Crypto Currency

The 50 billion USDC circulating milestone has increased Circle’s share of the stablecoin market to almost 30%. The world’s second-largest stablecoin by market capitalization keeps on growing as it erodes the dominance of the current leader, Tether. The stablecoin landscape is a constantly-shifting dynamic but one trend has become clear over the past year or so — Tether’s dominance is diminishing. Its main rival, Circle, has just reached a milestone of 50 billion USDC in circulation according to CoinGecko and a Feb. 1 tweet by company co-founder and CEO, Jeremy Allaire. 50 BILLION USDC (w/ thread below) pic.twitter.com/5FEaPmXjup — Jeremy Allaire (@jerallaire) February 1, 2022 Allaire said that while this is a massive number, “it's the massive growth and ecosystem around it that tells the broader story.” He added that USDC has seen 10,000% growth over the past two years. The total stablecoin supply currently stands at $177 billion, equating to around 9.7% of the total cryp...

The relief fund has been used to purchase essential goods like medicines, power generators, and canned food for affected communities in the Philippines. Yield Guild Games (YGG) has raised $1.45 million to support people affected by December 16's Typhoon Odette in the Philippines, with nearly $1 million already dispersed to people in need. The funding was used to purchase essential goods like medicines, power generators, and canned food, which were turned over to the Philippine Army and Navy and non-profits to distribute among affected communities. There is still about $458,000 worth of crypto and tokens that have been donated to the relief fund but they have yet to be converted to fiat currency for deployment, according to a representative from YGG. Our Transparency Report for Typhoon #OdettePH relief efforts is up! @yieldguild raised $1.45M and has so far disbursed a total of $992K to date. Meanwhile, our direct financial assistance program has helped 3K+ households begin...

Bradley Tusk says that the regulatory issues in the U.S. will not only be replicated but amplified as we see the internet move towards the Metaverse. Tusk Ventures CEO and founder Bradley Tusk says that the failure to regulate cryptocurrency and social media effectively in the United States is a “really good lesson for how we should handle the Metaverse.” In a Feb. 1 interview on CNBC’s “Closing Bell,” Tusk urged U.S. policymakers to “get ahead” of the Metaverse and implement regulations sooner rather than later. “Typically speaking, our policy has been that we wait for technology to be introduced to gain market fit and traction [before introducing regulation].” However, “It’s very hard to do that retrospectively,” he said. “We know the Metaverse is coming — it’s already here in some ways. We know it’s got all the problems of the internet, probably times five or ten. So why don’t we think about it now, and get ahead of it?” He echoed this sentiment in a Mirror blog post uploade...

Julian Lennon auctions off The Beatles memorabilia as NFTs, Italian brands Gucci and Lamborghini develop NFT collections with both digital and physical elements, and Atari develops giftable NFTs for its 50th anniversary. Let's start off the week with the latest nonfungible token (NFT)-related news in today's Nifty News. The following collections are either ongoing or launching the first week of February. The Beatles memorabilia up for auction Julian Lennon, the son of The Beatles' musician John Lennon’s, put up NFTs for auction of items from his personal collection of memorabilia on the YellowHeart marketplace, including the coat John Lennon wore in the Magical Mystery Tour film and three Gibson guitars.  Lennon, however, has no intention of selling the physical items because he "would like to be able to pass these items on for generations to come," he said in an interview with Yahoo Finance. Each NFT contains an audio component, narrated by the son, recount...

Data suggests $34,000 was the bottom and BTC’s recent performance could be a sign that traders are beginning to open fresh longs. Cryptocurrencies had a volatile week after Bitcoin's ( BTC ) sudden crash to $33,000 on Jan. 24. However, the sharp 9% drop fully recovered within 8 hours after BTC price regained the $36,000 support. On Jan. 26, Bitcoin rallied to $38,960 but it could not sustain the level and corrected by 8.8% in the following 8 hours. When factoring in the recent ups and downs, Bitcoin managed to only gain a meager 1.6% over the past seven days. Even with the considerable price swings, the aggregate futures contracts liquidations were relatively low. Longs (buyers) had $570 million futures terminated, while shorts (sellers) faced $690 million. Data shows that Bitcoin futures represented 41% of the total $1.25 billion liquidations. Regulatory winds could be limiting BTC’s price recovery The total crypto market capitalization presented a modest 1.6% weekly increas...

Uncertainty about crypto regulation can engender internal disagreement even within seemingly monolithic governments. One of the most fascinating implications of the collision between traditional political institutions and the crypto space is how it can reveal the glaring lack of cohesion within power systems that otherwise look monolithic. Digital assets reside in a parallel policy dimension where neither a centralized consensus nor a clear rulebook exists, leading to a surprising variety of voices and opinions emerging in the absence of a politically coordinated course. Last week, a rare lively policy debate broke out in Russia in the aftermath of its central bank’s attempt to promote a hardline stance on crypto. One does not often see such a public interagency disagreement on substantive issues. Below is the concise version of the latest “Law Decoded” newsletter. For the full breakdown of policy developments over the last week, register for the full newsletter below. Russia: Com...

UNICEF’s latest report on mainstream adoption of cryptocurrencies highlights the possibility of greater financial inclusion along with the need for new child safeguards. The United Nations Children's Fund has called for incorporating child safeguards into online child protection initiatives, citing financial and exploitative threats posed by unregulated crypto markets. UNICEF’s “Prospects for children in 2022”  report , which examines the impact of global trends on children, anticipates further mainstream adoption of cryptocurrencies — “demonstrating both the promise of greater financial inclusion and the need for new child safeguards.” Source: UNICEF The report shows that digital currencies have gained widespread interest in 87 countries by the end of 2021, with the majority of jurisdictions experimenting on their own versions of a central bank digital currency. UNICEF expects a similar growth trajectory in 2022, as the report states: “A potential alliance between governme...

A lack of bullish momentum leaves Bitcoin wanting this week as macro clouds gather on the horizon. Bitcoin ( BTC ) starts a new week with a bang — but not in the right direction for bulls. A promising weekend nonetheless saw BTC/USD attract warnings over spurious "out of hours" price moves, and these ultimately proved timely as the weekly close sent the pair down over $1,000. At $37,900, even that close was not enough to satisfy analysts' demands, and the all-too-familiar rangebound behavior Bitcoin has exhibited throughout January thus continues. The question for many, then, is what will change the status quo.  Amid a lack of any genuine spot market recovery despite solid on-chain data, it may be an external trigger that ends up responsible for a shake-up. The United States' executive order on cryptocurrency regulation is due at some point in February, for example, while exact timing is unknown. The Federal Reserve is a further area of interest for analysts, a...

Zuellig Pharma’s eZTracker platform is using the SAP blockchain to track and verify COVID-19 vaccinations. Singaporean healthcare services provider Zuellig Pharma is using a blockchain-based network to track COVID-19 vaccinations to prevent practitioners from administering expired vaccines. Zuellig Pharma says that its new “eZTracker” management system can help prevent improperly stored or counterfeit vaccines from being used by allowing its clients to instantly verify the provenance and authenticity of their vaccines via a mobile app. “Accidents involving expired or improperly stored vaccines can be avoided,” said Daniel Laverick, vice-president and head of digital and data solutions at Zuellig Pharma. eZTracker uses the SAP blockchain to capture, track and trace multiple data points to improve supply chain transparency. The eZTracker website explains how it works: “Simply scan the QR code on the packaging to instantly verify if your product comes from an authorized distributo...

The DeFi debacle has caused ripples across the ecosystem as the project head looks to wind things up. The co-founder of the embattled Wonderland decentralized finance project is preparing to pull the plug following a deeply divided community vote. On Jan. 30, Wonderland co-founder Daniele Sestagalli tweeted that the Avalanche-based reserve currency experiment is coming to an end. He added that the divided community “means that we failed.” The vote to save or wind down the project came after Sestagalli asked former partner and Wonderland treasury head Michael Patryn (who goes by the pseudonym ‘0xSifu’) to step down late last week. Patryn, who has changed his name on a number of occasions, was sensationally revealed on Jan. 27 to be the co-founder of the defunct Canadian crypto exchange QuadrigaCX. He has also been previously convicted of credit card fraud and pleaded guilty to several related offenses in the early 2000s. 1/ Wonderland experiment is coming to an end. It is cle...

The slated integrations with Bitcoin and Ethereum would displace the need to use a bridge, which can open the network up to malicious actors. The Internet Computer has released a roadmap for 2022 and beyond, indicating plans to roll out integrations with Bitcoin and Ethereum by the end of the year. The Internet Computer is a public blockchain and protocol that allows developers to install smart contracts and decentralized applications (DApps) directly on the blockchain. It was incubated and launched in May 2021 after years of development by Dfinity — a nonprofit based in Zurich. The #ICP #BTC integration will prompt a new wave of DeFi applications built to leverage the world’s largest cryptocurrency. Full story: https://t.co/kexreQTw20 pic.twitter.com/bQkKdel7r5 — DFINITY Foundation (@dfinity) January 27, 2022 The direct Bitcoin integration will be launched as part of Dfinity’s “Chromium Satoshi Release,” which is planned for Q1 2022. It will add smart contracts to the Bi...

MULTI, SYN and CELR saw a substantial boost in price as the crypto ecosystem focused on integrating cross-chain interoperability as a new fundamental component in DeFi. Interoperability is shaping up to be one of the main themes for the cryptocurrency market in 2022 as projects across the ecosystem unveil integrations that make their networks Ethereum ( ETH ) Virtual Machine (EVM) compatible. While this has been one of the long-term goals of the ecosystem as a step on the path to an interconnected network of protocols, it has also created a new decentralized finance (DeFi) market for multi-chain bridges and decentralized finance. Here are three of the top volume cross-chain bridges that the cryptocurrency community uses to transfer assets between blockchain networks. Multichain Multichain (MULTI), formerly known as Anyswap , is a cross-chain router protocol that aims to become the go-to router for the emerging Web3 ecosystem. According to data from Defi Llama, Multichain is the ...

Some of the key areas of blockchain development include manufacturing, energy, government data sharing and services, law enforcement, taxation, criminal trials, inspection, and cross-border finance. The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) announced the commencement of an in-house effort to expedite blockchain development and innovation across 15 zones and 164 entities.  The initiative aims for the large-scale implementation of blockchain technology across businesses and government organizations in China.  The CAC, along with other government agencies, directed the regulatory authorities to “promote the intensive and balanced layout of blockchain technology infrastructure in the region, form a large-scale production-level cross-chain data exchange support capability, and promote the formation of a multi-party collaborative blockchain industry ecology.” The notice also included a list of cities, companies and other entities — predetermined by the local and departmenta...

RSI is on route to repeating a trend break, which sparked "massive" BTC price moves twice in the last year, one analyst notes. Bitcoin ( BTC ) circled the $38,000 mark into Jan. 30 as a "trappy" weekend still offered the chance of a solid weekly close. BTC/USD 1-hour candle chart (Bitstamp). Source: TradingView "Choppy waters" for Bitcoin Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView  showed BTC/USD regaining the $38,000 mark after seeing local highs of $38,740 on Bitstamp the previous day. Despite its strong "out of hours" performance, few analysts believed in BTC as a firm bullish play without traditional market guidance. "Still choppy waters for Bitcoin," Cointelegraph contributor Michaël van de Poppe summarized in his latest Twitter update. "Looking at $37K to see whether that sustains. If not -> I'm assuming we'll test lows for daily bullish divergence to create. If we hold, we might see a breaker ...

An exclusive Cointelegraph interview on tracking down a group of DeFi scammers responsible for the $25 million StableMagnet rug pull. In the world of digital finance, where the weapon of choice for a heist is a computer rather than a semi-automatic firearm, tracking down scams and frauds from across the world becomes a near-impossible feat for centralized police forces.  However, in an interview with Cointelegraph, an anonymous cyber vigilante shares insights into how he went about tracking down a group of decentralized finance (DeFi) scammers responsible for the $25 million StableMagnet rug pull, coordinating with police authorities and eventually having the stolen money returned back to the investors. The StableMagnet platform lured unwary investors under the pretext of high returns against stablecoin deposits. In a typical rug pull event, StableMagnet managed to run away with the $25 million that was invested by over 1000 users. # #StableMagnet #rugpull $22m and growin...

The technical and log-jam issues preventing the advantages of Web3 privacy can be put to bed if the right solutions are adopted. Although the modern internet connects us like never before, one thing that younger generations have never truly experienced is the feeling of genuine privacy. Even older generations have forgotten what life was like before our every thought and action were tracked. Web3 envisions an open, trustless, permissionless internet where users can interact with each other peer-to-peer without giving up ownership control, privacy or relying on intermediaries. Underlying that vision, blockchains are one of the most important tools. They eliminate the need for trusted third parties and help to create a direct relationship between users and service providers, recording the rules of engagement on immutable ledgers and even storing direct interactions between them. Blockchains also fundamentally reconfigure the structures and power balances in data ownership. With bl...