Development within the Polkadot (DOT) ecosystem has been slowly unfolding over the past year and a half, and the work put in by developers is finally starting to bear fruit as parachain auctions finish and the first chains launch on the mainnet. The next phase of interoperability within the ecosystem is set to kick off now that cross-chain functionality is about to go live. This next step will allow Polkadot-based parachains to communicate with each other and transfer assets between chains. After passing community vote, v0.9.19 has been enacted on Polkadot. This upgrade included a batch call upgrading Polkadot’s runtime …

Bitcoin (BTC) fell further on the May 6 Wall Street open amid a warning that the U.S. equities sell-off was "not over." Novogratz: "We are not going to get a soft landing" Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC/USD hitting $35,268 on Bitstamp, bringing three-day losses alone to 11.9%. U.S. stocks, which had a seen a bloody May 5, were in no mood for a relief rally as the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 fell another 1% and 0.85%, respectively. "The Nasdaq sell-off isn't over," Mike Novogratz, CEO of cryptocurrency merchant bank Galaxy Digital, told CNBC. Commenting on …

Hop Protocol, a cross-chain bridge designed to facilitate the quick transfer of tokens between different Ethereum layer-2 scaling solutions, has unveiled a new governance model alongside an airdrop that will see early users receive 8% of the total supply of soon-to-be-released HOP tokens. Similar to Optimism, which recently unveiled a new governance structure that will see early users airdropped 5% of the total supply of the HOP token. Because of this, Hop Protocol is aiming to create a community-oriented decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) called Hop DAO that seeks to aid layer-2 scalability. An official date for the airdrop has yet …

The battle to attract stablecoin liquidity has been a trending theme across the cryptocurrency landscape for the past year, especially as decentralized finance users have come to realize the hefty APY that can be earned on dollar-peg assets. While Curve Finance remains the undisputed leader in interest bearing stablecoin liquidity pools, several new entrants have begun to climb the ranks, including Vector Finance (VTX), a protocol that enables Avalanche (AVAX) network users to generate boosted yields on their stablecoin positions. Data from CoinGecko shows that the price of VTX recently underwent a trend reversal as its price climbed 52% from …

Despite bouncing from a 45-day low on April 30, Ether (ETH) price is still stuck in a descending channel and the subsequent 9% gain over the past four days was just enough to get the altcoin to test the pattern's $2,870 resistance. Federal Reserve monetary policy continues to be a major influence on crypto prices and this week’s volatility is most likely connected to comments from the FOMC. On May 4, the United States Federal Reserve raised its benchmark overnight interest rate by half a percentage point, which is the biggest hike in 22 years. Although it was a widely …

Bitcoin (BTC) number go up technology is boosting crypto adoption in the United Kingdom. More and more Brits are buying cryptocurrency, according to a Coinbase research piece carried out by Qualtrics. The key takeaways indicate that 33% of British people own crypto, up from 29% in October 2021. Plus, over half, or 61%, of those surveyed intend to increase their holdings over the next 12 months. For Danny Scott, CEO of the United Kingdom's leading Bitcoin exchange, CoinCorner, the statistics "seem incredibly high." Scott suggested that "we're seeing a quiet period from the retail market right now," adding that "when …

Avalanche (AVAX) has rebounded strongly five days after testing a key inflection area as its support. Now, the AVAX/USD pair faces the possibility of continuing its upside retracement move further into Q2. A 30%-plus move ahead? AVAX's price surged to almost $69.50 on May 5 from nearly $55 on April 30, a 25% jump. Interestingly, AVAX's rebound move surfaced inside the same support area ($54–$60 range) that had preceded a 100% and a 175% price rally in the January 2022–April 2022 and the October 2021–November 2021 session, respectively. Additionally, the lower trendline of the AVAX's prevailing descending channel pattern (possibly …

Polkadot (DOT) price ticked higher in the past 24 hours on anticipations that its new cross-chain communications protocol would solve a long-standing problem in the blockchain sector. DOT price gains 12% on XCM launch Bulls pushed DOT's price to $16.44 on May 5 from $14.72 a day before, gaining a little over 12% as they assessed the launch of XCM, a messaging system that allows parachains — individual blockchains that operate in parallel inside the Polkadot ecosystem — to communicate with each other. As Cointelegraph reported, future updates in the XCM protocol would see parachains exchanging messages without relying on …

Holders of the popular memecoin Shiba Inu (SHIB), will now be able to use the cryptocurrency to purchase land in the Shiba metaverse. On Wednesday, the Shiba Inu team took to Twitter to reveal that the SHIB token could now be used to mint parcels of land in the recently unveiled virtual reality project “SHIB: The Metaverse.” New minting option has been released on https://t.co/f2oLn05qWk! Mint lands with $SHIB! Minting with $SHIB Details: 0.2 ETH equivalents in $SHIB 0.3 ETH equivalents in $SHIB 0.5 ETH equivalents in $SHIB 1 ETH equivalents in $SHIB#ShibTheMetaverse #ShibMV pic.twitter.com/mOrpwDSkDK — SHIB: The Metaverse (@ShibTheMV) …

Terra (LUNA) price lost 31% over the past four weeks, erasing all of the gains accrued year-to-date. Even though the token continues to outperform the broader cryptocurrency market by 20%, Terra is struggling to hold above the $85 support. Previously, a few bullish catalysts were Terra’s USD (UST) stablecoin flipping Binance USD (BUSD) to become the third-largest stablecoin on April 18, as well as the April 26 announcement that Fireblocks, a digital asset custody platform, had seen institutional clients invest over $250 million into the Terra DeFi ecosystem. This positive newsflow was not enough to instill confidence in Terra investors, …

Investors across the world are waiting for the outcome of the Federal Open Market Committee meeting on May 4. Although markets expect a 50 basis point rate hike and an announcement by the Fed to start shrinking its balance sheet from June, it is difficult to predict how the markets will react to this trigger. Billionaire investor Paul Tudor Jones, in an interview with CNBC, said that the United States was entering “uncharted territory” as rates were being raised when the Financial Conditions Index was tightening. Tudor Jones warned investors that it was “going to be a very, very negative …

Axie Infinity turned its game into a billion-dollar economy that helped thousands of players in the Philippines and other low-income countries to weather the fallout from pandemic mitigation measures. The main ingredient for success: strong property rights. Players can take in-game material out of the game and trade on third-party marketplaces like OpenSea. The freedom to set prices and to easily trade unlocked a veritable tsunami of economic activity in and outside of the game. The 30-page report from Cointelegraph Research analyzes the top five titles and what changed since the days of Second Life and is produced in partnership …