Bitcoin (BTC) and the U.S. equity markets fell sharply on Jan. 5, reacting negatively to the minutes from the Federal Reserve's December FOMC meeting, which showed that the members expect the balance sheet reduction to start after the Fed begins hiking interest rates in early 2022. Adding to the negative sentiment was the shutdown of the world’s second-biggest Bitcoin mining hub in Kazakhstan, where the internet has been shut down following massive protests by citizens. This caused a dip of about 13.4% in the Bitcoin network’s overall hash rate from 205,000 petahash per second (PH/s) to 177,330 PH/s. According to …

The year 2021 was unprecedented for crypto, with Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) gaining 60.58% and 408.5% throughout the year, respectively. For the latter, the explosion of decentralized finance (DeFi), nonfungible tokens (NFTs), decentralized applications (DApps) and decentralized exchanges (DEXs) built on its blockchain created a whole new digital currency cyberspace encompassing all corners of the world. But, the year was also an auspicious one for altcoins, whose performance far outweighed that of BTC and ETH during the same time period. So, without further ado, let's look at five cryptocurrencies that went from zero to hero in 2021. 1. Shiba …

Bitcoin (BTC) and most major altcoins are stuck in a tight range with bulls buying near the support and bears selling at resistance levels. Usually, such tight ranges are followed by an expansion in volatility. Although a few analysts have not ruled out a quick drop to low $40,000s, most traders expect Bitcoin to rebound sharply and move up to $60,000. Goldman Sachs said in a note to investors that if Bitcoin continues to increase its market share over gold as a store of value and crosses the 50% mark, then it could rally to $100,000 over the next five …

According to data compiled by CryptoRank and Santiment, Cardano (ADA) was the most developed crypto on Github in 2021, with over 140,000 events. Rounding out the top three were Kusama and Polkadot at second and third places, respectively, with roughly the same number of events over the year. Cardano beat Ethereum's development activity by a wide margin, with the latter coming in at fourth place. Santiment defines a Github event as either creating an issue, creating a pull request, commenting on an issue or pull request, and forking/starring/watching a code repository, among others. The Most Developed Cryptos on @Github in …

Bitcoin’s (BTC) price action has been uneventful in the first few days of the new year and it continues to languish below the psychological level at $50,000. The Crypto Fear and Greed Index is in the fear zone registering a value of 29/100. On-chain analytics resource Ecoinometrics said stages of extreme fear rarely remain for long, which means “there is a limited downside at 30 days.” Bitcoin continues to garner support from various quarters. Wharton School finance professor Jeremy Siegel said in an interview with CNBC that Bitcoin has replaced gold as an inflation hedge in the minds of Millennials. …

In a recent YouTube video, Charles Hoskinson highlighted the rapid growth of the Cardano (ADA) ecosystem while clarifying the concerns raised by other members of the crypto community over the past year. “We live in a world where arbitrary groups of people get to be fact-checkers and decide what's legitimate,” said Hoskinson while speaking about the government’s perception of cryptocurrencies. He pointed out that a vast majority of financial crimes are done with the U.S. dollar or other fiat currencies. According to Hoskinson, the growth of the crypto ecosystem this year might be slower than 2022: “It's hard to argue …

Bitcoin (BTC) and most major altcoins are attempting a rebound off their respective support levels, indicating that buyers continue to accumulate on dips. Data from Coinglass shows that 9,925 Bitcoin left Coinbase Pro, the professional trading arm of Coinbase, on Dec. 30, a possible sign of institutional buying. This is in sharp contrast to the strong inflows seen in Binance and OKEx. Several analysts believe that institutional buying could pick up in January. Economist and trader Alex Krüger expects a Bitcoin rally in early January based on fund flows. He also highlighted that January has produced positive results for Bitcoin …

Welcome to the latest edition of Cointelegraph’s decentralized finance newsletter. As the calendar year comes to an end, Cardano’s personable leader Charles Hoskinson shares a message of optimism, unity and collaboration for the future of crypto. As a gesture of goodwill for the holiday season, this week our long-form DeFi newsletter will be published in full here as an article alongside the regular email. Subscribe below for full access to next week's edition! Polygon fixes potential billion-dollar protocol vulnerability Layer-two protocol Polygon announced this week the rectification of a potentially multi-billion-dollar vulnerability in its proof-of-stake Genesis contract through implementing an …

The S&P 500 is trading near its all-time high but Bitcoin (BTC) has plunged about 30% from its all-time high at $69,000. Even after the sharp drop, Bitcoin is up 63%, year-to-date, outperforming the S&P 500, which is up about 30% in 2021. Gold, which is popular as a hedge against inflation, is down roughly 7% this year. Arcane research said in its report that Bitcoin’s outperformance in the high inflationary environment shows that “Bitcoin has proven itself to be an excellent inflation hedge.” Real Vision CEO Raoul Pal said in an interview with Vlad from The Stakeborg Talks that …

The total value locked, or TVL, in decentralized finance (DeFi) has soared to over $250 billion as 2021 closes out, according to DeFi Llama, with most activity on Ethereum. The budding DeFi industry only became mainstream during summer 2021. While TVL valuations underscore the rapid growth of the industry, Cardano (ADA) founder Charles Hoskinson has warned about the challenges facing DeFi. In a YouTube video entitled "DApps and Cardano DeFi Alliance," Hoskinson talked about DeFi's potential as well as Cardano's small role within the industry. According to Hoskinson, who has been on a decade-long quest to transform traditional finance, there …

Bitcoin (BTC) and most major altcoins have bounced off their immediate support levels, indicating that the sentiment is improving and traders are buying on minor dips. Billionaire and Mexico’s third-richest person Ricardo Salinas Pliego said in his Christmas and New Year message to stay away from fiat money, terming it as “fake money made of paper lies.” Instead, he advised people to “invest in Bitcoin.” Veteran trader Peter Brandt warned that “chart pattern breakouts should be viewed with great suspicion” during the thinly traded holiday period in the last half of December. Analysts remain bullish for 2022. Crypto analyst and …

With the growing number of wallets, blockchains and users the industry sees every month, the question of security becomes a top priority for the users. We talked to Robert Rhodin, the CEO of a crypto wallet recovery service KeychainX, about an unexpected discovery that became the solution crypto wallet users had been starving for. Tell us about Keychainx. When and why did you decide to launch the company and what kind of services do you provide? It started in 2017 when a friend's Ledger stopped working and they asked me to help them recover 150 ETH. After going through different …