crypto blog
Ethereum bulls wake up after four years to transfer 22,982 ETH
At a time of bear market-induced uncertainty, crypto investors often tend to stick with Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) to evade impermanent losses. As a result, the significant movement of such assets intrigues the community as they try and decipher the intent behind the move. Two addresses that have remained dormant for over four years recently came back to life to transfer 22,982 ETH to new addresses — leaving investors scratching their heads. The ETH tokens in question originated from trading platforms Genesis and Poloniex and were found transferring 13,103.99 ETH and 9,878 ETH, respectively. #PeckShieldAlert 2 Dormant addresses transferred 22,982 $ETH (~27.2M) to 2 fresh addresses, their last movement was October 2018 (1,535 days ago). These $ETH originated from Genesis and Poloniex ...
‘Wave lower’ for all markets? 5 things to know in Bitcoin this week
Bitcoin (BTC) starts the week before Christmas with a whimper as a tight trading range gives BTC bulls little cheer. A weekly close just above $16,700 means BTC/USD remains without major volatility amid a lack of overall market direction. Having seen erratic trading behavior around the latest United States macroeconomic data print, the pair has since returned to an all-too-familiar status quo. What could change it? That is the question on every analyst’s lips as markets limp into Christmas with little to offer. The reality is tough for the average Bitcoin hodler — BTC is trading below where it was two years and even five years ago. “FUD” is hardly in short supply thanks to FTX fallout and concerns over Binance. At the same time, there are signs that miners are recovering, while on-chain in...
Bitcoin targets $16.7K amid fear BNB may ‘drag whole crypto market down’
Bitcoin (BTC) looked set to ditch $17,000 after the Dec. 16 Wall Street open as United States equities continued to fall. BTC/USD 1-hour candle chart (Bitstamp). Source: TradingView Analyst: $240 BNB “has nothing but air below it” Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView tracked new intraday lows of $16,743 for BTC/USD on Bitstamp. The pair had abruptly dived nearly 3% earlier in the day, compounding losses, which immediately followed one-month highs. Ongoing concerns over largest global exchange Binance pervaded the mood, these coming despite the best efforts of CEO, Changpeng Zhao, to dispel what he called “FUD.” As Cointelegraph reported, longtime crypto traders were similarly skeptical of the credibility of the “craziest rumors” about the crypto exchange sector. Nonetheless,...
Amazon’s new series ‘NFTMe’ explores NFT culture and disruption worldwide
The capacity to digitally authenticate almost everything, and the possibility of monetizing in ways nobody could even imagine before. These are some of the ways that Amazon’s new documentary series NFTMe introduces nonfungible tokens (NFTs). The show features artists, collectors, and industry professionals across the world sharing their experiences with NFTs and how the merger between art and technology has positively affected their daily lives. In six 30-minute episodes, NFTMe introduces 50 pioneers in the NFT space from four continents, including American singer Susaye Greene of The Supremes; Queen Diambi Kabatusuila of the Democratic Republic of the Congo; Refik Anadol, a digital artist for SpaceX and NASA; Peter Rafelson, a music producer for Madonna; and Cheryl Douglas of P...
Gate.io experiences slowdown in deposits and withdrawals due to node maintenance
Users of the crypto exchange Gate.io are facing slow deposits and withdrawals on transactions due to a node maintenance from a third-party cloud provider, according to a Dec. 18 announcement. Gate.io said that transactions are still being processed and claimed that user funds are safe. The company stated: “At this moment, we are monitoring the network connection status of our cloud service providers and will expedite the deposits and withdrawals as soon as the network connection is restored.” It is unclear if the delay in transactions is related to OKX’s outage, which was caused by a hardware failure at a Hong Kong data center of its primary infrastructure provider, Alibaba Cloud. As reported by Cointelegraph, Alibaba’s Cloud server went offline on Dec. 17 and...
The Federal Reserve’s pursuit of a ‘reverse wealth effect’ is undermining crypto
The Federal Reserve’s strategy to hike interest rates may continue, making it difficult for the crypto industry to bounce back. For crypto assets to become the hedge against inflation, the industry needs to explore ways to decouple crypto from traditional markets. Decentralized finance (DeFi) can perhaps offer a way out by breaking away from legacy financial models. How Federal Reserve policies are affecting crypto In the 1980s, Paul Volcker, the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, introduced the interest hiking policy to control inflation. Volcker raised interest rates to over 20%, forcing the economy into a recession by reducing people’s purchasing capacity. The strategy worked, and the Consumer Price Index (CPI) went down from 14.85% to 2.5%. Even now, the Federal Reserve continues t...
Why is Ethereum (ETH) price down today?
Ether (ETH) price is down on Dec. 16 and the pre-FOMC rally to $1,350 was obliterated after Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell issued hawkish statements following a 0.50% hike in interest rates. The Ether sell-off follows a market-wide decline that has sent Ethereum network fees plummeting by 39.90% in the past 30-days. Daily Ethereum network fees and daily active users. Source: TokenTerminal The total value locked in Ethereum-based smart contracts also decreased by decentralized finance by 4.49% in 24-hours. Following the FTX exchange scandal, regulators are attempting to fast-track new regulations on the cryptocurrency sector. Total USD value locked on the Ethereum network. Source: DefiLlama While some analysts believe Ethereum still possesses multiple bullish catalysts that warrant inv...
Total crypto market cap takes another hit, but traders remain neutral
The total cryptocurrency market capitalization dropped 8.1% in the past two days after failing to break the $880 billion resistance on Dec. 14. The rejection did not invalidate the 4-week-long ascending channel, but a weekly close below $825 billion will confirm a shift to the lower band and reduce the support level to $790 billion. Total crypto market cap in USD, 12-hour. Source: TradingView The overall investor sentiment toward the market remains bearish, and year-to-date losses amount to 66%. Despite this, Bitcoin (BTC) price dropped a mere 2% on the week, down to the $16,800 level at 17:00 UTC on Dec. 16. A far different scenario emerged for altcoins which are being pressured by pending regulation and fears that major exchanges and miners could be insolvent. This explains why the total...
Industry execs confident in DeFi adoption despite security flaws: Finance Redefined
Welcome to Finance Redefined, your weekly dose of essential decentralized finance (DeFi) insights — a newsletter crafted to bring you significant developments over the last week. Industry experts are confident in DeFi and believe the sector would continue to see adoption despite its security flaws, primarily due to the mammoth failure of centralized exchanges. Despite the continued growth, however, the decentralized exchanges have lost $30 million on liquidity provider incentives. Popular hardware crypto wallet Ledger introduced a new DeFi tracking feature that pairs with its hardware wallets to monitor performance analytics of over 1,000 protocols. The Lodestar Finance protocol that was exploited for over $5 million on Dec. 10 had a Mango Markets connection, wherein the exploiter copied t...
OKX cites intermittent outage amid Alibaba Cloud equipment anomaly
Crypto exchange OKX witnessed service disruptions after primary infrastructure services provider Alibaba Cloud announced a hardware failure in Alibaba Cloud’s Hong Kong data center. Alibaba Cloud Hong Kong IDC Zone C server went offline on Saturday at roughly 10 pm ET and failed to recover for over seven hours at the time of reporting. On-chain data further confirms that OKX processed no transactions during this timeline. Partial list of Alibaba Cloud’s global infrastructure. Source: Alibaba Cloud Alibaba Cloud’s website shows that the Hong Kong (China) server hosts three availability zones, which have been operational since 2014. The cloud provider confirmed the outage through an official announcement, as shown below. Alibaba Cloud’s official announcement about service disrupt...
US Financial Stability Oversight Council urges congressional action on crypto
Officials with the United States Financial Stability Oversight Council, or FSOC, have recommended U.S. lawmakers pass legislation aimed at addressing regulatory gaps for crypto-related activities. In its annual report released on Dec. 16, the FSOC recommended members of Congress pass legislation granting “explicit rulemaking authority for federal financial regulators over the spot market for crypto-assets,” noting that tokens previously identified as securities would be exempt. The council also noted the lack of a comprehensive regulatory framework — specifically addressing stablecoins and visibility and supervision of crypto firms — in the United States. The FSOC cited the recent downfall of crypto exchange FTX as part of its background information in recommending actions on digital asset...
Bitcoin and Ethereum gave back their gains, but has anything actually changed?
Crypto markets threw a nice head fake this week by rallying into resistance on a “positive” Consumer Price Index (CPI) report, before retracing the majority of those gains right after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell took on a surprisingly hawkish tone during his post-rate-hike presser. The Fed hiked interest rates by 0.50%, which was well within the expectation of most market participants, but the eyebrow-raiser was the Federal Open Market Committee consensus that rates would need to reach the 5%–5.5%+ range in order to hopefully achieve the Fed’s 2% inflation target. This basically threw cold water on traders’ lusty dreams of a Fed policy pivot taking place in the first half of 2023, and the damper on sentiment was felt throughout crypto and equities markets. As the charts below...
