Cryptocurrency

Bitcoin (BTC) gained about 40% in January, its best finish in the first month of the year since 2013. The sharp rally caused a change in sentiment and the futures markets, which saw backwardation in November and December,started trading at a healthy contango in January, according to Glassnode. Coming out of a bear market low,

According to a Jan. 31 post by Ethereum Foundation developer Parithosh Jayanthi, the “Zhejiang” public withdrawal testnet will launch on Feb. 1 at 3:00 pm UTC. Six days after Zhejiang, the Shanghai and Capella testnets will also be triggered at epoch 1350. Jayanthi noted: “This is also a great opportunity for all tools to test

Traders tend to lighten up positions before important events because they hate uncertainty. The United States Federal Reserve’s next policy decision is on Feb. 1, when the central bank is expected to hike rates by 25 basis points. Market observers will keenly watch for any hints about how high the rates could go. That could

Despite a challenging year for crypto, 82% of millionaire clients had looked into investing in digital assets such as Bitcoin (BTC) in 2022, according to a recent poll conducted by financial advisory firm deVere Group.  The poll results, released on Jan. 30, found that eight out of every 10 of the firm’s high net-worth (HNW) clients

The third version of the crypto lending app Aave has now been deployed to Ethereum for the first time, according to a Jan. 27 Twitter thread from the Aave team. “Aave v3” was originally released in March 2022 and deployed on multiple Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)-compatible blockchains shortly afterward. Until now, Ethereum users only had

Top Stories This Week FTX creditor list shows airlines, charities and tech firms caught in collapse The complete list of creditors owed money by the bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX has been released, revealing a wide range of global companies. Among the potential creditors are airlines, hotels, charities, banks, venture capital companies, media outlets and crypto

Azuki, a popular nonfungible token (NFT) project, had its Twitter account compromised on Jan. 27, leading to hackers stealing over $750,000 worth of USD Coin (USDC) by posting a malicious “wallet drainer link” posing as a virtual land mint. Hackers stole $751,321.80 in USDC from a single wallet within half an hour of the malicious links being tweeted,

Despite the plans to turn the region into a bustling crypto hub, the United Kingdom’s financial watchdog says it has given the all-clear to only 41 out of 300 crypto firm applications seeking regulatory approval to date. The U.K. Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) implemented the new cryptocurrency-focused regulations on Jan. 10, 2020, to supervise businesses

Artist name: Amber VittoriaLocation: Los AngelesDate minted first NFT: March 1, 2021Which blockchains? Ethereum, Tezos Bio: Before she even turned 30, Amber Vittoria had made a significant splash in the traditional art world with gigs with Gucci, Google, Adidas, Victoria’s Secret, Apple, L’Oréal Paris, Meta, Snapchat, VaynerMedia and The New York Times, Hailing from New

The metaverse hype that began in 2021 dissolved almost entirely by the end of 2022 as the top projects in the space, Decentraland and The Sandbox, lost 95% of their market capitalization. The most prominent reason for the fall was a lack of user growth.  Still, the metaverse narrative is far from dead and will grow

The price of Ether (ETH) rallied 16% between Jan. 14 and Jan. 21, peaking at $1,680 before facing a 5.4% rejection. Curiously, the same resistance level resulted in a substantial correction in late August and again in early November 2.  Ether/USD price index, 2-day. Source: TradingView From one side, traders are relieved that Ether is

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has shared a possible solution to what he describes as the “largest remaining challenge” foEthereum — privacy. In a blog post on Jan. 20, Buterin acknowledged the need to come up with a privacy solution because by default, all information that goes onto a “public blockchain” is public too. He then

After nearly a 20% rally last week, Bitcoin (BTC) is on track to end this week with gains of roughly 10%. Bitcoin’s rally has improved sentiment and attracted buying in several altcoins. This sent the total crypto market capitalization firmly above the $1 trillion mark. The strong recovery in Bitcoin has startled several analysts who

The philanthropic arm of Binance — Binance Charity — is set to fund 30,65 scholarships to students keen on forging out a career in Web3 in 2023. The Binance Charity Scholar Program (BCSP) will provide free Web3 education and training courses which will enable tech-savvy students to upskill without having to leap-frog any unnecessary financial

The United States equities markets are on track to finish the week in the red but that has not resulted in a deeper loss for Bitcoin (BTC). The news of cryptocurrency lender Genesis filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy also did not have any meaningful impact on Bitcoin’s price. This shows that the selling pressure could

Several crypto industry commentators have expressed skepticism about FTX CEO John Ray’s vision to potentially reboot the crypto exchange, citing trust issues and “second-class” treatment of customers as reasons why users may not “feel safe to go back.” Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried tweeted on Jan. 20 praising John Ray for looking at a reboot

Bitcoin (BTC) may gain another 50% before seeing a mass sell-off to complete its bear market, new research predicts. In the latest edition of its regular markets newsletter, “The Crypto Circular,” trading firm QCP Capital delivered a grim warning to those who believe that crypto winter is over. Research warns of “final Wave 5 selloff”

Ethereum (ETH) price is struggling to overcome resistance at $1,600 and this is the altcoin’s third attempt since September 2022. Some would say the 33% year-to-date rally could be interpreted as a failed opportunity to breach the $200 billion market capitalization mark.  Ether/USD price index, 2-day. Source: TradingView If Ethereum price were to break above

Digital assets will largely decouple from traditional equity markets in 2023, believes Arca chief investment officer Jeff Dorman. Discussing his outlook for 2023 in a recent interview with Cointelegraph, Dorman argued that as the global economy enters a recession this year, equities will be negatively affected while some cryptocurrencies will perform well. The value of

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs), decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), and decentralized finance (DeFi) are redefining how charities raise donations and distribute funds to those most in need.  Through ever-evolving crypto and blockchain-related technology, crypto philanthropists told Cointelegraph that they’ve witnessed “new wealth distribution mechanisms” never seen before.  “Philanthropy has traditionally been seen as a high-cost-of-entry, individualistic activity but with

The developers of the dog-themed token Shiba Inu (SHIB) posted an update to inform its community about its upcoming beta release of Shibarium — a layer-2 network that will run on top of the Ethereum mainnet. In the announcement, SHIB developers shared information about layer-2 blockchains. They highlighted that Shibarium is being developed to provide a

Ethereum layer-2 scaling solution Polygon will undergo a hard fork on Jan. 17 in order to address gas spikes and chain reorganizations issues that has affected user experience on the Polygon proof-of-stake (POS) chain.  Polygon officially confirmed the hard fork event in Jan. 12 a blog post, which came after weeks of preliminary discussion on

Ethereum layer-2 scaling protocol Polygon (MATIC) is carrying out performance testing of zero-knowledge rollup (zk rollups) technology ahead of full integration with its mainnet. The development of the technology, called Polygon zkEVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine), has been ongoing for over three years by the Polygon Hermez team. The team has already confirmed that zero-knowledge proofs

The team behind the Cardano ecosystem will release a software toolkit later this month that will enable developers to deploy custom-built sidechains on Cardano aimed at improving the ecosystem. The news was announced on Jan. 12 by Input Output Global (IOG), a blockchain engineering company founded by Charles Hoskinson and formerly known as Input Output

Eight major media companies including Bloomberg, The Financial Times and Reuters have demanded public disclosure of the two individuals responsible for guaranteeing FTX former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried’s $250 million bond.  In a Jan. 12 letter addressed to New York District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan, attorneys from Davis Wright Tremaine LLP — acting on behalf of the

Ethereum layer-2 on-chain activity has been increasing to the extent that the leading two networks now process more transaction volume than mainnet Ethereum. Layer-2 networks Arbitrum and Optimism have seen an increase in transactions over the past three months. Comparatively, aside from a few spikes, transactions on the Ethereum network have declined by around 33%

Albright Capital has dropped its lawsuit against Terraform Labs and its founder Do Kwon, according to a Notice of Voluntary Dismissal filed in U.S. District Court on January 9. Before its dismissal, the lawsuit had alleged that the company had violated the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (“RICO”) by operating the stablecoin, UST, as

Investors across asset classes have been keeping a close watch on the United States Federal Reserve’s monetary policy because that sets the stage for a risk-on or a risk-off environment.  The strong rally in the U.S. stock markets on Jan. 6 and in cryptocurrencies over the weekend suggests that market observers anticipate the Fed to

The United States December nonfarm payrolls report showed a growth of 223,000 jobs, above the market’s expectation of an increase of 200,000 jobs. While this shows that the economy remains strong, market observers shifted their focus to the slower wage growth of 0.3% for the month, below economists’ expectation of 0.4%.  In addition, the euro

Top Stories This Week Sam Bankman-Fried enters not guilty plea for all counts in federal court Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried (has pleaded not guilty to all charges related to the collapse of the crypto exchange, including wire fraud and securities fraud. He faces eight criminal counts, which could result in 115 years in prison