The recent 256% recovery by Polkadot (DOT) over the past 56 days has been nothing short of spectacular. Although the price is 23% below its $49.80 all-time high from four months ago, the altcoin's $39 billion market capitalization has outperformed Ether (ETH) by 66% over the past thirty days. Polkadot is a blockchain network designed to support various interconnected, application-specific parallel chains — known as parachains. This scalability-focused project breaks transactions up into many shards and processes them in parallel, similar to what ETH 2.0 aims to achieve. Polkadot refers to the entire ecosystem of parachains that plug into a …

According to derivatives markets, Ether (ETH) traders are still confident that there is the chance formore upside even though the 23% correction on Sept. 7 took a hit on prices. Ethereum network congestion also peaked on Sept. 7 when the average transaction fee reached $60, and since then it has remained above $17. As a result of the lingering challenges experienced by the network, investors have shifted into Ethereum competitors with bridge and layer-two capabilities. For example, Polkadot’s DOT rose by 29% over the past week and Algorand’s ALGO spiked 67%. Undoubtedly, there’s a quest for interoperability and layer-two scaling …

Airdrops have been a fan-favorite in the cryptocurrency ecosystem for years because they offer projects a way to reward early adopters and increase token distribution. The latest project to surprise its community of supporters with retroactive rewards for its newly minted token is dYdX, a non-custodial decentralized derivatives exchange that operates on a layer-two version of the Ethereum network. Data from CoinGecko shows that on its first day of trading live in the markets, DYDX is trading at a price of $10.28 at the time of writing after hitting an intra-day high at $14.24. The number of tokens received by …

One platform might have found the solution to address the major pain points of traditional staking. AscendEX, a platform marketed as the nexus between the decentralized and centralized finance community, provides users with several unique features. On the AscendEX platforms, users can access trading services for over 200 trading pairs, including many initial exchange offerings (IEOs) along with margin trading of over 50 tokens. It is also the only centralized exchange to provide users with access to Polygon yield farming. New users are encouraged to try out these features, with what are believed to be more contests and the biggest …

Real-world adoption and brand awareness are one of the best ways for a blockchain project to increase its value and attract new users to its ecosystem. One project that has seen massive growth throughout 2021 thanks to its increasing public exposure and exciting protocol launches and partnerships is FTX, a crypto derivatives trading platform founded by Sam Bankman-Fried and Gary Wang. Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that after hitting a low near $50 on Tuesday, the price of FTT catapulted 42% to a new all-time high of $66.50 on Wednesday as its 24-hour trading volume increased by …

Chinese regulators, including the Securities Association of China and the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC), held a meeting in Beijing to promote blockchain technology in the securities industry and discuss regulations. In the symposium organized by China Securities Industry Alliance Chain and Off-Site Alliance Chain, the deputy director-general of the Science and Technology Regulatory Bureau of CSRC, Jiang Dongxing, spoke about the consensus of Chinese businesses to digitally transform the securities and futures industry. Citing the 14th Five-Year Plan, which details China’s intent to use blockchain technology, Dongxing mentioned that blockchain technology can build a trust mechanism in the network …

Very few events can shake the cryptocurrency markets in a sustainable manner that really sends Bitcoin and altcoin prices into a sharp directional move. One example is when Xi Jinping, China's President, called for a country-wide development of blockchain technology in October 2019. The unexpected news caused a 42% pump in Bitcoin (BTC), but the movement completely faded away as investors realized China was not altering its negative stance on cryptocurrencies. As a result, only a handful of tokens focused on China's FinTech industry, blockchain tracing, and industry automation saw their prices consolidate at higher levels. Some 'crypto news' and …

Whenever there's data out on futures contracts liquidation, many novice investors and analysts instinctively conclude that it's degenerate gamblers using high leverage or other risky instruments. There's no doubt that some derivatives exchanges are known for incentivizing retail trading to use excessive leverage, but that does not account for the entire derivatives market. Recently, concerned investors such as Nithin Kamath, the founder and CEO at Zerodha, questioned how derivatives exchanges could handle extreme volatility while offering 100x leverage. When a platform offers leverage or funds the customer to buy for more than the money in the account, the platform takes …

Bitcoin (BTC) price is still 4.4% down from its Aug. 23 high at $50,500, leading some traders to question whether the local top marked the end of the recent 34-day long bull run. Even with the current correction, derivatives data and the maneuvers of professional investors are not flashing any bearish signals. On Aug. 24, prominent technical analyst John Bollinger suggested that Bitcoin price could be pushed lower in the short term. A pseudonymous market analyst called 'CryptoHamster' shared a similar bearish outlook based on analyzing a technical pattern called an ascending channel. Bearish news coming from exchange regulation could …

Chainlink is the leading oracle provider, and the project has onboarded over 281 crypto projects in 2021. Some of these include heavyweights, like Huobi's ECO Chain, the Hedera Governing Council and Alchemix. Launched in October 2020, Chainlink's verifiable randomness function, or VRF, has also gained notoriety among decentralized applications (DApps). VRF provides an automated source of randomness to ensure that prizes and rewards are issued in a verifiably fair fashion. For example, on Aug. 13, Arbitrum — a layer-two Ethereum scaling solution — launched a beta mainnet service integrated with Chainlink's oracle data feed and intends to add a "Proof …

Bitcoin (BTC) futures open interest has recovered to May levels, raising optimism about a potent bullish breakout move above $50,000. The total number of outstanding futures contracts on the Deribit exchange reached $1.37 billion on Monday, its highest level since May 27. Meanwhile, the difference between the Bitcoin spot rate and its futures contract price widened, edging up its three-month basis (annualized) back to June levels, data provided by Stack Funds shows. The investment management firm saw the recovery as a sign of investors reentering the Bitcoin market while adopting a “more risk-on approach.” According to its head of research, …

Filecoin (FIL) accumulated 65% gains over the past 30 days to reach its highest price since June 8. The recent strength was accelerated after an Aug.6 partnership with Chainlink's oracle protocol on Aug. 6 allowed the projects to join their grant initiatives to speed up the development of hybrid smart contracts to leverage code running on the blockchain while the managing data computation process off-chain. Numerous events triggered the $235 all-time-high on April 1, but that movement is clearly long gone because the cryptocurrency is 67% below that level. Let's take a moment to understand what triggered the rally and …