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Altcoins News

Shiba Inu Lists Shiba Land as Metaverse Precursor

Shiba Inu has developed Shiba Land in Shiberse, where crypto users may buy or auction virtual territories. Shiba Inu prices rose as a result of this yesterday.

LEASH coin holders, as noted in the post, will have priority access to the queue during the first phase of land release. This announcement also resulted in an increase in LEASH.

Meanwhile, numerous coins, including Axie Infinity (AXS), Decentraland (MANA), The Sandbox (SAND), and Doge Killer (LEASH), are plowing their way through the metaverse.

The Sandbox transports gamers to a virtual world where they can play, construct, own, and monetize their virtual worlds.

Decentraland also allows users to buy and trade virtual lands. Axie Infinity is also a P2E metaverse in which users can gather Axies, breed, grow, and utilize them in battles to gain tokens.

Prior to Facebook’s Meta rebranding in 2020, the metaverse was already worth $47.69 billion, with coins such as AXS, SAND, and MANA. Following the redesign, MANA led the metaverse, followed by Enjin Coin (ENJ) and SAND.

Shiba Inu developers wrote on their blog ShibaSwap that:

The Metaverse is set to be one of the biggest areas within crypto for many to enjoy, while others will produce content and developers will set up shops within using it as another great resource to offer crypto communities incentivization, content, and regular royalties.

Shiba Inu is now ranked 14th among the biggest cryptocurrencies in the world, with a market valuation of more than $17 billion. Shiba’s market cap, on the other hand, remains higher than that of the majority of metaverse tokens. MANA is rated 30 at the time of writing, with a 20.8 percent rise in the previous week.

Most cryptocurrencies and metaverse coins are competing with minor price increases in the wider market momentum. This is a difficult situation for the Shiba Inu metaverse. SHIB was again on the top 10 purchased tokens and top most utilized smart contracts by 1000 greatest ETH whales in the previous 24 hours, according to a recent publication by WhaleStats’ statistics.

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News NFT

OpenSea Number of Active Users Decreases By Over 30%

OpenSea, the world’s largest NFT marketplace, has generated over $1.3 billion in total volume in the last 7 days, keeping pace with January’s total volume of $5 billion. However, the number of active users has plummeted by more than 30 percent , according to data from Dune Analytics.

This data is concerning because it shows that there may be a market correction in the NFT area in the near term, or that investors and collectors are shifting their trading activity to another marketplace in which they are participating.

LooksRare, a new NFT marketplace that launched in January 2022, is the marketplace’s closest competitor. The platform has generated around $3.49 billion in the last 7 days, but ongoing challenges with wash-trading have also reduced its profitability.

Last month, OpenSea was hacked for 332 ETH, which was worth $780,200 at the time. Peck Shield, a blockchain security business that aspires to improve the security, privacy, and usefulness of the whole blockchain ecosystem, discovered the compromise.

The exploiter was able to buy Bored Ape Yacht Club and Mutant Ape Yacht Club NFT collectibles at their old listing price and then sell them for the current market price due to a fault in the front end of the marketplace.

Users have regularly complained, with the most recent report due in December 2021, yet the company has done nothing to address the issue. This could be one of the reasons for the reduction in OpenSea users.

Last month, OpenSea was hacked for 332 ETH, which was worth $780,200 at the time. Peck Shield, a blockchain security business that aspires to improve the security, privacy, and usefulness of the whole blockchain ecosystem, discovered the compromise.

The exploiter was able to buy Bored Ape Yacht Club and Mutant Ape Yacht Club NFT collectibles at their old listing price and then sell them for the current market price due to a fault in the front end of the marketplace.

Users have regularly complained, with the most recent report due in December 2021, yet the company has done nothing to address the issue. This could be one of the reasons for the reduction in OpenSea users.

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Ethereum

Ethereum Is Now The Twenty-Fourth Largest Asset In The World!

The market valuation of Ethereum, the market’s second-largest cryptocurrency, has lately surpassed that of financial services giant Mastercard.

Despite the dramatic price drop that hit the crypto market earlier in January, Ethereum has recovered and is now trading at $3,248.3 per unit.

The digital currency has seen dramatic price changes in recent times, and with a market worth of $387.72 billion, Ethereum is now the world’s 24th largest asset, just below Bank of America.

Ethereum’s stellar success has vaulted it ahead of Mastercard, the American payment services provider with a market valuation of $375.18 billion.

The digital asset has also exceeded some global corporations, like Walmart (382.18 billion), Home Depot (379.79 billion), and many others.

The cryptocurrency sector has seen a tremendous boom in popularity as new trends such as NFTs emerge, as well as increased individual and institutional use.

The fledgling industry has grown from a little-known online concept to a major trillion-dollar enterprise that is threatening the global economic system as we know it.

Around August 2020, bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency, was valued at little more than $200 billion and was among the top 30 assets in the world. Bitcoin is now the 9th largest asset in the world, with a market valuation of $843.19 billion, more than four times its worth just two years ago.

Because of the cryptocurrency industry’s rapid expansion, federal governments from around the world are examining measures to control the business.

The Indian government has defused prior attempts to impose a blanket ban on crypto-assets by proposing a 30% tax on crypto income, implying a shift toward controlling the country’s crypto economy.

Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, has also appeared to be moving toward regulating the country’s crypto scene, despite banking officials’ differing perspectives.

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Altcoins Guides & Tutorials

Holo (HOT): What You Need To Know

Holo aspires to be the “AirbnB of apps,” with the Holo ecosystem rewarding users with crypto incentives for their involvement in the peer-to-peer market of cloud-based applications. Anyone can become a host on the Holochain app, which is a component of the Holo ecosystem, and HOT is the platform’s native token.

Do you want to learn more about Holo (HOT) but don’t know where to start? Don’t be concerned. This article will provide you with all of the information you need to know about the cryptocurrency.

What is Holo?

The Holo (HOT) framework is an open-source platform for developing networked peer-to-peer applications. It functions as a Dapp cloud hosting market. The network is one-of-a-kind in that it integrates an agent-centric approach to the market. Using Holochain, anyone can take advantage of low-cost cloud hosting providers and build strong Dapps. As a result, the concept’s creators hope to offer the benefits of distributed apps to anyone with a web browser. As a result, Holo offers a set of functions that both traditional and blockchain applications lack.

Arthur Brock and Eric Harris-Braun created Holo in 2017, with headquarters in Gibraltar. Holo was developed with the objective of enabling app hosting within a peer-to-peer environment, and is defined as a post-blockchain platform powered by the DHT hashing algorithm.

Holo raised nearly $20.4 million in two investment rounds, the most recent of which occurred in April 2018, and the project is also supported by Cardinal Capital.

How it Works

Holochain, as previously said, is an open-source platform for developing completely distributed P2P applications. It is not your average blockchain.

Nodes on a traditional blockchain preserve the same network state. Holochain, on the other hand, is an agent-centric, energy-efficient ledger system. This means that each agent (host) has a copy of the secured ledger and may act independently while also interacting with other network devices to form a viable and highly scalable distributed ledger system.

Unlike traditional blockchains, Holochain allows each node to have its own history. Holochain proposes to reduce the need for all nodes in a network to be synchronized by establishing distributed hash tables, which provide a shared public space. With this method, each node carries a portion of the dispersed data, which is not lost to the network when a node fails.

This feature of the Holochain is adjustable and customized for the use cases of each application. With Holochain’s distributed validation procedure, each app user agrees to and is aware of the application validation rules. If the application rules are violated in any way, other nodes in the network can determine who broke the rules and take appropriate action.

What Makes it Unique

The Holochain platform, which does not run on traditional blockchain technology but instead uses a hashing algorithm as a post-blockchain network, makes it unique. Holo, which uses traditional distributed ledger technology, allows users to host and use numerous programs known as hApps on the network. As a result, no staking or mining is required to operate and run the nodes in Holo.

Holo distinguishes itself not just through the use of the DHT hashing mechanism, but also through its architecture, which creates a P2P market in which users can be compensated for hosting applications built by other users and distributed to the Holochain app.

Bottomline

In many ways, the Holo idea is unique. Because of the network’s sharded nature, developers can expect unbounded storage capacities and responsiveness. Furthermore, the new features and permissions make it easier for developers to create complicated and strong Dapp ecosystems. As a result of these factors, Holo is well-positioned in the market.

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Blockchain News

U.S. Justice Department Recovers $3.6 Billion From Bitfinex Hackers

The Department of Justice said on February 8 that Ilya Lichtenstein, 34, and his wife Heather Morgan, 31, both of New York, were detained for suspected conspiracy to launder $4.5 billion in stolen cryptocurrency.

According to the article, law enforcement has confiscated almost $3.6 billion in cryptocurrency tied to the attack thus far. If convicted, the couple faces up to 25 years in jail, and they are scheduled to appear in federal court in Manhattan on February 9.

Crypto Twitter is presently flooded with video snippets of Morgan dancing around on the social media app TikTok, but many of the comments are far too racy to be reproduced here.

The couple used a variety of laundering strategies, including forged identities, bogus internet accounts, automated transactions, and “chain hopping” by changing to privacy-focused coins. On-chain expert David Pull dug into the wallet activity and digital loot movements, concluding that this is only one example of how Bitcoin’s public ledger, open to anyone, allowing observants to observe the ledger’s history unfolding live.

Lichtenstein and Morgan are accused of conspiring to commit money laundering and defraud the US. The complaint was filed in federal court in Washington, D.C.

The two are accused of plotting to launder 119,754 bitcoin that was taken after a hacker got into Bitfinex and launched over 2,000 unauthorized transactions. According to Justice Department authorities, the transactions were worth at $71 million in bitcoin at the time, but with the currency’s value increasing, the amount is now more than $4.5 billion.

The 2017 bust of an underground digital market used to launder a portion of the proceeds may have provided a significant clue. According to US officials, part of the money was transferred to AlphaBay, a dark web-hosted version of eBay where anything goes.

When the site was taken down, officials were likely able to view AlphaBay’s internal transaction logs and link them to a cryptocurrency account in Lichtenstein’s name, according to the report.

The Bitfinex attack was one of the largest in crypto history, with 119,754 BTC worth approximately $4.5 billion at the time stolen five years ago.

Categories
News Regulation

Russia Planning to Legalize Bitcoin In Nine Days!

HODLers in Russia have reason to rejoice, since cryptocurrency ownership in the country may soon be permitted. According to a February 8 declaration, the Russian government and central bank are working together to develop draft laws that will designate cryptocurrency as currency.

After previously recommending a ban on cryptocurrencies, the Bank of Russia has finally achieved an agreement with the Russian government on how to regulate them. The two organizations intend to legalize cryptocurrency and establish clear industry standards that will foster growth while protecting investors through a draft law that will be finalized by February 18.

Cryptocurrency transactions will be permitted only through banking institutions or licensed organizations in Russia, according to the proposed standards. In other words, banks will be permitted to operate as middlemen between users and cryptocurrency exchanges. Such banks will employ Rosfinmonitoring’s Transparent Blockchain transaction tool to inspect transactions for evidence of illegal activity.

Users will be obliged to declare crypto transactions worth more than 600,000 rubles (about $8,000) to the Federal Taxation Service or face criminal prosecution. Furthermore, there would be severe penalties for illegally accepting bitcoins as a payment option.

The declaration states that the Russia government intends to defend investors’ rights while also limiting the use of cryptocurrencies in criminal activity.

The announcement comes after months of speculation about Russia’s true stance on cryptocurrency. The central bank called for a comprehensive ban on cryptocurrency mining and trade last month. However, less than a week later, Russia President Vladimir Putin appeared to be in favor of regulating and taxing cryptocurrency mining due to the country’s comparative advantages.

For the time being, it is difficult to predict how the proposed draft law will affect investors and enterprises operating in Russia. Nonetheless, the action indicates the country’s changing posture toward cryptocurrencies, and if these guidelines are implemented, they will certainly solidify Russia’s position as one of the world’s main bitcoin mining hubs.

Furthermore, Russia could become an appealing destination for bitcoin businesses, talent, and projects in the future.

Categories
Blockchain News

iPhone’s New Feature Will Allow Users To Make Crypto Payments

Apple has revealed plans to release Tap to Pay for iPhone, a new feature that effectively transforms the smartphone into a point of sale system for companies and retailers. So, what’s in it for cryptocurrency?

According to the release, with Tap to Pay, iPhone-owning shops may accept contactless payments by using their mobile devices as a POS machine owing to NFC technology.

Apple’s soon-to-be-released Tap to Pay feature will support “Apple Pay, contactless credit and debit cards, and other digital wallets,” according to the company. Customers that use Coinbase Card, Crypto.com Visa Card, or a similar payment card will be able to use their bitcoin holdings to make payments using Tap to Pay, unless Apple places a clear obstacle in the way.

While Apple introduced Stripe, an Irish-American fintech, as the first platform to offer the iPhone’s Tap to Pay feature, the firm noted that “other payment platforms and apps will come later this year.”

Coinbase, a large cryptocurrency exchange, merged with Apple Pay and Google Pay in August 2021, allowing customers to acquire crypto assets on its platform. According to Cointelegraph, the move enabled users in the United States to purchase cryptocurrency using bank-issued debit and credit cards via Apple Pay, a mainstream payments network.

Coinbase released Coinbase Card in June 2021, allowing customers to spend bitcoins over mainstream channels:

“Coinbase will automatically convert all cryptocurrency to US Dollars and transfer the funds to your Coinbase Card (less conversion fees) for use in purchases and ATM withdrawals.”

Following suit, cryptocurrency exchange Crypto.com introduced a similar product called the Crypto.com Visa Card, which can be attached to Apple Pay and other major digital wallets. According to Apple’s announcement, Tap to Pay on the iPhone will accept contactless credit and debit cards from major payment networks as as American Express, Discover, Mastercard, and Visa.

Given Coinbase’s capacity to convert a user’s crypto holdings to fiat in real-time for payments, Apple Pay users will be able to use their iPhone’s Tap to Pay function to make bitcoin payments at mainstream retailers and businesses.

While Apple Pay will most likely not allow direct purchases of goods and services using Bitcoin (BTC), it will convert the user’s crypto holdings to match the dollar amount demanded by the merchant’s POS system in order to complete the transaction.

Categories
Altcoins Guides & Tutorials

What You Should Know About Basic Attention Token (BAT)

Most internet users go out of their way to avoid online adverts, but what if they were paid to see them? Basic Attention Token (BAT) is a cryptocurrency that aims to create a virtuous cycle of digital advertising that benefits both creators and consumers.

BAT, which is based on Ethereum (ETH) and is natively integrated into a unique web browser called Brave, may be transferred between advertisers, publishers, and internet users based on their web activity, and is meant to expedite commerce between these three groups.

Users are rewarded with BAT for watching ad content, publishers can provide more impactful advertising, and advertisers can be confident that their messaging is reaching a willing audience.

What is Basic Attention Token?

Basic Attention Token is a blockchain-based network that tracks how much time users of the Brave browser spend on various websites. The Basic Attention Token is the native token of Brave Browser, and it serves as the fuel for the Brave Browser digital marketing ecosystem.

Given the enormity of the worldwide internet advertising market, it was about time that a blockchain-based platform attempted to transform it. The online advertising market was worth $304 billion in 2019. It will expand at a 21.6 percent annual rate to a market value of $982.82 billion by 2025.

Advertising is one of the most important business components that can make or ruin a product. Advertising done well may generate a lot of money and help enhance a brand’s reputation.

In fact, several businesses, such as broadcast television, rely solely on advertising for revenue. Without the revenue generated by online advertising, the giant Google would not have been able to sponsor various initiatives. Advertising, on the other hand, can be vexing at times.

Nowadays, commercials can be found on every medium, including newspapers, radio, television, and internet. However, as internet usage has increased, digital advertisements have become one of the most successful ways.

Have you ever considered how blockchain technology can influence how users interact with online advertisements? So here’s a real-life example. Basic Attention Token, a brave new player in town, is already doing it.

Brave is committed to offering a safe, anonymous, and entertaining advertising system. The BAT (Basic Attention Token) mechanism caters to each and every significant stakeholder. Whether it’s end users, producers, or advertisers.

How BAT Works

All BAT transactions are settled on Ethereum, a public blockchain that enables developers to design and deploy their own coins and services.

Brave Browser

BAT runs on the Brave web browser, which was designed by the same company that produced the token. Brave is a free browser that claims to load 3-6 times faster than competitors since it only displays adverts if users opt in.

Users of the Brave browser can sign up for the Brave Rewards program, which allows them to get paid in BAT for seeing advertisements or to contribute BAT to content creators whose work they want to support.

The default setting in Brave is to disable trackers and advertisements. It only displays advertisements if the user opts in. Brave then serves trustworthy partners’ native adverts, which users are compensated in BAT for viewing.

Brave Micropayments Ledger

Brave uses the Brave Micropayments Ledger to track the movement of BAT. The Brave Micropayments Ledger is intended to allow marketers, publishers, and readers to join into smart contracts to transfer payments amongst each other.

Brave is investigating the use of zero-knowledge proofs for its blockchain, with the purpose of providing stakeholders with anonymity in online media transactions.

Bottomline

The Basic Attention Token system has a lofty goal and an even loftier vision. They created Basic Attention Token in order to remedy the dysfunctional digital advertising market. It is, as we all know, a monumental task. Users, advertisers, and publishers comprise their ecosystem. Tokens are used by advertisers to display their ads within the publisher’s content.

Publishers receive a portion of the token used, and the user who is paying attention to the ad receives a portion as well. The BAT is an ERC20 token that is developed on the Ethereum platform. This transparent method prioritizes user data privacy while altering the entire ad-delivery experience. BAT has prioritized delivering fewer but more relevant advertisements.

It eventually improves performance and reporting. Brave is the name given by the team to their browser. Brave is an open-source, fast, and privacy-focused browser that removes unwanted advertisements and trackers effortlessly. It is home to a ledger system that anonymously measures user attention in order to appropriately reward publishers.

According to the creators, Brave is more than just a browser because it uses client-side encryption to protect sensitive data on your devices from synchronizing. As a result, it seeks to revolutionize user experience by establishing an ad-supported Web environment. Overall, Brave and its Basic Attention Token system have what it takes to completely transform the digital marketing sector. After all, they reward all members of their ecosystem.

Categories
Blockchain News

Binance on Making the Crypto Industry Safer For Users

Decentralization, which eliminates intermediaries and empowers people to control their own money, is at the heart of the cryptocurrency industry. With decentralization as the primary purpose of digital assets, it is no surprise that regulation appears to have no place in this industry. While this is a popular position among cryptocurrency users, history has shown that it is myopic.

Investing in a lesser-known asset class that exists in the “Wild West” has minimal impact on investor confidence. As a result, as the value of bitcoin assets continues to rise, the media has been quick to highlight the numerous scams, insider trading, and market manipulation schemes, including but not limited to pump and dump schemes.

These risks are in addition to the less visible ones, such as the reliability of an online exchange or the possibility of interest-earning platforms going bankrupt. These issues may be alleviated through regulation, and even the most skeptic investors may be eager to invest in cryptocurrencies.

Currently, industry leaders such as Binance, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, have made it their mission to solve mounting regulatory issues. When it comes to regulation, the CEO of Binance, known as CZ, encourages consumers to compare bitcoin restrictions to those of an automobile.

He claims:

“When the car was first invented, there weren’t any traffic laws, traffic lights, or even safety belts. Laws and guidelines were developed along the way as the cars were running on the road.”

Recognizing the need of regulation, it is not surprising that Binance has made it a part of its commitment to guaranteeing user safety while traversing the cryptosphere. By doing what they teach, the exchange remains compliant with all regulatory obligations, even before regulators impose these restrictions.

Binance was among the first cryptocurrency exchanges to maintain a safe asset emergency fund, which was one of these measures (SAFU). The fund, which is expected to be worth USD 1 billion by the end of January 2022, is made up of a percentage of all trading fees that occur on the platform, offering a level of security to all platform users.

Other prominent efforts include collaboration with a number of law enforcement agencies to identify bad actors and hold them accountable for their acts. As part of their expanding efforts, the exchange has looked to organizations such as CipherTrance, a platform known for automating bitcoin Anti-Money Laundering (AML) compliance through API usage. The team also conducts AML audits, with a number previously cleared.

Binance’s dedication does not end with these laws, as they have just expanded their compliance staff. Many former FATF officials have joined the ranks, with a 500 percent rise from the previous year, to ensure the team complies with all local rules applicable to where they are working.

Categories
Blockchain News

QiDAO Lost $13 Million To Hackers

A security breach cost QiDAO, a decentralized finance system built on the Polygon network, $13 million in losses. The issue does not affect Qi DAO’s primary contracts, but rather a vesting contract that QiDAO had implemented utilizing the Superfluid programmable smart contract framework.

While Superfluid and QiDAO continue to examine the core cause of the incident, blockchain data shows that a total of $13 million in crypto assets was stolen. At the time of writing, the hacker’s address still had almost $8 million in it.

In a subsequent update, Superfluid revealed that the attack could have been a possible protocol layer exploit.  Users who own “SuperTokens,” or tokens issued within the Superfluid architecture, are strongly recommended to unwrap their assets as soon as possible.

As previously stated, the recent hack has no effect on user monies invested in the QiDAO system. Instead, the hacker stole the project team’s staked QI and other assets. The exploiter claimed $11.8 million in QI tokens, which they immediately sold for Wrapped Ether (WETH) on the 1inch platform.

The hacker’s action, along with investor concerns about being diluted by additional supply, caused the price of $QI to fall by more than 80% in two hours, falling from $1.20 to $0.18. As can be seen in the chart above, $QI has returned to $0.57 following assurance that the security vulnerability had no direct impact on the QiDAO protocol.

Categories
Price Analysis

Polygon (MATIC) Forecast 02/08

Bitcoin has recently broken through various levels of resistance and was trading above $45k at the time of writing. This has resulted in significant gains for numerous coins in the altcoin ecosystem, including MATIC. In other news, Polygon raised $450 million in cash through the private sale of its token MATIC, backed by Sequoia Capital India, with each token priced at $2 at the time of sale.

The price looked to create a range (yellow) between $1.495 and $1.75 over the last few weeks. In the last two days, the price attempted to break through the range highs twice.

In doing so, MATIC established a marker at $1.758; a breach of this level, followed by a retest as support, signaled a successful bullish breakout for MATIC.

Since then, the price has skyrocketed to the $2 round-number resistance level. In the previous month, the $1.9-$2.05 range served as support before shifting to resistance as Bitcoin plummeted below the $39k mark. Bitcoin has been positive in recent days, but it now finds resistance near the $46k level.

MATIC surged above the $1.92 barrier, signaling a strong bullish development. A retest of this area as support in the coming hours/days appears to be a buying opportunity. At $1.84, there was also some support.

While Bitcoin has seen significant demand in recent days, it is feasible that it will drop back to the $42k or perhaps $39k range in search of buyers. This could result in a significant drop in the price of altcoins.

With the price around $2.07, the RSI established a bearish divergence on the hourly, and MATIC has witnessed some selling pressure in the hours afterwards. The RSI remained above neutral 50, and the market structure remained optimistic.

This structure would be broken if the session closure fell below $1.75. This is an improbable scenario, considering the CDV has seen substantial buying volume in recent days.

Categories
Altcoins

What You Need To Know About Secret (SCRT)

Blockchain technology adds a dimension of openness and transparency to networks that conventional centralized networks cannot, yet some sensitive data should not be shared publicly. How many people want to utilize a network that, for example, shares their financial and identifying information with everyone? That is the problem that Secret Network seeks to address. Secret Network promises the transparency benefits of blockchain with the security and privacy that consumers expect from web services by enabling programmable smart contracts that run on blockchain and compute within trusted execution environments, hiding the data from the nodes themselves.

Here’s a look at what Secret Network is, how it works and what makes it special.

What is Secret?

The Secret Network (SCRT) is a decentralized blockchain system that allows smart contracts to be programmed and powerful DeFi features to be used. Through a combination of proprietary technology and a novel business model, the project’s creators hope to empower artists, entrepreneurs, developers, and crypto consumers. Notably, Secret got its moniker since it was one of the first DeFi-capable blockchains that prioritize privacy.

This year, the Secret Network (SCRT) aroused eyebrows by announcing that Quentin Tarantino would release seven never-before-seen snippets from the iconic film Pulp Fiction. The announcement drew attention to Secret as well as the whole NFT (non-fungible token) market. It also contributed to Secret’s position as a top-performing NFT launch space.

Secret’s network started online in February 2020, with the mining of its genesis block. Many features of the protocol were adapted from the 2015 MIT Decentralizing Privacy paper. The Secret Network is made up of various development teams and partnerships. SCRT Labs is the primary developer. Surprisingly, SCRT Labs began as Enigma but later rebranded to better reflect the project’s overall aim. Guy Zyskind created the firm.

How it Works

Secret Network is a layer-1 blockchain built on top of the Cosmos/Tendermint framework, with its own consensus and on-chain governance. It is based on a network of distributed nodes that perform the computation of smart contracts created on Secret Network, but the nodes do so using a trusted execution environment (TEE)—similar to a black box—to keep prying eyes at bay.

It’s similar to how a smartphone CPU use a TEE to handle sensitive data such as fingerprints, except this time it’s a blockchain node. The network refers to its smart contracts as “secret contracts,” as they are intended to protect the anonymity of the data contained within. To join in the network, nodes must stake the SCRT (“Secret”) coin, which is also used to pay fees and transfer value.

What’s so Special About it?

Secret adds a new layer of security to the market. The network offers a secure and open-source alternative to the current system. Developers can take advantage of the network’s unique characteristics to create and use permissionless and privacy-preserving applications.

Secret had a huge overhaul titled Supernova in April 2021. This upgrade extended interoperability to the system by introducing cross-chain Asset Bridges. Secret can now deliver its privacy features to Ethereum, BSC, Monero, Terra, Polkadot, Cosmos, and other cryptocurrencies thanks to this technique.

Staking is one of the most effective methods for securing passive rewards. Staking your cryptocurrency locks it into a network smart contract in exchange for benefits. The more SCRT you stake, the higher your benefits will be.

Bottomline

Secret Network has enormous potential as the world gradually shifts toward more privacy-centric services. It is not the first blockchain project to provide private smart contracts, but because to the simplicity of its TEE solution, it is well positioned to grab the market and gain worldwide adoption.

In the digital era, it is frequently stated that privacy equals liberty. As a result, it’s encouraging to see the return of privacy-focused blockchains like Secret. Because of its unique combination of programmability and anonymity, the network continues to attract more developers and users. For these and other reasons, expect to see a lot more from this initiative in the coming weeks.

Categories
Altcoins News

Polygon Gets $450 Million In New Funding Round

Scaling solution for Layer 2 Polygon has raised $450 million in a funding round led by some of blockchain’s largest venture funds, demonstrating that significant investors are interested in supporting the future of Web3 development.

Sequoia Capital India led the investment round, which included participation from more than 40 venture capital funds, including SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Galaxy Digital, Tiger Global, and Republic Capital. Kevin O’Leary, a billionaire investor, also took part in the fundraising.

Polygon will use the funds to grow its scaling solutions, which include Polygon PoS, Polygon Edge, and Polygon Avail, as well as to encourage Web3 application general adoption. After devoting over $1 billion to such initiatives in November 2021, the team will also continue to invest in zero-knowledge technology.

Polygon, which provides scalability and infrastructure support to Ethereum, has received a lot of attention in the last year, as the dramatic expansion of decentralized finance and nonfungible tokens has prompted concerns about Ethereum’s network capacity. Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal said in December 2021 that Ethereum’s much-anticipated upgrade is unlikely to provide enough scalability to meet demand. He elaborated:

“Even if 2.0 comes in here, that will not provide enough scalability. [In 2022], the proof-of-stake upgrade will keep everything the same; like Ethereum has 13 transactions per second [TPS] right now, maybe it will go to 20 TPS [after PoS], but not more than that. So that does not add anything to scalability.”

Concerning Web3, the altcoin has been very active in growing its developer network in order to fuel the next generation of decentralized applications. Polygon has joined with Seven Seven Six, a venture capital firm founded by Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, to build a new $200 million Web3 fund, according to Cointelegraph.

In January, Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz announced another $1 billion commitment to Web3 startups.

Categories
Bitcoin

El Salvador Slams the IMF

El Salvador’s administration has replied to the International Monetary Fund’s most recent assessment on the country’s use of Bitcoin as legal cash. According to the government’s statement, there are no plans to follow the IMF’s proposals.

El Salvador Treasury Minister, Alejandro Zelaya, stated that the government will not be coerced into doing anything. Zelaya told a local television station that the country had sole authority over policy decisions.

“No international organization is going to make us do anything, anything at all…Countries are sovereign nations and they take sovereign decisions about public policy.”

In a recent study, the international body recommended that El Salvador discontinue its Bitcoin trust fund and return any unused cash to the public government.

The organization underlined the asset’s extreme price volatility, as well as its use by criminal elements, in prior reports.

Bitcoin’s price collapse over the last three months, down about 50% from its all-time high in early November, almost seems to underline the first point. In reaction to the IMF study, Zelaya stated that the government complied with money laundering regulations. The regulatory authority also instructed the government to discontinue providing consumers with a $30 incentive to utilize the government-backed Chivo wallet for Bitcoin transactions.

While the IMF feels that the Chivo wallet has potential, it believes that this potential would be maximized by using US dollars rather than Bitcoin.

The El Salvadoran administration, on the other hand, claims that the Chivo wallet has significantly increased financial inclusion. Bitcoin tourism has been considered as an extra benefit of the technology. For the time being, El Salvador’s government sees no need to change its stance on Bitcoin. However, it concedes that it will continue to do more to protect consumers.

In the midst of all of this, El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, turned to Twitter after bilateral negotiations with the IMF to push for a “gigantic price increase” for the asset. You may recall that the president has been a vocal supporter of the country’s embrace of Bitcoin as an official currency.

Categories
Altcoins

Ripple (XRP) Has Gained 12%!

After a rather difficult start to the year, cryptocurrency price observers have just spotted the beginnings of a potential recovery. This week saw a spike in the value of many crypto assets, including XRP. The market capitalization of cryptocurrency has climbed to $1.9 trillion, which is especially notable. According to the FTX exchange, XRP was trading at $0.74, up 12% as the eighth-most valuable cryptocurrency by market capitalization ($35.5 Billion).

Investors can aim for the high at $0.81 as long as the bulls maintain their momentum (January 12.) If selling pressure rises, the 200 four-hour Simple Moving Average (SMA) around $0.69 may provide quick support. There is a maximum supply of 100,000,000,000 XRP tokens. 47,832,461,678 XRP coins are circulating.

A increasing number of investors are holding Ripple’s token. Ripple is being used by large banks such as Bank of America, American Express, and Santander to perform transactions over the Ripple network. In addition to funding Ripple network transactions, XRP can be invested in and exchanged for other cryptocurrencies.

Ripple, as an alternative to crypto heavyweights such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, has a few distinguishing characteristics. Ripple’s data is acquired and compared across servers utilizing unique node lists for constructing sets and maps, in addition to employing blockchain for consensus.

However, it is important to know that the prices of cryptocurrencies fluctuate depending on a variety of reasons, and Ripple is no exception. Many factors influence investor enthusiasm, including overall market mood.

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Altcoins

Everything You Need To Know About Waves (WAVES)

Waves is a blockchain ecosystem that includes a cryptocurrency, a token launch platform, and a decentralized exchange (DEX). The project’s creators hoped to deliver a robust toolkit to aid in the creation of Web 3.0 decentralized applications. Their goal was to create an easy-to-use Ethereum alternative in order to increase blockchain adoption. To this sense, the platform’s development team was a huge success.

Waves enables the creation and trading of cryptocurrency tokens without the need for complex smart contract implementation. Tokens, on the other hand, can be produced and managed using scripts that run in user accounts on the Waves network.

The aim is that creating new tokens (and the applications that control them) should be similar to establishing a standard web application.

Programs and apps are executed as attachments to these transactions to achieve this purpose, and new assets are assigned a unique identity. Scripts can only be attached when the asset is created.

These assets are intended to be traded within the Waves ecosystem, which has its own built-in decentralized exchange (Waves.Exchange) designed to facilitate trade between Waves blockchain tokens and other tokens.

The Waves team implemented smart contract capability to the Waves MainNet in 2018, allowing third-party developers to create decentralized applications (dapps). Furthermore, in 2019, the Waves platform team began marketing Waves Enterprise, a version of the network geared for universities.

History

The network first appeared on the market in June of 2016. From the start, the coin was a success. During its initial coin offering (ICO), the company raised more over $16 million. A large part of this achievement can be ascribed to the team’s experience. Many of Waves’ main team members were also extensively involved in the NXT project.

The network was significantly upgraded by the team in September 2018. Support for multi-sig addresses, token freezing, atomic swaps, voting, and Oracles were all included in the upgrade. Oracles are sensors that operate outside of the blockchain and communicate with it. These cutting-edge systems enable blockchains to connect with the physical world in novel and interesting ways.

In October 2018, the platform broke the record for the most transactions processed by any blockchain project in a single day. The platform impressively stole the crown from another third-generation coin, EOS. On this historic day, analysts recorded 6.1 million transactions on the site.

How it Works

The Waves blockchain software may be executed by two types of nodes: full nodes and lightweight nodes.

Full nodes maintain a complete history of transactions, whereas lightweight nodes rely on full nodes for transaction confirmation and network interactions.

Waves employs leased proof-of-stake, a variant of the proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus method, to keep its distributed network in sync (LPoS).

The LPoS Blockchain

Any node that decides to lock up tokens can be eligible to add blocks to the blockchain in a typical proof-of-stake fashion. The likelihood that a node will be allowed to add a block increases or decreases depending on the number of coins held in a particular contract.

With the LPoS, nodes can now lease their balance to full nodes. This means that when a full node is chosen and compensated for producing the next block, nodes who lease tokens to that chosen node earn a percentage of the dividend.

Waves-NG

Waves-NG is the protocol that chooses which node has the privilege to produce the next block, and it is a variation of an idea that was first suggested (but rejected) for Bitcoin (BTC).

The Waves blockchain is divided into two types of blocks: “key blocks” and “micro blocks” by Waves-NG. A randomly selected proof-of-stake miner creates key blocks. Other nodes utilize a public key in this block to build multiple microblocks that include transactions.

Smart Assets

The capacity to generate ‘Smart Assets,’ tokens with an attached script written in Ride, a Waves-native programming language, is key to the Waves platform. By attaching a script, any token can be given functionality. The scripts’ execution costs 0.004 WAVES.

Because Waves allows users to create tokens without any programming knowledge, tokens and subsequent transfers are done as attachments to transactions. Various transaction kinds are introduced via plug-ins, which are implemented as extensions on top of the blockchain.

What Makes it Unique

The architects of the Waves platform are looking ahead. Given that tokenization is one of the market’s fastest-growing businesses, the choice to create an easy-to-use token launch platform makes sense. Because of its unique strategy and track record of providing valuable blockchain services to the general public, Waves is projected to maintain its market leadership for the foreseeable future.

There is no simpler method to generate your own coin and benefit from basic blockchain features. To design Dapps and execute smart contracts on Ethereum, the most popular Dapp blockchain, developers must comprehend programming languages such as Solidarity. These rules significantly increase the cost of any crowdfunding effort.

Conclusion

The Waves platform’s creators are looking to the future. When you consider that tokenization is one of the market’s fastest-growing industries, the decision to establish an easy-to-use token launch platform is sound. Waves is expected to maintain its market leadership for the foreseeable future because to its unique strategy and track record of providing beneficial blockchain services to the general public.

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Altcoins

Dogecoin on Becoming The Standard Microtransactional Network

Dogecoin, the meme cryptocurrency that aspires to be a global payment mechanism, has gained popularity in recent years primarily as a digital tipping tool for sending small amounts of money.

Billy Markus, co-founder of Dogecoin, believes the dog-themed cryptocurrency has a bright future because it is poised to fix the internet.

As the Internet of Things grows in popularity, there is an increasing demand for real-time tiny payments with minimal transaction rates.

Dogecoin, the original meme coin created in 2013 as a riposte to bitcoin by Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer, has swiftly gained in popularity as a popular mechanism for facilitating frictionless microtransactions throughout the internet.

https://twitter.com/BillyM2k/status/1489867552683479042?s=20&t=1JN3ApVqmIhYTiD40xGwyA

Dogecoin, according to Markus, also known on Twitter as Shibetoshi Nakamoto, will fix the internet. In a tweet on February 4, he stated that the cryptocurrency will become the world’s standard micro-transaction platform.

Markus is not the only one advocating for further success for the cryptocurrency. Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla/SpaceX, stated in May that Dogecoin would hands down defeat bitcoin if its block time and block size were increased by 10x and fees were reduced by 100x. Throughout 2021, Musk was a vocal promoter of Dogecoin, and his regular tweets pushed the price of DOGE higher.

Musk has also been working with Dogecoin developers to make the joke cryptocurrency more simple and affordable for regular purchases such as movie tickets and a cup of coffee.

The dogecoin price has recovered 7.57 percent in the previous 24 hours, reclaiming the $0.15 support level. However, at the time of publication, the cryptocurrency has retraced little to $0.1493.

In another tweet, Markus reported that he only has 220K DOGE and that dogecoin was “flirting with its old companion 15.” In response to a Twitter user who expressed optimism about a trend reversal, the dogecoin co-creator stated that he prefers to stay pessimistic in order to psychologically prepare for a hypothetical absolute apocalypse situation.

On May 8, 2021, DOGE reached a lifetime high of $0.731578. That pinnacle, however, would not last long. Markus also commented on this, indicating that the flirtation with 73 cents was brief.

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Altcoins Blockchain

SHIB, LINK, EOS Price Analysis 02/06

As the bulls attempted to counteract the market’s long-term bearish inclinations, Chainlink and EOS maintained their up-channel oscillation. Chainlink displayed mixed near-term signs, whereas EOS displayed a bullish tilt. SHIB bears, on the other hand, attempted to break through the $0.00002233 level, while the bulls defended the 59-mark RSI support.

Shiba Inu (SHIB)

SHIB fell sharply when the bulls failed to defend the $0.00002914-level, losing 58.6 percent of its worth (from 27 December). As a result, it hit a 15-week low on January 22. The price then reversed after buyers came in at the $0.00001864 mark.

Over the last two weeks, the meme coin’s 4-hour chart has shown a bearish pennant.

Surprisingly, the bulls recaptured the $0.000022-level support in the last two days after gaining more than 19%. The immediate resistance remained at the pennant’s top trendline.

SHIB was trading at $0.00002268 at the time of publication. After a 30-point increase in two days, the RSI has retreated from overbought territory in the last 24 hours. As a result, it probed the 59-point level while the bullish influence waned. Furthermore, the AO revealed a decline in purchasing power as it approached its midpoint.

The purchasers lost their zeal after LINK failed from the up-channel (yellow). Thus, LINK fell 53.09 percent (from 11 January) to reach a six-month low on January 24.

However, the bulls ultimately appeared at $13.96 as the alt recovered 34.28 percent later.

As a result, on its 4-hour chart, LINK depicted a rising channel (white). The bulls have struggled to produce a sustained close above the $17.76 mark throughout the last week. Any reversals from here would now find a floor at $16.68.

The altcoin was trading at $17.78 at the time of publication. After breaking over the 67-level on February 5, the RSI dropped to test its immediate support. Any drop below the 60-point mark could precipitate a further decline. Furthermore, with the +DI pointing north, LINK painted mixed messages. In addition, the ADX (directional trend) was exceedingly low.

EOS (EOS)

Due to the broader sell-off on 21 January, the recent down-channel (white) breakout was soon reversed. As a result, EOS fell 30.41 percent and reached a 22-month low on January 24.

Since then, the altcoin has recovered 25.5 percent up-channel (green) in the last 13 days. EOS gained nearly 13% in just two days before reverting from the up-upper channel’s trendline. The immediate resistance remained near the higher trendline. Support for any retracements would be found near the 20 SMA (red).

At the time of publication, EOS was trading at $2.5 above its 20-50 SMA. The bullish RSI made tremendous increases and closed above 61 for the first time in a long time.

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Bitcoin

Nigeria’s Bitcoin P2P Trading Has Increased By 16% Despite The Ban

Nigeria’s central bank barred crypto transactions in the Nigerian financial sector exactly a year ago. Despite the central bank’s fierce opposition to crypto transactions in its financial ecosystem, crypto transactions are on the increase in Africa’s largest crypto market.

Peer-to-peer transactions in Nigeria increased by 16% year on year. Nigeria presently has $400 million in P2P volumes on two main P2P platforms (Paxful and Localbitcoins), followed by Kenya with more than $160 million and South Africa with $117 million.

BTC exchanges using peer-to-peer technology do not require a central authority and are conducted between parties (such as individuals).

Despite the fact that peer-to-peer Bitcoin trading is decentralized, a rising number of Nigerians still use their banks to settle in cash when engaged in this type of trading.

There are over 17,000+ digital currencies in use today, the majority of them are known as altcoins. Cryptocurrency has become a widespread notion, and if you’re reading this, you’ve probably heard of Bitcoin.

Nigeria, on the other hand, has taken an anti-crypto stance, as have many other countries throughout the world. It has even reacted deliberately and harshly against digital currencies at times.
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor, Godwin Emefiele, argued that the bank’s decision in February 2021 not to allow deposit money banks, non-banking organizations, and other financial institutions to support cryptocurrency trading was in the best interests of Nigerians.

Tukur Moddibo, the chief of the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU), also stated that crypto failed essential vulnerability and risk tests, despite the fact that his agency thwarted a $3 million fraud involving 20 bank accounts.

This restriction sparked widespread outrage among cryptocurrency aficionados across the country. In response, the Central Bank of Nigeria announced on October 25, 2021, the launch of its own digital currency – the electronic naira, also known as the eNaira.

Nonetheless, Nigerians are now paying a premium to obtain these digital assets, as the only legal method is P2P trading, as the world’s most popular cryptocurrency is available on Africa’s largest crypto market.

Despite Nigeria’s central bank’s prohibition on crypto transactions through its financial institutions, Africa’s most populous country is not given up on the Crypto market and is willing to pay a premium to store and buy Bitcoin.

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Altcoins Guides & Tutorials

Mina (MINA): The World’s Lightest Blockchain

Most blockchains, from Ethereum to Tendermint, start small but can expand to thousands of terabytes over time. The degree of architectural decentralization in a blockchain increases with the number of nodes responsible for validating network transactions. In a conventional blockchain, each new block added to the chain raises the cost of running a full node. Mina Protocol, a bridge between the real world and crypto, aims to transform the blockchain sector with breakthrough technology that promises cheaper transactions at lightning speeds.

What is Mina?

The Mina Protocol (MINA) is a proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain and cryptocurrency that supports smart contracts. The protocol is unique in that it restricts block capacity to 22 kilobytes. This innovative technique contributed to the network being dubbed “the world’s lightest blockchain” by developers.

MINA is the network’s primary utility and governance token. Using this token, users can send value all over the world. MINA can be staked to earn passive benefits on the network. Notably, the cryptocurrency was released with a 1 billion token initial supply and no maximum supply. The approach is meant to allow for a 12% yearly inflation rate. After two years, this is expected to fall to 7%.

There are numerous advantages to using the Mina Protocol. For starters, the platform streamlines the execution of Dapp functionality for developers. The Mina Protocol was designed from the bottom up with the purpose of reducing computational requirements to allow Dapps to function more efficiently.

History

The Mina Protocol first appeared on the market in 2017 and was based in San Francisco, California. The project’s development team is O(1) Labs. The network was formerly known as the Coda Protocol. Evan Shapiro and Izaac Meckler, two lifetime friends and computer scientists, came up with the idea.

The Mina Protocol had a successful launch. Multicoin Money, Polychain Capital, and Coinbase Ventures provided venture capital to the network. A lawsuit was filed against the corporation in September 2020 due to the resemblance of its name to the Coda Blockchain. Following the suit, the initiative was renamed the Mina Protocol.

The Mina Foundation and the Ethereum Foundation forged a strategic cooperation in February 2021. The project’s purpose is to incorporate Mina’s technology into Ethereum. Interestingly, Ethereum’s founder, Vitalik Buterin, has long advocated for the adoption of Zero-Knowledge Proofs (zk). Notably, after three years of Beta testing, the Mina mainnet went live this year.

How it Works

The integration of zk-SNARKs, which stand for “zero-knowledge succinct non-interactive arguments of knowledge,” is the key to the Mina Protocol. This is a computing idea pioneered by MIT professor and Algorand founder Silvio Micali that allows users to validate the existence of particular data without disclosing it to one another. Zcash is another popular cryptocurrency that employs zk-SNARKs.

In Mina’s instance, this means that the network does not have to validate every transaction that is created. Instead, the blockchain is represented by a cryptographic proof that is easily verifiable (the zk-SNARK). This evidence is substantially smaller than the majority of other blockchains and shows the status of the entire chain rather than the most recent block.

Mina claims that their version of zk-SNARKs, when combined with a Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism, greatly reduces the resources required to process and record transactions.

Each participant must run a node in order to transmit and receive transactions on the network. Furthermore, Mina Protocol requires two specialized network nodes to function properly:

Block producers choose which transactions to include in the next block and win the reward for that block. In this sense, they are analogous to the “miners” or “validators” of other blockchains.

Snark workers devote processing power to compressing network traffic and generating transaction proofs. Block producers can then bid on these proofs, and snark workers are paid in MINA for their efforts.

Bottomline

The Mina blockchain is currently the lightest of its kind. Mina Protocol is not only designed to achieve ideal decentralization, but it also protects its users’ privacy by preventing sensitive data from being divulged or leaked. Having said that, Mina isn’t ideal; it has shortcomings and areas where it should be improved. Overall, with its original premise and high potential, this blockchain/crypto is one to keep an eye on.

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News

How Robinhood’s Listing of Shiba Inu is Going

In a recent interview, Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev stated that the platform would undoubtedly offer more cryptocurrencies for consumers. The CEO made the statement while answering queries from users with Irvin Sha, the company’s Head of Investor Relations and Capital Markets.

Sha read the inquiry, which queried whether the corporation will list Shiba Inu among other cryptocurrencies. Tenev claimed that Robinhood consumers will see more cryptocurrencies on the platform in the next months because they have been hearing their clients loudly. He went on to say that the reason for the slow pace was the requirement to play by the regulators’ guidelines.

“We want to avoid triggering SEC registration requirements for cryptocurrencies. That said, we have robust protocols in place and we feel very confident about the coins we have on the platform, and we intend to add more coins going forward.”

He mentioned the possibility of unregistered securities being added to the platform as a possible basis for opposing the listing. For example, since 2020, the SEC has been locked in a legal battle with Ripple Labs over the purported sale of unregistered securities.

Despite the fact that the CEO did not expressly identify Shiba Inu, community members are implying that the CEO’s statement was addressed at SHIB. Last year, the Shiba Inu community began a petition on Change.org requesting that Robinhood feature the coin, and the site has received over 500,000 signatures, with a steady march to 1 million. After a series of hiccups that nearly wrecked plans, the platform has gained a listing on Kraken thanks to community activism.

On January 11, Zero Hedge tweeted that Robinhood planned to float SHIB and that this could happen by February. The platform states that Robinhood was already 6 months late, despite the fact that SHIB users had been clamoring for a listing. A listing on Robinhood will provide over 31 million customers with access to SHIB, which will boost the asset’s price.

First, Squak made a similar prediction that threw Shiba Inu fans into a frenzy. The news outlet tweeted, “SHIBA INU ROBINHOOD LISTING SAID TO COME AS EARLY AS FEBRUARY.”

Shiba Inu is the 15th largest cryptocurrency, trading at $0.00002314 and having a market capitalization of $12.7 billion.

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Bitcoin

Bitcoin Analysis 02/05

Twitter is awash with traders chastising Bitcoin skeptics. Most people recall how many anticipated a $20k BTC, and the leading currency is now worth more over $40k. The Schiffs had one of the most interesting chats.

Inadvertently, Peter Schiff advised investors to invest in the largest digital asset, which elicited a variety of emotions. Spencer provided one of these solutions, telling the Strategist that he had just purchased more.

The largest cryptocurrency by market cap received more kudos from Mexico’s third richest man, who suggested that a few SATs may change people’s lives. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas stated in his most recent filing that he stocked up on SATs.

BTC had its largest hike considering February 2021 for the duration of the preceding intraday session, because it received extra than 11%. As according to reviews from Coinglass, a complete of $244 million really well worth of brief positions were liquidated over the past 24 hours. This breakout has lightened the temper of the bulls as they stay up for similarly increases. Will this happen? Let`s don’t forget a few factors.

The second month of the year is the maximum worthwhile within the first quarter. The maximum the apex coin received for the duration of this era below attention is 87.6% even as misplaced 26.8% – the best loss. We additionally determined that of the 11 Februarys, 9 got here out effective as bitcoin recorded large gains. Every second month of the year, the largest coin by market cap grows by more than 15.2 percent on average.

With this in mind, we can anticipate BTC to continue its upward path. How far will it go? According to the average, the OG cryptocurrency may rise by 10% to 15% in the next 24 hours.

As previously stated, the surge above $40,000 is thrilling, and market conditions are steadily improving as a result. The Fear and Greed Index is one metric that represents this trend. For the majority of the last 30 days, the index reading has fluctuated between 29 and 10.

The indicator, which is currently at 33, suggests that the market will soon leave the fearful region. The metric is expected to improve further as more adoptions are reported and media personalities stock up on the assets.

Bitcoin is set to topple the $42k resistance this week provided the trend of hikes over the weekend persists. The asset is currently trading above its pivot point, which is an indication that the apex cryptocurrency is bullish.

BTC may challenge the first pivot resistance at $46,600 in the next days. However, at $44k, the top coin may experience severe selling pressure. After failing to break through this level since January 7, considerable purchasing pressure may be required to break through the $44k barrier.

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NFT

Chainalysis Report: Millions of Dollars Have Been Laundered Using NFTs

One of the most common arguments used by cryptocurrency opponents to oppose decentralization and anonymity in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is the possibility of scammers and money launderers hijacking the feature and exploiting it for their operations. This is now being extended to NFTs.

According to Chainalysis’ February report, there is an increasing tendency of wash trading and money laundering in the NFT market. Wash trading is an illegal way of raising the market value of an object, stock, or token by actively participating in both the buyer’s and seller’s sides of the transaction.

Wash traders in the NFT ecosystem utilize the same old strategy of generating self-funded customer accounts to acquire their NFTs and generate an artificial sense of worth that lures any prospective naive customers that was once unique to crypto token projects in the early phases of development. According to Chainalysis’ findings, up to $8.9 million in gains can be obtained by wash trading in 2021, with a single wash trader linked to nearly 100 self-financed NFT addresses.

While over 58.1 percent of infamous NFT washers continue to lose money, the operations of the remaining 41.9 percent account for 100% of all earnings documented. According to Chainalysis, when other NFT-supported blockchains such as Algorand, WAX, FLOW, Ronin, and Solana are included, this figure might rise much higher.

When the global lockdown prompted the deployment of NFTs in 2020, supporters predicted the end of regular gallery auctions as we knew them. While NFTs appear to have decentralized traditional galleries and curtailed in-person visits, they have done little to stem the heinous tendency of money laundering that has been connected with them over the years. According to Chainalysis, about $2.4 million has been connected to suspicious wallets and sanctioned accounts like Chatex in the previous six months.

While this statistic represents only 0.02 percent of the $8.6 billion in overall money laundering instances tied to Altcoins, stablecoins, and DeFis, it represents a growing concern for an immature industry looking to gain the trust of new investors, according to Chainalysis.

Hackers have targeted the already popular NFT hosting services OpenSea and Rarible.

However, the $44.2 billion market is still in its infancy, and given the underlying brilliance and openness of blockchain technology, hosting platforms should have no trouble tracking down suspect addresses and restricting their access. This may be the first law that the crypto industry must agree on in order to ensure the safety and security of investors on the platform.

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Altcoins

Everything You Need To Know About Arweave (AR)

The advent of blockchain has flipped the script and accelerated the process of decentralization, which includes information storage. However, because on-chain storage is expensive and thus impractical for storing large amounts of data, most blockchains rely on other protocols. In this article, we’ll look at the crypto project Arweave, which uses a novel protocol to store data indefinitely and in a decentralized way. We’ll also go into the features of the cryptocurrency, how it works, and what makes it unique.

What is Arweave?

Arweave (AR) is a next-generation decentralized storage network. The platform establishes a safe and internationally accessible permanent data storage network. The project’s purpose is to construct a more long-term version of the internet while also reducing developer constraints. Using the platform, users and developers can archive sites and sources indefinitely. As a result, the network facilitates the development of more productive and comprehensive applications.

AR is the native coin of the Arweave blockchain, and it has a variety of applications within the ecosystem. Over 55 million of the 66 million maximum supply were coined in the genesis block upon the debut of the Arweave mainnet in June 2018. The remainder of the tokens will be issued as block rewards to Arweave nodes. There are already around 33 million AR tokens in circulation as of this writing. This cryptocurrency will become deflationary after the minting of 33 million extra AR tokens.

Arweave’s for-profit information technology company is based outside of London. On July 28, 2017, the platform became live. During a pre-seed funding round on July 13, 2021, the project received $525,000 to continue operations. Arweave is now one of the most well-known decentralized data storage networks on the market.

How it Works

Arweave is not a blockchain in the traditional sense. Arweave maintains its data in a graph of blocks rather than a chain of blocks that contains transactions and data, as is customary for other cryptocurrencies.

This means that in Arweave, each block is linked to two previous blocks, generating a structure known as a “blockweave.” In contrast, in Bitcoin, blocks are linked in order to build a chain.

(Hedera Hashgraph is one of the cryptocurrencies that uses a graph structure.)

Proof of Access Consensus

Because of the way Areweave is designed, it monitors the accuracy of transactions in a different method than most cryptocurrencies.

Whereas Bitcoin requires computers on its network to compete to solve a mathematical puzzle — a technique known as proof-of-work — Arweave employs a distinct approach known as “proof-of-access.”

In summary, Arweave requires each computer on the network to verify that a new bundle of transactions includes a randomly selected marker from a previous bundle.

If such marker exists, new transactions can be added to the network. The computer that adds a new package is rewarded with AR coin.

Proof-of-access ensures that machines on the Arweave network can confirm that all new transactions are correct and that existing transactions have not been tampered with.

Content Moderation

Another element of the Arweave network is the ability for anyone using the software to select the sort of data they want to save. In Arweave, this is referred to as content moderation.

Simply said, machines on a network can choose what kinds of content they want to host.

Maybe they only want to host audio files and not photos. Arweave will ask each machine whether it would accept new content as it is uploaded to the network.

However, there are incentives for more intensive data storage, as consumers who do so will be rewarded with a higher percentage of transaction fees.

What Makes it Unique

Despite the Arweave network’s seemingly sophisticated workings, all technicalities lie under its back-end operations, while the network’s front end is streamlined for the greatest user experience possible. Adding a website to the Arweave blockchain is as simple as adding a bookmark to your browser using the Arweave browser extension. Pages stored with this addon can be seen and shared by other decentralized network users.

Data stored on Arweave is permanent and unalterable. Arweave applications are also permanent in that their rules cannot be amended or changed, even by the applications’ designers.

Because apps cannot be amended or updated, the protocol rewards and encourages developers to assure the quality of the applications they create. It also encourages developers to build and connect with the communities who use their DApps, which aids with the smooth transition to the modified version of their DApp.

Bottomline

To summarize, the Arweave blockchain is a long-term data storage solution that is on track to solve many critical concerns in decentralized storage. Arweave’s revolutionary technique overcomes the storage restriction problem while simultaneously addressing scalability. It also provides developers with indefinite storage to build DApps and gain additional prizes for network management. Furthermore, with incredible partnerships and the addition of NFTs, the Arweave network is primed to achieve new heights in the near future.

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Bitcoin

Michael Saylor Believes Regulation Will Increase Adoption

Better regulatory clarity on crypto, according to MicroStrategy co-founder and popular Bitcoin proponent Michael Saylor, would speed up institutional acceptance of the asset class.

He said this in an interview with CNBC on Wednesday, claiming that the [Biden] administration’s improved regulatory clarity will promote bitcoin and drive institutional adoption of the asset.

“Clear, bright-line definitions of digital property versus a digital security versus a digital currency and the functioning regulations of the digital exchange,” Saylor continued.

Furthermore, the Bitcoin proponent added that mainstream technology businesses, huge financial service organizations, and individuals increasingly recognize the need for a digital property solution, which Bitcoin, the leading cryptocurrency, can supply.

Regulators accepting spot bitcoin ETF fillings and the use of fair value accounting methods, according to Saylor, are two important factors that will accelerate crypto’s mainstream adoption.

Saylor’s MicroStrategy accounting methods for reporting its Bitcoin holdings were recently rejected by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Saylor has been a staunch supporter of Bitcoin, adding more of the top cryptocurrency to MicroStrategy’s portfolio.

MicroStrategy has continued to invest aggressively in BTC since it began buying the digital currency two years ago, taking advantage of market troughs.

Following the latest announcement of the acquisition of 660 bitcoins, the corporation currently holds roughly 125,051 bitcoins, valued at approximately $4.6 billion at current prices. As of now, MicroStrategy is the largest corporate Bitcoin holder.

Despite the recent drop in Bitcoin prices, Saylor stated that MicroStrategy will never be enticed to sell its huge Bitcoin holdings, regardless of how gloomy the market is.

In an interview, he was questioned if the corporation will sell its BTC during the current bear market, and he stated that they are not sellers. They solely acquire and store bitcoin. That is their plan.

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NFT

John Legend Planning to Launch An NFT Platform for Artists

John Legend, whose real name is John Roger Stephens, has revealed ambitions to enter the Non Fungible Tokens (NFT) market, this time by building an NFT platform for musicians.

During a recent interview with Bloomberg, the 12-time Grammy winner revealed that they were nearing completion on the platform, which would be co-owned by Chris Lin, the founder of KKBOX, Twitch co-founder Kevin Lin, and Cherubic Ventures’ Matt Cheng.

According to Legend, the “Our Song” platform is geared at assisting musicians and entertainers in navigating the stormy waters of the NFT arena and monetizing their work through NFTs.

“It can be really intimidating for an emerging creative who wants to share their art, their work with the world, share their creativity with the world, but they feel like they can’t possibly do something that’s going to be worth that much money. Some of them are building that up to a place where they’re even making a living off of their art as students.

As part of the contract, the singer also said that he will take on the role of Chief Impact Officer in the company to raise awareness and traffic for the platform. Chris Lin, on the other side, would take over as CEO, while Kevin Lin and Matt Cheng would continue to be only investors. Legend, on the other hand, refused to discuss the company’s finances.

According to Chris Lin, the platform will provide artists with a variety of benefits, including gifts, increased anonymity, and respect for copyright concerns, as well as the ability to function without a cryptocurrency wallet.

Legend has now joined a growing list of international celebrities who are dabbling in the embryonic NFT market. While most people acquire NFTs for personal reasons, a small group of artists has taken the unusual step of launching their own NFT-based enterprises.

Tom Brady, the great American football quarterback who retired after 22 years to focus on “Autograph,” his NFT platform, earned $170 million in seed funding from venture capital companies Kleiner Perkins, Katie Haun, and Andreessen Horowitz earlier this week.

Melania Trump has also recently started an NFT platform, using Solana to auction her “Melania’s Vision” NFTs. Others, such Shawn Mendes and Paris Hilton, have unveiled NFT collections that have grossed millions of dollars.

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Altcoins

Ferrari Has Plans To Integrate NFTs, Metaverse And Web3

Ferrari, the luxury vehicle manufacturer, has stated that it is considering Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), the metaverse, and blockchain technology.

During Ferrari’s Q4 2021 earnings call, CEO Benedetto Vigna informed investors that the business is eager to adopt the new technology.

Ferrari has announced a partnership with Velas Network, a Swiss blockchain startup that would produce special digital goods and sponsor Ferrari’s racing squad.

Ferrari, the Italian luxury automobile manufacturer, is not backing down from its plans to enter the metaverse. Benedetto Vigna, Ferrari’s CEO, remarked this in response to a query on what the company’s investors might expect in terms of the metaverse and NFTs.

Ferrari, according to Benedetto, is looking into how to incorporate new blockchain-based technologies because they will be critical to the company’s future success.

He went on to say that the corporation had established up a full section in its retail operation dedicated to digital technology. Ferrari has signed a multi-year agreement with Velas Network, a Swiss blockchain startup, to build the brand in the metaverse. Ferrari’s Maranello racing team will receive exclusive digital memorabilia from Velas. Velas will also be the team’s official sponsor.

In 2022, the NFT business will see significantly more acceptance from large brands. The NFT trend is catching on with brands from all walks of life.

The Walt Disney Company recently revealed that it is seeking to hire an NFTs expert to oversee its digital asset initiatives. Lamborghini, YouTube, and Twitter are among the brands that have joined the NFT this year.

It’s no wonder that more brands are basing their blockchain adoption strategy around it, with NFT sales at record highs and digital assets gaining more attention. Similarly, the industry is growing, with more opportunities to participate. GameStop has announced the opening of its NFT marketplace, as well as a $100 million fund to encourage game creators to integrate NFTs, today.

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Altcoins

Dash (DASH): What You Need To Know About the Crypto

Dash is a cryptocurrency steeped in innovation, despite its origins as a Bitcoin hard fork (or, more precisely, a fork of a Bitcoin hard fork). Dash was one of the original “altcoins,” and it separated itself out from the pack with innovative hashing algorithms and the addition of masternodes.

It is also a decentralized autonomous organization, or DAO, which implies that its users are in charge of deciding how the network runs in the future.

Are you curious about Dash but aren’t sure what it’s all about? There is no need to be concerned. This article will tell you everything you need to know about the cryptocurrency. Read on.

What is Dash?

The DASH digital currency is based on Dash, an open-source cryptocurrency project. Evan Duffield wrote the project’s whitepaper, which he published in January 2014. Duffield dubbed the project ‘Xcoin’ when it was originally revealed. Soon after, the name was changed to Darkcoin, and then to Dash in March 2015 (a portmanteau of digital cash).

The goal of Dash, which began as a Litecoin derivative, was to build a digital currency that would revolutionize the financial sector. DASH-based transactions are instantaneous and cost next to nothing, hence the crypto has gained a lot of traction so far. Furthermore, the Dash network allows users to transact without disclosing as much information as traditional financial services companies require.

Understanding Dash

Dash aspires to be a daily transactional medium, and it has cast a wide net to achieve that goal. The digital payment startup expanded into Venezuela in 2018, marking the cryptocurrency’s first excursion into a troubled economy.

Since the virtual currency’s inception three years ago, demand for cryptocurrencies has exploded, as has the number of users. The reason for this is that Venezuela is in in need of a transactional currency, as the country is now experiencing considerable civil turmoil and hyperinflation, rendering the native currency (bolvar) virtually worthless.

Ryan Taylor, the CEO of Dash, told CryptoSlate that cryptocurrency is essential for survival in Venezuela. Because cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Dash can be transacted swiftly and cheaply, citizens in the country have turned to them.

Dash has also made a research investment, partnering with Arizona State University to fund a blockchain research center (ASU). The project’s sponsors research through this lab in order to speed up research, development, and education in ways that improve blockchain transaction speed, efficiency, and security, as well as broaden its usage.

Under the Dash-ASU partnership, undergraduate and graduate research fellowships are also available.

History

The project was developed by Evan Duffield in 2014 as “Xcoin,” before being rebranded as “Darkcoin,” and then again in 2015 as DASH to better portray its platform as “digital cash.” Duffield claims that he began working on it as a pastime and completed it in just one weekend.

In December 2017, Duffield stepped down, leaving the protocol’s operations to the DASH Core Group. DASH was one of the first alternative cryptocurrencies to emerge alongside Bitcoin, and it has become increasingly popular in the blockchain field in recent years, reaching to Rank 12 among all cryptocurrencies in 2018.

How it Works

Dash is made up of nodes, which are computer networks. A proof of work (PoW) system is used to build new blocks. This means that nodes tackle complicated mathematical problems, with the winner receiving DASH tokens for the quickest solution. This is the system that nodes use to verify transactions.

Aside from the PoW mechanism, Dash varies from Bitcoin in terms of network topology. Masternodes, also known as the Dash Core Group, are in charge of the network’s governance. This is a group of programmers who execute tasks such as verifying transactions, hosting ledger copies, and relaying messages. The Masternodes also help with functionality like ChainLocks, PrivateSend, and InstantSend, which are important to the project.

DASH’s treasury’s decentralized architecture offers high transaction speeds at very minimal costs. Dash employs a proposal system instead of smart contracts, as seen on the Ethereum network. This is where users propose starting a transaction, and nodes go into action to help it complete.

Conclusion

Dash, without a doubt, employs unique and powerful technology that has given it an advantage over many other cryptocurrencies. With that said, there are several disadvantages to be aware of. One of them is the possibility of criminal abuse, making it a possible target for regulators.

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Bitcoin

El Salvador Launches A Bitcoin Education Center

Paxful, a major peer-to-peer (P2P) Bitcoin (BTC) platform, is attempting to assist Salvadorans in making better use of the cryptocurrency, which became legal cash in the country last year.

Paxful announced the opening of “La Casa Del Bitcoin,” a new educational and training center in El Salvador that would provide free Bitcoin education.

Paxful will host educational workshops and seminars on BTC and financial inclusion in the country as part of the initiative. The center will focus on increasing local community understanding of the benefits of buying and selling BTC as a means of exchange in order to accelerate the next wave of Bitcoin broad adoption.

The center will also house the offices of the Built With Bitcoin Foundation, a nonprofit organization based in the United States that uses Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies to provide clean water, quality education, sustainable farming, and humanitarian aid. Ray Youssef, co-founder and CEO of Paxful, is the foundation’s executive director.

According to Will Hernandez, Paxful’s head of Latin American growth, the company’s Salvadoran users have increased by 300 percent. What we’re experiencing in El Salvador is a moment of transformation. Peer-to-peer platforms are driving adoption in emerging economies, and as a people-powered platform, we recognize the importance of education in the next wave of adoption, he said.

Despite El Salvador’s adoption of BTC as legal cash on Sept. 7, 2021, Paxful’s latest attempt to boost Bitcoin knowledge in the country is in response to some existing crypto-related mistrust among El Salvadorans.

As previously reported, in September 2021, up to 90% of El Salvadorans indicated their comprehension of the king crypto was inadequate or non-existent. According to a later poll, more than half of El Salvador’s population has never heard of Bitcoin.

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News

The $300 Million Solana-Ethereum Wormhole Exploit

Developers have successfully corrected a gap exploited by an attacker to transfer tokens between the Solana and Ethereum networks via Wormhole, a bridge protocol.

According to a tweet from Wormhole, the attacker exploited a vulnerability in the bridge, siphoning 120k wrapped ether valued at $323 million.

It was difficult to discern how the attacker built the exploit, according to experts who are now working to restore the bridge’s functionality. They debated whether the attacker had gotten the private keys or exploited the bridge at first, but eventually decided to work backwards to find the exploiter’s footprints.

Wormhole normally locks assets and mints a wrapped version of the tokens before releasing them to the destination chain when users send assets from one chain to another.

The attacker sent 80k ETH from Solana to Ethereum in the first transaction. According to Kelvin Fitcher, a smart contracts developer with Ethereum Optimism, he afterwards made a further aggregate trade of 120k ETH that was generated out of thin air, prompting the transfer of real funds.

 “The attacker was able to mint Wormhole ETH on Solana, so they were able to correctly withdraw it back to Ethereum.” he tweeted.

Wormhole didn’t properly validate all input accounts, allowing the attacker to spoof guardian signatures and mint 120,000 ETH on Solana, of which they bridged 93,750 back to Ethereum, according to SamCzSun, a software developer at paradigm who worked with two other developers to reverse engineer the exploit.

The wormhole’s creators have since set up a bounty for the loot’s return.

This is one of the largest DeFi exploits in history, as well as the greatest bridge attack to date, adding to the more than $2 billion in DeFi hacking damages.

Despite the fact that DeFi is heralded as one of the most significant advancements in the blockchain ecosystem, with the Total Value Locked in Assets rising to new highs year to date, the risk of attacks is increasing.

This demonstrates that the security of DeFi services has not yet reached a level that is commensurate with the vast sums of money held within them. Following the Wormhole heist, Tom Robinson, the Chief Scientist of blockchain analysis firm Elliptic, commented, “The transparency of the blockchain is allowing attackers to identify and exploit major bugs.”

Vitalik Buerin, the founder of Ethereum, has expressed disdain for cross-chain networks because of their vulnerability to attacks, while touting multi-chain networks as the future of DeFi.

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Altcoins Guides & Tutorials

NEM (XEM): The Harvested Cryptocurrency

NEM positions present themselves as a more innovative alternative to established asset management systems, rather than just another altcoin. It gives users more transparency and allows them to access their assets at a lesser cost. Smart Asset blockchain is the name given to this technology.

Because of its adaptability, it has grown in popularity and was previously the world’s 16th largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization. A cryptocurrency’s market capitalization (or market cap) is a measurement of its market value.

Finally, what is NEM, how does it work, and what distinguishes it from other similar systems? Find out below.

What is NEM?

The “New Economy Movement” of NEM (XEM) aims to create a more efficient means for enterprise clients to verify and move blockchain assets. In order to achieve this, the organization acts as a missing link between private and public blockchains, integrating them in ways that improve usability.

Because of its adaptability and unique business model, NEM (XEM) continues to attract increasing interest. With this new era blockchain, users may easily handle assets and data more efficiently. Importantly, NEM was designed from the ground up with major companies in mind. The network has earned the moniker “Smart Asset Blockchain” as a result of its desire to meet market demands.

The creation of NEM’s unique software for expanding the project and making it more scalable resulted in the emergence of XEM (the native coin of NEM), which stands for “New Economy Movement.”

NEM, like many other crypto projects, has a roadmap for its long-term objectives. It is, however, more than just a means of payment. On top of global finance, the NEM team believes they can tackle a variety of other financial and business domains. Smart contracts, crowdsourcing, supply chains, gaming data, and legal documents are just a few examples. Despite this, the value of XEM increased dramatically, reaching an all-time high of $2.09.

History

NEM’s history dates back to 2015. The entire concept started when UtopianFuture, a Bitcoin Talk forum user, stated how the cryptocurrency NXT motivated him to create a new initiative. NEM, a forked version of NXT, started operational in March 2015. It didn’t take long for developers to decide to rebuild NEM from the ground up.

NEM got its own codebase at the end of the year. As a result of these enhancements, the platform is now more scalable and speedier than NXT. The project grew in popularity until 2016, when the NEM Foundation entered the market. This non-profit focuses on brand awareness, marketing, training, and collaborations as approaches to accelerate NEM adoption.

The NEM Foundation, which was founded in 2019, announced plans to let off all 150 of its staff due to severe budget shortages. Following that, the newly elected president filed a financing request to the NEM community, claiming to be able to save the company.

But what truly happened was due to the previous governance council’s mismanagement and the piling of debt spent on marketing. Later, when NEM was burning through 80 million XEM and former foundation president Lon Wong was promoting “shady” ICOs like Ecobit and ProximaX, flames flared.

How it Works

NEM (XEM) achieves these objectives by merging numerous cutting-edge technologies. The most crucial is NEM’s innovative Proof-of-Importance (PoI) consensus mechanism, which this adaptive blockchain presented to the market.

PoI differs from other consensus systems, such as Bitcoin’s Proof-of-Work (PoW), in a variety of ways. The time and money that users invest are the two key distinctions with PoI.

A user with at least 10,000 XEM in the system will be qualified to generate new blocks on NEM’s blockchain, according to the PoI algorithm. A user will be rewarded with the token and a percentage of the transaction fees whenever they successfully generate a new block in the blockchain.

That’s not all, though. PoI, in reality, allows users to transact with other networks while earning benefits. The total transaction value will be evaluated by NEM and used to raise the user’s PoI score. Finally, the greater your score, the better your benefits will be. All you have to do to improve your PoI score is send more transactions to others.

Bottomline

“Smart Asset Blockchain, Built for Performance” is the tagline for NEM, a new-age blockchain that has opened up a plethora of opportunities for creating better and improved blockchain systems. NEM addresses the shortcomings of conventional blockchains, such as long processing times and network congestion. It also tries to bring together the much-needed private and public blockchains, making it a viable choice with future adoption potential.

Categories
Bitcoin

India Plans To Launch National Blockchain Digital Currency

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) aims to issue a digital version of the rupee, with pilot projects for a central bank digital currency (CDBC) starting this year, according to India’s finance minister, Nirmala Sitharaman.

Sitharaman said the adoption of the digital currency would provide a big boost to the digital economy while also resulting in a more efficient and cost-effective currency management system during the Budget 2022 debate in Parliament.

The minister did not specify how the digital rupee would function or appear, but she did suggest that it will be deployed using blockchain and other technologies and that it might go live this year.

She said, “It is proposed to introduce digital rupee using blockchain and other technology to be issued by the Reserve Bank of India starting 2022-2023.”

According to CapitalVia Global Research, RBI is “weighing numerous issues pertaining to the scope and regulatory structure of the envisaged digital currency, which would likely coexist with cash and digital payment systems,” according to the Times of India.

The government’s principal economic adviser, Sanjeev Sanyal, claimed that the government will take a balanced approach to the subject of cryptocurrency legislation because it has ramifications for the country’s financial stability.

After years of waffling, the government has decided to introduce a so-called central bank digital currency (CBDC).

Categories
Blockchain

Google Getting Deep Into Blockchain And Web 3.0

Alphabet Inc, the parent company of Google, is enthusiastic about blockchain and Web3 technology. Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Alphabet, stated that the company is committed to embracing the blockchain industry’s future.

Google’s CEO is a proponent of cryptocurrency and has expressed interest in Web3. Alphabet CEO Sunder Pichai considers blockchain technology to be both interesting and powerful. Pichai stated that it is something that they want to promote as much as possible. He is enthralled by innovation at all times.

The global conglomerate’s CEO said he keeps a close eye on the blockchain industry. Web3 – a new version of the World Wide Web built on blockchain and incorporating token-based economics – appeals to Pichai. He affirmed that Google is working to enter the Web3 world.

Google’s parent corporation had previously taken a pro-crypto position, investing $1 billion in the Chicago Mercantile Exchange in November 2021. (CME). CME Group is the world’s largest and most diverse derivatives exchange.

The two corporations agreed to a ten-year partnership to use cloud adoption to alter the global derivatives market.

Google announced plans to allow users to store cryptocurrency in digital cards at the beginning of January 2022. By the end of the month, the company had developed an online data storage division to use blockchain technology to build, store, and support bitcoin transactions.

Lory Kehoe, co-founder of Blockchain Ireland, expressed his thoughts on Google’s move into blockchain and Web3.

The total cryptocurrency market capitalization was $1.44 billion in 2020, and it has continuously increased by 12.9 percent since then, reaching $1.63 billion in January 2022. Market capitalization might soon reach $2.73 billion, according to analysts.

In a world where returns across asset classes are depressed, Ankush Jain, a cryptocurrency supporter and partner at Aaro Capital, feels that the volatility of cryptocurrencies gives an opportunity to institutions and corporations. This explains Alphabet Inc.’s and institutional investors’ interest in blockchain technology and cryptocurrency.

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Bitcoin

MicroStrategy Still Buying Bitcoin

MicroStrategy, one of the top institutional Bitcoin investors, announced that it had purchased more Bitcoin throughout January, despite the asset class losing more than 16 percent of its value.

MicroStrategy’s CEO, Michael Saylor, announced the acquisition on Twitter, as he usually does. The company’s total Bitcoin holdings have now reached 125,051 BTC. Using today’s market price, the total value is estimated to be around $4.8 billion.

MicroStrategy purchased 660 BTC for about $25 million in cash between December 30, 2021, and January 31, 2022, according to an official form filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Tuesday.

MicroStrategy received 660 BTC for $25 million in Bitcoin, which was purchased at an average price of $37,865 per BTC, including fees and expenditures. MicroStrategy has now purchased a total of 125,051 BTC for a total of about $30,200 per coin. This indicates that MicroStrategy spent a total of $3.78 billion on their BTC acquisition, including fees and expenditures.

This also implies MicroStrategy is in the black by 26.82 percent, thanks to unrealized gains on its Bitcoin acquisition of nearly a billion dollars. The latest news comes after the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of the United States apparently rejected MicroStrategy’s Bitcoin accounting techniques, leading the company’s stock to plunge in mid-January.

The SEC took issue with MicroStrategy’s reporting of BTC purchases, claiming that the form did not meet Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). The SEC claimed that MicroStrategy calculated statistics for its BTC purchases using non-GAAP methodologies that excluded the impact of share-based compensation expense, impairment losses, and gains on intangible asset sales.

MicroStrategy’s most recent Bitcoin acquisition isn’t as significant as its past BTC purchases. MicroStrategy reported two significant BTC purchases in December 2021, purchasing 1,434 BTC from November 29 to December 9 at an average price of $57,477 per BTC and then 1,914 BTC from December 9 to December 29 at an average price of $49,229 per BTC. Previously, the corporation purchased 7,002 BTC at an average price of $59,187 per BTC from Oct. 1 to Nov. 29.

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Altcoins

All You Need To Know About Symbol (XYM)

The New Economy Movement, or NEM, was founded with the goal of revolutionizing how bitcoin users connect and transact. The Symbol blockchain, which connects corporate users, developers, and private businesses to the public blockchain, is NEM’s newest innovation. Even in financial technology, supply chains, and other areas, its main characteristics are designed for optimal functionality and accessibility. Symbol was created to simplify the complicated construction of blockchain by allowing for seamless integration of public and private chains with legacy systems in a secure and trusted manner.

In this article, there is everything you need to know about Symbol, how it works, what its vision is, and how this blockchain fits into the current crypto landscape.

What is Symbol?

In March 2021, the Symbol (XYM) mainnet became live. A high-performance enterprise-grade blockchain, developer tools, and a new coin are all part of the platform. According to the developers, the project’s principal purpose is to establish a fairer society that is more inclusive and accessible to all. Symbol is a product of the NEM Group, to be sure. These are the same people who launched the NEM NIS1 blockchain and the XEM cryptocurrency in 2017.

Symbol was created to work alongside the NIS1 blockchain. In a variety of ways, the system improves on the NIS1 blockchain. For starters, it supports full DeFi, including NFTs, staking, and other features.

How it Works

The Symbol public chain, like other blockchain ecosystems, contains node operators, users, investors, and a native token. However, there are a few key distinctions that make earning incentives easier for Symbol users. Harvesters, for example, can receive incentives by running nodes or maintaining a token balance. The system is built on a hybrid chain architecture that allows secure data to flow freely across public and private chains with unrivaled interoperability.

The platform also includes a variety of flexible solutions for streamlining operations, such as multi-layered, multi-signature accounts. Users of Symbol can construct digital assets that represent almost anything, such as non-fungible tokens (NFTs), signatures, or stock shares.

The Symbol network, which was initially designed to run with the NIS1 chain, claims to boost liquidity, lower transaction costs, and minimize processing time.

It’s not just a duplicate blockchain; it’s an upgrade, including decentralized finance (DeFi) that improves on the original.
Decentralized Finance (DeFi) brings the blockchain’s decentralized notion to the world of finance. Build…), NFT support, benefit staking, and other features. Transaction fees are paid by XYM crypto to reward nodes that execute and record transactions.

Symbol, billed as a next-generation blockchain, has been in the works for nearly five years. It allows users to produce tokens and digital assets using the less energy-intensive proof of stake (PoS) consensus mechanism. However, security token offers (STOs) and regulated assets are its ultimate targets.

Its founders want to build a linked crypto marketplace, thus they’ve made it possible to create customisable digital assets that may be used as security tokens.

With the Symbol network, which is based on a consensus mechanism called POS+, Symbol’s developers have pushed the blockchain concept to a new and fascinating level. POS+, like PoS, ties node power to XYM staking. Rather of mining, this operation is referred to as “harvesting,” and it entails validating and recording transactions as well as creating new blocks. Node operators that own a significant number of XYM tokens have more harvesting power and, as a result, a larger possibility of creating new blocks, which results in a reward.

Symbol includes open-source code that may be accessed by anybody. This network is unrivaled in terms of speed, security, and ease of use.

Symbol was built by NEM with a hybrid chain design that allows it to handle both public and private blockchains. Individuals and businesses alike can benefit from this unique blockchain’s adaptability, which allows for smooth system connection and fully configurable design. With lower prices, increased transparency, and utmost security and privacy, Symbol provides the best of both worlds. All of this is accomplished while retaining speed and price.

Users of the network can create and deploy secure multi-layered solutions that are simple to integrate with other systems. Symbol allows for atomic swaps and “Mosaics,” which are non-fungible tokens that can represent any asset or value. Mosaics have unique IDs and can be fully modified and altered to meet the demands of the user.

Users can use Mosaics to construct new DeFi services, Security Token Offerings, and even native currencies. Based on the original NEM blockchain, the network has top security features and upgrades. On-chain multi-signature accounts and delegated financial authority are two examples. Symbol, too, because to its plug-in design and layered architecture, has pre-configured smart contract functionality.

Conclusion

Symbol’s decentralized structure provides a useful service. Businesses have been looking for more cost-effective methods to take use of the benefits of blockchain technology for years. This used to necessitate the use of a specialized expert. Platforms like Symbol continue to make these stages easier and accelerate blockchain adoption.

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Altcoins

Meet the Dogecoin Millionaire Glauber Contessoto

Glauber Contessoto, a 33-year-old Los Angeles man, became a Dogecoin billionaire in April after risking his whole life savings.

In an exclusive interview with CoinStats a few days ago, the Dogecoin millionaire said that despite the advice of family and friends, he opted to spend everything he had in Dogecoin after reading about crypto on Reddit.

Elon Musk, the billionaire behind Dogecoin’s inevitable climb, is one of the key reasons for Contessoto’s investment in the cryptocurrency. In addition, he was disappointed in the stock market in February, when GameStop Corp stock fell 88.29% from an all-time high of $347.51 to $40.69 in only three weeks.

“Understanding what happened with it [GameStop] and how unfair I felt the stock market really was, I looked into crypto and realized this was an alternative way of investing my money.”

According to CoinStats, the Dogecoin millionaire sold his Tesla and Uber stocks and used Robinhood’s margin investment function to raise $250,000, which he then invested entirely in the memecoin. Glauber Contessoto became a Dogecoin millionaire in just 69 days, according to his April 16 tweet, which stated, “Hey folks, I just become a dogecoin billionaire.”

Contessoto, who comes from a middle-class household and has a hip-hop background, maintains he has no technical knowledge and instead relies on social media trends. His crypto preferences differ from those of specialists, and he favours newer currencies with a smaller market cap, despite the fact that this is riskier. Furthermore, he advises everyone to do their homework before investing in cryptocurrency, particularly memecoins.

As part of his love for more recent coins, the Dogecoin millionaire claimed that Floki Inu is his second heavy bag (FLOKI). In addition to the 4.3 million DOGE — worth $718,530 at $0.1639 per at the time of writing — he said he hasn’t sold any of it yet. He also has about 822 million FLOKI, which are worth around $92,000 at $0.0001084 per at the time of writing.

Contessoto believes that Dogecoin, in combination with Floki Inu, named after Elon Musk’s dog, will enable him to retire at 35 with $10 million and that [he] will be pleased.

Thanks to its recent endeavors, the nascent memecoin FLOKI has already amassed a sizable fanbase. The Floki Inu team is working on VALHALLA, a play-to-earn (P2E) non-fungible token (NFT) video game, as well as Floki Inuversity, an educational platform, and FlokiPlaces, a merchandise and NFT marketplace. The DOGE millionaire saw optimism in the project’s utilities.

Categories
Bitcoin

India Is Legalizing Crypto

In India, cryptocurrency merchants are now subject to taxation. In addition, the country intends to develop its own digital money.

The Indian government has levied a 30% tax on income derived from the transfer of crypto assets, according to Finance Minister Nirmala Sitaraman’s budget address for 2022-2023. She stated that the number of transactions in virtual digital assets had skyrocketed. Because of the size and frequency of these transactions, it is necessary to establish a specific tax structure. She advocated that any income derived from the transfer of any virtual digital asset be taxed at a rate of 30%.

Taxpayers in the country will not be able to deduct cryptocurrency gains, and crypto losses will not be able to be offset against other income, according to her. Furthermore, any gift of crypto assets will be taxed in the recipient’s hands.

To track the movement of digital assets, the government would collect a 1% tax deducted at source (TDS) on all transfers of crypto assets.

The Minister also mentioned that the government could introduce its central bank digital currency (CBDC) in 2022-2023 during her speech. CBDC, according to Sitaraman, will provide the digital economy a major boost, and the currency will be issued using blockchain and other technology.

Indian officials have suggested many measures prohibiting the use of digital assets in the country over the years.

It’s worth mentioning that a bill to outlaw cryptocurrency isn’t on the table in the current budget speech part. The fact that Indian regulators are taxing crypto income indicates that the country is not outlawing digital assets, but rather that the burgeoning asset class has become legitimate.

Meanwhile, officials have been placing taxes on cryptocurrency in recent years. Thailand recently announced that all crypto dealers in India will be subject to a 15% capital gain tax. Following investor outcry, the Southeast Asian country abandoned its intentions.

Categories
News NFT

Kanye West Have No Interest In NFTs

Celebrities are rushing into the burgeoning non-fungible token (NFT) arena, whether they’re selling their own NFTs or spending millions of dollars collecting from the most popular sets.

Kanye West, the American rapper-turned-fashion designer, is not one of them. Mr. West recently begged his supporters to stop asking him about NFTs in an Instagram post, stating that he is only interested in making actual items in the real world.

The flamboyant singer sent a handwritten statement on a piece of paper with his 10.5 million Instagram followers, expressing his displeasure with being asked to participate in the NFT frenzy.

Ye
Knaye West via Instagram

Non-fungible tokens are cryptographic assets that incorporate digital media identifiers stored in smart contracts. Stars and celebrities ranging from Snoop Dogg to Justin Bieber, Grimes, Kings of Leon, Eminem, The Weeknd, and Jimmy Fallon are riding the wave of interest for NFTs.

Kanye West, on the other hand, isn’t planning on adopting the trend anytime soon. He does, however, appear open to further research into NFTs in the future, finishing his message with the phrase “Ask me later.”

Ye, whose Donda 2 album is due out on February 22, is a strong supporter of bitcoin. In a podcast discussion with Joe Rogan in 2020, he praised Bitcoin developers for recognizing what true liberty for America and humanity will entail.

Categories
Altcoins

Kadena (KDA): What You Should Know

The King (Bitcoin) and the Queen (Ethereum) are the best cryptocurrencies. Other coins only follow in the footsteps of the King and Queen. Some coins, on the other hand, wish to bypass the royalty and develop their own market. This is exemplified by Kadena (KDA). Continue reading to learn everything you need to know about this cryptocurrency.

What is Kadena?

Kadena (KDA) is a blockchain ecosystem that is enterprise-grade and interconnected. A proprietary chain architecture, cryptocurrency, developer tools, and a novel smart contract programming language are all included in the protocol. These capabilities allow businesses, developers, and users to transact and share data across numerous networks in a decentralized way.

How it Works

Kadena can give outstanding speed and scalability thanks to its braided blockchain design. This structure is based on the premise that if one blockchain can process X transactions, two chains can manage twice as many. Kadena’s creators figured out how to connect the blocks and hashes among the chains to build a single multi-chained network, making it unique.

In this technique, each block has the hash of the previous block on the same chain as well as the hash of the preceding block on the other chain. The Merkle Tree structure required for cross-chain SPV proofs and other tasks is provided by this type of network in particular. Kadena has a high degree of performance as well as the ability to scale up to meet demand as a result of this.

The Chainweb protocol serves as the network’s Layer 1 foundation. This public blockchain employs a parallelized proof-of-work consensus procedure to provide the same level of security as Bitcoin while significantly increasing transaction throughput. The use of the Pact smart contract language can be credited in part for the network’s success.

Pact is a smart contract language created with the blockchain ecosystem in mind. This next-generation programming language is both human-readable and extremely safe. Error-reduction features are also available to help ensure the security of your smart contracts and Dapps.

Under the Developer Tools section, users will discover everything they need to build a complex Dapp. To make dApp and smartcontract development easier, users can access resources such as code examples and modules. Anyone may learn how to design more useful and immersive solutions that improve the user experience by utilizing the network’s own service architecture.

The network’s principal utility token is KDA. This multi-purpose coin can be used to send money all over the world. It also refers to how users interact with the platform’s features and with one another. Developers, for example, use KDA to pay for smart contract executions. Users can stake KDA on the CoinMetro exchange and gain passive rewards. To be eligible for this service, you must bet at least 1000KDA.

Benefits

Kadena users have numerous advantages. To make dApp creation and integration easier, the platform includes an intuitive dashboard and programming language. As part of this strategy, the system streamlines the most typical user operations. To use Kadena’s core services, you don’t require any prior technical knowledge.

Kadena offers zero-fee transactions to the market. While its competitors are experiencing record-high costs, this method continues to pique interest in the protocol. By removing these fees, businesses may better serve their customers by providing more sophisticated applications.

Kadena uses a sharded design to provide developers access to nearly infinite storage. Sharding is a data storage technique that divides data into smaller, more manageable chunks and distributes it over different locations.

A sharded network’s benefits include almost limitless expandability, storage, and upgradeability. Kadena has lately proven to be one of the fastest sharded layer-1 PoW blockchains available.

NFT issuance and trading are supported by Kadena (non-fungible tokens). These one-of-a-kind digital assets can be used to represent almost anything. As a result, the NFT market has witnessed a lot of growth.

NFTs are used in the gaming, art, and investing industries. It’s one of the industry’s fastest-growing and most-watched trends. When compared to its predecessors, Kadena offers a scalable alternative to the NFT market.

Kadena’s technical structure allows it to deliver some functions that other blockchains cannot. The network, for example, may distinguish between account names and keys. Your account name is your public key in most blockchains. However, the adoption of multi-sig wallets in business contexts makes this method more difficult. Kadena distinguishes account names from keys, allowing businesses to better manage their cryptocurrency usage.

Bottomline

Kadena’s mix of enterprise-level services and security continues to accelerate blockchain adoption and innovation. The protocol employs a unique and successful combination of sophisticated features and proprietary protocols to alleviate network congestion and scalability difficulties. Kadena appears to be well-positioned in the market for these and other reasons.

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Bitcoin

President Nayib Bukele: Idea of a Gigantic Bitcoin Price Increase

Following a dip in bitcoin and other crypto assets, the global crypto market has decreased to $1.67 trillion. Bitcoin fans are optimistic about the future, despite the fact that the slump has not yet ended. El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, recently took to Twitter to explain why the country’s flagship cryptocurrency is about to see a massive price spike.

Bukele pointed out that there are more than 50 million millionaires in the globe, but only 21 million Bitcoins. If every rich opted to possess at least one bitcoin, there would be insufficient coins to go around. As a result, a parabolic price increase would occur.

In recent weeks and months, Bukele’s bitcoin enterprise has been dogged by criticism. The IMF, for example, believes that El Salvador’s adoption of the benchmark cryptocurrency is a major issue since it “involves significant risks for financial and market integrity, financial stability, and consumer protection.” The IMF has issued a new caution to the Central American country, urging it to abandon bitcoin as legal cash.

But, based on a recent tweet from Bukele, it’s evident that, despite repeated warnings from the IMF and other parties, he has no intention of abandoning his huge bitcoin experiment.

Bukele, in particular, has prompted other countries to consider adopting bitcoin as their official currency.

Arizona has also introduced legislation that would make bitcoin legal tender in the state. Though it is not expected to be easy, crypto experts believe that if the bill passes, it will be a significant deal for the leading cryptocurrency. This is due to the fact that Arizona has the same population as El Salvador but has a gross domestic output that is over 10 times higher (GDP). Furthermore, the legalization of bitcoin in a US state would be a watershed moment.

Bitcoin experienced a massive surge in 2021, reaching a high of $69,500 in November. However, the cryptocurrency’s bull run has come to an end, as it just took a dramatic plunge in the wake of a spectacular rollercoaster ride in traditional financial markets.

Categories
Blockchain News

Report: Binance Restricting Almost 300 Nigerian Accounts

Binance, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, has explained why 281 Nigerian users’ accounts have been suspended.

Changpeng Zhao, the company’s CEO, wrote in a letter that 38 percent of the impacted accounts had been banned at the request of international law enforcement.

Multiple consumers of the Binance worldwide exchange had expressed their dissatisfaction on social media. Some Nigerian users complained that they were unable to access their accounts for no apparent reason offered by the exchange.

With over 25,000 tweets on Wednesday, #BinanceStopScammingNigerians was the third most popular topic on Nigerian Twitter. On Thursday, the trend continued with almost 10,000 tweets.

Zhao intimated that some of the accounts had been banned to avoid fraud-related activity in his answer headed “A letter from our CEO to Nigerians: Our commitment to user protection,” dated Saturday, January 29.

Accord“The Nigerian community is one that brings me great pride. Since the inception of Binance, Nigeria and Africa at large have been very special markets to us and for crypto. On hearing the concerns raised by the community, I decided to write to re-emphasize our commitment to you,” according to the letter.

“First and foremost, we are sorry for the inconvenience caused by delays in resolving your customer support requests. User security remains our top priority. We love and are devoted to our Nigerian community, but we must ensure that our users are safe. As such, protection mechanisms such as KYC, anti-money laundering measures, collaboration with law enforcement, and account restrictions are in place to ensure our community remains protected and that fraudulent activity is prevented. This is a global approach applied in every country.

He went on to say that, notwithstanding, they owe it to their consumers to provide them the experience they deserve, highlighting their faith in them, and here’s what they’re doing to earn it back:

Ensure quick resolutions of ongoing user cases including account restrictions: they’ve already resolved 79 cases and are working on more. All cases that are not related to law enforcement will be addressed within two weeks.

More customer service and risk agents will be sent to the region: They will assign more CS and risk agents that are well-versed in the Nigerian market.

Categories
News

Gemini Now Sponsors of Real Bedford FC

Gemini, a crypto exchange based in New York, has announced a sponsorship partnership with Real Bedford FC, an English football team owned by Peter McCormack, a well-known bitcoin investor and podcast host.

Tyler Winklevoss confirmed that Gemini will become the football club’s official sponsor in a tweet on Sunday, boosting McCormack’s aim of promoting Real Bedford FC to the Premier League.

The Geminin emblem will appear on the club’s jersey as part of the agreement. The club will take advantage of Gemini’s fame in order to grow its fan base and get closer to its aim.

McCormack revealed in December 2021 that he had purchased the football club for an undisclosed sum and had become its chairman.

The Bitcoin proponent revealed his aim to raise the club from its current position in the South Midlands League Division 1 to the highly coveted Premier League in a lengthy Twitter thread.

According to McCormack, he plans to accomplish this lofty aim by utilizing the most popular cryptocurrency, bitcoin. He urged fellow bitcoin investors and crypto corporations to donate money to the cause in order to help the team improve and attract stronger players and management.

Bedford FC would function as a bitcoin club, according to him, and he plans to run the club with a bitcoin standard, bringing crypto sponsorships, endorsements, fan training programs, and open-source development.

“It is all about winning games, to win games you need the best players and managers. To afford the best players and managers you need to be commercially successful. I will establish our club as the #bitcoin club, a team that operates on a #bitcoin standard…  Where local teams can only tap into a local community of fans/companies to drive revenue, we have a global army of #bitcoin holders and companies who can get behind this. We have so much leverage. An army of 150m #bitcoin holders and companies can be part of this journey.”

Categories
Altcoins

Everything You Need To Know About Oasis Network

The Oasis Network (ROSE) is the most recent blockchain project to be dubbed a “Ethereum killer.” It has two major aspects that set it apart from Ethereum: built-in privacy and scalability. We’ll examine at what the Oasis Network is, how it operates, what ROSE tokens are, and why ROSE is a good investment in this guide.

The Oasis Network (ROSE) is a cryptocurrency that combines a programmable blockchain, secure computing, and a custom-built cryptocurrency. In many ways, the network is unusual. The developers focused mostly on privacy protocols and the implementation of Paratimes.

DeFi developers can design more robust applications using the Oasis Network because they have more control over sensitive data. The platform aims to empower developers to build a rich ecosystem of next-generation DeFi and Web 3.0 protocols in this way.

How it Works

The PoS consensus mechanism is used by the Oasis Network, which employs random validator nodes who stake native tokens — in this case, ROSE — in exchange for the right to validate new blocks and collect rewards.

The scalability of the Oasis Network is achieved by dividing its consensus and computational activities into the consensus layer and the ParaTime layer, respectively. Let’s dissect that.

Validator nodes execute a secure and highly scalable consensus procedure in the Consensus Layer. Blocks are confirmed and put to the blockchain here.

ParaTime Layer: ParaTimes are shared-state runtime environments that represent computation. Anyone can create and maintain their own ParaTime system. Each ParaTime can be created independently to satisfy the requirements of a single application.

The two levels of the Oasis Network divide consensus and execution, allowing the network to handle many transactions in simultaneously. This prevents resource-intensive computations in one ParaTime from slowing down simpler, faster operations in another.

What Makes it Unique

Oasis supports private ParaTimes, which can be used to make private smart contracts. Nodes in a private ParaTime must use a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE), which serves as a safe enclave for smart contract execution.

Along with the smart contract, encrypted data is placed in the secure enclave (seen above). This data is decrypted, then processed by the smart contract before being re-encrypted and sent forth. This ensures that private user data is kept private and that neither the node operator nor the smart contract developer may see it.

By allowing personal or sensitive data, such as bank statements, health information, and social security numbers, to be used safely on the blockchain, a variety of new use cases emerge.

Tokenized data is a digital asset created by combining privacy-enabled computing with the blockchain, according to Oasis Labs. The blockchain enables users and developers to securely log and enforce use policies. Confidential computing keeps data secret and prevents it from being reused without consent.

By staking their tokenized data with apps, data providers on the network can receive incentives while preserving complete control over how their private information is used by the services they use.

Binance, Chainlink, BMW Group, Balancer, and other projects have already begun developing data tokenization-based applications on the Oasis Network.

Oasis Network is building a community of node operators, DApp developers, colleges, and other stakeholders. It has started a funding program to encourage developers to create new DApps, DeFi protocols, privacy-first products, and integrations on top of the network in order to help it flourish. Depending on the scale of each project, applicants may get anything from $5,000 to $50,000 in ROSE tokens.

With 25 renowned university departments scattered across five continents, Oasis Network boasts the largest university program of any Layer 1 blockchain. Members of the program create programs, run nodes, and perform other tasks. Tsinghua University’s Student Association of Digital Finance, Blockchain at Berkeley, and other university student organizations are among those taking part.

Conclusion

The Oasis Network offers a number of significant benefits to the market. For DeFi developers and consumers, the platform’s flexibility and privacy-focused approach remove some major pain problems. As a result, as more users take use of the project’s unique feature set, you can expect to hear a lot more from it in the coming weeks.

Categories
Bitcoin

Arizona Could Be The First U.S. State To Make Bitcoin Legal Tender

A law has been presented in Arizona that would allow the state to accept bitcoin as legal cash. If passed, the law would oblige citizens and companies in Arizona to accept bitcoin as a form of payment in addition to the US currency.

However, because the United States Constitution currently prohibits states from forming their own legal cash, the chances of this law passing are slim.

Senator Wendy Rogers, a Republican, has introduced legislation to alter the state’s list of legal money to include bitcoin. This means that the decentralized peer-to-peer digital money might be used to pay for debts, government fees, taxes, and dues.

SB 1341, the proposed bill, must pass both the Arizona state senate and house of representatives before being signed into law by current governor Douglas Anthony Ducey.

Senator Rogers’ bill comes at a time when a number of nations across the world are debating whether or not to recognize bitcoin as legal cash, following El Salvador’s lead in September. Interestingly, Don Huffines, a gubernatorial candidate in the state of Texas, has lately committed to make bitcoin legal tender if elected.

If the amendment passes, Arizona will become the first state in the history of the United States to embrace the most popular cryptocurrency as legal cash.

However, considering that the United States Constitution expressly prohibits individual states from designating assets other than gold and silver as legal money, it appears unlikely that this law will be implemented.

Aside from the potential constitutional issues, the bill comes as reports surface that the Biden administration is working on an executive order that would require federal agencies to assess the threats and opportunities provided by cryptocurrency, calling it a national security issue.

It’s unclear what effect this order, which is scheduled to be issued as soon as next month, will have on the Arizona Senator’s bitcoin plans.

Categories
Altcoins News

Elon Musk Thinks Robinhood Wallets Will Be A Huge Deal For Dogecoin

Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, feels that Robinhood wallets will be a significant issue for Dogecoin since the top meme cryptocurrency will no longer be considered as a speculative investment by Robinhood consumers.

Dogecoin co-founder Billy Markus noted in a tweet that got the billionaire’s notice that the flagship canine cryptocurrency may now be used for tipping, trading, and other uses now that users will be allowed to embrace decentralization.

Markus has previously revealed his first experience transmitting Dogecoin from his Robinhood wallet.

https://twitter.com/BillyM2k/status/1487606021790986242?s=20&t=1s6TPOvERqrrH-ya8IACwQ

In late January, Robinhood began beta testing its wallets, allowing some of its waiting members to withdraw funds to their own wallets.

The Menlo Park-based company earned $48 million in cryptocurrency-related revenue in the fourth quarter of 2021, a 6 percent decrease from the third quarter. Dogecoin, in particular, accounted for a whopping 40 percent of the total.

Dogecoin accounted for 26% of Robinhood’s overall income in the second quarter, which totaled $565 million.

Memecoin-hungry users have been pleading with the popular online trading site to include Shiba Inu support. Robinhood, on the other hand, continues to sag on the much-coveted listing.

Users of Robinhood can currently purchase and sell seven different cryptocurrencies. The majority of them, however, are still unable to withdraw funds to third-party wallets.

The company also said during its most recent earnings call that it would begin extending bitcoin trading globally in 2022, arguing that the crypto economy has enormous potential.

Categories
Blockchain News

BSTX Is The First Blockchain-Powered Securities Exchange

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of the United States has given BSTX conditional approval to operate as a trading facility of BOX Exchange. BSTX was founded in 2018 with the goal of becoming a fully automated securities exchange using blockchain technology.

BSTX is the result of a cooperation between tZero, a private company liquidity platform, and Boston Options Exchange, an equity options marketplace. The SEC’s approval implies the company is on pace to become the first blockchain-based securities exchange, if it joins applicable national market system plans.

“The SEC has taken an important step forward today in its approval of BSTX as a national securities exchange facility. We are eager to continue to work closely with the SEC to launch BSTX as a fully regulated exchange and to help provide capital markets with more modern tools for issuers and investors. We are particularly grateful to our technology partner in this endeavour tZERO. We are looking forward to continuing to work with them to provide institutional-grade trading technology to participants on BSTX.”

Beyond the existing use cases we see in global corporations like Walmart and Honeywell, this is a significant step forward in the list of use cases for Distributed Ledger Technology.

BSTX aspires to be the first exchange to provide players the option of fast settlements (T+0 or T+1), according to the press release. This will be feasible because to the platform’s utilization of blockchain technology. The portal will also deliver blockchain-based market data.

BSTX will also use a private and permissioned Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) that it controls to “make participant market data available to them and to make general market data available to industry players,” according to the news release.

This isn’t the first time BSTX has approached the SEC for clearance. BSTX wants to record end-of-day securities ownership balances and other trading data to the Ethereum blockchain in 2020, before utilizing private and permissioned DLT.

The SEC rejected this idea, claiming that false data may be broadcast to the blockchain because BSTX planned to use a “omnibus wallet” for non-BSTX stock transaction data, which the regulator worried would be out of date.

We’ve seen a lot of examples of DLT helping traditional firms tackle complicated challenges that have been an issue for a long time and have impacted their bottom line. Walmart, for example, may utilize blockchain technology to track where food comes from, which is crucial in the event of a food-borne disease outbreak.

Aside from Walmart, Honeywell, a multi-industry company with interests in aerospace technology, manufacturing, retail, and other fields, is using blockchain technology to reform the $4 billion used airplane parts market.

Categories
Altcoins

What’s Good About the Crypto Amp (AMP)

When it comes to tokens, investors are always seeking for the greatest options, but finding the most profitable ones isn’t always straightforward. Perhaps you’ve heard of the AMP cryptocurrency and are debating whether or not to join its community. So, you’ll need to figure out how much it’s worth and how to get it. You will learn more about AMP crypto in this article and, at the conclusion, you should be able to decide whether or not to invest in it.

What is Amp?

AMP is a decentralized mechanism for digital collateral. The project’s purpose is to make it possible for developers to provide verifiable assurance for any app or asset transfer. As a result, the network makes use of a number of patented technologies to decentralize the risk of asset transfers in both digital and real-world settings.

AMP is a cryptocurrency that may be used to secure any type of value transfer. It is used by the Flexa Network to make fast, irreversible, and secure payments in a range of currencies and assets. Any physical or digital product can use AMP Crypto as collateral. This is where AMP varies from the Lightning Network used by Bitcoin. AMP can be used to collateralize any digital asset as a payment solution.

Although Amp began on the Flexa network, it is currently used by a variety of services including CoinGekco, Uniswap, and Sushiswap. Amp has a predetermined quantity of tokens in circulation to ensure that the token does not undergo excessive inflation while backing a transaction. Amp is currently available for purchase on numerous exchanges, including Coinbase Pro, using fiat or BTC.

Amp tokens are unique among cryptocurrencies in that they function as smart contracts on their own. Amp can be used as collateral in other cryptocurrency transactions, including those involving its parent cryptocurrency, Ethereum.

History

Dave Rogers invented the amp in the year 2020. Large transactions, such as the selling of a home, were difficult to bring into the bitcoin realm before Amp. This is due to the two parties’ lack of trust and the nonphysical nature of cryptography. Rodgers set out to fix this problem by not just developing a collateral to back crypto agreements, but also one that wouldn’t (in principle) go wild with inflation or crash to zero throughout the course of a transaction. Amp is currently managed by a firm of the same name, whose CEO is Dave Rodgers.

How it Works

To provide the market with agnostic collateral options, AMP employs a variety of features and protocols. The platform was designed from the bottom up to accommodate a wide range of tokens and assets. The network’s core system, in particular, is ERC-20 compliant. Users will be able to use any ERC-20 compatible exchanges, wallets, and other services as a result of this method.

As part of the network’s protocols, users must stake their AMP to collateralize assets. Staking is the process of securing your cryptocurrency in a network smart contract for a set period of time. Any type of value exchange can be ensured in the AMP ecosystem by staking the asset. The network now secures a wide range of assets, including digital payments, fiat currency exchange, loan payouts, and property sales, among others.

Users stake their tokens in vast pools of collateral. Amp is ready to collateralize a transfer after it has been staked to a partition. The network and its users benefit from these pools in a variety of ways. For starters, they secure the network’s long-term viability. The collateralization pool activates built-in loss mitigation procedures when an asset transfer fails. This technique ensures that the protocol remains lucrative while also providing more security to the parties engaged in the transaction.

A variety of smart contracts exist that allow users to get more out of their user experience. Smart contract alternatives, for example, allow consumers to take advantage of micro-distributions and ongoing compounding. As the network grows, the architects of the blockchain want to build on these functionalities.

Conclusion

For many investors, AMP crypto can be a terrific token, and because its value is expected to rise in the coming years, it has the potential to become one of the most valuable cryptocurrencies available. It’s easy to purchase and trade on Coinbase, but it’s also available on Gemini, so getting it shouldn’t be a problem. If you want to keep it safe between transactions, you need purchase a crypto wallet, preferably a hardware wallet if you want extra security.

Categories
News

What to Know About the PayPal Stablecoin

After a developer discovered signs of such a stablecoin within the source code of PayPal’s iPhone app, the company acknowledged on Jan. 8 that it is “exploring a stablecoin” that may be dubbed PayPal Coin.

Senior vice president of cryptocurrency and digital currencies at PayPal If the company expects to press forward with the stablecoin, Jose Fernandez da Ponte indicated at the time that it will do so while working closely with relevant regulators, an approach that could help the fintech company avoid the wrath of US senators that killed Meta’s Diem cryptocurrency project.

The source code discovered on the iPhone app was built in an internal hackathon, according to the business.

The impact of a PayPal stablecoin on payments and the cryptocurrency sector is difficult to predict, and although some experts feel the firm’s decision would be immensely beneficial to the field, others fear the stablecoin will be more of the same.

A traditional finance institution entering the cryptocurrency space and developing its own stablecoin clearly differs from a crypto-native company launching a stablecoin. Traditional financial institutions service customers who aren’t necessarily familiar with cryptocurrency wallets or the market’s volatility.

PayPal already allows users in the United States and the United Kingdom to purchase, sell, and hold Bitcoin, Ether, Bitcoin Cash, and Litecoin, as well as make payments in these crypto assets.

While it’s unclear how many PayPal customers have paid with cryptocurrency, stablecoins are well recognized as a tool for trading and exploiting opportunities in the decentralized finance industry.

According to Marwan Forzley, CEO of online payments platform Veem, PayPal’s continued push into the cryptocurrency business through the development of a stablecoin could lead to more traditional banking and payments corporations exploring blockchain technology. Stablecoins, according to Forzley, will likely become a component of the global payment scheme since small businesses need to move money in a secure environment with on- and off-ramps for various uses.

While PayPal has stated that it will collaborate with relevant regulators on its stablecoin if and when it moves through with the project, it will still face regulatory hurdles due to the breadth of its operations.

According to Eli Taranto, chief business development officer at EQIBank, a regulated digital bank that works with businesses and high-net-worth people, this is the case. According to Taranto, PayPal’s global position will force it to deal with global regulatory difficulties when it comes to cryptocurrency, which will be a fascinating and essential task.

PayPal’s transaction revenue, according to Taranto, forces them to connect as many tokens and chains as possible, resulting in faster, better, fully automated cross-chain instruments.

In the end, PayPal’s decision to issue its own stablecoin benefits the company’s financial line. According to PayPal’s most recent quarterly report, transaction-related expenses cost the company $2.7 billion in the third quarter of 2021, according to Caleb Silver, editor-in-chief of financial information portal Investopedia.

PayPal may save a large amount of money on transaction costs by using a high transaction throughput blockchain like Solana. The company does not presently enable customers to buy or sell Solana (SOL) on its platform, and it is unknown which blockchain it will utilize to distribute its stablecoin.

The true impact of a PayPal Coin will be determined by how the corporation implements the stablecoin. It has the potential to integrate crypto into regular payment systems, but it also has the risk of becoming “just another” stablecoin. The best-case scenario appears to be one that crypto aficionados fantasized about years ago, before Bitcoin hit five figures, demonstrating how far we’ve come in only a few years.