February saw a noticeable shift between inflation and U.S. Federal Reserve news, followed by news of a conflict in Eastern Europe that completely overshadowed the earlier concerns of economic health. What’s transpiring in Ukraine is causing an immediate marketwide price drop. Bitcoin (BTC) had a notable decline of 11% over a 16-hour time period, while the majority of altcoins plummeted 20% or more. The initial expectation was for the war to have a negative impact on cryptocurrency prices, which it did for a short period of time. However, as fear set in, prices quickly ramped up. But the short sample …

With key stakeholders taking profits and confidence in buying the dip staying high, traders who were overzealous about a quick Bitcoin rebound back to all-time high levels were punished with further price declines. Although Bitcoin (BTC) has subtly bounced since dropping below $34,000 in late January, its price is still down 20% in the last 30 days. Ether (ETH) has fared worse, dropping 30% in this same timeframe. This edition of the Market Insight’s newsletter takes a deeper look at the data behind the cryptocurrency market’s performance in the past month. For example, Bitcoin’s key whale trader tier, typically comprising …

For payment tokens such as Alchemy Pay’s ACH, there may not necessarily be a world where cryptocurrencies are widely accepted as a medium of exchange for everyday transactions, such as buying a gallon of milk in the grocery store, without fiat. This is because two parallel economies exist, and bridges between fiat and cryptocurrency are needed for the time being. But how does one price such a token with payments as its bedrock? Is there a way to arrive at a fair valuation for ACH, whose growing dominance in the payments scene is evident in the number of payment channels …

In an interview, Do Kwon, co-founder and CEO of Terraform Labs, said that Terra’s ecosystem was built with several use cases such as savings, payments, investments and others that leverage its stablecoin assets. The previous Market Insights newsletter tackled Terra’s ecosystem growth in 2021 and how it got to hundreds of decentralized applications from just two at the beginning of last year. And all of it is grounded on Terra’s stablecoins and the protocol’s ability to maintain the stability of their peg. Yet the key ingredient for such stability is its primary staking asset, LUNA. On the surface, investors got …

Terra’s native staking token, LUNA, was one of the best-performing cryptocurrencies of 2021, with gains north of 13,000%. Terra has also surpassed Binance Smart Chain (BSC) in total locked value with $17.62 billion, making it the second-biggest DeFi chain just after Ethereum. Much of this growth is due to Terra’s ecosystem, with a community of developers continually building decentralized applications on top of Terra. But it may come as a surprise to know that before there were hundreds of apps built on Terra, there were only two that existed at the start of 2021 in the Mirror Protocol and Chai. …

The year 2021 is coming to a close, and if there’s one way to describe how the cryptocurrency industry fared in the past 12 months, it would be momentous growth. Major cryptocurrencies shattered previous records, adoption grew, new sectors sprouted, and novel blockchain use cases made significant breakthroughs. The Market Insight’s latest edition recalls the events covered in past issues as well as deep-dive topics in Cointelegraph Research’s industry reports. DeFi and Altcoins Two of the top gainers of 2021 were Solana (SOL) and Terra (LUNA). SOL gained 9,500%, while LUNA gained 13,000%. Significant investments and ecosystem growth catalyzed the …

When calculating the return of an NFT collection, most analysts calculate the average return. For example, the first CryptoKitties were sold in December 2017 for an average price of $3.24 each. On the first day, 105 CryptoKitties were created, and a total of $340.63 worth of Ether (ETH) was spent on those CryptoKitties by different collectors. That makes an average price of $3.24 per CryptoKitty. Currently, CryptoKitties are trading for an average price of $256.99. This equates to an average price of $256.99 per CryptoKitty and an average collection all-time return of over 7,800%. Out of CryptoKitties, CryptoPunks and Bored …

When people think of nonfungible tokens (NFT), the most popular collectibles such as CryptoPunks, Bored Ape Yacht Club and Decentraland usually come to mind. Beeple’s digital artwork that sold for millions will most likely ring a bell, and most recently, gaming came together with the Metaverse to usher in an altcoin season. However, one particular type of nonfungible token that rarely gets looked at is music NFTs. With NFT sales raking in billions of dollars across other categories in 2021, music NFTs seem to have lagged behind. According to Cointelegraph Research’s recent report, the global awareness of NFTs has increased …

In contrast, a transaction on Tezos takes 0.0016 kWh or less than the energy required to charge an Apple Tablet for 10 minutes. 100 Tezos transactions is equivalent to driving 10 km in a Tesla Model 3. The energy use of the entire Tezos network is approximately equivalent to two households in the U.S. for the whole year. One question, though, is how competing blockchains such as Tezos, Polkadot and Solana will perform on the market once Ethereum transitions to Eth2. According to Cointelegraph Research’s original investigation into the most energy-efficient blockchains for nonfungible tokens (NFT), the Ethereum network is …

While Bitcoin remains in a cool-off period after thrusting to its all-time high in early November and the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector in an apparent dry spell, gaming tokens seem to have taken the spotlight as massive gains are seen across the industry. The Sandbox’ SAND captured headlines as it spearheaded the enthusiasm for gaming tokens, with over 340% gains in the past month. Another one is GALA, with a similar 300% rally in November. Such coins, including those under the metaverse sphere like Decentraland’s MANA and Illuvium’s ILV, gained momentum after Facebook’s rebranding to Meta, suggesting that gaming tokens …

In 2010, if someone had told you that Internet memes, digital artwork and Twitter avatars would sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars, would you have believed them? Well, these are nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, in a nutshell. NFTs are driving blockchains toward uncharted territory on the backs of cute kitties and pixelated punks. What may appear to be a shroud of speculation over pointless collectibles is actually the clouded horizon of fintech innovation. NFTs represent a turning point. Blockchain technology is now being used to represent assets beyond the chain. In order to understand the thriving and intriguing world …

Without a doubt, 2021 has been a momentous year for nonfungible tokens (NFT). The nascent market has seen unprecedented growth as sales volume from January to date nears $10 billion — a 14,500% surge from 2020. The NFT marketplace OpenSea is responsible for processing a great chunk of that. OpenSea controls a majority of NFT sales and has processed more than $10 billion worth of transactions since launching in December 2017. Its 2021 volume alone even topped the revenue earned by Etsy and is comparable to the revenue generated by eBay. But despite this, it appears as though OpenSea and …