Bitcoin (BTC) miners have earned nearly $600,000 in two months from a new controversial NFT protocol called Ordinals that has triggered a surge in user activity. What are Bitcoin Ordinals? Ordinals allow users to inscribe data in the form of images and other media types in newly mined blocks on the Bitcoin blockchain that's otherwise largely used for peer-to-peer monetary transactions. Since the launch of Ordinals in mid-December, however, users have inscribed nearly 74,000 NFTs into the Bitcoin blockchain, earning miners a cumulative $574,000 in BTC transaction fees to date, data from Dune Analytics shows. These NFTs include "digital artifacts" …

Bitcoin (BTC) price and the wider crypto market corrected at the start of this week, giving back a small portion of the gains accrued in January, but it’s safe to say that the more experienced traders expected some sort of technical correction. What was unexpected was the SEC’s Feb. 9 enforcement against Kraken exchange and the regulator’s announcement that staking-as-service programs are unregulated securities. The crypto market sold-off on the news and given Kraken’s decision to close up 100% of its staking services, traders are concerned that Coinbase will eventually be forced to do the same. The real question is, …

Ethereum's native token, Ether (ETH), saw its worst daily performance of the year as the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) stopped Kraken, a cryptocurrency exchange, from offering crypto staking services. On Feb. 9, Kraken agreed to pay $30 million to settle the SEC's allegation that it broke securities rules by offering crypto staking services to U.S. retail investors. The news pushed down the prices of many proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain project tokens, in particular. Ethereum, which switched to a staking-based protocol in September 2022, also suffered as a result. On Feb. 9, ETH's price plunged nearly 6.5% to around $1,525, …

A survey of 81 nonfungible token (NFT) collections on the Ethereum blockchain showed a sharp overall loss in market capitalization in 2022, according to a report from DappRadar released Feb. 9. Losses were not even distributed, however. The Ethereum NFT market was worth $9.3 billion at the beginning of 2022, according to DappRadar’s valuation, and that figure dropped to $3.7 billion by year end — a loss of 59.6%. The value of Ether (ETH) impacted all values: “It is also important to consider that ETH lost 60% of its value last year, which had a strong influence on the value …

In this week’s episode of Market Talks, Cointelegraph welcomes Average Joe’s Crypto, a research analyst and writer. He authors his own blog, which focuses on all things crypto, Web3 and decentralized finance (DeFi). Without wasting any time, we jump straight into why artificial intelligence (AI) tokens have been going parabolic recently. Why have tokens that use artificial intelligence in some way been having their moment in the sun, and is this a trend that will continue into the future or is it just a passing fad? There have recently been a number of memecoins that have been moving upw, too. …

The Graph (GRT) price slipped on Feb. 8 alongside a broader correction across the top crypto assets. GRT price skyrockets wi other data management tokens GRT price plunged nearly 14.5% intraday to $0.18, showing signs of short-term upside exhaustion after rising over 200% earlier in the year. At its sessional high, the token was changing hands for $0.23 on Feb 7, its highest level in nine months Buy flocked into the GRT market amid a relatively stronger risk-on mood, led by the Federal Reserve's slower interest rate hikes and a strong recovery witnessed in the Bitcoin (BTC) market, which typically …

After the impressive rally in January, Bitcoin (BTC) seems to be taking a breather in February. This is a positive sign because vertical rallies are rarely sustainable. A minor dip could shake out the nervous longs and provide an opportunity for long-term investors to add to their positions. Has Bitcoin price bottomed? The opinion remains divided, however, on whether Bitcoin has bottomed out or not. Some analysts expect the rally to reverse direction and nosedive below the November low while others believe the markets will continue to move up and frustrate the traders who are waiting to buy at lower …

The price of Fantom (FTM) risks pulling back in February due to a growing divergence between its price and momentum in recent weeks. FTM price rallies 230% after Cronje's 2023 roadmap FTM price has grown by 230% in the past five weeks, currently trading at $0.61 on Feb. 5. The rally came as a part of a broader crypto market recovery but outperformed most top-ranking crypto assets due to the hype created by Andre Cronje. Cronje is the co-founder and architect of Fantom's layer-1 blockchain. On Dec. 26, 2022, the developer released a letter discussing the goals and priorities for …

Shiba Inu (SHIB) price was at the lowest versus its top rival Dogecoin (DOGE) in November 2022. Three months later, the dynamics have flipped. SHIB price rises 100% versus DOGE On Feb. 4, 2023, the SHIB/DOGE pair reached 0.00001638 DOGE, up almost 100% three months after bottoming out at 0.00000993 DOGE, its lowest level on record. The sharp recovery came as investors' focus shifted to the impending launch of Shibarium, a Shiba Inu-backed layer-2 blockchain built on the Ethereum mainnet, announced on Jan. 16. As Cointelegraph reported, the SHIB price rebound gained momentum amid reports that Shibarium will go live …

In September 2022, Interchain Foundation, the team behind Cosmos’ development , introduced the Cosmos ATOM 2.0 whitepaper. The document proposed significant changes to Cosmos’s design, including a tokenomics upgrade to fund the Cosmos ecosystem development and reduce ATOM inflation. While the whitepaper launch acted as a bullish catalyst for ATOM price, the community vote to pass the proposal eventually failed, primarily because of its enormity. Some community members wanted to take a measured approach to each development feature listed in the whitepaper, starting with Interchain Security in Q1 2023. Interchain Security will enhance the value accrual position of ATOM as …

The next crypto bull market will start sooner than most people think, according to Mark Yusko, the founder and CEO of Morgan Creek Capital Management. Yusko thinks the next crypto bull run or, as he calls it, "the crypto summer," could kick off as soon as the second quarter of this year due to the combination of more dovish central bank policies and the anticipation of the Bitcoin (BTC) halving. While the United States Federal Reserve is unlikely to cut interest rates anytime soon, according to Yusko, the markets tend to anticipate the Fed's decisions. That means even a slowing …

On Feb. 1 and Feb 2. Bitcoin’s (BTC) price surpassed even the most bullish price projections after the U.S. Federal Reserve (FED) announced plans to raise interest rates by 25 basis points. Even though FED chair Jerome Powell told investors not to wait for interest rate cuts in 2023, during his press conference he did clearly state that the employment data is currently the main focus. The results of the ADP payroll survey revealed on Feb. 1 that U.S. private sector hiring was significantly slower in January. ADP's measure of private sector payrolls was 106,000, well below the 160,000 market …