Bitcoin (BTC) and the U.S. equity markets fell sharply on Jan. 5, reacting negatively to the minutes from the Federal Reserve’s December FOMC meeting, which showed that the members expect the balance sheet reduction to start after the Fed begins hiking interest rates in early 2022. Adding to the negative sentiment was the shutdown of the world’s second-biggest Bitcoin mining hub in Kazakhstan, where the internet has been shut down following massive protests by citizens. This caused a dip of about 13.4% in the Bitcoin network’s overall hash rate from 205,000 petahash per second (PH/s) to 177,330 PH/s. Daily cryptocurrency market performance. Source: Coin360 According to Galaxy Digital Holdings CEO Mike Novogratz, the current decline was with low volumes and he believes that the market...
The end of the year is normally a time to wind down and prepare for the holiday season, but the last few weeks of 2021 saw a crypto market that showed no signs of resting. One of the headline-grabbing stories related to Terra reaching an all-time high in terms of the total value locked (TVL), and the project surpassed Binance Smart Chain (BSC) as the second-largest decentralized finance blockchain after Ethereum. After reaching the $20-billion TVL mark on Dec. 24, Terra’s TVL has come down to around $19.3 billion at the time of writing according to data from Defi Llama, but this is in no way, shape or form a bearish signal. Top 5 total value locked on the top 5 blockchains. Source: Defi Llama Currently, Terra has only 14 protocols built on the chain, compared to the 257 protocols on ...
American fintech giant PayPal Holdings has reportedly confirmed its intent to launch its own stablecoin named PayPal Coin. The development of an in-house stablecoin was first discovered in the source code of Paypal’s iPhone app by developer Steve Moser. Confirming the evidence found on the PayPal app, Jose Fernandez da Ponte, PayPal’s SVP of crypto and digital currencies, told Bloomberg News: “We are exploring a stablecoin; if and when we seek to move forward, we will of course, work closely with relevant regulators.” PayPal Coin logo found inside of PayPal app. Source: PayPal iPhone app Moser’s finding uncovered that PayPal is in the works of building PayPal Coin, which will be backed by the United States dollar. However, a PayPal spokesperson clarified that the source codes of the iPhone...
Lisa Cameron, a member of parliament for the United Kingdom’s House of Commons, is reportedly chairing a lobbying group aimed at promoting crypto-related legislation in government. According to a Friday report from the Financial Times, members of parliament, as well as members of the House of Lords in the United Kingdom, launched the Crypto and Digital Assets Group to ensure rules for the crypto industry in the U.K. “support innovation” as of last week. The cross-party group aims to protect investors from financial crimes, including token scams or offerings from regulated companies. “We are at a crucial time for the sector as global policymakers are also now reviewing their approach to crypto and how it should be regulated,” said Cameron. Palace of Westminster at night. Source: Pexels...
Welcome to the latest edition of Cointelegraph’s decentralized finance newsletter. The new year is upon us, and the expectations for DeFi innovation, utility and mainstream adoption are greater than ever. Read on to hear about the inaugural stories of 2022. Reading this article, you’re only receiving a portion of the content from our DeFi newsletter. Drop your email below for the full copy. Terra Research proposes new utility for TerraUSD and LUNA Decentralized algorithmic stablecoin issuer Terra published an ambitious proposal via its research team this week to expand the interchain deployment of its TerraUSD (UST) stablecoin across five projects on Ethereum, Polygon and Solana. Titled “UST Goes Interchain: Degen Strats Part Three,” the lengthy governance post extensively detailed t...
Stablecoins have emerged as a foundational part of the cryptocurrency ecosystem over the past couple of years due to their ability to provide crypto traders with an offramp during times of volatility and their widespread integration with decentralized finance (DeFi). These are necessary for the health of the ecosystem as a whole. Currently, Tether (USDT) and USD Coin (USDC) are the dominant stablecoins in the market, but their centralized nature and the persistent threat of stablecoin regulation have prompted many in the crypto community to shun them and search for decentralized alternatives. Top 9 stablecoins by reported market capitalization. Source: Messari Binance USD (BUSD) is the third-ranked stablecoin and is controlled by the Binance cryptocurrency exchange. DAI, the top rank...
Turkey’s electronic vehicle (EV) manufacturer Togg has announced a strategic partnership with Ava Labs to design and build smart contract-based services aimed at improving autonomous mobility. Togg’s collaboration with Ava Labs, a team dedicated to supporting and developing the Avalanche public blockchain, was revealed at the CES 2022 event in Las Vegas. As Cointelegraph Turkey reported, the partnership aims to fast-track Togg’s Use-Case Mobility initiative, which combines different technologies and transportation solutions to produce cars with more functionalities as compared to traditional EVs. According to the official announcement, Togg has been exploring use cases around blockchain and related technologies in EVs for more than a year. With Ava Labs’ partnership, Togg intends to ...
Digital assets’ past performance is never a guarantee of future price movement. There are never two identical situations in the crypto marketplace, so even historically similar patterns of a token’s behavior can be followed by starkly different price action charts. Still, crypto assets’ individual history of price action often rhymes, giving those who can ready this history right a massive edge over other traders. And, importantly, some tokens are much more likely than others to exhibit recurring behavior, which makes their bullish setups more recognizable ahead of time. Cointelegraph Markets Pro, a subscription-based data intelligence platform whose job is to search for regularities in crypto assets’ past trading behavior and alert traders to historically bullish conditions around individ...
The wider cryptocurrency market is facing another day of volatility and selling on Jan. 7 as Bitcoin (BTC) bears managed to break bull support at $42,000. The price of Bitcoin was pushed to a daily low of $40,620 before resources were exhausted. Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro shows that four of the top seven gainers of the day are part of the growing Cosmos Hub. This ecosystem currently uses the Interblockchain Communication protocol (IBC) to facilitate interoperability and communication between connected networks. Top 7 coins with the highest 24-hour price change. Source: Cointelegraph Markets Pro Here’s a look at what’s behind the strength seen in IRISnet (IRIS), Secret (SCRT), Akash Network (AKT) and Cosmos (ATOM). IRISnet expands its NFT capabilities The top gainer over the ...
In a Reddit post on Friday, Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum (ETH), outlined critical security concerns surrounding cross-chain bridges in the blockchain ecosystem. As told by Buterin, storing native assets directly-chain (Ethereum on Ethereum, Solana on Solana, etc.) provides a certain degree of immunity against 51% attacks. Even if hackers manage to censor or reverse transactions, they cannot propose blocks to take away one’s crypto. The rule also applies to the Ethereum application. For example, if hackers launch a 51% attack (by controlling 51% of all circulating ETH supply) while an investor swaps 100 ETH for 320,000 DAI stablecoin, the end state remains invariant, i.e., the investor would always get either 100 ETH or 320,000 DAI. However, Buterin continued, that the ...
The White House has officially submitted President Joe Biden’s nominations to fill two seats at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission with the upcoming departure of another commissioner. In a Friday announcement, the White House said it had sent Citi managing director Caroline Pham’s and Summer Mersinger’s names to the Senate for confirmation. Mersinger previously served as chief of staff to commissioner Dawn Stump — who is expected to leave the agency this year — as well as the director of the Office of Legislative and Intergovernmental Affairs. She and Pham will be taking the places of recently departed commissioner Dan Berkovitz, whose term expires in April 2023, and that of Stump, with a term ending in April 2027, respectively. The CFTC nominations came the same week the White House...
Distanced Mozilla founder vehemently lambasted the move in a tweeted response to the tweet announcing the decision The Mozilla Foundation yesterday announced that it was putting a hold on crypto donations following a discussion with involved parties and the larger community. On New Year’s Eve, the foundation revealed that it had partnered with crypto payment service BitPay to introduce support for crypto donations. The announcement was followed with heavy backlash and trenchant criticism as many users expressed their disapproval of the decision. Some brought to the fore a company blog from January last year in which the chief executive Mitchell Baker asserted that the organisation was devoted to positive climate efforts. Others even noted that they would entirely stop donating to the devel...