Bitcoin (BTC) price has yet to recapture the $40,000 level and traders who were expecting a quick resumption of the uptrend may have been caught off guard by the recent pullback. This could have led to the liquidation of about $500 million worth of cryptocurrency futures positions in the past 24 hours. Over leveraged positions provide the necessary ammunition during the uptrend, but they become a liability when the trend reaches an inflection point. When the markets turn down, leveraged long positions quickly turn into a loss, resulting in margin calls from brokers. When the margin requirements are not met, …

Calls for Bitcoin (BTC) to rally above $40,000 were dashed as the top cryptocurrency hit a wall of resistance which sparked a sell-off in the early trading hours. Data from Cointelegraph Markets and TradingView show the price of BTC fell as low as $34,368 before rebounding to its current price of $37,300. It’s possible that the excitement surrounding the announcement of a $1.9 trillion stimulus bill from the incoming Biden administration quickly morphed into a buy the rumor, sell the news event as questions begin to emerge on the feasibility of parts of the bill. Bitcoin’s dip also comes after …

Ethereum 2.0 has already emerged as the fourth-largest proof-of-stake network by total value locked in staking within roughly six weeks of the Eth2 deposit contract going live. Despite withdrawal functionality not yet enabled and no precise estimation for its full launch date, nearly $1 billion worth of Ether (ETH) has already been designated for staking. According to crypto data aggregator Staking Rewards, more than 1.5 million Ether or 1.35% of Ethereum’s supply has been deposited for staking. Ether staking rewards are currently estimated at approximately 13.20%, meaning that a single stake of 32 ETH would earn $2,725 over one year …

On Friday, blockchain projects Cosmos and Blockstack both announced winners of their respective HackAtom V and HackDeFi hackathons, each offering a glimpse into the coming wave of DeFi development — a vision including marked advances in tooling, interoperability, and composability. While the overwhelming majority of decentralized finance (DeFi) development remains concentrated on Ethereum, where over $16 billion in digital assets are currently locked by various DeFi Protocols, Cosmos and STX are currently the #25 and #59 ranked projects by marketcap and look to be fast risers eager to take a slice of Ethereum’s DeFi pie. On the Cosmos side, the …

A blockchain focused on decentralization has added 105 independent validators to its mainnet, with hundreds more to follow next month. More than 440 validators are set to be involved with Free TON by the end of the year, making it one of the largest and most scalable proof-of-stake networks that the industry has to offer. Free TON’s goal is to achieve “true decentralization.” At present, the blockchain’s multi-threaded architecture delivers an average block time of just 0.2 seconds, far faster than what’s currently offered by rivals. With 440 validators and a 0.2-second block time on the horizon, Free TON’s members …

Celo has awarded a grant to staking service provider Chorus One for building a bridge facilitating interoperability between the Cosmos and Celo networks. The proof-based bridge will allow “bidirectional communication” between Celo and Cosmos, allowing Celo’s cUSD stablecoin to operate on the Cosmos network, and Cosmos-based assets including ATOM, BAND, and KAVA to be held in the Celo Reserve. According to a Nov. 19 announcement, the partnership will lay the groundwork for building future bridges between Celo and “chains like Polkadot, Near, and Solana.” Cosmos is also working to build numerous cross-chain bridges, including with Ethereum, Polkadot and Kadena. The …

In the past three years the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has shot down several applications for a Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded fund. This dashed hopes of many investors who believed Bitcoin price would rally higher if an EFT was approved. Although investors no longer pin BTC’s future on the existence of an ETF, regulators could eventually adjust their anti-crypto stance in the future. In an interview with Cointelegraph, SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce said that the regulator will have to become accommodative to innovation as several people from both the crypto space and traditional financial institutions seek their guidance. Bloomberg’s latest …

In the lead up to its major network upgrade Stargate, Cosmos (ATOM) has announced a three-month-long bug bounty with double rewards to improve the software’s robustness prior to release. The key Stargate upgrade will complete the original roadmap laid out in the Cosmos Whitepaper and will include the first implementation of the IBC protocol — which allows Cosmos to connect to other blockchain networks. According to early contributor Zaki Manian, the Cosmos Stargate testnet is ready to launch, however, the various Cosmos teams would like further test the upgrade “to identify critical bugs that may have made it past engineering …

Investors are concerned about the stability of the cryptocurrency market after it was faced with a flurry of adverse news in the past few days. Fortunately, the markets have matured to the extent that negative news no longer provokes wild price swings like they once did in crypto’s early days. The current stability shows that institutional investors do not consider the recent KuCoin hack, CFTC and DOJ charges against BitMEX, or even President Donald Trump being diagnosed with coronavirus as serious enough events to crash the crypto markets. Therefore, there was no panic liquidation in Bitcoin (BTC) futures after the …

Band is one of Chianlink’s main competitors in the oracle space that is based on Cosmos technology. In a recent Cointelegraph interview, Soravis Srinawakoon, the CEO of Band Protocol, said: “If you look at Chainlink, one data request right now can take almost $450 because someone needs to submit the request data to ask for the data. Let's say 20 data providers need to receive that, respond to that with 20 transactions, and then the aggregation contract to do all the computation before returning the final result, all of these require a lot of gas.” Srinawakoon also provided a link …

Ripple Labs CEO Brad Garlinghouse believes that the U.S. Federal Reserve’s recent decision to allow inflation to stay above its 2% target objective could debase the dollar further. According to Garlinghouse, this decision is likely to lead “to further diversification of assets which will certainly be good for crypto.” The various stimulus and fiscal measures announced around the world to counter the coronavirus pandemic led economic slowdown are bullish for Bitcoin (BTC). However, Bitcoin’s major bull market cycles show that each successive cycle has been longer than the previous one. Hence, if history were to repeat itself, Bitcoin could consolidate …

This week the S&P 500 made news by notching a new intraday all-time high and recovering 100% of the losses caused by the coronavirus pandemic in mid-March. Despite this, there are signs U.S. stock markets could be overvalued. The Buffett indicator, an analysis tool which divides the Wilshire 5000 Index by the U.S. GDP, currently shows 1.7. This figure is quite near to the dot-com era top at 1.71 which was followed by a strong market correction. However, one major difference between now and the dot-com era is that the current interest rates are at record lows and central banks …