Crypto

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 Congress has put forward 18 bills on digital assets in 2021 so far The U.S. Congress has been ramping up its efforts to provide a regulatory framework for crypto in 2021 and has put forward 18 bills concerning digital assets and blockchain tech so far this year.    According to an Aug. 22 analysis from former Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation regulator Jason Brett, the current 117th Congress differs from its predecessor in that it has been focusing on regulation concerning decentralized asse...

Momentum for the top layer-one protocols has been on the rise throughout August as the highly anticipated rollout of the London hard fork on the Ethereum (ETH) network has done little to address the network’s high transaction fees and delayed confirmations.  One of the biggest beneficiaries of the quest to find a more welcoming smart contract environment has been Cosmos (ATOM), a project focused on interoperability that has set out to become the “internet of blockchains” thanks to its Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) protocol. Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that the price of ATOM rallied 180% from a low of $8.87 on July 20 to a high of $24.77 on Aug. 22 as its 24-hour trading volume surged from an average of $250 million to $1.87 billion. ATOM/USDT...

Whenever there’s data out on futures contracts liquidation, many novice investors and analysts instinctively conclude that it’s degenerate gamblers using high leverage or other risky instruments. There’s no doubt that some derivatives exchanges are known for incentivizing retail trading to use excessive leverage, but that does not account for the entire derivatives market. Recently, concerned investors like Nithin Kamath, the founder and CEO at Zerodha, questioned how derivatives exchanges could handle extreme volatility while offering 100x leverage. When a platform offers leverage or funds the customer to buy for more than the money in the account, the platform takes a credit risk. With Crypto exchanges offering 10 to 100x leverage (futures), on days like today, I wonder...

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has reportedly signed a $125,000 deal with blockchain analytics firm AnChain.AI to help monitor and regulate the decentralized finance industry. According to a Friday report from Forbes, an AnChain.AI company spokesperson confirmed the agreement with the federal regulator, saying the SEC and blockchain firm had the option to sign up to five separate 1-year contracts for $125,000 each, or $625,000 total. The first contract reportedly began in May. “The SEC is very keen on understanding what is happening in the world of smart contract-based digital assets,” said AnChain.AI CEO and co-founder Victor Fang. “We are providing them with technology to analyze and trace smart contracts.” The reported agreement between the government body and the blockchai...

A major consensus bug has affected more than half the Ethereum network’s nodes, causing those running older versions of Geth to split from the main network. According to Ethereum software developer Marius van der Wijden, an unknown individual or group exploited a vulnerability affecting earlier versions of Geth, one of Ethereum’s software clients. According to the developer, Geth clients and Ethereum nodes running software v1.10.7 or earlier are at risk of splitting from the network. “Users that run validators need to update their nodes quickly (in the next 10h I think) as they would otherwise vote on invalid committees,” said van der Wijden. A chain split has occurred on the Ethereum mainnet. The issue was resolved in the v1.10.8 release announced previously. Please updat...

The cryptocurrency market has been on a tear over the last month as Bitcoin price climbed 73% from a low of $29,200 on July 20 to a high of $50,478 on Aug. 26, a move that has warranted caution from Dan McDermitt, cryptocurrency market analyst and co-founder of TheChartGuys.  According to McDermitt, Bitcoin’s relentless march over the past month was done “with a lack of weekly consolidation,” which was an impressive progression that frustrated bears as “every week is a higher low.” McDermitt is “expecting an equilibrium pattern on the monthly time frame, which is a pattern of higher lows and lower highs in a tightening range.” McDermitt said: “I’m anticipating that were are going to be looking for a lower high compared to the all-time high, initially… I’m just watching for some short-...

The entire cryptocurrency industry is waking up to a new reality. Politicians and regulators have decided to wade into the space, which had flown mainly under their radar until now. A House committee chair is launching a working group; the Securities and Exchange Commission is seeking new authorities to regulate digital assets as securities; and the Senate-passed infrastructure bill includes $28 billion in tax revenues from crypto transactions. This last handful of weeks has arguably seen more regulatory activity around digital currencies since the name Satoshi Nakamoto first entered the popular lexicon. Anyone whose business deals in this asset class will need to pay close attention. Related: Biden’s infrastructure bill doesn’t undermine crypto’s bridge to the future Digital asset provisi...

Bitcoin (BTC) price is still 4.4% down from its Aug. 23 high at $50,500, leading some traders to question whether the local top marked the end of the recent 34-day long bull run. Even with the current correction, derivatives data and the maneuvers of professional investors are not flashing any bearish signals. Bitcoin price in USD at Coinbase. Source: TradingView On Aug. 24, prominent technical analyst John Bollinger suggested that Bitcoin price could be pushed lower in the short term. A pseudonymous market analyst called ‘CryptoHamster’ shared a similar bearish outlook based on analyzing a technical pattern called an ascending channel. Bearish news coming from exchange regulation could have also diminished investors’ interest, and this week the United Kingdom’s Fin...

The adoption of nonfungible tokens has served as a practical entry point for users joining the crypto economy, driven primarily by their respective fandoms and the benefit-centric nature of the tokens. For instance, if you’re a Lebron James superfan, you can understand why “The Block” from the 2016 NBA finals is valuable on NBA Top Shot without understanding the blockchain. But when it comes to brands, stablecoins are likely to become the biggest entry point. Reimagining rewards points Selling to existing customers costs brands less than acquiring new ones, which is a leading reason why more than 90% of companies have some type of customer loyalty program. Rewards points are one of the most effective methods for increasing both customer loyalty and revenue. For example, Starbucks Rew...

Bitcoin (BTC) held $49,000 on Aug. 28 after the United States Federal Reserve sparked a run-up toward critical resistance. BTC/USD 1-hour candle chart (Bitstamp). Source: TradingView All eyes on $49,300 on the weekly chart Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC/USD cooling at higher levels after cracking the $49,000 mark late Friday. The end of the working week had seen a positive reaction to comments from Fed Chair Jerome Powell on tapering of asset purchases, as well as remarks on inflation. As Cointelegraph reported, stocks surged to all-time highs, while the U.S. dollar weakened — Bitcoin made use of the opportunity and added $1,500 in under an hour. With talk of a new “bullish impulse” move afoot on crypto markets, the mood into the weekend was...

Over the last three or four years, blockchain adoption has expanded tremendously, and each industry is exploring different use cases for the technology. There are multiple aspects of blockchain — from business to technical and more — but with the way the industry is exploding, it’s really hard to get it right. It’s best to divide the blockchain topic into two main buckets in order to understand the development of the ecosystem and the key benefits and innovations it provides. One is cryptocurrency, where we cover industries like financial services, insurance and capital markets, including deals via private equity and venture capital. Then we look into the enterprise world, which is about how we apply blockchain as a technology in different industries. Enterprise blockchain Last year, we pu...

Square CEO Jack Dorsey said that the platform’s latest Bitcoin (BTC) venture would be to develop a decentralized exchange.  In a Friday tweet, Dorsey said that “TBD” — either referring to the fact the business’ name has yet to be determined or simply the name itself — would be focused on building a decentralized exchange for Bitcoin. According to project leader Mike Brock, TBD, a unit of Square, aims to “make it easy to fund a non-custodial wallet anywhere in the world through a platform to build on- and off-ramps into Bitcoin.” The business said it wants the decentralized exchange to be “Bitcoin-native, top to bottom,” as well as completely open-source and permissionless, with “no foundation or governance model that TBD controls.” “Our idea for the fiat DEX is something t...