crypto blog
Robinhood axes almost 1 in 10 staff members as stock hits all-time low
Popular retail trading platform Robinhood has fired 9% of its workforce amid a firesale of its stock that has seen HOOD plunge to all-time lows. In the past 30 days alone, HOOD has tanked roughly 38% to sit at $9.99 at the time of writing, marking the lowest price since the initial public offering (IPO) launch in mid-2021. The decline is part of a longer-term bearish trend that has seen the price of HOOD continually decrease since its all-time high of roughly $70.39 on Aug. 4 2021 according to TradingView. Robinhood publicly announced its staff readjustment via an April 26 blog post by CEO and co-founder Vlad Tenev. He noted that after going through a “period of hyper-growth” between 2020 and H1 2021, the firm’s headcount had increased nearly six times, from 700 to nearly 3800 employees. H...
SNACKCLUB raises $9M in seed funding to launch unique gaming DAO
SNACKCLUB, a new sister company to LOUD, the most dynamically growing international brand with a total of 300 million followers, raised $9 million in a seed funding round, CoinText learned from a press release. The company, which is also the first gaming organization to reach a billion views on YouTube, will launch a DAO with the goal of transforming ownership in gaming. A game changer Traditionally, gamers do not own the currency, equipment, or assets their characters have acquired in the many hours spent playing games. With the advent of Web3, they can “mint” in-game items to an external blockchain wallet that grants rare assets value at once. Jean Ortega, cofounder of LOUD and managing partner of SNACKCLUB, commented: LOUD has always been a community-first organization...
Yield Guild Games raises $15M to bolster P2E gaming ecosystem
Yield Guild Games Southeast Asia (YGG SEA), a Philippines-based subDAO of the gaming startup Yield Guild Games, said in a Tuesday press release it raised $15 million in two new rounds of funding. The company plans to use the proceeds to bolster the adoption of play-to-earn gaming across Southeast Asia. What is YGG SEA? YGG SEA is the first subDAO of YGG with direct exposure to players in Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Thailand. According to the press release, YGG SEA is “at the core” of its expansion strategy that spans beyond the Asian region. The press release notes: “In YGG Ecosystem, the goal is not just to onboard players as scholars; but also to be the bridge that brings the Web2 community into Web3 space through GameFi. YGG SEA has been aggressively onboarding and creating a safe...
Ethereum scaling solution Optimism upgrades governance structure
The Optimism Foundation has unveiled a new governance structure and token as part of its ongoing efforts to bring scalability and cost efficiency to Ethereum (ETH), the world’s largest smart contract platform. The “Optimism Collective” was introduced Tuesday afternoon in a lengthy post that outlined its mission and governance mandate. Described as a “large-scale experiment in digital democratic governance,” the Optimism Collective essentially comprises a band of communities and stakeholders committed to improving Ethereum’s technical capabilities. According to the details, the Optimism Collective will be governed by two components: the Citizens’ House and the Token House. The Citizens’ House will “facilitate and govern a process to distribute retroactive public goods funding” via rev...
Altcoins sell-off as Bitcoin price drops to its ‘macro level support’ at $38K
The cryptocurrency market and wider global financial markets fell under pressure on April 26 after the hype surrounding Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter began to fade and concerns about the state of the global economy took the forefront again. Tech-related stocks were some of the hardest-hit assets on April 26 and this pullback was followed by sharp declines in crypto prices as risk assets become persona non grata in these turbulent markets. Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that after holding support at $40,500 through the early trading hours on April 26, the price of Bitcoin (BTC) dumped 6.21% in afternoon trading to hit a low of $38,009. BTC/USDT 1-day chart. Source: TradingView April 26’s price action looks to be a continuation of the weakness se...
US Senate confirms Lael Brainard as Fed vice chair
After weeks of delays due, in part, to partisan obstructionism, the United States Senate has confirmed the nomination of Lael Brainard, a member of the Federal Reserve’s board of governors, as the next vice chair of the central bank. In a 52–43 vote on the Senate floor on Tuesday, U.S. lawmakers confirmed Brainard a vice chair of the Federal Reserve for four years, potentially beyond her term as a governor ending in January 2026. Brainard was one of four nominees waiting for approval since Republican lawmakers in the Senate Banking Committee boycotted a February committee, which would have sent the prospective Fed vice chair’s nomination to the full Senate. In addition to Brainard, the Senate will likely soon vote on the nominations of prospective Fed chair Jerome Powell, who h...
Ethereum on-chain data hints at further downside for ETH price
Analyzing Ether’s (ETH) current price chart paints a bearish picture, which is largely justified by the 11% drop over the past month, but other traditional finance assets faced more extreme price corrections in the same period. The Invesco China Technology ETF (CQQ) is down 31% and the Russell 2000 declined by 8%. Ether price at FTX, in USD. Source: TradingView Currently, traders fear that losing the descending channel support at $2,850 could lead to a stronger price downturn, but this largely depends on how derivatives traders are positioned along with the Ethereum network’s on-chain metrics. According to Defi Llama, the Ethereum network’s total value locked (TVL) flattened in the last 30 days at 27 million Ether. TVL measures the number of coins deposited on smart contr...
Top trending tokens of April 26, 2022: GMT, APE, XCAD and EOS
STEPN (GMT), ApeCoin (APE), XCAD Network (XCAD), and EOS (EOS) are trending as of April 26, 2022. Each token has showcased a high level of growth. All of these tokens can increase in value going forward. STEPN (GMT), ApeCoin (APE), XCAD Network (XCAD) and EOS (EOS) are the biggest trending tokens at the moment, which have seen a significant increase in value as of April 26, 2022. Today, we are going to go over each of these tokens individually, so you can have a heightened perspective of what you can expect before investing in each one of these tokens. Should you buy STEPN (GMT)? On April 26, 2022, STEPN (GMT) had a value of $3.3641. The all-time high of STEPN (GMT) was on April 20, 2022, when the token reached a value of $3.80. Here we can see that the token was $0.4359 higher in value or...
Ferrum Network integrates with Algorand to advance EVM and AVM interoperability
Ferrum’s integration with Algorand provides for seamless Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) and Algorand Virtual Machine (AVM) interoperability. The integration expands Ferrum’s staking-as-a-service solutions onto the Algorand blockchain. Ferrum also plans to launch a multi-chain token bridge for Algorand before the end of Q2, 2022. Ferrum Network, a cryptocurrency network that seeks to help existing blockchain networks address interoperability issues via a suite of multi-chain infrastructure solutions, has announced successful integration with the Algorand blockchain. With this integration, the blockchain interoperability platform’s staking-as-a-service solutions are now accessible to projects in the Algrorand ecosystem. The Ferrum Network announced this via a press release shared...
Fireblocks expands institutional access to Terra’s DeFi ecosystem
Fireblocks, a digital asset custody platform, announced that it has enabled institutional DeFi access to Terra (LUNA), the second-largest decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol by total value locked (TVL). As per the announcement, Fireblocks users can now securely access all the decentralized applications (DApps) built on the Terra blockchain. The launch is in response to Fireblocks’ Early Access Program users, who invested over $250 million into the Terra DeFi ecosystem within the first 72 hours of its integration going live. According to Michael Shaulov, CEO of Fireblocks, institutional demand for DeFi is only continuing to grow, adding that: “As their appetite expands, so will their desire to be able to access all of the latest and greatest innovations across different blockchain e...
Web3 solutions aim to make America’s real estate market more accessible
America’s housing market may soon be facing its next bubble as home prices across the country continue to be fueled by demand, speculation and lavish spending that could result in a collapse. Moreover, many homeowners are opting to stay put due to climbing mortgage rates, creating a housing shortage. Data from the Federal National Mortgage Association, commonly known as Fannie Mae, found that 92% of homeowners think their current home is affordable. Yet, findings further show that 69% of the general population, consisting of both homeowners and renters, believe it’s becoming too difficult to find affordable housing. Web3 and the real-estate market While the fate of the United States housing market remains unclear, the rise of Web3 business models based around nonfungible tokens (NFTs...
Chinese court rules marketplace guilty of minting NFTs from stolen artwork
A court in the Chinese city of Hangzhou ruled a one-of-a-kind judgment against a nonfungible token (NFT) marketplace for allowing a user to create (or mint) NFTs of stolen artwork. As reported by South China Morning Post, the court verdict toward the NFT marketplace was made after Shenzhen-based company Qice filed a lawsuit against NFTCN’s parent company, BigVerse. The lawsuit claimed that an NFTCN user stole a copyrighted artwork of Ma Qianli, a Chinese artist specializing in drawing and printing. The user of the NFT platform allegedly poached one of Ma’s creations of a cartoon picture. Based on the evidence collected, the court found the NFTCN platform guilty of not checking for forgery or intellectual property (IP) theft prior to allowing users to mint NFTs. As a result, NFTCN was charg...
