Crypto

Bitcoin (BTC) targeted $53,000 on Sep. 7 as fears of a fresh BTC price dip faded above crucial resistance. BTC/USD 1-hour candle chart (Bitstamp). Source: TradingView “No going back” after El Salvador Bitcoin adoption Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC/USD hitting new highs of $52,960 on Bitstamp overnight. After a swift retest of the $51,000 level — the lower boundary of what was previously a large wall of selling pressure — Bitcoin bounced back with a vengeance, eclipsing bears and hitting its highest in almost four months. Short sellers lost out big, with 24-hour liquidations nearing $500 million at the time of writing. Among analysts, however, talk was all about El Salvador, Tuesday marking its transition to a partial Bitcoin standard in an histo...

Thailand’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has temporarily suspended the services of the local branch of crypto exchange Houbi and recommended revoking its operating license with the Ministry of Finance. With the suspension in place, Huobi has been given three months to return all assets to its clients. Huobi, which is branded as DSDack in Thailand, received the suspension order after failing to comply with local regulations related to its operations and management structure. According to the Thai SEC, Huobi was first informed about a breach of compliance during an investigation that started in February 2021. After its reported failure to meet the regulatory requirements set by the authorities, Huobi had been given an extension until the end of August 2021 based on the exchange’s ...

Bitcoin’s (BTC) market capitalization is nearing the $1 trillion mark and several altcoins have also been rallying hard in the past few days. This has driven the Crypto Fear and Greed Index into the extreme greed territory where the range fluctuates between 79 and 100. Generally, tops are made when the index hits around 95, which shows there is some more room to run. PlanB, the creator of the Bitcoin stock-to-flow model, believes that BTC is on target to reach $100,000 by Christmas this year. Eventually, he believes that BTC price will be much higher than $100,000 before the end of the current halving cycle in 2024. Daily cryptocurrency market performance. Source: Coin360 Tuesday marks an important milestone for Bitcoin because El Salvador has become the first sovereign country in the worl...

El Salvador president Nayib Bukele confirmed Monday that his government has purchased its first 200 Bitcoin (BTC) ahead of the Sept. 7 rollout of a new law set to make the cryptocurrency legal tender.  “Our brokers will be buying a lot more as the deadline approaches,” Bukele said, referring to the Sept. 7 timetable for fully implementing the new BTC legislation. El Salvador has just bought it’s first 200 coins. Our brokers will be buying a lot more as the deadline approaches.#BitcoinDay #BTC — Nayib Bukele (@nayibbukele) September 6, 2021 The purchase is part of a new $150 million Bitcoin fund passed last week by El Salvador’s Congress. The fund will be used to facilitate conversions from BTC to United States dollars in the lead-up to the new law being implemented. At current prices,...

Bitcoin (BTC) has been the uncontested cryptocurrency market leader since its creator launched the digital asset in 2009 and to date, it continues to be the dominant force in the industry.  This truth was put on display on Sep. 6 when BTC price rose to the $52,000 level and ignited a market-wide rally that lifted the price of small- and large-cap altcoins. When Bitcoin rallies, most of the legacy coins like Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash, XRP and Stellar tend to move in tandem. Now that BTC looks ready to test new highs, let’s take a look at how the so-called ‘dinosaur tokens’ are doing. LTC/USDT Litecoin (LTC) has often been touted as the silver to Bitcoin’s gold because its faster protocol was partially modeled after the top crypto, but modified to increase the token suppl...

Institutional demand for altcoin exposure has surged to record levels, with the altcoin market share now representing a record 35% of capital locked in crypto investment products. According to CoinShares’ Sept. 7 Digital Asset Fund Flows Weekly report, nearly 40% of the past week’s inflows to digital asset investment products were allocated t instruments tracking altcoins. While $97.8 million was invested into crypto investment products combined between Aug. 30 and Sept. 3 to mark the sector’s third consecutive week of inflows, $38.9 million was invested into altcoin products. This past week also saw a sizeable increase in institutional crypto investments, with the previous two weeks recording inflows of $24 million and $21 million respectively. Roughly 35% of capital invested in ins...

In a candid open letter, the lead contributor of Cover and Ruler Protocol, “DeFi Ted,” announced the protocol will close its virtual doors in the near future, citing a mass developer exit as the primary reason for the project’s conclusion. Launched earlier this year, the Ethereum-based decentralized finance (DeFi) insurance marketplace enabled users to stake Cover tokens as collateral and receive insurance payouts if their assets in other DeFi protocols are hacked or rug-pulled. In December 2020, the Cover protocol suffered a catastrophic exploit when a hacker minted 40 quintillion tokens, stratospherically increasing the token supply and effectively rendering the project valueless, a hypothesis confirmed with the consequential 97% price plummet. In a drastic turn of events becoming m...

Social media platforms are constantly under fire for their lack of total end-to-end encryption, existing privacy policies and censorship – but a blockchain-based solution might spell the end to an era of centralized social media dominance. In many ways, social media is a vital component of daily life for both businesses and the average consumer. Today, these platforms connect individuals with their desired type of content based on their own inputs. This streamlined feed being served to users leading them to the businesses waiting at the end, should be the perfect scenario. However, when it comes to distributing the rewards, the results are often incredibly skewed. Algorithms constantly change to create new sources of revenue for the platform while disenfranchising users. Moreover, building...

Blockchain cybersecurity company GK8 will be offering custody and tokenization services to the Stellar network, a move that could spark institutional interest in the Stellar Lumen (XLM) token.  By integrating with Stellar, customers of GK8 can access XLM investments in a custodial setting, opening the door to offline transactions of the digital currency, the company announced Monday. GK8 has said that its infrastructure eliminates the risk of cyberattacks while also providing scalable, high-frequency transactions. GK8 co-founder and CEO Lior Lamesh said the partnership enables XLM’s institutional investors to “generate new revenue streams, digitize assets, trade, and transform currency as it’s sent.” Stellar operates as a blockchain-based payment network that initially forked away fro...

Chainlink emerged as one of the best cryptocurrency performers on Sept. 6 as the price of its LINK token jumped 8.25% against the U.S. dollar. The LINK/USD exchange rate reached $36.35 for the first time since May 20, months after bottoming out near $13.45 — thus recovering by more than 170% altogether. At the same time, its recent bout of buying saw prices bringing in about 36% month-to-date returns. Ecosystem growth Optimism Ethereum announced on Sept. 1 that it had integrated Chainlink’s market-leading decentralized oracle solutions to its Ethereum layer-two services. As a result, LINK — which serves as a payment and staking token inside the Chainlink ecosystem — rose by 36% on the prospects of seeing higher interim demand from Chainlink users. The same fundamentals...

United States Senator Elizabeth Warren, one of the most vocal cryptocurrency skeptics in the U.S. government, has called the cryptocurrency industry the “new shadow bank.” In a Sunday interview with the New York Times, Warren said that the cryptocurrency industry offers “many of the same services” as shadow banks but still lacks “consumer protections or financial stability that back up the traditional system.”  Warren expressed concerns over the rapidly growing market for stablecoins, a type of cryptocurrency whose value can be pegged to that of other assets, including fiat currencies like the U.S. dollar, the euro or commodities like gold. The senator said that it’s “worth considering” banning U.S. banks from holding the reserves to back private stablecoins, a move that “could effect...

The United States Securities and Exchange Commission published a new alert about investment scams related to digital assets and cryptocurrency.  The announcement, shared by the SEC’s Office of Investor Education and Advocacy and the Division of Enforcement’s Retail Strategy Task Force, highlighted the “devastating losses” faced by retail investors due to scams. The SEC attributed the “rising popularity” of initial coin offerings, including cryptocurrencies, as the main reason for growing scams and exploits. The SEC also said that the price surge of certain digital assets has been a key factor for scammers to lure unsuspecting investors: “Investors may be less skeptical of investment opportunities that involve something new or ‘cutting-edge,’ or may get caught up in the fear of missing...