Elvira Nabiullina, Governor of the Bank of Russia, stated that the current pilot test of the Russian digital ruble was “on track,” with several operations being tested, including opening wallets, and interactions with smart contracts. Nabiullina revealed that over 25,000 transactions were registered, and confirmed the pilot expansion later this year. Russian Digital Ruble Pilot […]
Bitcoin News
Ordinals Market Registers Record Sale: Bitcoin Budgie Changes Hands for Over $1.1 Million in BTC
Leonidas, the pseudonymous founder of Ord.io, an ordinals explorer, has reported one of the biggest sales of inscriptions, the so-called Bitcoin native non-fungible tokens (NFTs), to date. Leonidas stated that the second inscription on the Bitcoin blockchain had been sold for 24.48 BTC (over .1 million), predicting that more sales will beat this record in […]
Bitcoin News
Polkadot (DOT) Circulating Market Cap Rockets To $8.3 Billion, Registers Massive 111% Growth
Polkadot, the computing platform known for its interoperability and scalability, has shown remarkable growth in key metrics during the latter part of 2023, as outlined in a recent report by Messari.
Outpacing Crypto Market Growth
According to Messari’s findings, Polkadot’s circulating market cap experienced a remarkable 111% quarter-on-quarter (QoQ) growth, reaching an impressive .38 billion.
This growth outpaced the overall crypto market’s growth of 54% during the same period. Furthermore, Polkadot’s year-on-year (YoY) change reached 94%, solidifying its position among the top 15 crypto projects by market capitalization.
In terms of revenue, Polkadot witnessed a substantial surge of 2,880% QoQ, generating .8 million in Q4 2023. This surge was primarily attributed to the significant rise in extrinsic, driven by the introduction of Polkadot Inscriptions.
Messari suggests that even excluding the four-day spike from the Inscriptions, Polkadot’s revenue would have doubled from the previous quarter. It is worth noting that Polkadot’s revenue tends to be relatively lower compared to its competitors due to the structural design of its network.
Polkadot Witnesses Significant Increase In Active Addresses
Following the launch of OpenGov – the governance module and framework within the network – in June, the Polkadot Relay Chain experienced a surge in account activity, largely due to increased governance participation.
Because the Relay Chain is critical in facilitating governance processes, it experienced a spike in active addresses on October 24, when users claimed their locked DOT tokens from the first batch of parachain auctions held two years earlier.
Throughout Q4, the Polkadot Relay Chain averaged over 10,000 daily active addresses, representing a substantial 90% QoQ increase. Excluding the October 24th activity related to DOT token claiming, the average number of active addresses still saw a significant 70% rise in QoQ, reaching 9,000.
Additionally, Cross-Chain Message (XCM) transfers on the platform increased by 150% QoQ, reaching an all-time high of 133,000. The total number of active XCM channels nearly tripled in 2023, reaching 203 by the end of the year.
According to Electric Capital’s rankings, Polkadot has 800 full-time and 2,100 total developers, making it one of the largest crypto ecosystems in developer participation.
DOT Price Shows Mixed Performance
Despite notable growth in key metrics demonstrating the network’s expansion, the price of Polkadot’s native token, DOT, has not followed suit and has even experienced declines over longer time frames despite positive developments.
Currently, DOT is trading at .7420, representing a slight 0.3% price increase in the past twenty-four hours, coupled with a 9% year-to-date gain.
However, over the past fourteen and thirty days, the token has recorded a 6% and 22% price drop, highlighting the absence of bullish momentum and catalysts that could propel DOT to higher levels.
Although it reached a 19-month high of .5711 on December 26, the subsequent price drop has led DOT to a critical juncture, potentially erasing its gains over the past year.
If the current level and its nearest support at .3229 fail to halt further price declines, DOT could potentially drop to the .4830 level, which serves as the next major support in the token’s 1-day chart.
Conversely, if DOT surpasses its upper resistance at .0392, the next objective would be to break the short-term downtrend structure, facing the .5332 resistance and another resistance at .1631. This would pave the way for another consolidation phase at its 19-month high.
Featured image from Shutterstock, chart from TradingView.com
Argentina Registers First Bitcoin Settled Lease Agreement
Argentina has registered one of its first lease agreements denominated in bitcoin after the application of the emergency executive order issued by President Javier Milei, which opened the door for this kind of settlement. The agreement stipulates that the tenant must pay the 0 USDT worth of bitcoin to the property’s landlord each month.
Argentina Starts Implementing Bitcoin-Settled Lease Agreements
Argentina has reached a milestone in crypto adoption, registering one of the first contracts involving bitcoin payments. According to La Capital, a local Argentine news outlet, the first Bitcoin-settled lease agreement was recently signed in Rosario City.
The agreement stipulates that the tenant will pay the equivalent of 0 USDT in Bitcoin to the landlord each month, having selected Fiwind, a national cryptocurrency exchange, as the provider of the referential bitcoin price to execute these payments. The contract also determines that the tenant will execute these payments during the first five days of each month to an address provided by the landlord.
While there were records of real estate sales settled in bitcoin before, this is the first lease agreement of this kind, local sources state.
Diana Mondino, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Argentina, had clarified that as a result of the application of the first mega executive order issued by President Javier Milei, which eliminated the lease and rents law, these contracts could be settled in bitcoin, in other cryptos, and also in other assets.
The executive order that enables these agreements will be reviewed by the courts of the country, which have already suspended the effects of some segments awaiting the final decision on the legality of this document. Also, the emergency executive order can be suspended if both chambers of Congress reject it.
Nonetheless, the executive order allows tenants and landlords to legally sign this kind of bitcoin-denominated lease contract that evades having to transact in Argentine pesos, the embattled and devalued national fiat currency.
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Bitcoin Developer Luke Dashjr Registers Ordinal Inscriptions Workaround as a Vulnerability
Luke Dashjr, Bitcoin developer and CTO of Mummalin, has registered a method that allows Ordinal inscriptions to be saved on the Bitcoin blockchain as a code vulnerability. The vulnerability, CVE-2023-50428, states that “datacarrier size limits can be bypassed by obfuscating data as code,” as Ordinal inscriptions do to embed images and other kinds of data directly onto the BTC blockchain.
Luke Dashjr Registers Bitcoin Vulnerability CVE-2023-50428
Luke Dashjr, Bitcoin developer and CTO of Mummalin, the company behind the Ocean mining pool, has registered the method that allows Ordinal inscriptions to embed data directly on top of the Bitcoin blockchain as a vulnerability. The vulnerability, registered as CVE-2023-50428, describes how the Ordinals protocol allows this data to be obfuscated and embedded into the chain.
The description of the so-called vulnerability explains:
In Bitcoin Core through 26.0 and Bitcoin Knots before 25.1.knots20231115, datacarrier size limits can be bypassed by obfuscating data as code (e.g., with OP_FALSE OP_IF), as exploited in the wild by Inscriptions in 2022 and 2023.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) National Vulnerability Database (NVB), which hosts a copy of the Common Exploits and Vulnerabilities (CVE) list, gives this exploit a 5.3 score, identifying it as a “medium” threat.
Dashjr, who has already stated that Ordinal inscriptions are a bug and expects to get the issue fixed in the next release of the Bitcoin Core full node software, is facing enormous criticism from the Bitcoin community.
Other developers have conceptually rejected the fix for this “vulnerability,” already proposed as a patch for Bitcoin Core in September. Peter Todd, a Bitcoin Core developer who opposes this change, explained that:
It is very unlikely that miners will give up that source of revenue. Censoring those transactions would simply encourage the development of private mempools – harmful to small miners – while making fee estimation less reliable.
In the same way, Bitcoin contributor Sjors Provoost stated that the approach taken by Dashjr “does not create an incentive to use a slightly less harmful method to post ‘spam,’” encouraging programmers to find more innovative ideas to avoid the proposed filter.
Ocean, a Bitcoin mining pool, uses a fork of Bitcoin Core developed by Dashjr, called Knots, which has been criticized for censoring Samourai Wallet’s private transactions after applying this fix targeting Ordinal inscriptions.
What do you think about the Bitcoin CVE-2023-50428 vulnerability? Tell us in the comments section below.
Blackrock Registers Ishares Ethereum Trust With Delaware’s Division of Corporations
Blackrock may be taking steps toward obtaining approval from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for a spot ethereum exchange-traded fund (ETF) in the near future. This comes on the heels of the company’s application for an Ishares Ethereum Trust with the Delaware Division of Corporations on Thursday.
Speculation Rises on Blackrock’s Preparations for Spot Ether ETF Launch
As the world’s largest asset manager by assets under management, Blackrock has formally recorded its Ishares Ethereum Trust with Delaware’s Division of Corporations. The document, dated November 9, 2023, identifies the trust as statutory and acknowledges Blackrock Advisors as the filing party.
James Seyffart, a Bloomberg ETF analyst, called attention to the filing on the social platform X, verifying its authenticity. “Multiple people asking ‘is this real’ — yes it’s real,” Seyffart confirmed. “An entity with this name was indeed registered in Delaware. That’s all we can really confirm at this time. Those images are real and from the State of Delaware website.”
Market watchers speculate that Blackrock is positioning itself to introduce a spot ether ETF, subsequent to regulatory consent for its spot bitcoin ETF initiative. Blackrock’s submission for a spot bitcoin ETF was made on June 15, 2023, and the firm is currently awaiting the SEC’s decision.
In the meantime, ethereum’s (ETH) value has seen an uptick of over 5% in the last 24 hours, temporarily crossing the ,000 mark per unit. The surge was a lot more pronounced following the circulation of the Blackrock story across social media networks. However, only time will reveal Blackrock’s next move with the Ishares ETH trust.
What do you think about Blackrock’s registration in Delaware? Share your thoughts and opinions about this subject in the comments section below.
Worldcoin Unveils Enhanced State Bridge; Registers 2.35M Users as WLD Market Dynamics Shift
This week, the iris-scanning Worldcoin project introduced a state bridge into its framework. This feature enables users to create and link their own bridge with the global identity, World ID, and any blockchain that’s Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatible. Data further shows that Worldcoin has registered about 2.35 million users, with over 700,000 distinct wallets holding the WLD, Worldcoin’s native cryptocurrency.
Worldcoin’s State Bridge, Growth, and Supply Concentration
On October 11, 2023, Worldcoin developers made changes to the state bridges, incorporating a design focused on gas efficiency and broader compatibility. The announcement explained that the new structure allows the formation of bridges for any EVM-compatible chain, giving users the ability to set up and control their state bridge. The goal is to facilitate the integration of World ID with a user’s chosen blockchain and application.
Worldcoin views this adjustment as a means to support applications based on sybil-resistant, proof-of-personhood principles. Beyond the state bridges update, Worldcoin’s official records indicate 2.35 million users have registered. Moreover, on September 7, 2023, around 591,633 unique wallets held WLD. By October 13, 2023, this number grew to 707,909. In a 77-day period, WLD transactions also increased from 887,482 to 7,701,38.
Despite the growth in WLD wallets, a substantial portion of the token remains significantly concentrated. The two largest WLD addresses, both managed by Worldcoin, together hold 70.8% of the total supply. The third biggest address, with 5.838% or over 10 million WLD, is associated with Binance’s cold wallet. Market maker Wintermute holds the fourth largest address, while the South Korean cryptocurrency exchange, Bithumb, has the fifth.
The top ten wallets account for 86.86% of the total supply, and the top 100 wallets hold 92.75% of all WLD in circulation. Regarding market trends, WLD increased by 46.2% against the U.S. dollar in the past 30 days, but it also declined by 18.4% in the last two weeks. As of October 13, with WLD priced at .47 per coin, it’s 55% below its highest value of .30, yet 51% above its record low of .973. Presently, WLD has a 7 million market cap which is ranked 148 out of the more than 10,000 crypto assets in existence.
What do you think about the Worldcoin project? Share your thoughts and opinions about this subject in the comments section below.
TWT Token Registers 20% Gains As Crypto Market Slumps, What’s Next?
Trust Wallet Token (TWT) seems untouched by the crypto market decline, holding a nearly 20% seven-day gain while top coins recede. After finding support at .79, it rallied above the .94 resistance, flipping it to a new support level today.
The Trust Wallet Extension update on Chrome might be driving its price gains in the past week. Due to the update, users can now enjoy the full features of Trust Wallet integrated with their Chrome browser. Such ease of access may have boosted the use of TWT, thereby pushing its demand and price.
Recent Network-Related Developments Can Push TWT’s Price Further
The new Trust Wallet Extension update (V 1.9.1) on Chrome Store was announced on October 3. According to the announcement, users can enjoy native EVM swaps, Ledger and hardware support, and crypto purchases.
Users can now access 15 different staking options across nine blockchains with the extension. This additional utility is likely driving more investors to the Trust Wallet ecosystem.
Also, on October 5, Trust Wallet launched a Trust Wallet Testimonial Contest to reward its loyal community. According to a blog post, participants will share their testimonials and experiences using Trust Wallet.
Trust Wallet will reward five lucky winners with mystery swag boxes once they complete certain tasks. This contest will likely boost investors’ interest in the ecosystem and lead to price gains for TWT tokens.
TWT Declining On Daily Chart Despite Weekly Gains
Despite impressive weekly gains, TWT shows signs of price decline on the daily chart. Its decline could correlate to the retracement in BTC’s price from ,000 to ,770 today, October 9, at 5:36 am EST. After its rally from the .79 support level, TWT broke above the .94 resistance level.
Looking at the daily chart, TWT has formed two consecutive red candles on the daily chart, confirming increased selling pressure. Also, today’s candle drops below the trendline, hinting at a slight retracement ahead for the token.
TWT is retracing in the Donchian Channel (DC) and approaching the Median Band. A drop below this band will confirm that the sellers have reclaimed dominance on its price.
Furthermore, the Relative Strength Index (RSI) indicator displays a value of 64.5 in the buy zone close to 70. A close look at this indicator and its downward motion reveals that it is retracing from the overbought zone. The RSI’s movement confirms the sentiment that the buyers are beginning to take profit and close long positions.
Nevertheless, the price retracement for TWT will likely be brief due to its ecosystem developments. The daily chart analysis shows that TWT will likely decline to .94 in the next few days before resuming its rally.
Also, the next rally may likely send TWT above the resistance zone for more impressive gains. However, buyers must avoid bull traps if the .94 support level fails to hold.
Ethereum Price Registers Breakout But Lacks Momentum, $1,620 Is The Key
Ethereum price is attempting a fresh increase above ,650 against the US Dollar. ETH could accelerate higher if it clears the ,670 resistance.
- Ethereum is attempting a fresh increase above the ,620 level.
- The price is trading above ,620 and the 100-hourly Simple Moving Average.
- There is a key bullish trend line forming with support near ,645 on the hourly chart of ETH/USD (data feed via Kraken).
- The pair could continue to rise if it clears the ,670 resistance zone.
Ethereum Price Climbs Higher
Ethereum’s price formed a base above the ,580 level. ETH remained stable and climbed above the ,620 resistance zone to move into a positive zone, like Bitcoin.
There was a move above the ,650 level but upsides were limited. A high was formed near ,667 and there was a minor downside correction. The price is now trading near the 23.6% Fib retracement level of the upward move from the ,583 swing low to the ,667 high.
Ethereum is trading above ,640 and the 100-hourly Simple Moving Average. There is also a key bullish trend line forming with support near ,645 on the hourly chart of ETH/USD.
Source: ETHUSD on TradingView.com
On the upside, the price might face resistance near the ,670 level. The next major resistance is ,720. A clear move above the ,720 resistance zone could set the pace for a larger increase. In the stated case, the price could visit the ,800 resistance. The next key resistance might be ,820. Any more gains might open the doors for a move toward ,880.
Are Dips Limited in ETH?
If Ethereum fails to clear the ,670 resistance, it could a downside correction. Initial support on the downside is near the ,645 level and the trend line.
The next key support is ,620 or the, below which the price could test the ,600 support. A downside break below the ,600 support might start another bearish wave. In the stated case, there could be a drop toward the ,540 level.
Technical Indicators
Hourly MACD – The MACD for ETH/USD is losing momentum in the bullish zone.
Hourly RSI – The RSI for ETH/USD is now above the 50 level.
Major Support Level – ,620
Major Resistance Level – ,670
Coinbase Registers as Crypto Exchange and Wallet Provider in Spain
U.S.-based crypto exchange Coinbase has obtained a registration in Spain that will allow it to offer a range of services for digital assets. The authorization fits into the company’s current strategy for global expansion through acquiring local licenses and tailoring products for specific markets.
Cryptocurrency Exchange Coinbase Registers With the Central Bank of Spain
Leading U.S. digital assets trading platform Coinbase has registered as a crypto exchange and custodian wallet provider with the Bank of Spain. The firm said this week the registration will allow it to offer its full suite of products and services to both retail and institutional customers in compliance with in Spain’s laws and regulations.
In an announcement on Friday, Coinbase emphasized the development is a milestone in the execution of its “Go Broad, Go Deep” strategy for international expansion. In a recent blog post, the American crypto firm said it’s launching its second phase and shared details about its plans.
Coinbase users in Spain will now be able to buy and sell cryptocurrencies with fiat, trade crypto assets and have access to crypto custody on its platform, the exchange detailed. Commenting on the news, the company’s Vice President of International and Business Development Nana Murugesan stated:
We are excited to have achieved this registration from the Bank of Spain to support and grow our retail consumers, institutional clients and developer partners in Spain.
The executive also reminded that in the past year alone Coinbase has obtained registrations as a virtual assets service provider (VASP) in Italy, Ireland, and the Netherlands. It also received in-principle approval and is launching in Singapore, Brazil, and Canada.
“Working with regulators in these jurisdictions is a fundamental step in our strategy to grow internationally and continue our momentum, Murugesan pointed out. He also acknowledged that a large part of the world is now providing clarity and guidance for the crypto industry.
Earlier in September, Coinbase revealed it seeks expansion in jurisdictions with clear crypto rules, unlike the U.S., where authorities are enforcing existing rules and new regulation through courts. The exchange now added it’s focused on acquiring local licenses and registrations, tailoring products to local needs, establishing local partnerships, and strengthening local operations in markets like Spain.
Coinbase also underscored the importance of this year’s adoption of the European Union’s Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) legislation which it described as a pivotal moment for cryptocurrencies in the region showing that Europe is recognizing the potential of the emerging technology.
“The EU is stepping up to the mark, while other notable jurisdictions are struggling to provide a solid, cohesive regulatory framework that gives clarity to a burgeoning innovative industry,” the exchange said. Its statement follows a recent report that Coinbase sought to acquire the European arm of failed crypto exchange FTX in order to expand its derivatives business on the Old Continent.
The U.S. company further highlighted that close to 30% of adults in Spain believe crypto is the future of finance and that cryptocurrencies like bitcoin are now the second most popular payment method in the Mediterranean nation, overtaking bank transfers, while over 60% of Spanish citizens look to crypto assets for long-term investments.
Do you think the Bank of Spain registration will help Coinbase grow its business in Europe? Tell us in the comments section below.