Blockchain Financial News

2021 was a breakout year for the cryptocurrency sector and this year is expected to see an extension of the “mass adoption” trend.

On the first anniversary of the launch of Stacks blockchain (STX), which seeks to make Bitcoin (BTC) programmable, the network achieved over 350 million monthly API requests, 40,000 Hiro (development tool for Stacks to build applications on Bitcoin) wallet downloads, and 2,500 Clarity smart contracts. According to a report by Electric Capital, a venture capital firm focused on cryptocurrencies and fintech, these statistics make Stacks the largest project on Bitcoin.

A bit Twitter drama ensued on Thursday, continuing well into Friday afternoon, when developers behind popular meme token Shiba Inu (SHIB) issued a statement alleging that CoinMarketCap had listed three fake SHIB contract addresses belonging to the Binance Smart Chain (BNB), Solana (SOL), and Terra Luna (LUNA) blockchains. The staff at Shiba Inu claimed that the addresses were unsafe and that CoinMarketCap had refused to correct the alleged mistake. At the time of publication, the contract addresses are still viewable on CoinMarketCap.

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January 2022 continues to be rough for crypto investors as current markets see turbulent fluctuations in the price of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Some have attributed the slump to recent federal intentions to introduce new rate hikes, and the political turmoil in Kazakhstan which significantly lowered the hash rate of bitcoin. On Jan. 14, the price of Bitcoin dipped below $42,000 as traders continued to hold out hope for bullish signals. 

The ICON Foundation announced plans to launch an interoperability incentive program for 200 million ICX, or approximately $200 million at the time of publication. The foundation supports the development of the ICON network, South Korea’s largest public aggregator chain. The foundation said that it hopes this program will incentivize the ICON community and its partner networks to adopt ICON’s blockchain transfer protocol, or BTP.

Major crypto derivatives exchange FTX has launched a USD 2bn venture fund, FTX Ventures.

In the world of traditional finance, market players can swap future interest rate payments with one another. This is often done as a way to hedge against losses, manage credit risk, or speculate on increasing or decreasing interest rates based on future market conditions. These swaps may occur as fixed-to-floating, floating-to-fixed or floating-to-floating swaps, each of which is a type of derivative contract. When a swap occurs, the parties do not take ownership of the counterparty’s debt. Instead, under the derivative contract, the interest rates are swapped while the loan's value (notional principal) remains with the original party. 

Fees.wtf is a simple service that shows Ether (ETH) users their lifetime spending amount on Ethereum blockchain transactions by measuring gas. You plug in your wallet address on its website, and it tells you how much gas you spent. 

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Torus Kling Blockchain IFSC, an equal joint venture between financial management firm Kling Trading India and Cosmea Financial Holdings, is all set to launch Asia's first cryptocurrency exchange-traded fund (ETF), which will potentially go live by March 2022 in GIFT (Gujarat International Finance Tech) city.

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Proof-of-stake blockchain NEAR Protocol has raised $150 million in seed investments to accelerate the adoption of Web3 technologies. The team announced that the fund would be used to develop regional hubs and raise awareness for blockchain and decentralized tech.

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Tether has added three more Ethereum addresses, holding more $150 million worth of the USDT stablecoin between them, to its blacklist.

Reuters reported late last year that the bank intended to hire 100 staff to kickstart its digital assets strategy.The head of TTS digital assets will be a member of the TTS partnership and innovation team and among other things will be charged with working with venture-backed startups in blockchain and digital assets in identifying their technical and commercial challenges and mapping them to Citi technology and products"This individual will lead global efforts in formulating a TTS digital assets strategy, building out cross-TTS/TTS digital asset products and capabilities, implementing a governance structure, and engaging with key internal and external stakeholders including partners, clients and regulators," states the job posting. The chosen candidate "will work closely with the in-business innovation and business development leads as well as product heads to identify, develop and scale capabilities, knowledge and products across first line (Product & Tech), and second line with an aim to create readiness for TTS with respect to digital assets.

On Thursday, the Iota Foundation, which oversees developments in the namesake Internet-of-Things transactions blockchain (IOTA), announced that it had been selected as one of five contractors by the European Commission to develop blockchain and distributed ledger technology in the region. According to the announcement, phase 2A aims to advance European Blockchain Services Infrastructure, or EBSI, in five areas:

There are many advantages to automating one's trading tactics instead of pointing and clicking with a mouse. For starters, bots can execute trading decisions free of emotion, are lighting fast, and have far fewer margins of error. According to CNBC estimates, crypto trading bots account for 70% to 80% of the overall trading volume.

Last week, Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum (ETH)'s co-founder, voiced his disapproval regarding the emergence of cross-chain bridges, citing security vulnerabilities due to their interdependency. In the days that followed however, developers working on cross-chain technologies largely dismissed his skepticism. In a statement to Cointelegraph, Kadan Stadelmann, chief technology officer of atomic swap blockchain Komodo, responded to Vitalik's critique:

In the last year, more people than ever before have taken to cryptocurrencies as a medium for investment. It is estimated that this amount is more than 100 million people, including a growing number of Gen X-ers and baby boomers, two groups that were previously skeptical of its place. As a result, trading volumes have reached new all-time highs with volumes of an estimated $3.8 trillion.

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