Nivesh Rustgi

Bitcoin and Ethereum. Image: Shutterstock

Ethereum, Bitcoin Balances on Exchanges Edges Toward 5-Year Low

The amount of Ethereum on centralized exchanges has nearly hit a five-year low, per data from Glassnode. With 17.8 million ETH on exchanges, the sum represents 14.85% of the network’s total token supply. Though large, it’s significantly less than the peak value of 30% reached in the summer of 2020. Volatile cryptocurrencies, like Bitcoin and Ethereum, leaving centralized exchanges are sometimes seen as a bullish sentiment among investors. Conversely, an influx of cryptocurrencies to exchange is

Bitcoin, Ethereum Hold Ground as $3.5 Billion in Options Expire

Bitcoin and Ethereum have held steady as billions worth of options contracts expired this morning. The leading cryptocurrency rose 1% early Friday morning, while ETH jumped 1.6%. Bitcoin is now trading at $26,509, down 11% over the past 30 days. Over that same period, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap has dropped 4.6%. Today, Bitcoin options on Deribit expired this morning with a notional value of $2.26 billion and $1.25 billion for Ethereum, inducing uncertainty in the market. No

Crypto Bridges have become a key weakness in the network. Image: Shutterstock.

Binance Suspends Multichain Token Deposits Amid Transaction Delays

Binance has temporarily suspended transfers of wrapped tokens from the Multichain bridge amid days-long delays in transaction times. This afternoon, the world’s largest exchange suspended deposits of ten tokens bridged to Binance Chain, Ethereum, Avalanche, and Fantom. Multichain has deposits worth $1.52 billion locked on it for liquidity provisions, per DeFiLlama. This week’s events caused a slight dip in its total value locked (TVL) from $1.6 billion to $1.52 billion. “We'll be temporarily sus

Reddit the Only Big Tech Firm That 'Cracked the NFT Code': Polygon Co-founder

Polygon’s co-founder said the social media giant “cracked the code” for NFT adoption, during a recent AMA session on Reddit. Besides sharing pro-crypto and Polygon views like how Web3 will complement Web2 in areas like finance, gaming, and social media, the founder also explained how Reddit managed to win over its community with the launch of its digital collectibles. The social media platform introduced NFTs as “Collectible Avatars” on Polygon in July 2022 via free airdrops and early sales of d

Crypto bridges let users transfer incompatible tokens across networks. Image: Shutterstock.

Multichain Token Plummets as Transactions Pile Up on Cross-chain Bridge

The native token powering the cross-chain bridge Multichain plummeted today after users began sharing that some of their transactions had been stuck since Sunday. Though the team assured that funds are safe and they’re working to solve the issue. Multichain—previously known as Anyswap—is a decentralized cross-chain protocol that facilitates the exchange of different cryptocurrencies across multiple blockchain networks. By leveraging smart contracts and decentralized liquidity pools, Multichain l

Tether is the company behind the USDT stablecoin. Image: Shutterstock

Tether Market Cap Edges Toward All-Time High as Minting on Tron Surges

Tether’s market capitalization has hit $82.9 billion, edging towards its all-time high of $83.2 billion attained in May 2022, per CoinGecko data. However, Kaiko analysts have discovered that Tether’s supply has risen without a corresponding rise in trading volumes. They argued that Tether is primarily used for trading on centralized exchanges, commanding 50% of the market compared to other stablecoin pairs. On decentralized exchanges, USDT only boasts around 20% market share. The recent rise in

Q1 of 2023 saw a dramatic drop in the amount stolen via crypto hacks. Image: Shutterstock.

Tornado Cash Sanctions Key to Drop in Crypto Hacks Last Quarter: TRM Labs

It’s been a bearish quarter for crypto hackers, a new report shows. Blockchain intelligence firm TRM Labs revealed that the industry saw a dramatic drop in the number of hacks in the first quarter of 2023 due to recovery efforts and sanctions placed on the Ethereum mixer Tornado Cash. The report states that hackers stole approximately $400 million from crypto projects across 40 attacks, representing a 70% decrease in money stolen compared to the same period in 2022. Meet the Sleuthing Firm Helpi

Tokenized Securities on Ethereum, Polygon, Gnosis Hit $225M Market Cap

The tokenization trend is gaining momentum. A Dune dashboard shows that the niche now boasts a market capitalization of more than $220 million across the six projects measured. Tokenization refers to issuing financial securities, like stocks and bonds, on the blockchain. Firms like Matrixport, Backed Finance, Ondo, and Franklin Templeton have all created ERC-20 tokens, representing government bonds or exchange-traded funds (ETFs)stock. Last month, for example, Franklin Templeton tapped Polygon

Atlendis is an uncollateralized lending platform. Image: Atlendis.

Polygon-based Crypto Lender Atlendis Taps Fintech Banxa in New V2 Roll Out

Atlendis, a Polygon-based uncollateralized lending platform, it’s launching its latest iteration, adding a host of new features and key crypto on-ramp along the way. The protocol offers credit lines for institutional borrowers, and users can act as pooled lenders for such borrowers, earning interest payments and additional DeFi rewards. Crucially, Atlantis addresses one of the key weaknesses in the crypto space: Uncollateralized lending. Ethereum DeFi Project Teller Facilitates First Uncollatera

Liquid staking has become a popular alternative to staking directly to Ethereum. Image: Shutterstock.

Ethereum Staking Tokens Lido, Rocket Pool Soar Double Digits on the Week

LSD tokens are heading higher. Lido Finance (LDO) and Rocket Pool (RPL) led weekly market gains with 22.9% and 12.8% price surges, respectively, even amid a widely bearish move from the broader crypto market. Ethereum's price lost 1.7% in the last seven days, according to CoinGecko data. Liquid staking refers to the process of depositing ETH into a protocol that then deposits those assets to the Ethereum mainnet. Unlike depositing directly to mainnet, which requires a minimum deposit of 32 ETH,

Binance is one of the largest crypto exchanges in the world. Image: Shutterstock

Bitcoin Liquidity on Binance Has More Than Halved Since February: Kaiko

Binance trading volumes and liquidity have been steadily declining in the first quarter of 2023 amid the spate of U.S. banking failures and after ending its zero-fee promotion. The result? It’s led to even more chop for the price of Bitcoin, Kaiko analyst Dessislava Aubert told Decrypt. Aubert said that "Overall, Bitcoin liquidity on Binance has more than halved relative to the start of February from around $45 million to $16 million in early May." The primary reason for the decline in liquidit

Bitcoin Hits Two-Month Low Amid Dollar Strength, Cooling Ordinals Activity

Bitcoin dropped to a two-month low of $26,188 early this morning amid rising dollar strength and a cooldown in the Ordinals hype. The dollar index (DXY), which values the dollar against other global reserve currencies, recorded a strong uptick on Thursday, inching toward monthly highs. Bitcoin, which usually has an inverse relationship with the dollar, started showing weakness after the dollar’s rise, dropping below $27,000. Its price lost 4% in the last 24 hours, taking down $50.4 million in fu

Bitcoin profits are disappearing. Image: Shutterstock

Bitcoin Developer Calls to Block Ordinals, BRC-20 Tokens From Network

The meme coin and NFT trading phenomena on Bitcoin caused by Ordinals have led to a massive spike in transaction fees and blockchain congestion. Now, at least one developer has offered a solution. Luke Dashjr, a leading Bitcoin code contributor on Github, emailed other Bitcoin developers and miners asking them to implement "spam filtration" as a part of Taproot transactions to block Ordinals and BRC-20 tokens. “Action should have been taken months ago,” he wrote. “Spam filtration has been a stan

Michael Saylor, founder and chairman of MicroStrategy. Image: Swan Bitcoin/YouTube

Michael Saylor: Bitcoin Ordinals Are a ‘Catalyst’ for Adoption

Bitcoin bull and Microstrategy co-founder Michael Saylor said the latest Ordinals craze has been a catalyst for Bitcoin adoption “Every time someone builds an application that’s cool on Bitcoin, like all the Ordinals and inscriptions and whatever that are driving up transaction fees, its a catalyst,” said Saylor on the PBD Podcast. He roped in bank failures, hyperinflation, regulators calling the asset a commodity, and whenever “a company like Microstrategy buys another $100 million worth of Bit

Paxful is a peer-to-peer Bitcoin marketplace. Image: Shutterstock.

P2P Bitcoin Marketplace Paxful Reopens After Abrupt Closure

Paxful, the peer-to-peer Bitcoin marketplace, is back online after a month-long hiatus. The platform was shut down in April allegedly due to a lawsuit filed by one of the co-founders, Artur Schaback, against the then-presiding CEO and another co-founder Ray Youssef in January 2023. Youssef told Decrypt that “nasty” lawyers from Schaback drove key officials from the firm, crippling the workforce to a limit where it couldn’t function. On April 10, a judge on Delaware Chancery Court appointed a le

First Quarter NFT Volumes Outpace Q4 Thanks to Blur Token Airdrop

NFT trading volumes on Ethereum surged in Q1 2023 compared to the previous quarter, thanks in part to the airdrop farming frenzy for Blur’s native token. Blur is an NFT marketplace and aggregator that launched in October 2022. The project scheduled an airdrop of the platform’s native token, BLUR, on February 14, 2023, which brought significant traction from airdrop hunters in the first quarter. Data shared with Decrypt by crypto analytics firm Nansen shows that NFT trading volume more than doubl

Bear cycles in crypto are common and difficult to navigate for many investors. Image: Shutterstock.

SUI, PEPE Lead Market Losses, Down Double Digits Overnight

The popular meme coin rally fueling the rise of Pepecoin (PEPE) appears to have finally begun to slow. Per CoinGecko, PEPE has fallen by nearly 11% this morning. Still, over the week, the meme coin has risen a whopping 215%. Launched mid-April, the frog-inspired token quickly gathered steam, entering the top 100 cryptocurrencies by market cap last week. Today, PEPE is the 52nd-largest cryptocurrency and has a market capitalization of $965 million at press time. The rally was helped along after B

PEPE Meme Coin Hysteria Pushes Ethereum Gas Fees to 1-Year High

Ethereum’s gas fees have surged above a one-year high as the demand for trading the PEPE meme coin continues to soar. The average cost of a single transaction on Ethereum jumped above $15.82 on May 4. While Ethereum’s mean transaction fees have reached much higher levels of between $50 to $70 in 2021, things have been quiet since the market crashed in May 2022. Daily median gas price. Source: Etherscan. It’s likely that excitement around meme coins, specifically the newly-launched PEPE, is respo

Curve Finance is a popular decentralized exchange. Image: Shutterstock.

DeFi Powerhouse Curve Finance Deploys Decentralized Stablecoin on Ethereum

Announced last Summer, Curve Finance’s highly-anticipated stablecoin is now live on Ethereum. “As many figured—deployment of crvUSD smart contracts has happened!” tweeted the Curve Finance team. “This is not finalized yet because UI also needs to be deployed. Stay tuned!” Launched during the DeFi summer of 2020, Curve Finance is a stablecoin-centric decentralized exchange (DEX) that facilitates cheap swaps between stablecoins and other fixed-priced assets such as derivatives of Ethereum. It’s th

Speedy Sui Blockchain Officially Launches on Mainnet

The Sui mainnet went live today at 7:30 am EST, 30 minutes before its scheduled launch, according to an update in the project’s Discord. The Sui blockchain is a Move-based, layer-1 blockchain platform developed by former Meta (formerly Facebook) engineers who worked on the now-defunct Novi project. Mysten Labs, the development team behind the blockchain, raised a $300 million investment in a Series B round in September 2022. According to the testnet’s performance, the blockchain can reportedly a

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