Bitcoin (BTC) sidechain RSK will soon be equipped with Chainlink (LINK) oracles, enabling developers on the smart contract-enabled blockchain to tap into market price feeds and other off-chain data to build their applications. The integration is being developed by IOVLabs, the company behind the RSK sidechain. It is currently live on testnet and expected to be launched on mainnet in less than a month, an IOVLabs spokesman said. Chainlink data will be ported to RSK via RIF Gateways, an interoperability framework that is designed to let developers access a broad array of data from other blockchains and the external world. …

As decentralized finance begins to gain ground, Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov believes there are two ways for more mainstream adoption. Speaking at the Smart Contract Summit, Nazarov said he sees two ways DeFi “crosses the chasm” and more Web 2.0 companies to adopt these technologies. “The transition occurs in two different key dynamics. The slower path is in the interest inflation. We’re currently in a low-interest environment and the appetite to combat inflation will be massive. The second, and the faster path, is through counterparty risk. This is where the solvency of brand-based guarantees erodes and math-based contractual guarantees come …

Chainlink (LINK) has acquired a privacy-preserving oracle protocol DECO from Cornell University and one of its creators, Ari Juels, will be joining Chainlink as chief scientist. Previously, Juels served as chief scientist at RSA and has been teaching at Cornell University since 2014, one of the premier blockchain hubs in the world. He is taking a sabbatical to focus on his work at Chainlink. Along with his research partner Markus Jakobsson, he coined the term "proof-of-work". DECO employs advanced cryptography and zero-knowledge proofs to provide enhanced privacy to its users. In a Cointelegraph interview, Chainlink's co-founder Sergey Nazarov said the …

Cardano (ADA) is getting into data oracles ahead of the Goguen era that will add smart contract functionality, taking a different approach than Chainlink. The first oracles are being built in partnership with EMURGO, one of the companies in the Cardano ecosystem, and Ergo (ERG). The first two oracles are deployed on Ergo and provide price feeds for the two trading pairs: ADA/USD and ERG/USD. The new model introduces Oracle Pools, which are capable of incentivizing good and disincentivizing bad behavior. Ergo's core developer Alexander Chepurnoy told Cointelegraph that the idea involves major players in the DeFi ecosystem donating funds …

In his speech on Aug. 27, U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell said that the central bank will allow inflation to stay above its 2% target level if the figure has been languishing below that level for a long time. Some analysts believe that this could mean no rate hikes for at least five years. In response to the speech, the U.S.dollar index (DXY) resumed its downtrend while gold is trading in the black. This shows that traders believe that the central bank’s change in strategy could debase the dollar further, hence, the demand for gold as a store of …

On Thursday, U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell is expected to deliver an important speech that will highlight a new strategy of targeting “average inflation.” This means that the Fed might allow inflation to overshoot the 2% target temporarily if it has spent a long time below that level. If the Fed adopts this new strategy, it could keep interest rates near zero for five years or more, according to a Bloomberg report. The abundant liquidity is likely to drive asset prices higher across the board and create bubbles that will eventually burst. If this occurs, investors are likely to …

The coronavirus pandemic has forced people to change several social behavioral habits. Along with maintaining social distance from one another, people are also averse to using notes, coins or cards as they might transmit COVID-19. A new report from the Bank for International Settlements suggested that social distancing procedures and the “government-to-person payment schemes” have accelerated the efforts towards launching central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). The paper shows that the public interest in CBDCs has exceeded that of Bitcoin (BTC) and Libra in 2020. However, the CBDCs will only be a digital version of the fiat currencies that will be …

After recently entering the crypto space, Barstool Sports founder turned stock trader, Dave Portnoy, seems as though he is not quite ready for Bitcoin (BTC) trading yet. "I'm getting killed right now in Bitcoin," Portnoy said in an Aug. 21 video posted on Twitter. "It took me months to figure out the stock market, I admit that," he said. "I went in, I lost money — that's what's happening in Bitcoin," he added, noting his unwillingness to mess around with the asset to figure it out, stating a lack of available time. Portnoy also went on to call Chainlink (LINK) …

Rich Dad Poor Dad author Robert Kiyosaki believes that Warren Buffet’s recent closure of his bank stock positions is a warning sign that the world might be starting a “major banking crisis.” Therefore, Kiyosaki suggests traders buy safe haven assets such as gold, silver and Bitcoin (BTC) to protect themselves from the downward spiraling value of the fiat currencies. Popular Bitcoin derivatives trader Tone Vays believes that Bitcoin could breakout to new all-time highs in 2021. He pointed out that historically, Bitcoin has tended to double in price after breaking out of its all-time high, especially if it took years …

Bloomberg Intelligence senior strategist Mike McGlone is bullish on Bitcoin (BTC) as he believes that “something unexpected needs to happen for Bitcoin's price to stop doing what it's been doing for most of the past decade: appreciating.” However, with the S&P 500 hitting a new all-time high today, traders are booking profits in gold and crypto assets. As U.S. markets surge to new highs, Bitcoin price has corrected sharply in the last two days but this is likely to be a short-term blip in a secular uptrend. Veteran investor Jim Rogers thinks that the U.S. stock market is in a …

Investors usually buy large quantities of gold when they do not have faith in fiat currencies and want to protect their purchasing power against debasement. Berkshire Hathaway’s recent purchase of Canadian gold miner Barrick Gold suggests that Warren Buffet is not confident about the future health of the United States and global economy. Morgan Creek Digital co-founder and partner Jason Williams believes that although Buffet might not directly invest in Bitcoin (BTC), it is likely that one of the younger managers will. Daily cryptocurrency market performance. Source: Coin360 With gold making a sharp move today, Bitcoin has also followed it …

The number of Ethereum network transactions more than doubled in 2020 and is now virtually identical to the January 2018 all-time high. As shown on the chart below, the number of transactions doubled in the past six months to stand at 1.23 million per day. Ethereum 7-day average daily transactions. Source: CoinMetrics This situation might seem very bullish at first, but one must remember both EOS and Tron (TRX) started as ERC-20 tokens before launching their own mainnet and running fully independent blockchains. A similar chain migration is happening on Tether’s USDT, a stablecoin which recently secured a $12 billion …