Crypto news
President Biden sends CFTC nominations to Senate
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...
Mozilla puts crypto support on hold following intensified heat on initial decision
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...
The top 3 GameFi tokens you should buy on January 7: AXS, SAND and GALA
Axie Infinity (AXS), The Sandbox (SAND) and Gala (GALA) are the go-to GameFi tokens on December 7. Each of them has had a huge following within the crypto-gaming space. Every token can potentially increase in value throughout January. Axie Infinity (AXS) is a play-to-earn game that is based on top of the Ethereum blockchain, where AXS is its native cryptocurrency token. The Sandbox (SAND) is a virtual metaverse where players can essentially play, build, own as well as monetize their virtual experiences. Gala Games is a platform for blockchain gaming powered by the Ethereum-based token known as GALA. Should you buy Axie Infinity (AXS)? On January 7, Axie Infinity (AXS) had a value of $74.3. To get a better perspective as to what kind of value point this is for the AXS token, we will go over...
Bitcoin clings to $42K as key moving average break from July reappears
Bitcoin (BTC) consolidated above $42,000 prior to Wall Street’s opening bell on Jan. 7 as more similarities to last year’s lows emerged. BTC/USD 1-hour candle chart (Bitstamp). Source: TradingView BTC “very closely” mimicking May behavior Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView tracked a nervous Bitcoin market as BTC/USD avoided another retest of $40,000 support. Earlier, after briefly falling below $41,000, analysts had warned that a further capitulation event may occur, this having the potential to bring the pair down to $30,000 or even lower. That figure rings true for market participants, having formed the bottom of a protracted capitulation which lasted from May to July last year. Then, as now, miner upheaval combined with macroeconomic factors...
Rapper Nas to let fans own part of his music through NFTs
Award-winning rapper Nas will release nonfungible tokens (NFTs) that will let his fans own a stake in two of his songs, “Ultra Black” and “Rare.” Users who buy and hold the NFTs, dubbed limited digital assets (LDAs), will get a specific percentage of streaming royalty ownership depending on the token that they hold. “Ultra Black” comes from Nas’ 2021 Grammy award-winning Album King’s Disease, while “Rare” is from the follow-up 2022 Grammy-nominated album King’s Disease II. The former song will have a limited supply of 760 tokens, while the latter will have 1,110. Both will be released on Jan. 11, and buyers will be able to acquire the tokens on a first-come, first-served basis. Without further ado.. we’re honored to announce Hip Hop legend, innovator and entrepre...
The biggest consumer brands that engaged with crypto in 2021
2021 was an exciting year for crypto, with several well-known — some unexpected — brands entering the crypto sector. Here’s looking at you, Charmin, and your toilet paper nonfungible tokens (NFTs). The year saw its fair share of moments that had crypto enthusiasts on the edge of their seats. While many people continued to talk generally about the revolutionary power of cryptocurrencies and blockchain, it seems as though 2021 was the year when the ideas underlying these technologies truly took hold of the consciousness of the mainstream. From NFTs to Web3, there has never been more interest expressed from traditional players in relation to this fast-expanding ecosystem. Here are some of the biggest moves made by major consumer brands to engage with and adopt various crypto-centric technolog...
Bitcoin leverage ratio reaches new highs
The estimated leverage ratio for Bitcoin (BTC) hit a new all-time high last night according to CryptoQuant. Further metrics point to growing leveraged interest, but liquidations have remained relatively low. According to on-chain analytics resource CryptoQuant, while the Bitcoin price fell off a cliff over the past 24 hours, the estimated leverage ratio reached 0.224, an all-time high. The metric works by dividing exchanges’ open interest by their coin reserve. The result shows how much leverage traders are using on average. A higher ratio, such as 0.22, indicates that more investors are taking high leverage risks. Conversely, lower values mean traders are increasingly risk-averse in their derivative trading. The blue line on the graph below, it’s trended upwards since June 201...
Here’s why Ray Dalio considers 1% to 2% allocation to crypto investment ideal
The billionaire investor has his toe in Bitcoin and Ethereum but has in the past declined to disclose how much he has put into them Ray Dalio, the co-chief of investment at hedge fund Bridgewater Associates recently told The Investor’s Podcast Network that he agrees with fellow billionaire Bill Miller’s proposition. In the episode published on January 2, Dalio suggested that investors shift about 1 to 2% of their portfolios into crypto – Bitcoin. The American investor tied his optimism on Bitcoin to the asset’s insusceptibility to hacking, lack of close competition, and satisfying adoption rates that will make its valuation battle gold’s market cap. “Bitcoin now is worth about $1 trillion, whereas gold that is not held by central banks and not used for je...
Report finds crypto crime resulted in $14 billion worth of losses in 2021
Chainalysis findings show that there is currently more than $10 billion in illicit money (mostly stolen) held in crypto wallets A new report from the blockchain data platform Chainalysis has revealed that crime involving cryptocurrencies last year hit an all-time high of $14 billion. This figure is almost twice the sum ($7.8 billion) recorded in 2020. This upsurge in funds lost to fraudulent activity was, however, majorly attributed to the growth of the crypto markets. The markets saw transaction volumes rise by more than 550% to reach $15.8 trillion. The $14 billion sum lost represents just a mere figure of 0.15% of all the blockchain transactions seen in 2021. “We had an explosion in the amount of on-chain activity (in 2021). It’s just that the amount of crime didn’t gr...
Weekly Report: Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary argues that NFTs are growing bigger than Bitcoin
This week, top cryptocurrencies suffered a massive dip as the broader market pulled back following confirmation of plans to hike interest rates. Minutes from the FOMC meeting hinted that the US Federal Reserve was considering a potential rate increase in March. The top crypto assets (not including Tether and USD Coin stables) are all down by double figures over the last 7-days. Solana (SOL), Ethereum (ETH), and Binance Coin (BNB) lead the way in losses with 19.47%, 13.97%, and 13.15% plunges, respectively as of writing. The leading cryptocurrency is also trading in the red – down by 12.01% in the last 7-days. Here’s a look at the top headlines outside the market in the first week of the year. Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary bets on NFTs getting bigger than Bitcoin Popular Shar...
SEC files complaint against operator of ‘unregistered’ $33M Crowd Machine ICO
The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has filed a suit against Australian Craig Derel Sproule for the allegedly “fraudulent and unregistered” sale “of digital asset securities” in an Initial Coin Offering his company conducted in 2018. The SEC alleges in a Jan. 6 complaint that Sproule’s company, Metavine, Inc. which operated the ICO for Crowd Machine (CMCT) from Jan. to April 2018, sold unregistered securities, never made the project operational and “materially misrepresented how it intended to use ICO proceeds.” In total, the SEC says Sproule raised at least $33 million dollars, but that he now lacks “sufficient capital to fund continued operations.” The reason for his lack of funds goes to the core of the SEC’s case. A Jan. 6 announcement from the SEC regarding the ...
Vitalik proposes new ‘multidimensional’ Ethereum fee structure
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has put his thinking cap on again in an attempt to improve the current fee structure for the network. The proposal titled “Multidimensional EIP-1559” was laid out in a blog post on Jan. 5 in which Buterin noted that different resources in the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) have different demands in terms of gas usage. He added that there are different limits for short-term “burst” capacity as opposed to “sustained” capacity within the EVM citing examples of block data storage, witness data storage, and block state size changes. “The scheme we have today, where all resources are combined together into a single multidimensional resource (‘gas’), does a poor job at handling these differences.” The problem is that channeling all the different res...
