today. Some people think the game is over, and Ethereum is it, but I don’t agree. There are many other alternatives, whether it be Solana or anything else. If you’re an investor like I am, you want diversification. That’s the key.” O’Leary was previously a cryptocurrency skeptic, calling Bitcoin (BTC) “garbage” in an interview with CNBC two years prior. In explain...

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 Crypto markets tag $3T combined market cap for first time At the start of this week, the combined cryptocurrency market cap broke $3 trillion for the first time. The market has fluctuated heavily this year, previously topping out at $2.62 trillion during the height of the bull run in May, before crashing down to as low as $1.24 trillion in mid-July.  CoinGecko’s data tracks 10,418 digital assets across 518 cryptocurrency exchanges, and the surging momentum in the latter half of 2021 comes on the back of B...

The Bitcoin (BTC) network successfully activated the Taproot soft fork following a 90% lock-in consensus from miners and mining pools between blocks 709,488 and 709,632. The milestone signifies the first major upgrade for Bitcoin since August 2017, which saw the launch of Bitcoin’s leading layer-two solution, the Lightning Network and Segregated Witness (SegWit). The Taproot upgrade aims to improve the scripting capabilities and privacy of the Bitcoin network. To do this, the soft fork introduces the concept of Merkelized Abstract Syntax Tree (MAST). According to a Taproot-dedicated website run by prominent Bitcoin developer Hampus Sjöberg: “[MAST] can help make smart contracts more efficient and private by only revealing the relevant parts of the contract when spending.” Speaking to Coint...

As the digital asset market continues to break new ground, seemingly with each passing day, there is no denying the fact that crypto adoption has continued to increase at a fairly rapid pace globally. In this regard, it now appears as though online content creator platform Patreon is actively looking to devise its very own social token — or “creator coin” as it likes to call it — as a way of diving into the world of cryptocurrencies. Patreon executives recently teased the idea at the 2021 Creator Economy Summit with CEO Jack Conte making an appearance alongside chief product officer Julian Gutman. During the event, the two interacted with the audience at length and when asked about their decision to venture into the digital asset space, Conte replied by saying: “I really love the idea of c...

The story of Shiba Inu (SHIB), crypto’s best-performer of the year, still boggles the mind — even after multiple retellings. Just 12 months ago, the price of one SHIB token had ten zeros in front of it: $0.000000000063 on volume of $682.58, according to CoinGecko. By late October of this year, six of those zeros had gone and Shiba Inu had flippened Dogecoin to become the largest dog-themed token in the world, a top-ten cryptocurrency worth around $47 billion. Despite dropping almost 40% from that all-time high, SHIB still sits at a market cap of almost $29 billion — making it almost 350 times more valuable than our contender, Koinos Network (KOIN). Koinos Network has been the best-performer of the week on the Cointelegraph Markets Pro data and intelligence platform, where the proprietary V...