Category: Cryptocurrency News

A very expected launch went live as the governance token OP was airdropped by the Ethereum layer-2 scaling solution Optimism. Why So Optimistic? In a mission to fund public goods and create a sustainable future for Ethereum, the Optimism Collective firmly believes that “positive impact to the collective should be rewarded with profit to the individual,” thus this latest airdrop is one more step in their process of creating “a new model for properly rewarding those who create or sustain public goods.” “The Optimism Collective will dispel the myth that public goods cannot be profitable. The Collective will consistently provide retroactive incentives for public goods which benefit Optimism, Ethereum, and the Collective as a whole. These public goods act as a propellant for the growth of the Collective economy.” Their quest to “rebuild the internet to align with the values of its users” has excited many users, even Vitalik Buterin himself who previously described the effort as “Possibly the biggest attempt at non-token-holder-centric DAO governance so far.” The team explained that ever since they opened up the system, the network has seen “more than 50 apps deployed on Optimism, resulting in over 60k ETH bridged in and more than $900M in total on-chain value.” Ethereum and Optimism users are excited about the possibilities for this project to continue improving user experience and lowering transaction fee costs. And even more so, they are also excited about the rewards and governance possibilities that result from supporting and collaborating with this experiment. As the collective’s vision explains, Optimism is “governed by a collaboration between the Optimism Foundation and the members of the Optimism Collective.” Likewise, the Collective has established its core governing structure divided into two equal chambers in order to enable a collaborative ecosystem: The Token House and the Citizens’ House: to launch later in the year, it is meant to “facilitate and govern a process to distribute retroactive public goods funding, generated from the revenue collected by the network.” The Token House: established today by the OP token airdrop, meant to create “an ongoing system of incentives for projects and users in the Optimism ecosystem.” Related Reading | TA: Ethereum Dips From $2K, Why 100 SMA Might Spark Fresh Increase The Ethereum Season Of Airdrops Has Started What the Collective had described as “an entire season of airdrops” with over 250,000 eligible addresses, began today with the first OP airdrop that allocated 5% of the initial OP supply. “Token holders will be able to vote on protocol upgrades, project incentives as a part of a Governance Fund, and more.” It was a bumpy first airdrop for OP. The team admitted to having underestimated the amount of expected load that the event would have on their public RPC endpoint, they tweeted. As the collective has been careful to constantly alert users about possible scams by impersonators and to only follow official announcements, it was strange at first that the claims of the OP token seemed to have started without the team giving out said announcement –a Twitter account dedicated to sharing airdrops announced it beforehand–, but this was later explained alongside other mistakes. The source of the problem seems to the that the team failed to make their MerkleDistributor contract pausable. This meant that “claims were open, and we had no way to stop them.” “We then deployed our claims UI in preparation for our official announcement,” they explained, and while underestimating the amount of traffic that would hit them, “website visitors found the claims link” before the announcement was officially made, thus “the public RPC started getting slammed.” “We have NOT officially announced yet, but we’re already experiencing an all-time high demand,” the team had alerted earlier in the day, surprised by the high load that struck. The team continued in a series of efforts that resulted in taking down the claims UI for a period of time “in an effort to decrease RPC load in the short-term,” however, “without access to the claims UI, users began to construct and share links to their own custom-built claim UIs.” It took them several hours to “stabilize the public RPC.” “While the sequencer remained stable throughout, this was the point where read-access was able to handle the expected load.” Throughout the process, users experienced various issues like not being able to claim OP at the same time as other early users or seeing their status as “ineligible”, although they had previously checked the opposite. Later on, it seemed like Binance had also been having trouble handling the OP hype as users reported that the exchange was not reflecting deposits even after a successful transfer. Nonetheless, the team seems to have responsibly worked to solve the problems faced today and expects to apply the lessons learned to the next airdrop. Meanwhile, many holders expect the OP price to experience a rally as it’s being listed by big exchanges like Binance and FTX. Currently, the token is trading at around $1.69 as per CoinGecko after reaching a peak of $2.10. Related Reading | TA: Ethereum Dips From $2K, Why 100 SMA Might Spark Fresh Increase

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What will happen to the crypto markets when quantitative tightening takes full effect and the Federal Reserve shelves the money printer?

Blockchain technology has revolutionized government, finance, insurance, and personal identity security. By 2025, it’s predicted that corporations will be spending $20 billion annually on blockchain technical services. Tech giant IBM is investing more than $200 million in research and over 90% of European and US banks investigating blockchain options. Although only taking the world by storm over the past few years, blockchain technology is already on its way to becoming a legitimate disruptor in a slew of different industries. So what exactly does blockchain accomplish to make it so popular? Blockchain is a shared, immutable ledger that facilitates the process of recording transactions and tracking assets across a network. An asset can be tangible (e.g. a house, car, cash, or land) or intangible (e.g. intellectual property, patents, copyrights, or branding). Anything of value can be tracked and traded on a blockchain network, reducing risk and cutting costs for all involved. Blockchain technology is revolutionary because it allows businesses to receive information faster and more accurately. It provides immediate, shared, and transparent information stored on an immutable ledger which can only be accessed by permissioned network members. Blockchain’s ability to track orders, payments, accounts, and production, while giving members trust and transparency into their transactions is what is makes it so groundbreaking. One of the most appealing attributes of blockchain technology is its built-in smart contracts. Smart contracts speed up transactions by essentially providing a set of rules stored on the blockchain that are executed automatically and have the ability to define conditions for things like corporate bond transfers, or terms for insurance. Although blockchain technology has arisen to rapid expansion and popularity, the space is still not without its problems, particularly with the incidence of crypto frauds like rug pulls and exit scams. Exit scams occur when cryptocurrency promoters vanish with investors’ money during or after an initial coin offering (ICO). DeFi rug pulls another type of exit scam whereby crypto developers abandon a project, exiting with investors’ funds by withdrawing buy support or Decentralised Exchange (DEX) liquidity pool from the market. Newcomer to the blockchain space Concordium believes that the blockchain world can rid itself of these issues and become a safer space by implementing accountability. Through its integrated ID layer, the company has designed a platform that increases privacy while also addressing the issues of accountability, trust, and transparency. The platform was built under the premise that more authentication will lead to more user accountability, which will ultimately build more trust. Many other blockchains still have unclear anonymity guarantees making users believe they’re anonymous while their actions can still be linked back to them. While regulations can promote identity, Concordium believes that one of the most critical problems it can help solve is accountability. Users who use Concordium’s technology will be completely private and protected unless they abuse the system. It ultimately aims to encourage users to act responsibly or face the consequences of their actions. Blockchain technology has provided a groundbreaking solution for many industries, but there are still many flaws that has led to nefarious activity like exit scams to occur. As the technology grows and evolves, newcomers like Concordium can pave the way for a safer space by introducing regulation through identification, trust, transparency, and accountability.

Bulls vs. Bears. The long history of two animals battling against each other on Wall Street has now paved its way into the crypto markets. After a long reign, the bulls have taken a step back and the bears have taken over. That said, most of us are aware that the market conditions right now aren’t the most trader-friendly; stable coins have been destabilized and there’s a bloodbath with red candlesticks taking dips. So, what could help a trader or an investor at this point? The simple answer is diversification, or the golden rule of never putting all your eggs in one basket. Striking the right balance in terms of diversification can sometimes be tough, which is why having the right mechanism or tool can help. What is diversification? Diversification is the strategy of spreading your assets across several asset classes to minimize your exposure to only one type. This method is intended to help minimize your portfolio’s volatility over time and maximize returns by investing in different assets that would react differently under the same circumstances. Some of the benefits of diversification include: Loss risk minimization: Asset diversification reduces the risk of losing money in a single asset type. This occurs because if one asset or asset class performs poorly, another asset or asset class performs well. This helps to balance the outcome and decreases the risk of portfolio loss. Capital preservation: Diversifying assets reduces the risk of capital loss. Debt instruments provide a set yield and capital protection, so including them in your portfolio ensures capital preservation. Greater returns (at the same amount of risk): In institutional finance, diversification has been found to provide higher returns for the same amount of risk. There are times when particular asset classes perform very well in the market, and having a well-diversified portfolio ensures that you profit from this. On the contrary, especially during a bear market, some assets won’t perform as well, and having a diverse portfolio will average the losses. Therefore, to keep things simple in terms of diversification, Durafi is one of those tools that a trader, and more so a crypto trader, would find necessary in order to trade effectively even in a bearish period of the market. What does Durafi do being a decentralized exchange? Durafi is a DeFi protocol for trading cryptocurrency index derivatives and structured products. It intends to democratize access to powerful crypto derivatives and lower the cost of active trading methods by lowering transaction costs and simplifying crypto diversification. Its mission is to make it easier for people to invest in significant cryptocurrency trends without having to manually buy and sell hundreds of tokens or identify specific winners and losers with the help of their first innovative product, the Durafi Fund Token (DFT). Durafi makes use of the best of both worlds by combining the fundamentals of traditional finance with the dynamics of decentralized finance. Some of Durafi’s top tier features include: Durafi’s patented Durafi Liquidity Engine combines the benefits of decentralized liquidity pools with high-speed order books and proprietary innovations to maximize slippage and market effect based on each trade’s parameters. Trade DeFi Derivatives at Fast Speed and Low Cost: Users may exchange single tokens or index derivatives at high speed and low-cost thanks to Durafi’s Derivatives Generator and Liquidity Engine. Designed to Support Active Trading Strategies: Durafi’s derivatives products trade without lockups or other limitations. They are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and can be traded at high speeds using their API, which was created by and for high-frequency traders. All of this is possible thanks to “Durafi Fund Tokens” (DFTs), which are traded on their exchange and track the performance of cryptocurrency baskets like the Durafi Crypto Index, which tracks major cryptocurrencies, the Durafi DeFi Index, which tracks major decentralized finance protocols, and the Durafi NFT Index, which tracks major NFT platform tokens. Each token is intended to represent the index components’ total market performance, thus making diversification easier than ever. With Durafi, neither the bull nor the bear market can stop you from putting your eggs in different and diversified baskets.

I've posted on this before, but as a long-term investor in Celsius, and someone involved in crypto since 2011, it bears all the hallmarks of an insolvent operation, similar to Mt. Gox and Quadriga CX. Copy and pasting one of my prior comments (further thoughts below): I recently withdrew all my funds from Celsius, something…
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Dmitry Vasiliev, co-owner and former chief executive of the now defunct Russian crypto exchange Wex, has been arrested upon entering Croatia, local media reported. The crypto entrepreneur is wanted by Kazakhstan where he is accused of stealing money from an investor. Wex Executive Vasiliev Apprehended at the Airport in Zagreb Belarus-born Dmitry Vasiliev, former CEO […]

Ethereum struggled to gain pace above the $2,000 resistance against the US Dollar. ETH is correcting lower, but dips might be limited below the $1,900 zone. Ethereum started a downside correction from the $2,000 resistance zone. The price is still trading above $1,900 and the 100 hourly simple moving average. There is a key bullish trend line forming with support near $1,905 on the hourly chart of ETH/USD (data feed via Kraken). The pair could start a fresh increase if it stays above $1,900 and the 100 hourly SMA. Ethereum Price Reaches Key Support Ethereum attempted an upside break above the $2,000 resistance zone. However, the bulls struggled above the $2,000 level. A high was formed near $2,015 and the price started a downside correction. There was a move below the $1,950 and $1,940 levels. Ether price dipped below the 23.6% Fib retracement level of the upward move from the $1,704 swing low to $2,015 high. However, it is still trading above $1,900 and the 100 hourly simple moving average. There is also a key bullish trend line forming with support near $1,905 on the hourly chart of ETH/USD. On the upside, an initial resistance is near the $1,960 level. Source: ETHUSD on TradingView.com The next major resistance is near the $1,980 level and a connecting bearish trend line on the same chart. The main resistance is still near the $2,000 zone. A proper upside break above the $2,000 resistance might stage a fresh increase. In the stated case, ether price could rise towards the $2,100 level. Any more gains may perhaps send it towards the $2,150 resistance zone. Downside Break in ETH? If ethereum fails to continue higher above the $1,980 resistance, it could extend its downside correction. An initial support on the downside is near the $1,920 zone. The next major support is near the $1,900 level and the 100 hourly simple moving average. Any more losses might call for a test of the 50% Fib retracement level of the upward move from the $1,704 swing low to $2,015 high. A downside break below the $1,850 level might send the price towards $1,800. Technical Indicators Hourly MACD – The MACD for ETH/USD is now losing momentum in the bullish zone. Hourly RSI – The RSI for ETH/USD is now just below the 50 level. Major Support Level – $1,900 Major Resistance Level – $2,000

The platform has already raised more than half of its target and still has another 21 days to go before the NFT funding campaign ends.