TronWeekly

Crypto World News

You are here: Home / Archives for Lipika Deka

Lipika Deka

Solana Price Spikes As Brave Announces dApp Support

by

Solana’s price witnessed a spike as the layer 1 blockchain forged a new alliance with the open-source web browser Brave.

Announcing the same, Brave software revealed that it has incorporated Solana dApp support into its browser to allow users to connect to top Solana applications like Magic Eden, Orca, Jupiter Exchange, and others for DeFi and NFT-related transactions.

SOL’s value increased by more than 6% in less than 24 hours as a result of the development. The 11th-ranked cryptocurrency, which was trading at $23.7 at the time this article was written, appeared to be beginning a new price rebound.

Solana’s ties with the privacy-focused browser, go back to late 2021 when the duo announced a joint collaboration to enhance wallet features across all versions of the browser for a better user experience.

The integration aimed to add support to Brave’s then 42 million active users and 1.3 million creators, making it the default browser to the layer 1 blockchain for all cross-chain activities and decentralized applications [DApps] support.

That said, the most recent integration was made possible on both the browser’s mobile and online versions. Users can earn small rewards in the form of a Basic Attention Token [BAT], and in its “all-encompassing and flexible” platform.

Most significantly, given it reaches the browser’s approximately 62 million active users worldwide, the relationship is considered a glimmer of hope for the once-hyped Ethereum killers.

Solana Looks To Regain Its Losses

Additionally, this occurs as the L-1 scaling platform has a strong start to 2023 after spending most of 2022 in decline as a result of the crypto winter. Additionally, SOL’s exposure to FTX contributed to its stock falling sharply in the wake of the FTX scandal in November 2022.

SOL, which is making its way back to the top, has benefited from the recovery in the cryptocurrency market as well. Despite being below its all-time high [ATH] value, it has improved in 2023.

A number of cutting-edge projects that Solana has started have piqued the curiosity of the cryptocurrency community.

For instance, the Solana Mobile stack and Saga phones will be unveiled, SolanaMobile said on Twitter. The goal of this mobile gadget is to give people quick access to the blockchain. They promised their customers that it would be available in early 2023.

Cardano’s Whale Activity Rises; ADA primed For Another Rally?

by

Cardano has registered a notable spike in whale activity in 2023 as large-scale transactions to the tune of $100k have reached last year’s May levels.

Not only that, but since the beginning of 2023, 36 new whale addresses ranging between 1 million- 100 million worth of ADA have flocked into the Cardano ecosystem.

As noted by blockchain analytical platform Santiment, historical trends revealed that the last time there were this many $100k+ ADA transactions was in May, & its price jumped over 36% from the beginning of that week until its local top in early June.

image 28
Cardano's Whale Activity Rises; ADA primed For Another Rally? 2

An increase in whale numbers and large transactions is certainly a positive sign for the price of ADA. This is because demand for the coin rises as more whales enter the market, thus driving up its value.

Additionally, the large transactions indicate that whales are confident in the future of the coin and are willing to make big investments in it.

This bullishness is likely to spread among other investors, which will raise the price even more.

ADA, at the time of writing this article, is up by 3% in the last 24 hours at $0.39. In recent times the token has put up a brave front against its 2022 bottom at $0.24.

Investors are particularly optimistic as the eighth largest crypto asset by market cap began 2023 on a spectacular note with prices up by 60%.

Cardano might also be well-positioned to profit from the recent milestone achieved by its newest stablecoin, DJED.

Cardano Ecosystem Is Booming

Since the DJED token was launched in January, the protocol confirmed recently that a total of 30 million ADA coins have been locked up in its smart contracts.

A significant effect of the locked ADA on DJED smart contracts, according to community members, might boost Cardano. This conclusion is expressed in the limited amount of ADA in circulation, a trend that, if it persisted, would generally increase the coin’s value.

According to the law of supply and demand, a decrease in the supply of ADA may result in an imbalanced demand that would ultimately lead to a future price rise.

Apart from that, Cardano’s developing firm IOHK rolled out its native Ethereum-compatible sidechain on the public net, TronWeekly reported.

The firm hoped that in the near future, “a family of Cardano sidechains and partner chains will emerge,” paving the door for “wide adoption” of the Cardano ecosystem.

Cardano’s IOHK Released Its First Ethereum Sidechain

by

Cardano developing firm IOHK has launched its first Ethereum-compatible sidechain on the public net. Although this isn’t the first time, as Milkomeda’s Cardano sidechain, which is EVM-compatible, has been successfully running on the main network for some time now.

However, the recently released Ethereum-compatible sidechain was the first explicitly created by Input Output.

A sidechain is a separate blockchain that operates next to the main network, sometimes known as the parent blockchain. Sidechains frequently aim to provide scalability to the mainnet, which frequently places a premium on security and decentralization.

In the series of tweets, Input Output HK invited community members and stake pool operators on Cardano to link their wallets, test the network and interact with smart contracts and decentralized applications.

This proof of concept testnet is ephemeral and will be regularly respun during its pilot phase. Ultimately, it is intended to be a community resource and we encourage developers and SPOs to get involved and collaborate.

The information comes after a previous release by the Cardano ecosystem team, which disclosed the introduction of a software toolkit designed to enable developers to deploy unique sidechains on Cardano with the goal of enhancing the ecosystem.

The announcement also included the official technical documentation for the sidechain toolkit.

It was reported earlier that IOG developers had already utilized the toolkit to construct an Ethereum Virtual Machine [EVM]-compatible sidechain public testnet as a “proof-of-concept.”

The team was waiting for the audit to be finished, and once it is, anyone can run decentralized applications, make smart contracts, and transfer tokens between testing chains.

The toolkit will also provide the sidechains creators the ability to choose their own consensus mechanism in addition to other application-specific features.

“Cardano Sidechains Will Bolster Mass Adoption”

IOG hopes that in the near future, “a family of Cardano sidechains and partner chains will emerge,” paving the door for “wide adoption” of the Cardano ecosystem.

As reported by TronWeekly, deposits, and withdrawals on ADA are to be temporarily suspended by Binance for the upcoming Valentine’s Day update of the Cardano network, called SECP.

In accordance with the blog post, the exchange will reopen deposits and withdrawals for ADA once the upgraded network is stable.

The scheduled SECP update will initially take place on the test networks from Feb. 11, before going live on the mainnet.

XRP Lawyer Files Amicus Brief To Support Ripple’s Other Lawsuit

by

Attorney and XRP representative John E Deaton has filed an amicus brief to support Blockchain firm Ripple in a different lawsuit, as per an update shared by another prominent member and lawyer James K Filan

In an exciting turn of events, John Deaton’s entry in Ripple’s California case is slated to keep the limelight on the blockchain firm even more.

For context, a section of XRP investors has filed a class action suit against Ripple and its CEO, Brad Garlinghouse. in 2018.

The plaintiffs, in the lawsuit, claimed that the company offered XRP as an unregistered security and demanded compensation for the losses they sustained. They are also asking the court to declare the token as a security.

Moreover, there are three lawsuits in the case of lead plaintiff Bradley Sostack as well, including ones from Zakinov, Oconer, and Greenwald. These lawsuits have since been combined into one.

According to Filan, the most recent submission by Deaton is filed on behalf of all 75,890 XRP holders in the SEC lawsuit who disagree with the plaintiff’s claims.

Furthermore, Deaton will also argue that the majority of investors believe that the token should be regulated rather than classified as a security, contrary to the move of the small number of XRP holders.

“John Deaton will argue that those small number of plaintiffs in Zakinov cannot fairly represent so many who disagree with them, including XRP Holders in places where the asset is not even considered a security,” Filan stated. 

Ripple’s Class Action And The SEC Lawsuit Would Give A Clarity On XRP’s Classification

It should be noted that the proposed class action complaint covers all token sales, including secondary sales and sales done worldwide in nations where XRP has already been found not to be a security.

That said, fintech powerhouse Ripple is also in the final leg of its long-running legal fight with the US regulator the Securities Exchange Commission over the sale of XRP tokens.

Whatever may be the outcome, the case, alongside the SEC lawsuit, is expected to give a clear direction on the classification of the token.

Deaton who is an outspoken supporter of XRP has recently commented on the Ripple and SEC lawsuit.

In it, he stated that he has no doubt about the court ruling in favor of Ripple. “I have zero doubt that the current makeup of the U.S. Supreme Court will rule in favor of Ripple if it goes that far.”

Gemini & Genesis Embarks On A $100M Agreement

by

Gemini exchange agrees to commit up to $100 million in cash for its customers as part of a restructuring deal and recovery plan with the now-bankrupt Genesis Global Capital and parent firm Digital Currency Group.

In a court hearing held on 6th Feb., Gemini announced the agreement in principle with Genesis DCG and other creditors on a plan that provides a path for Earn users to recover their assets.

As part of this initiative, the Winklevoss twins-led trading firm, will donate up to an additional $100 million to Earn users.

It needs to be recalled that the trading firms were involved in a bitter public spat over $900 million in customer assets where both sides accused each other of perpetuating fraudulent activity, misleading accounting, and misguided public statements.

The contentious relationship had its origin way back in Dec 2020 when the two firms forged a deal to give the latter’s customers the option of lending their cryptocurrency to Genesis.

As part of the agreement, Genesis would agree to pay interest on the loans being issued.

Then in February 2021, both firms introduced the Gemini Earn program to retail investors, who then “tendered their crypto to Genesis.”

The agreement also entailed that Gemini would act as the facilitator and earn a 4.29% agent fee, and Genesis would then “exercise discretion in how to use investors’ crypto assets to generate revenue and pay interest to the latter’s Earn investors.”

Gemini Customers Filed Class Action Suits

For months, Gemini customers loaned money to Genesis for placement across various crypto trading desks. Following the FTX crash, Genesis filed for bankruptcy and was forced to temporarily shutter its operations, as well.

Withdrawals on Earn have been temporarily suspended for almost three months. Naturally, the 340k retail customers of Gemini are upset, and some of them have joined hands to file class actions against the two firms.

Even the SEC has filed a lawsuit against the two firms alleging the sale of unregistered securities, TronWeekly reported the other day.

With the latest deal hoping to bring relief for the investors, Gemini released the following statement:

This plan is a critical step forward toward a substantial recovery of assets for all Genesis creditors. It demonstrates Gemini’s continued commitment to helping Earn users achieve a full recovery.

The broader details of the restructuring plan were announced in Manhattan bankruptcy court.

Ethereum-Focused Scaling Firm Teams Up With Chainlink

by

Ethereum-focused scaling platform StarkWare has joined hands with leading blockchain oracle network Chainlink to onboard the latter’s price feeds into the StarkNet ecosystem.

Chainlink is a decentralized oracle network that enables smart contracts to securely interact with real-world data and events, making it possible for them to be triggered by data from external sources.

Through the partnership, StarkWare will be able to participate in Chainlink’s Scale program. In addition, certain Chainlink oracle node operation expenses will be covered by StarkNet tokens, providing Starket developers with access to Chainlink oracle services and data feeds.

Last year, StarkWare secured an $8 billion valuation and announced plans to open source its core cryptographic software tool.

The Israel-based tech firm oversees the scalability issues of Ethereum, which cause slow throughput and high gas or transaction fees.

The company has two platforms: the StarkEx scaling engine and StarkNet, which empowers developers to build decentralized applications [dapps]. In a meeting, the ETH-based scaling firm revealed its plans to open-source the STARK Prover technology.

The announcement was made during the two-day StarkWare Sessions 2023 event in Tel Aviv, Israel. The company said the plan to open source will take time to implement, but StarkWare is committed to making the entire tech stack transparent for developers.

StarkWare co-founder and President Eli Ben-Sasson said in a statement at the summit.

Every step we take to provide infrastructure and to make it accessible and decentralized is a catalyst for devs to build. And the quicker and more broadly they build, the faster we’ll see mass onboarding to solutions that truly enable people to manage their own funds. So there’s a direct line between open-sourcing key tech and popularizing self-custody.

As reported by TronWeekly, Ethereum for the first time since Sept. 12, climbed above $1700 briefly. The second biggest crypto by market cap began 2023 on an impressive note, with a 40% rise to date.

Ethereum Rally Might Stall; Here’s Why

Following the FTX saga and the prolonged bear market of 2022, the leading altcoin has been able to recoup the losses suffered during the events in just a span of 30 days.

Also, in February, ETH experienced the highest percentage of profitable transactions in the previous two years.

Investors are unsure whether the price rally would continue its momentum even as profit-taking has increased, Santiment noted.

On the brighter side of things, an Ethereum developer announced the launch of “Zhejiang” public testnet on February 1 which provides a test environment to run withdrawals of staked Ether.

XRP’s Value Might Touch Million In 7 Years, Expert Predicts

by

In a stunning claim, Reaper CEO Patrick L. Riley predicted that XRP might be worth a million dollars by 2030. The tweet made reference to Ark’s Cathie Wood’s Bitcoin price prediction in answer to a user’s query about what would be worth $1 million in 2030.

Riley who heads the Austin Texas-based Blockchain Financial firm has caught everyone’s attention with the bold claim. Typically, XRP’s price estimation has reached the $1,000 mark, sometimes five digits, or even as high as $600k.

Interestingly Reaper Financial joined the lawsuit by filing an amicus brief in support of Ripple.

That said, the $1 million forecast might look far-fetched as it is roughly a 4,200% increase from Bitcoin’s current level of $22,901.

This meant that XRP would have to rally nearly 400 million percent from its current price of $0.39 to attain the $1 million mark.

Currently, Ripple is embroiled in a legal battle with the SEC, for the alleged sale of $1.3 billion worth of XRP as an unregistered security offering.

The outcome, many believe would provide much-needed clarity to the crypto industry and in return impact the token’s price.

In a recent tweet, Ripple CTO David Schwartz spoke out about the XRP buyback proposal that was first raised in 2021 and has now resurfaced again but this time with a newer version.

Jimmy Vallee, CEO of Valhil Capital, brought up the contentious concept once more, sparking a new round of frenzied discussion on Twitter.

XRP Buyback Proposal Gets A Thumbs Down Fron Ripple CTO

The theory predicts that XRP will overtake USD as the world’s reserve currency when global government debt soars, all banks migrate to ISO 20022, and the token would be used for international financial transactions.

Governments all across the world would therefore be required to purchase huge quantities of XRP.

Schwartz, though, gives the XRP buyback idea a negative review. On the surface, it appears to be fraud, according to Schwartz. The Ripple CTO admitted he hadn’t given the hypothesis much thought, but he compared it to the scams that occurred in 2012 and 2022.

“I haven’t looked at it very closely. But what I have seen looks an awful lot like a scam to me. If we’ve learned anything from 2012 and 2022 it’s that anyone promising high returns with low risk is almost certainly going to rob you,” Schwartz said.

Mini Bitcoin Addresses Hit Highest Levels In 2023

by

Small Bitcoin addresses that hold 0.1 BTC or less have risen rapidly since the FTX blowout. As many as nearly 620k new addresses of this cohort have made their record-breaking appearance in less than 3 months, Santiment noted.

As BTC/USD crossed the $20,000 mark again on January 13, the subsequent growth in the number of wallets meant that FOMO has returned.

According to the data platform, these addresses with 0.1 BTC or fewer grew slowly in 2022, but 2023 is showing a return of trader optimism.

image 24
Mini Bitcoin Addresses Hit Highest Levels In 2023 4

On the other hand, BTC prices have fallen back to nearly 6% in less than a week and are back below $23k, stalling the much-awaited rally.

Experts believe that the king coin is entering the second week of February in another bearish mood as multi-month highs fail to hold.

The coin’s 4% decline over the previous seven days reduced its year-to-date gain to 39% and was the largest weekly decline since November.

Rising US dollars amid bad trade in Europe or the US and plummeting Asian markets could be another obstacle for Bitcoin bulls to face.

To top it off, recent US jobs data disappointed investors’ hopes that this year’s policy tightening would soon come to a halt and possibly turn around, dovish wagers that had fueled a January rally across international markets.

That rally swept up large and small tokens alike — ranging from Bitcoin and Ether to Axie Infinity and Decentraland.

Bitcoin Could Face Retest Over US CPI Data

John Toro, head of trading at digital-asset exchange Independent Reserve, claims that the payrolls report increased Treasury yields, which have been a major influence in influencing demand for riskier products.

That being said, traders are now betting on some macroeconomic data that is slated to come out this week from the Federal Reserve.

Analysts like Michaël van de Poppe, founder, and CEO of trading firm Eight, believe that much depends on the outcome of Consumer Price Index [CPI] data for January, due Feb. 14.

The U.S. dollar might gain if the figures indicate that inflation is slowing more slowly than anticipated or even deviates from that downward trend, which would again play the spoiler for risk assets.

BTC traded at around $22,871 at the time of writing, down by over 2% in the daily index.

FTX Seeks Return Of Donation Funds By Feb 28

by

Now defunct crypto exchange FTX has sent out confidential messages to political figures and other recipients of contributions requesting to return such funds to the FTX Debtors by February 28, 2023.

The bankrupt firm also issued a press release warning against defaulters, stating that the FTX Debtors might take legal action to recover the returned payments, with interest starting on the day any action is started.

The latest development comes after FTX Debtors’ December 19, 2022 announcement of establishing arrangements for such recipients to return funds voluntarily by contacting [FTXrepay@ftx.us].

In addition to that, all such recipients even those who made payment or donation to a third party [including a charity] in the amount of any payment received from an FTX Contributor are too not exempted, the blog added.

The SBF-led exchange once valued at $32 billion, had to file for bankruptcy last year after the price of its exchange token FTT collapsed which triggered sparked a run on the platform.

It was later revealed that it did not have enough reserves of customer assets as it failed to honor withdrawals.

Founder Bankman-Fried was arrested and charged with eight counts of financial crimes, including securities fraud, money laundering, and campaign finance violations by federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York. 

Bankman-Fried is accused of misusing billions of dollars in client cash to fund activity at his trading firm Alameda Research, buy private real estate, and contribute to political campaigns. He has pled not guilty to the accusations, and his trial is scheduled for October.

FTX Ex-CEO Donated Roughly $40M In The 2022 Election Cycle

Creditors and lawmakers have tried to make sense of the crypto behemoth’s collapse. Since then, there has been pressure mounting on several members of the US Congress who received donations from the former CEO of FTX, or people connected to him.

According to sources, only five respondents had reportedly returned the money they received as of January 18, while a majority of 53 campaigns said they had again sent the money to non-profits.

Further, CBS News reported that the former billionaire donated close to $40 million during the 2022 election cycle. His recipients mostly comprised of Democratic candidates but have also admitted to making “dark” donations to Republican candidates as well.

The legal proceedings against Bankman-Fried are ongoing.

Binance To Halt Cardano Transactions Temporarily On Valentine’s Day

by

Deposits and withdrawals on Cardano [ADA] are to be temporarily suspended by Binance for the upcoming Valentine’s Day update of the Cardano network, called SECP.

In accordance with the blog post, ADA trading on the cryptocurrency exchange will not be impacted during the network upgrade and hard fork. The exchange will reopen deposits and withdrawals for ADA once the upgraded network is stable.

The scheduled SECP update will initially take place on the test networks from Feb. 11, before going live on the mainnet.

Its bigger rivals like Bitcoin and Ethereum utilize the ECDSA cryptographic systems. Whereas blockchain networks such as Polkadot use Schnorr signatures, which are alternatives to ECDSA.

The Cardano blockchain, on the other hand, relies on the Edwards-curve Digital Signature Algorithm [EdDSA] with the elliptic curve Curve25519 as its base curve [Ed25519].

To put it simply, EdDSA is touted to be much faster, more secure, and more compact, but not compatible with ECDSA and Schnorr.

The upcoming upgrade to Cardano is aimed to secure cross-chain DApps development and greater interoperability to the blockchain. This, in turn, will make it easy for Cardano developers to work with other blockchain networks.

In the latest announcement, Tim Harrison, VP at IOHK wrote:

Preparations have been underway for some time across the entire Cardano ecosystem. The core engineering teams at IOG and the Cardano Foundation, SPOs, DApp developers, and exchanges have performed intensive integration testing in the preview test environment since November 2022, with positive results. This technology is now close to being deployed on the Cardano mainnet.

Having said that, Cardano hogged the limelight for its recently launched DJED stablecoin. But things have not gone as planned as the token has already lost its peg to the $1 benchmark, raising concerns among investors.

Cardano’s DJED Depegging Raised Concern

Some in the crypto community have speculated that the stablecoin may have a serious problem as a result of the abrupt decline in price.

However, investors have tried to allay concerns by claiming that such price drops are nothing new and that the cryptocurrency market routinely suffers this kind of volatility.

According to experts, one reason for the drop in price could be a lack of liquidity, a common problem for new assets.

The DJED stablecoin uses a collateral method, meaning it is backed by an asset reserve. The goal of the collateral mechanism is to keep DJED’s price stable and fixed at $1. However, this mechanism needs some time to work properly, and the current price decline is a typical stage of the process.