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3 striking similarities with past Bitcoin price bottoms — But there’s a catch
Bitcoin (BTC) has been consolidating inside the $18,000–$20,000 price range since mid-June, pausing a strong bear market that began after the price peaked at $69,000 in November 2021. Many analysts have looked at Bitcoin’s sideways trend as a sign of a potential market bottom, drawing comparisons from the cryptocurrency’s previous bear markets that show similar price behaviors preceding sharp bullish reversals. Here are three strikingly similar trends that preceded past market bottoms. 2018’s sideways trend for BTC price The 2018’s Bitcoin bear market serves as a major cue for a potential market bottom in 2022 if one looks at its eerily similar price trends and indicators. One of the key indicators is Bitcoin’s 200-week exponential moving average (200-week EMA; the blue wave in the ch...
Binance still serving Russians while seeking clarity on EU crypto sanctions
In the weeks following new sanctions from the European Union, Binance has kept its doors open for non-sanctioned Russian nationals, but that does not mean that the firm isn’t complying with EU sanctions, according to Binance’s newly-appointed sanctions executive. Western sanctions against Russia have been a major challenge for Binance from day one, and the firm has been working hard to comply, Binance’s global head of sanctions Chagri Poyraz told Cointelegraph in an interview. Since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Binance has comprehensively blocked several non-government-controlled territories of Ukraine, including annexed regions like Donetsk and Luhansk, Poyraz said. “There is still an active war going on in the region,” he noted, adding that Binance continu...
What the Russia-Ukraine conflict has revealed about crypto
The Russia-Ukraine conflict has tested the capabilities of crypto in a real-world conflict where sanctions and inventive blockchain crowdfunding models abound. The war, which is drawing into its ninth month, has uncovered a raft of blockchain benefits, such as the capacity to support humanitarian endeavors. It has also revealed how much control national authorities can exert over crypto networks. Vadym Synegin, co-founder at IT and crypto solutions provider Tecor, told Cointelegraph that cryptocurrencies have a unique advantage in situations where there is an increased risk of money transfer interruptions due to the centralization of conventional systems. “With most markets controlled by centralized authority figures that can easily buckle under the political tensions, the crypto markets r...
Executive Turntable: Warner Records Appoints Marketing SVP; iHeartRadio Vet Adds Digital Music to Prez Purview
Shawnae Corbett-Rice was promoted to senior vp of marketing at Warner Records. Based in Los Angeles, she will continue to oversee marketing campaigns focused on artist development. She reports to executive vp of marketing & artist development Dionnee Harper. Jon Zellner was named president of programming operations and digital music for iHeartRadio, effective immediately. Zellner was previously president of programming operations. In the new role, Zellner will manage the programming, content and strategy for iHeartRadio’s digital channels and playlists while continuing to oversee iHeartMedia’s programming operations. In addition to running programming and strategy for the iHeartMedia custom and format center stations, he will continue to lead the company’s commercial production center,...
Nifty News: LooksRare the latest NFT market to sack royalties, Twitter’s tweeting tiles and more
Nonfungible token (NFT) marketplace LooksRare is the latest in a string of NFT markets to do away with enforcing creator royalties by default, following the likes of Magic Eden and X2Y2. The platform tweeted on Oct. 27 that it would not be supporting creator royalties by default, instead choosing to share 25% of its protocol fees with NFT creators and collection owners. Buyers can still choose to pay royalties when purchasing an NFT but it will be on an opt-in basis. Explaining the changes, it said 0.5% of its 2% protocol fee would go to collections, as long as that collection has a receiving address for the funds. LooksRare said the willingness of buyers to pay royalties has “eroded” as a result of many NFT markets now moving to a zero-royalty model adding that these disadvantage cre...
Celsius bankruptcy case Trustee slams $3M employee bonus motion
The United States Trustee overseeing the Celsius Chapter 11 bankruptcy case, William Harrington, has objected to a Celsius motion that would see 62 of its 275 employees paid a retention bonus totaling $2.96 million. The Trustee has blasted Celsius in its supporting statement for the objection filed on Oct. 27, noting: “It defies logic, not to mention the Bankruptcy Code, that a company where the majority of its functions are no longer providing services, would now propose a multi-million dollar bonus scheme.” For the “bonus motion,” as it is aptly named, to receive approval, the Trustee claims that Celsius must show that the bonuses are reasonable based on the facts of the case. Without any identifiable metrics, the Trustee says Celsius has failed to do so. While the objection does not inf...
Ripple reports XRP holdings below 50% for the first time
Ripple Lab’s XRP (XRP) token holdings have dropped below 50% of the total circulating supply for the first time in the company’s history. Ripple has faced criticism in the past by some that have raised questions over the firm’s significantly large ownership of XRP, arguing that it gives the company centralized control over its XRP Ledger (XRPL). In a Q3 report published on Oct. 27, Ripple once again refuted that criticism while also pointing out that its XRP holdings continue to decline, falling below 50 billion tokens, or 50% of the total supply. “Critics have pointed to the company’s XRP ownership as an indicator that the XRP Ledger is controlled by Ripple. This is not true,” Ripple stated, adding that: “The XRP Ledger (XRPL) uses Federated Byzantine Consensus to validate transactions, a...
Web3 sees 15 new scam smart contracts an hour: Solidus Labs
The Web3 and cryptocurrency space is seeing a significant amount of smart contract scams proliferating, with blockchain risk monitoring firm Solidus Labs saying it has detected on average 15 newly deployed scams every hour. Solidus Labs said on Oct. 27 that it had been monitoring 12 blockchains including Ethereum, Polygon and BNB Chain since Oct. 10, and in that time, had detected 188,525 smart contract scams. Former United States Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) director, Kathy Kraninger, who is now Solidus’ vice president of regulatory affairs, said in the statement that “while some of the big rug pulls and scams make the news […] the full picture stemming from our data shows the vast majority of these scams go unnoticed.” The firm also shed some light on the number...
Visa’s trademark applications suggest more involvement in crypto space
Major credit card company Visa may be planning to explore digital wallet services based on two recent trademark applications. According to records submitted to the United States Patent and Trademark Office on Oct. 22, the Visa International Service Association filed two applications for its character mark to be used in software “to view, access, store, monitor, manage, trade, send, receive, transmit, and exchange” crypto assets and nonfungible tokens, or NFTs. The filings also suggested the credit card company may be exploring a move into the metaverse, with its namesake used in “virtual environments in which users can interact for recreational, leisure or entertainment purposes.” VISA has filed 2 trademark applications claiming plans for: ▶️ Managing Digital, Virtual, ...
Axelar partners with Polygon to deliver cross-chain communication to Polygon Supernets
Cross-chain platform Axelar has announced a partnership with Polygon to deliver secure cross-chain communications to Polygon Supernets. The company said that Axelar’s partnership with Polygon will serve as infrastructure for an interoperable internet of dedicated Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) blockchains powered by Polygon Edge. Speaking with Cointelegraph, CEO and co-founder of Axelar Sergey Gorbunov shared that this partnership is important to the Web3 ecosystem because the industry needs to scale from thousands of developers to millions. According to Gorbunov: “Application-specific chains are critical infrastructure for that step, but they present huge challenges without interoperability. Axelar and Polygon Supernets are enabling developers to build on chains that make it easy to...
Solana-based protocol seeking to decentralize ride-sharing raises $9M
The ride-sharing industry is poised for another paradigm shift with Web3 protocols, allowing new companies and drivers to bid for rides using a matching algorithm, according to the Decentralized Engineering Cooperation (DEC) — the company behind the Solana-based protocol TRIP that enables mobility-based applications. According to DEC, on the TRIP platform, companies and riders can collaborate and compete in a shared marketplace. The protocol also rewards the most active participants with a stake in its governance for both drivers and customers. The first company to operate on TRIP is Teleport, a decentralized ride-sharing application set to be launched in December and run by the parent company DEC. On Oct. 27, DEC announced a $9 million seed round co-led by Foundation Capital and Road Capi...
TV streaming providers should start relying on NFTs
Subscription-based services have become so ubiquitous it’s hard to remember a time when they weren’t the norm. Streaming companies have sought to take advantage of that norm by fleecing consumers for everything they’re worth — just look at Netflix’s decision to start running advertisements. Another benefit of leveraging NFT technology is that streaming services can increasingly be used to create communities. As with all consumer culture in the digital world, we are what we consume. NFTs, however, have the potential to make the relationship between the consumer and what is consumed far more profound. There is a solution to streaming “churn” A decade ago, who would have thought digital communities based on families of JPEGs would become billion-dollar enterprises? From Bored Apes to Pa...
