Chainlink, a major smart contract technology supplier, has tapped a new partnership to streamline one of the biggest issues around smart contracts. According to a March 11 tweet, Chainlink has partnered with Hdac Technology, a blockchain startup founded by Dae Sun Chung, CEO of software firm Hyundai BS&C and member of the Hyundai family. By bringing their forces together, the firms intend to jointly develop a system for delivering off-chain data on blockchain in an attempt to bolster smart contract execution. Specifically, Chainlink and Hdac will be addressing the blockchain oracle problem, which is considered to be the biggest obstacle …

Crude oil prices plunged about 30% on Monday to the lowest levels seen since Feb. 2016. This triggered a sell-off in global equity markets, which were already reeling under the pressure of a likely global slowdown due to the coronavirus outbreak. At its lowest level, the crude oil traders were nursing losses of about 55% year-to-date. Similarly, the US markets have plummeted about 15% year-to-date. Although Bitcoin (BTC) has dropped about 26% from its highs, it is still up about 7% year-to-date. This shows that it is outperforming both equity and oil markets. While it is difficult to pinpoint a …

The total crypto market capitalization has dropped from about $263 billion on March 7 to under $244 billion at press time. This shows a lack of demand at higher levels. The failure to resume the up move within the next few days is likely to attract further selling by the short-term traders. Binance’s research department noted a drop in Bitcoin (BTC) trading volume dominance from 40% to 27% in February. On the other hand, Ether price witnessed a 158.6% increase in its total monthly volume. This shows that the interest in altcoins is increasing and the researchers expect an alt …

Roughly 42% of the total Bitcoin supply has not moved in the past two years. This shows that the investors are holding on to their Bitcoin as they expect the price to rally further. Lesser quantity of Bitcoin in circulation increases scarcity and with the upcoming halving, the supply is only going to decrease further, which could boost prices. The creator of the stock-to-flow Bitcoin price model PlanB believes that “Bitcoin will probably go over $100k before Dec 2021.” While PlanB is banking on halving to boost prices, Max Keiser of The Keiser Report, expects the financial markets to tumble …

Global taxation and transaction advisory firm EY have announced the launch of their open-source Baseline protocol. Baseline comprises a smart contract and tokenization platform built for enterprises on top of the Ethereum blockchain. Baseline was founded by EY in partnership with Microsoft and ConsenSys, and was developed in collaboration with many companies operating in the cryptocurrency sector, including Chainlink, MakerDAO, Unibright and AMD. The platform’s code has been made available to select entities by invitation and will see a public release before April. Baseline features zero-knowledge proofs and off-chain storage to protect privacy In a video published by development partner …

Grayscale Investments managing director Michael Sonnenschein said that “Bitcoin itself has solidified its role as a store of value or as a digital gold.” In his conversations with institutional investors, Sonnenschein explained that he has seen a big change in the way they view Bitcoin. According to him, now, several institutional investors are looking to add cryptocurrency to their portfolio, which was not the case just 12 to 18 months ago. In a report, KPMG has said that institutional players are concerned about the lack of proper custody for cryptocurrencies. Co-lead of KPMG’s crypto asset services Sal Ternullo said : …

Ethereum-based sports tokenization platform Chiliz (CHZ) has partnered with blockchain platform Chainlink to allow for real-time nonfungible token creation. According to a March 4 announcement from Chiliz, the platform plans to leverage Chainlink’s capacity to trigger the execution of smart contracts based on real-world data and events. This feature will allow the minting of NFTs for partners in real-time, based on data securely provided by Chainlink’s network. This integration will allow Chiliz to create NFTs that react to the real world and mint limited edition collectibles to commemorate real-time events. The company explains that, for instance, it would be possible …

Chainlink’s (LINK) 27.48% gain over the past four days shows that the altcoin continues to function as an outlier when compared against the recent performance of other cryptocurrencies. This strong recovery from the swing low at $3.30 to $4.79 has LINK now approaching its previous all-time high at $4.86. Crypto market 1-week price chart. Source: Coin360 Unlike Bitcoin (BTC), LINK trading volume has shown that traders are excitedly buying each dip and the candlesticks of the past 3 days clearly show that a strong reversal has occurred. In the daily timeframe, the moving average convergence divergence (MACD) shows a bull …

After the rout last week, most asset classes have started the week with a rebound. The total crypto market capitalization has bounced from the recent lows of about $240.7 billion to $251 billion at press time. The strength of the rebound will confirm whether a bottom is in place or if this is a dead cat bounce after which the down move will resume. With the recent fall in Bitcoin, the price action has been exactly following the popular stock-to-flow Bitcoin price forecasting model designed by PlanB. He expects the price to average about $8,650 until Bitcoin’s halving in May. …

The last week of February saw a blood bath across various asset classes on fears that the coronavirus outbreak is turning into a pandemic. This led investors to dump their positions in the equity markets, which wiped off about $3.8 trillion of value in U.S. stocks. Gold, which has acted as a traditional safe haven was not spared. The yellow metal plunged about 4.6% on Feb. 28, which took the weekly loss to about 5% for the week. This shows that the investors did not differentiate between asset classes and sold everything in a state of panic. Bitcoin (BTC) and …

Recently, the chairman of Virgin Galactic Chamath Palihapitiya said that “everybody should probably have 1% of their assets in Bitcoin,” as it is “an uncorrelated hedge” to the excesses in the financial industry. He did not approve of the strategy to buy Bitcoin only when the equity markets are down. Instead, he said that investors should keep a long-term view on Bitcoin and consider it as “insurance”. Fundstrat’s Tom Lee said that blockchain and crypto will disrupt the financial industry over the next twenty years. For the short-term, Lee retained his bullish stance on Bitcoin. He said: “I think there’s …

Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao believes that the upcoming Bitcoin halving has not been priced in to the digital asset’s current price action. The reduction in miner rewards will increase the cost of mining each Bitcoin, meaning, miners are unlikely to sell below their cost of production. Bitcoin’s supply will decrease with the halving but its demand has also been increasing, creating a situation where prices are likely to driven higher. Although CZ’s statement can be interpreted as bullish, the CEO personally believes that Bitcoin’s price might gravitate around $10,000 levels for a few more days as round numbers are known …