crypto blog
Crypto liquidations pass $700M as altcoins take a hit from Bitcoin sinking below $40K
Bitcoin (BTC) stayed lower on Friday after an overnight bout of volatility sent the largest cryptocurrency to six-month lows. BTC/USD 1-hour candle chart (Bitstamp). Source: TradingView $40,000 optimism unwinds Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC/USD reversing at $38,250 after shedding over $4,000 in hours. Circling $39,000 at the time of writing, traders were reeling from the sudden downside, which came just as BTC had hit multi-day highs, passing $43,000. Liquidations across trading platforms were thus predictably significant. For Bitcoin and altcoins combined, 24-hour position unraveling totaled $725 million, with BTC positions accounting for $292 million. The vast majority of the casualties were long positions, a sign that the area around $40,000 had att...
Blockchain meets activity tracking: Project rewards healthy habits with tokens
Blockchain use cases continue to grow as the world learns about the benefits that it brings. Apart from bringing financial innovations like the ability to do peer-to-peer transactions, blockchain now makes its way to the health industry. Health specialists created a method to track and store health data using blockchain technology. Rosanne Warmerdam, the CEO of Health Blocks, told Cointelegraph that her team had developed a way for users to generate and store patients’ health data without sacrificing their privacy and security. “We wanted to start with giving users ownership and control over their health data,” said Warmerdam. By building on top of the IoTeX blockchain, their platform Health Blocks collects lifestyle-related health data from wearables and other smart devices and conn...
Bitcoin fundamentals diverge from BTC price dip as difficulty hits new all-time high
Bitcoin (BTC) may have tanked to six-month lows this week, but under the hood, the network is now verifiably stronger than ever. Data from on-chain monitoring resources including Glassnode and BTC.com confirms that as of Friday, the Bitcoin network difficulty is at a new all-time high. Difficulty passes 26 trillion for the first time The difficulty, which expresses how much miners need to work to solve the equations to process transactions on the blockchain, is arguably the most important of fundamental Bitcoin network components. The metric automatically adjusts to increase or decrease mining effort according to miner participation — the more competition among miners, the higher the difficulty. This has the effect of keeping mining stable regardless of factors such as sentiment, pric...
Crypto taxation could deter investors, says Thai ruling party MP
Thailand’s Committee on Monetary Affairs, Finance, Financial Institutions and Financial Market conducted a virtual meeting to discuss various aspects of crypto taxation. The ruling party MP Watanya Wongopasi posted a summary of the discussion on her Facebook page and urged the Excise department to do their due diligence before imposing any tax on the crypto trading market. In the meeting, Paiboon Nalinthrangkurn, the chairman of the Federation of Thai Capital Market Organisations noted that a tax on stock trading and digital asset trading could decrease market liquidity by 40%. He also warned that heavy taxation would deter foreign and small investors from trading. Yutthana Srisavat, the CEO and founder of iTax proposed a corporate tax or a value-added tax instead of imposing a trading tax...
Binance CEO doesn’t think crypto ad restrictions will affect user adoption – Here are his thoughts
Changpeng Zhao explained that word of mouth plays a more prominent role than advertisement in ramping up user adoption Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao said in a recent interview shared by CNBC that he does not expect the increasing ad restrictions by regulators to impact the growth of crypto. Zhao explained that it is only recently that crypto ads were embraced, given that word of mouth has been the dominant force behind crypto adoption. As such, he expects the demand for crypto to grow further, and the surging regulatory measures against the ads are evidence of this. “Clampdown on crypto advertising is unlikely to have much of an effect on demand, as most of the crypto users come from word-of-mouth promotions anyway,” he elucidated. Ads haven’t had a significant influen...
Meta exploring NFTs integration, with a marketplace reportedly in plans
Meta will support digital art creators by introducing monetisation for their collectibles Social media giant Meta plans to take advantage of the growing hype in the NFTs industry, according to recent reports. NFTs burst into the scene last year, ballooning to surpass a figure of $40 billion in trades as of the end of 2021. A Thursday report from the Financial Times detailed that ‘several people familiar with the matter’ have suggested that Facebook and Instagram are eyeing NFT integration with talks of an NFT marketplace also in the air. It is worth noting that following the transformation of Facebook into Meta, CEO Mark Zuckerberg indicated that his company would explore the idea of bringing NFTs into the Meta universe. A ‘space’ for creators to exhibit their work ...
Robinhood crypto wallet testing is live: 1,000 users can now withdraw
Online retail investing platform Robinhood has released its long awaited crypto wallet for beta testing which will finally enable users to withdraw crypto from the platform. The first 1,000 users that signed up to the waitlist for ‘Wallets’ are eligible to take part in beta testing. Wallets testers will be able to withdraw crypto valued up to $2,999 over a maximum of 10 total transactions daily. Robinhood is a financial services platform backed by Citadel Securities that offers stock and crypto trading. Robinhood’s crypto purchaser users have awaited the release of Wallets since mid 2021 when the waitlist was first created. The last public count of sign-ups to the waitlist revealed by Brown stood at 1.6 million in November, or about 7% of its total user base. While the current limit of tes...
Australia’s plan to create a crypto competitive edge in 12 steps
In October 2021, the Senate Committee for Australia as a Technology and Financial Centre released its much-awaited recommendations for how cryptocurrency should be regulated. The 168-page final report boils down to 12 recommendations aimed at striking the right balance between creating legitimacy without stifling innovation. This is a landmark report that demonstrates Australia’s clear efforts to put itself at the forefront of crypto investment globally. The chair of the committee, Senator Andrew Bragg, believes that “Australia can be a leader in digital assets” and is confident that it can particularly “be competitive with Singapore, the UK and the US.” Four key recommendations First, the introduction of a range of new crypto-specific licenses and regulations. For too long, regulato...
Wait, what? Former Bitcoin bull Raoul Pal only owns one Bitcoin?
Former Goldman Sachs hedge fund manager and cryptocurrency bull Raoul Pal claimed in a tweet that he now only owns a single Bitcoin. As the claim was made in the heat of a Twitter fight with self-proclaimed “Bitcoin Strategist” Greg Foss it’s not entirely clear whether it’s an exaggeration or an accurate statement about his holdings. Pal is the founder and CEO of Real Vision and Global Macro while Foss is an executive director at Validus Power Corp. The revelation of his apparently small holding certainly caused uproar and angst among Bitcoin true believers, who’ve looked at Pal askance ever since he started calling Ethereum “the greatest trade” and predicted that ETH and altcoins will eventually outperform BTC. Fascinating to see that since inception ETH has outperformed BTC by 250%. It o...
SundaeSwap launches on Cardano but users report failing transactions
Cardano’s first decentralized app (DApp) SundaeSwap has launched but is causing a frustration among users due to congestion, platform errors and failed transactions. Is it just a case of expected teething troubles under an influx of excited users or is there more to it? SundaeSwap is a decentralized exchange (DEX) and token staking platform. It’s mainnet launch today marks a milestone in the Cardano (ADA) ecosystem by being the first DApp of to utilize its smart contracts. The ADA price climbed 50% over the past week leading up to the launch of SundaeSwap, meaning a successful launch is a high stakes game for Cardano. Trading on the DEX started at 9:45pm UTC on Jan. 20. It took less than two minutes for users on the project’s Discord server to begin complaining about failed transactions an...
GARI token records a trading volume of over $100M on first day of trading
The social token from video sharing mobile app Chingari became available to international traders on Tuesday India-based short video app company Chingari earlier this week debuted its native token GARI on the international stage. The token quickly saw interest from millions of people on the first day, with trading volume eclipsing $100 million within hours as per an announcement from Chingari. Chingari launched GARI last October as part of efforts to incorporate a cryptocurrency element in the digital content creation world. Renowned actor, producer and TV star Salman Khan served as the brand’s ambassador during the launch. In December, Chingari revealed its Initial DEX Offering launch plans on SolRazr. Taking the market by a storm This week, the token simultaneously arrived on more ...
Bulls aim to turn the tide in Friday’s $580M options expiry after BTC tops $43K
Bitcoin (BTC) investors seem uncomfortable with adding positions after the most recent 40% correction from the $69,000 all-time high made on Nov. 10. In addition to the prolonged downtrend, remarks from the United States Federal Reserve on Dec. 15 about rising interest rates are also weighing on risk-on assets. The Fed signaled that it could raise its benchmark rate three times this year and there are plans to increase the pace of its asset purchasing taper. Consequently, traders are worried that these plans will negatively impact traditional and crypto markets because liquidity will no longer be “easily” available. Bitcoin price at Coinbase, USD (right) vs. China stock market MSCI index (left) Cryptoasset regulation in the U.S. has been in the spotlight and recently a member o...
