Cryptocurrency

Arbitrum, a layer-2 scaling solution for Ethereum, announced the airdrop of its ARB governance token on March 16, with eligible receivers expected to get the token by March 23. The hype around its airdrop has now helped another layer-2 solution, zkSync, to see significant week-over-week growth. ZkSync is another layer-2 scaling solution for Ethereum, supporting

Bitcoin (BTC) is on track to close the week with gains of more than 23%. The banking crisis in the United States and Europe seems to have boosted buying in Bitcoin, indicating that the leading cryptocurrency is behaving as a safe haven asset in the near term. All eyes are on the Federal Reserve’s meeting

Top Stories This Week Sam Bankman-Fried petitions court to prioritize reimbursing his legal fees Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) is seeking to use FTX’s corporate insurance policies to cover his legal expenses, according to a court filing on March 15. As per the filing, the policies provide “priority of payment” to insured individuals such as Bankman-Fried. The

The total crypto market capitalization increased by 26% in seven days, reaching $1.16 trillion on March 17. Bitcoin (BTC) was the biggest winner among the top 20 coins, up 31.5%, though some altcoins gained 50% or more during the period. The surge in cryptocurrency prices occurred as the United States Federal Reserve was forced to

After a recovery on March 16, the United States equities markets are again down on March 17. Investors remain concerned about the vulnerability of banks in the U.S. and Europe. A silver lining for cryptocurrency investors is that Bitcoin (BTC) has remained decoupled from the equities markets and has risen to its highest level since

Stablecoin issuer Circle says it has cleared “substantially all” of the redemption and minting requests for its stablecoin, USD Coin (USDC). In a March 15 operational update, Circle said between the morning of March 13 to the close of banking business in the United States on March 15, it had redeemed $3.8 billion USDC and

On this episode of Decentralize with Cointelegraph, United States policy reporter Turner Wright and opinion editor Rudy Takala speak to listeners about their experiences at the ETHDenver conference from Feb. 24 to March 5. Wright arrived in time to interview industry experts, check out a “hacker house” and watch developers go through BUIDLWeek. Takala talks

Wash trading on nonfungible token (NFT) marketplaces is back in the spotlight after critics claimed the fast-growing NFT marketplace Blur has incentivized the practice with its trading rewards scheme. 10% of Blur’s total token supply was distributed to users based on their trading activity in its second token reward scheme from Feb. 14. The platform

The depegging of USD Coin (USDC) and Dai (DAI) from the United States dollar prompted a frenzy of loan repayments over the weekend, allowing debtors to save a total of more than $100 million on their loans. Following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank on March 10, the USDC price dropped to lows of $0.87 on March

The death spiral of the Terra ecosystem served as a catalyst to the 2022 bear market — causing losses in the billions, damaging investor sentiment and intensifying the regulatory spotlight over cryptocurrencies. However, the recent depegging of Circle’s USD Coin (USDC) led Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao to believe that traditional banks are a risk to

Top Stories This Week Silicon Valley Bank shut down by California regulator, holding over $5 billion for prominent crypto VCs Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) was shut down by California’s financial watchdog on March 10 after announcing a significant sale of assets and stocks aimed at raising additional capital. The California watchdog appointed the Federal Deposit

The Cosmos community has approved a vote to add “replicated security (RS)” to its chain, with 99.99% of votes in favor of the motion. The much-awaited upgrade is set to go live on March 15, 2023, with the v9-Lamba upgrade.  RS is the first version of Cosmos’s Interchain Security (ICS) feature, allowing blockchains in the

Dogecoin (DOGE) pared some losses versus Bitcoin (BTC) on March 10, a day after the DOGE/BTC pair fell to its lowest level since October 2022. Can DOGE price see an extended rebound ahead?  On the daily chart, the DOGE/BTC pair reached 331 sats, up 4.75% compared to the previous day’s low of 316 sats. The

Ether (ETH) price is down on Dec. 16 and the pre-FOMC rally to $1,350 was obliterated after Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell issued hawkish statements following a 0.50% hike in interest rates. Ether price was dealt another blow when Silvergate Capital Corporation decided to voluntarily liquidate Silvergate Bank. Silvergate Bank was one of the major

Artist: Terrell Jones, MichiganDate minted first NFT: March 28, 2021Which blockchains? Ethereum, Tezos Influenced by classic gangster films, Terrell Jones has a distinctive style that captures imagination and nostalgia. He is about to auction a second piece at Sotheby’s and has a patented “soft-shell taco method” to garner the attention of notable collectors.  Who is

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has gone on a shitcoin selling spree, exchanging nearly $700,000 worth of tokens previously airdropped to him for Ether (ETH). According to Etherscan, a wallet belonging to Buterin on March 7 offloaded 500 trillion SHIKOKU (SHIK) for 380.3 ETH ($595,448), nearly 10 billion Cult DAO (CULT) for 58.1 ETH ($91,021), and

Bybit will launch a new debit card allowing users to make payments and withdraw cash using cryptocurrency holdings. The Bybit card will operate on the Mastercard network, and will allow fiat-based transactions by debiting cryptocurrency balances when used to pay for goods and services. The service begins with the launch of a free virtual card

Digital asset investment firms poured $2.7 billion into decentralized finance projects in 2022, up 190% from 2021, while investments into centralized finance projects went the other way — falling 73% to $4.3 billion over the same timeframe. The staggering rise in DeFi funding was despite overall crypto funding figures falling from $31.92 billion in 2021

The United States equities markets made a strong recovery this week but Bitcoin (BTC) failed to follow suit. This means that cryptocurrency investors stayed away and could be worried by the ongoing problems at Silvergate bank. These fears could be what is behind the total crypto market capitalization dropping to nearly $1 trillion. The behavior

Bitcoin (BTC) is leading the cryptocurrency markets lower, and the matter is being exacerbated by Silvergate Banks’ ongoing issues. This week, the cryptocurrency-focused bank said it needed additional time to file its annual 10-K report and warned that it might not make it another 12 months. Reacting to this news, several cryptocurrency companies announced they would

ConsenSys has announced the upcoming release of its zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine (zkEVM) rollup to a public testnet on March 28, allowing for stress testing of the layer-2 scaling technology. ConsenSys’ research and development team has been working on its zkEVM rollup over the past four years. The zkEVM is touted to offer fast finality,