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Protocol and community development initiatives have become the latest trend in the cryptocurrency market after a number of projects have launched multi-million dollar funds aimed at enticing builders and investors to make the cross-chain migration into the layer-2 ecosystem. The latest project to capitalize on this trend is Harmony (ONE), a blockchain protocol that boasts a 2-second transaction finality and offers cross-chain bridges to a handful of layer-one protocols, including Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Polkadot (DOT) and the Binance Smart Chain (BSC). Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that since hitting a low of $0.095 on Aug. 31, ONE price rallied 120% to a daily high at $0.21 on Sept. 9 as its 24-hour trading volume spiked to $717 million. ONE/USDT 4-hour ...

On Aug. 12, Cardano tweeted that the upgrade had been completed successfully at epoch 290, facilitating the creation and execution of smart contracts on the public blockchain for the first time. Despite celebrating the milestone, Cardano notes that it is still “early days for the project,” asserting that now is when “the mission truly begins” in a blog post published on the same day: Cardano has announced the completion of its Alonzo hard fork, ushering in its long-awaited smart contract functionality. “This is where the mission truly begins as we – the whole community – start delivering on the vision we have all been working towards for so long. Building a decentralized system that extends economic identity and opportunity to everyone, everywhere.” The Alonzo fork enables smart cont...

Ethereum layer-two rollup network Arbitrum One is beginning to see significant growth, with its total value locked (TVL) surging by roughly 2,300% this past week. According to L2beat, an analysis platform comparing layer-two protocols, Arbitrum’s TVL tagged an all-time high of $1.5 billion on Sept. 11 as DeFi degens rushed to invest in early farming DApps launching on the network. Off-chain Labs launched Arbitrum to mainnet following a $120 million funding round on Aug. 31. Since then, Ethereum transaction fees have surged to their near-record levels, driving a migration of liquidity to layer-two scaling solutions and rival layer-ones. Arbitrum currently holds 65.7% of all capital locked on layer-two networks, followed by the second-layer decentralized exchange dYdX with 14.6%. Much of Arb...

To celebrate the holiday season in India, cryptocurrency exchanges are looking to lure retail traders by launching aggressive marketing campaigns and giving away crypto. For this year’s Hindu holiday season, which kicked off on Sept. 10, crypto exchanges are encouraging citizens to choose Bitcoin as a gift instead of their traditional choice this time of year – gold. Sathvik Vishwanath, the co-founder of the popular crypto exchange Unocoin, told the Economic Times that if approached right, “Bitcoin and gift vouchers can be an interesting option for users to consider as more awareness activity is expected across the industry.” The exchange has linked up with e-commerce websites to enable customers to purchase prepaid gift-vouchers vouchers for online shopping using Bitcoin. Rival exchange, ...

Australian digital asset manager Monochrome has concluded a $1.8 million Series A fundraiser led by some of crypto’s most influential entrepreneurs, underscoring the growing potential of institutional-grade crypto-asset solutions.  The cash injection will be used by Monochrome to develop new products specializing in Bitcoin (BTC) and other digital assets, the company said. The Series A was co-led by Litecoin creator Charlie Lee, Blockstream chief strategy officer Samson Mow, former Binance CFO Wei Zhou and Kain Warwick, the founder of Blueshyft and DeFi protocol Synthetix. Following the raise, Monochrome’s total valuation was estimated to be worth roughly $15 million. Monochrome was launched earlier this year by Jeff Yew, the former chief executive of Binance Australia, to provide an ...

Bitcoin (BTC) is witnessing a tough tussle between the bulls and the bears near the 200-day simple moving average, which is considered as an important level by institutional investors attempting to decide whether the asset is bullish or bearish. Along with this, crypto investors are also watching the formation of a golden cross in Bitcoin. If this bullish setup completes, it will signal a trend in favor of the bulls. For the time being, investors continue to focus on select altcoins that have continued their northward journey. Crypto market data daily view. Source: Coin360 On the fundamental front, Bitcoin reached another milestone as miners produced the 700,000th block on Sep. 11. Bitcoin was trading near $8,000 when the 600,000th block was reached on Oct. 18, 2019. Reaching this mil...

Institutions have been at the forefront of the crypto bull run seen since Q4 2020, but now retail investors have been taking the center stage as well. Bitcoin (BTC) is getting more popular all around the world and it officially became a legal tender in El Salvador on Sept. 7, making it a landmark event for retail and sovereign adoption of the asset. However, it turned out to be a chaotic event for the premier cryptocurrency token as the country celebrated “Bitcoin Day.” Soon after the day began, BTC’s price suffered a flash crash of over $8,000 to bottom out at $42,900. Even though this flash crash coincided with this major adoption event for the token, its significance for retail consumers and investors far outweighs the short-term price impact seen in the token’s price. Interesting devel...

Avalanche (AVAX) looks poised to hit $80 as per a classic technical pattern after hitting a new high of over $65 on Sept. 12. Dubbed as “Bull Flag,” the structure emerges as a brief sideways/downward trend following a strong price move higher. As a result, Bull Flags tend to look like downward sloping channels, represented by two parallel trendlines that trap the price action. Additionally, the market’s underlying trade volume dries up as the prices move lower, indicating weakness in the downtrend. Therefore, Bulls Flags typically resolve following a break above their upper trendlines, with prices pushing as high as the previous uptrend’s height, i.e. Flagpole. AVAX’s price action since Aug. 17 has apprehensively led to the creation of a Bull Flag pattern. AVA...

Crypto lending products have come under scrutiny from security regulators in some jurisdictions across the United States. While these enforcement actions have come from agencies at the state level, there have been indications that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was also set to go on the offensive. Thus, it was perhaps unsurprising to see the SEC ask Coinbase to halt its proposed crypto lending program titled “Lend.” Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong took to Twitter to express dissatisfaction with the SEC’s behavior, stating that the Commission was not forthcoming with useful guidance despite public assurances to the contrary. Critics of the SEC’s enforcement actions directed at the U.S. crypto space warn that America risks falling behind in the emerging digital economy if suitable...