Crypto

Optimism from bulls is the leading sentiment of the day after Bitcoin (BTC) price made its way back toward the psychologically important $40,000 level. In addition to the reversal from this week’s local low at $37,500,  Gary Gensler, the chair of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission issued positive comments about the crypto industry and reaffirmed the goal of ironing out fraud in the ecosystem.  BTC/USDT 4-hour chart. Source: TradingView Now that Bitcoin price appears back on the path to $40,000, here’s what analysts and traders are saying about the top cryptocurrency. Traders are waiting for $40K to flip from resistance to support To many traders, $40,000 is a pivotal level for Bitcoin and how the price performs from here could determine if the ma...

Lawmakers have written an amendment to an infrastructure bill in the United States Senate which proposes excluding certain crypto companies from the reporting requirements for brokers. In an amendment from Oregon Senator Ron Wyden on behalf of himself and Wyoming Senator Cynthia Lummis, with the support of Pennsylvania Senator Pat Toomey, the U.S. lawmakers suggested that some of the provisions in the bipartisan infrastructure deal shouldn’t apply to developers, miners, or blockchain firms in the crypto space. Specifically, the amendment proposes that the definition of a broker does not include anyone in the business of “validating distributed ledger transactions,” “developing digital assets or their corresponding protocols,” or dealing with mining software or hardware. “By clar...

Long-dated Bitcoin options and bulls still make waves with their ultra bullish bets, but even they must admit that the possibility of (BTC) trading above $60,000 in the next couple of months is dim.  Many traders have added leveraged-long positions via futures contracts to chase after the elusive all-time high, but this seems like an unrealistic outcome. According to Willy Woo, a popular on-chain analyst, exchange outflows and accumulation from BTC miners and whales suggest that Bitcoin price will reach the $50,000 to $65,000 range in the coming sessions. Even Gary Gensler, the Chair of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, believes that cryptocurrencies won’t go away and will likely play a big role in the future of finance. Therefore, being moderately bullish for the ...

This “Crypto City” guide looks at Melbourne’s crypto culture, the city’s most notable projects and people, its financial infrastructure, which retailers accept crypto and where you can find blockchain education courses — and there’s even a short history with all the juicy details of famous controversies and collapses. Fast facts City: MelbourneCountry: AustraliaPopulation: 5.15MEstablished: 1835Language: English Australia’s second-largest city may lack Sydney’s amazing harbor views, but it makes up for it with a focus on art, sports and culture. There are more live music venues here per capita than any other city in the world, and the city has produced heaps of notable acts, including Nick Cave, Men at Work, The Avalanches and Kylie Minogue. Located on the southern coast of Australia, Melb...

The price of Axie Infinity’s native token AXS surged on Wednesday despite a lackluster upward momentum elsewhere in the cryptocurrency market. The AXS/USD pair rose to as much as $44.96 following a 16.44% intraday jump. Nonetheless, the strong upside move came as a part of a sideways trend that saw AXS fluctuating inside the $36.48-$56.57 price range, hinting that traders placed speculative upside bets on the token. AXS trades near its all-time high. Source: TradingView.com Axie ecosystem swells Axie Infinity’s growth as a gaming project provided bullish cues to speculators. Data provided by Axie World showed that Axie Infinity earned $196.89M in July 2021. Meanwhile, so far in August, the project has raked in circa $45M in revenue, with almost 1 million active users.  ...

MakersPlace, a nonfungible token market dedicated to digital art, has secured $30 million in Series A financing, highlighting once again that venture funds are keen to back promising NFT plays. The funding round will be used by MakersPlace to scale business operations and acquire additional talent as it continues to attract new users and artists to its platform. The investment was co-led by Bessemer Venture Partners and Pantera Capital, with additional participation from Coinbase Ventures, Sony Music Entertainment, Uncork Capital, Dragon Digital Assets and 9Yards Capital. Several notable angel investors also participated in the round, including Acquavella Galleries, Sabrina Hahn, Eminem and Paul Rosenberg. Founded in 2018, MakersPlace is said to have played a “central role in sparking the ...

Investment firm Victory Capital Management has filed an application with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for a cryptocurrency exchange-traded fund. In a Form S-1 registration filed Tuesday with the regulatory body, Victory said it intended to move forward with listing an exchange-traded fund, or ETF, tracking the Nasdaq Crypto Index. The index consists of eight cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Litecoin (LTC), Chainlink’s LINK, Stellar’s Lumen (XLM), Filecoin (FIL) and Uniswap’s UNI. The Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, has not yet approved any crypto ETF in the United States. Companies including VanEck, Valkyrie Digital Assets, and Fidelity Investments have filed for crypto ETFs with the SEC, but the regulatory body ...

Federal authorities in Russia are moving forward with a plan to closely monitor cryptocurrency activity for illicit transactions and deanonymize crypto users’ identities. The Russian Federal Financial Monitoring Service (Rosfinmonitoring) has selected a contractor for developing a platform for tracking cryptocurrency activity. According to data from Russia’s state procurement website, the country will allocate 14.7 million rubles ($200,000 USD) from its budget to create a “module for monitoring and analyzing cryptocurrency transactions” using Bitcoin (BTC). According to the official data, the procurement contract was granted to a company referred to as RCO, which is reportedly indirectly backed by the Russian largest bank, Sber, formerly known as Sberbank. Under the contract’s documentatio...

A new report from Chainalysis has found that while China’s share of global criminal crypto flows has been falling since the third quarter of 2019, the country still represents a disproportionate amount of money laundering and scam activity. In its August 3 Cryptocurrency and China report, Chainalysis stated that more than $2.2 billion worth of crypto had been sent from Chinese wallets to addresses associated with illicit activity between April 2019 and June 2021. Chinese addresses also received more than $2 billion worth of digital assets tied to nefarious activity such as scams and darknet marketplaces. Despite this, the report says crime has fallen significantly: “China’s transaction volume with illicit addresses has fallen drastically over the time period studied, both in terms of raw v...

FTX is launching an NFT platform centered on sports and entertainment and has also stitched up a new sponsorship with professional esports league, the League Championship Series LCS. According to Variety, FTX U.S. is teaming up with Dolphin Entertainment to create a “large scale” NFT marketplace that will target brands within the sports, entertainment, gaming, esports and charity industries to name a few. We’re beyond excited to team up with Dolphin Entertainment to create an NFT marketplace for major sports and entertainment brands—including film, television, music, gaming, eSports, culinary, lifestyle and charity industries. Dolphin Entertainment FTXhttps://t.co/RgKXuWfViF — FTX (formerly Blockfolio) (@blockfolio) August 2, 2021 “We are excited to build marketplaces with Dolphin, b...

Prominent British banker Jacob Rothschild’s investment firm Rothschild Investment Trust (RIT) Capital Partners partnered with New York-based Liberty City Ventures to lead pre-A funding for Aspen Digital, a crypto asset investment platform. According to the official announcement, the funding round ended up raising $8.8 million to help the Hong Kong-based company develop an institutional crypto investment platform targeted at asset managers, institutions and professional investors. Aspen Digital CEO and co-founder Yang He said that the funding would also help the company penetrate into the London market. The announcement states other prominent investors include Somerley Capital, Cherubic Ventures, Token Bay Capital, and Thailand’s richest family and owner of Fortune magazine, Chatchava...

Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volumes, continues actively expanding into the crypto payment industry through a new crypto-to-fiat integration. The company announced Tuesday a partnership with crypto-fiat hybrid payment platform Alchemy Pay to enable peer-to-peer (P2P) crypto payments at over 2 million global merchants through its payments application Binance Pay. The new integration will allow users and merchants to pay and accept payments using 40 supported cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) in 18 countries where Alchemy Pay operates. Binance Pay users will be able to pay across merchants of Alchemy Pay’s partners, including e-commerce giant Shopify, software technology company Arcadier, mobile payment provider QFPay and others. Founded i...