The month of April has been a forgettable one for equities and cryptocurrency investors. Bitcoin (BTC) plummeted 17% in April to record its worst-ever April performance. Similarly, the Nasdaq Composite plunged 13.3% in April, its worst monthly performance since October 2008. However, a major positive for crypto investors is that Bitcoin is still above its year-to-date low, near $33,000. In comparison, the Nasdaq 100 has hit a new low for 2022, while the S&P 500 is just a whisker away from making a new year-to-date low. This suggests that Bitcoin has managed to avoid a major sell-off, indicating demand at …

The week was filled with several new project developments and key updates from leading decentralized applications (DApps) and decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols. Fireblocks has expanded its institutional access to Terra’s DeFi ecosystem and Solana partnered with the Notifi network to improve the abysmal participation rates in governance votes. We will also look into the Cointelegraph research into the Terra ecosystem’s future and see if it can sustain the current growth. Samson Mow, the former executive at Blockstream, questions the decentralized aspect of the DeFi ecosystem. Top DeFi tokens saw another week of bearish price action despite several new developments and …

Avalanche (AVAX) price is down more than 30% in April, but despite the negative price move, the smart contract platform remains a top contender for decentralized applications due to its scalability, low-cost transactions and its large footprint in the decentralized finance (DeFi) landscape. The network is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) and unique in that it does not face the same operational bottlenecks of high transaction fees and network congestion. Avalanche was able to amass over $9 billion in total value locked (TVL) by offering a proof-of-stake (PoS) layer-1 scaling solution. This indicator is extremely relevant because it …

The U.S. dollar index (DXY) turned down from its 20-year high on April 29 but that has not changed the bearish price action seen in Bitcoin (BTC) and the U.S. equity markets. Equities remain under pressure and this week, Amazon stock saw its biggest intraday drop since 2014 after uncertainty over the U.S. Federal Reserve’s tightening measures placed investor sentiment back into choppy waters. If Bitcoin extends its correction, on-chain analysis platform Whalemap believes that the $25,000 to $27,000 zone may be the best place “to go all-in” on Bitcoin. Long-term investors do not appear to be panicking over the …

Okay Bears, a Solana (SOL)-powered nonfungible token (NFT), managed to top OpenSea’s 24-hour sales tracker for the first time earlier on Thursday, beating out all other Ethereum (ETH) projects on offer. It’s the first time a Solana NFT project has reached the top spot in thpopular NFT marketplace OpenSea’s 24-hour sales tracker. .@okaybears No.1 on the OpenSea 24h rankings A @solana project has topped OpenSea’s market-wide 24h sales tracker for the first time! Check out the latest featured Solana collections on our dedicated SOL page: https://t.co/gteXeNRocn pic.twitter.com/1duEDQyxyn — OpenSea (@opensea) April 27, 2022 The Solana-based NFT, which features a collection …

You’ll never have an excuse to miss another governance vote if the decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) calls or texts to badger you to vote. The Notifi Network is banking on this concept to help improve the abysmal participation rates in governance votes. Launching with Solana DAOs, it combines popular centralized methods used by the Web3 community such as Telegram and Discord pings with more traditional, and harder to ignore notifications like phone calls, text messages or emails. Backed by crypto venture capital firms Race Capital and Hashed, on April 24, Notifi applied its notification service to all DAOs that launch …

The U.S. dollar index (DXY) has risen above the highs created in March 2020 and may next challenge the multi-year highs set in January 2017. Bitcoin’s (BTC) price action is generally inversely connected to DXY. Therefore, unless the dollar reverses its sharp uptrend, a strong recovery in Bitcoin may be difficult. Although Bitcoin has not confirmed a bottom, institutional investors seem to have started their purchases at lower levels. Canada’s Purpose Bitcoin exchange-traded fund added 1,132 BTC to its holdings, according to data analytics platform Coinglass. Behavior analytics resource Santiment also suggested that the crowd’s interest in buying the dip …

Institutional investors have shifted their attention from Ethereum to competing layer-1 blockchains of late, with capital inflows for altcoin investment products increasing last week while Ether (ETH) products posted outflows for the third week in a row. Data from CoinShares’ latest Digital Asset Fund Flows report shows that investors last week (ending on Friday) loaded up on $3.5 million worth of Avalanche (AVAX), Solana (SOL), Terra (LUNA) and Algorand (ALGO) funds while capital outflows from Ether products totaled $16.9 million. It marks the third straight week that Ethereum products have seen outflows, bringing the total over that time to $59.3 …

Crypto capital markets platform Maple Finance has expanded support to the Solana blockchain and has deployed a $45 million fund to spur ecosystem growth. Maple provides undercollateralized loans for institutional borrowers on Ethereum and now Solana from several pool delegates. The project stated in a Monday blog post that it has already “originated over $1.2 billion in loans and currently count over $900 million in TVL to the platform.” The ecosystem fund was launched in partnership with decentralized finance (DeFi) lending platform X-Margin, with capital being provided by USD Coin (USDC) issuer Circle, digital asset manager CoinShares and several unnamed …

Bitcoin (BTC) continues to trade below $40,000 as bears try to flip the level into resistance. The soaring U.S. dollar index (DXY), which is usually inversely related to Bitcoin, favors the sellers. However, it is not all gloom and doom because the Bitcoin bulls seem to be taking clues from the Nasdaq (NDX), which has been hovering close to positive territory. Although risky assets have been on the receiving end for the past few days, Bitcoin hodlers are focusing on the long-term bullish projections and ignoring the short-term weakness. Glassnode data shows that Bitcoin's supply that has not moved for …

Bitcoin (BTC) turned down sharply on April 21, maintaining its tight correlation with the U.S. equity markets, which reversed direction after U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell hinted that a 50 basis point rate hike was “on the table” in May. The selling has continued on April 22 as investors trim risky assets in expectation of an aggressive stance from central banks to curb surging inflation. Veteran trader Peter Brandt said in a tweet recently that the Nasdaq 100 (NDX) was showing a formation similar to the one it had made before plunging in the year 2000. If history repeats …

The U.S. dollar currency index (DXY) turned down sharply after rising above 101 on April 20 but this weakness in the dollar has not helped Bitcoin (BTC), possibly because the S&P 500 is struggling to build upon its strong rally on April 19. This indicates that Bitcoin remains tightly correlated with the U.S. equity markets. Irrespective of the lackluster price action, research projects several positives for Bitcoin this year. A report by Insider Intelligence shows that the number of adult crypto users in the U.S. could surge from 28.3 million in 2021 to 33.7 million in 2022. Along with the …