The metaverse is more than a movie concept. It combines all digital experiences a user might encounter, replicating many of the actions one would take in the real world, including the purchase of property, homes and clothing, and the customization of one's own space and avatars. However, unlike a virtual ecosystem in a game, the metaverse considers financial data management and other transactions that can keep an entire economy running and simulate what a user would encounter in the real world. Without it, users are likely to miss out on the completely immersive experience the metaverse can offer. Recognizing this …

Bitcoin (BTC) fell slightly into the Wall Street open on Jan. 11 after the largest cryptocurrency failed to crack resistance above $42,000, but fresh comments from U.S. Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell appear to be providing a boost to markets. Bitcoin squares off at support According to Powell, the U.S. is likely to remain in a low interest environment for some time, a comment which stocks and risk on assets like cryptocurrencies seem to appreciate. Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC/USD returning to the middle of a narrow range in which it has now spent four days. …

Bitcoin (BTC) dipped below the $40,000 level on Jan. 10 for the first time since September 2021. The crypto markets were not alone as the U.S. equity markets also witnessed strong selling when traders chose to reduce risk and piled into the 10-year Treasury yield which surged to 1.8% from 1.51% at the end of 2021. On Jan. 9, Goldman Sachs chief economist, Jan Hatzius, said that the U.S. Federal Reserve may increase rates by four quarter-percentage points in 2022. Analyst Alex Krüeger also warned that crypto markets may not be able to ignore the Fed if it “decides to …

Bitcoin (BTC) and the U.S. equity markets fell sharply on Jan. 5, reacting negatively to the minutes from the Federal Reserve's December FOMC meeting, which showed that the members expect the balance sheet reduction to start after the Fed begins hiking interest rates in early 2022. Adding to the negative sentiment was the shutdown of the world’s second-biggest Bitcoin mining hub in Kazakhstan, where the internet has been shut down following massive protests by citizens. This caused a dip of about 13.4% in the Bitcoin network’s overall hash rate from 205,000 petahash per second (PH/s) to 177,330 PH/s. According to …

The Solana blockchain has faced its second network performance degradation incident this week. According to Solana, this is happening because of a rise in high compute transactions. As a result, the network capacity which was originally advertised to be 50,000 transactions per second (TPS) was reduced to several thousand TPS. Solana cited this as the reason why users experienced failed transactions and added that its developers are already working to fix the issues. This latest network issue came only a few days after a similar incident on Jan 4, where users experienced the same problems. Many speculated that the Tuesday …

Cat themed play-to-earn (P2E) NFT game Nyan Heroes is aiming to save 1 billion cats from euthanization in animal shelters across the U.S. Nyan Heroes is an upcoming NFT battle royal shooter style game built on the Solana blockchain that will enable players to compete with each other using NFTs depicting animated cats that are used to pilot mech-robot NFTs in the game. The U.S. based project has been in development since October and the game is set for release in Q4 2022. Its first NFT drop is currently available for hodling and trading on marketplaces such as Fractal. According …

The year 2021 was unprecedented for crypto, with Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) gaining 60.58% and 408.5% throughout the year, respectively. For the latter, the explosion of decentralized finance (DeFi), nonfungible tokens (NFTs), decentralized applications (DApps) and decentralized exchanges (DEXs) built on its blockchain created a whole new digital currency cyberspace encompassing all corners of the world. But, the year was also an auspicious one for altcoins, whose performance far outweighed that of BTC and ETH during the same time period. So, without further ado, let's look at five cryptocurrencies that went from zero to hero in 2021. 1. Shiba …

Bitcoin (BTC) and most major altcoins are stuck in a tight range with bulls buying near the support and bears selling at resistance levels. Usually, such tight ranges are followed by an expansion in volatility. Although a few analysts have not ruled out a quick drop to low $40,000s, most traders expect Bitcoin to rebound sharply and move up to $60,000. Goldman Sachs said in a note to investors that if Bitcoin continues to increase its market share over gold as a store of value and crosses the 50% mark, then it could rally to $100,000 over the next five …

The Solana blockchain has suffered a third incident in just a few months that clogged the network and caused transactions to fail, with users debating whether it was caused by another DDos attack or if it was just network issues. The scale and nature of the incident is hard to ascertain, with Coinbase, Wu Blockchain and Redditors reporting there had been an incident causing the network to slow and transactions to fail. However Solana Labs co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko denied there had been a DDoS on this occasion. The latest incident comes less than a month after a previous attack which …

Bitcoin’s (BTC) price action has been uneventful in the first few days of the new year and it continues to languish below the psychological level at $50,000. The Crypto Fear and Greed Index is in the fear zone registering a value of 29/100. On-chain analytics resource Ecoinometrics said stages of extreme fear rarely remain for long, which means “there is a limited downside at 30 days.” Bitcoin continues to garner support from various quarters. Wharton School finance professor Jeremy Siegel said in an interview with CNBC that Bitcoin has replaced gold as an inflation hedge in the minds of Millennials. …

Bitcoin (BTC) and most major altcoins are attempting a rebound off their respective support levels, indicating that buyers continue to accumulate on dips. Data from Coinglass shows that 9,925 Bitcoin left Coinbase Pro, the professional trading arm of Coinbase, on Dec. 30, a possible sign of institutional buying. This is in sharp contrast to the strong inflows seen in Binance and OKEx. Several analysts believe that institutional buying could pick up in January. Economist and trader Alex Krüger expects a Bitcoin rally in early January based on fund flows. He also highlighted that January has produced positive results for Bitcoin …

Twitch co-founder Justin Kan launched a new blockchain gaming-focused NFT marketplace yesterday dubbed Fractal. Fractal’s Discord group has since amassed more than 111,000 members, despite only being announced two weeks ago. At the time of writing, it appears that the most significant sale on the platform so far was for a Baby Scoot NFT that went for 4 Solana (SOL) worth roughly $680. The Solana-based marketplace enables users to buy, trade and hold NFTs used in blockchain games. In an announcement made yesterday, the firm unveiled its first partnered blockchain games, including The Sandbox, Nyan Heroes, Caveworld and Genopets, to …