May 2022

GameFi has been a particularly interesting landscape over the past year, and while the cryptocurrency market at large has been middling – in the midst of heated debates around whether we’re in a full fledged bear market (and if so, how long it will persist) – many other subsets within the crypto market have taken […]

The crypto market has been struggling for a while now and has taken the likes of Bitcoin down with it. The result of this extended trend of low prices has been that profitability has dropped across both major and minor digital assets in the space. For Bitcoin, the pioneer cryptocurrency has been especially hard hit […]

Cardano has been making waves in decentralized finance (DeFi) ever since it debuted smart contract capabilities on the network. Development has ramped up, making it the network with the most developments going on. This activity has translated to a rise in the total value locked (TVL) on the network. And although this value has been declining for a whole, it recently recorded a recovery that saw it jump 30% in a single day. Cardano TVL On The Rise Shortly after multiple decentralized exchanges (DEXes) had been launched on the Cardano network, the TVL had quickly climbed. This was a result of the accelerated adoption that came with notable personalities such as Snoop Dogg taking to the platform and bringing their enormous fanbases with them. At its peak, Cardano’s TVL had grown as large as $326 locked back in March. Related Reading | Billionaire Tim Draper On What Will Trigger The Next Bitcoin Bull Market However, just as the market had declined, the DeFi space had taken a big hit too. The result of this was that TVL had fallen more than 50% from its all-time high and the Cardano network, just like other networks, had watched its TVL decline. On Monday, the network’s TVL had dropped to $118 million, its lowest in a two-month period. However, this would prove to be short-lived given that a surge bumped it back above $150 million in TVL. In a 24-hour period, Cardano’s TVL had added more than 30.96% to its value bringing it to its current position of $155.24 million locked on the network. ADA price on the rise following surge in activity | Source: ADAUSD on TradingView.com Minswap (MIN) continues to dominate on the network, while newcomer WingRiders (WRT) has beat out OG protocol SundaeSwap (SUNDAE) to claim the second position in terms of TVL. SundaeSwap now places third with a total of $36.51 million locked. DeFi TVL Still Struggling 2021 was no doubt the year of decentralized finance (DeFi) given how much TVL was added in the span of a year. From trending at $21 billion in January 2021, DeFi TVL peaked at $230 billion in the same year. This would set the tone for the rest of the year. That is until eh December 4th crash rocked the crypto market to its core. Related Reading | Negative Sentiment Deepens In Crypto, Why Recovery May Not Last The decline that would begin from this point outward would be very apparent. In a matter of six months, the DeFi space has now lost more than $115 billion, culminating in more than half of its TVL being shaved off. Currently, the crypto market is on a recovery trend as bitcoin has recovered above $30,000. This recovery has had an impact on the DeFi TVL but not much. TVL is up 4.87% in the last 24 hours, bringing the total value locked to $112.39 billion as at the time of this writing. Featured image from Young Platform, chart from TradingView.com Follow Best Owie on Twitter for market insights, updates, and the occasional funny tweet… 

PRESS RELEASE. Clesson, the operating company behind OPENTRACK and LABEL Foundation, has officially established a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with CJ Entertainment & Media. The new collaboration has the potential to benefit both parties involved as CJ Entertainment & Media is essentially an entertainment and mass media organization founded by the CJ Group, which is […]

South Korea set a $117.1 million budget to invest in the metaverse and became one of the first governments ever officially to do so.

The post South Korea sets $117.1 million budget to kickstart metaverse industry appeared first on CryptoSlate.

The Brazilian Development Bank has officially launched the Brazilian Blockchain Network, a structure designed to aid other institutions in the country in increasing public transparency. The launch, which was also assisted by the Court of Accounts of the Union, serves to call more institutions to adhere to this project, which aims to have its first […]

The cryptocurrency custodian has officially appointed the former top executive at the Bank of England to serve on its Corporate Strategy team

The Terra (LUNA) crash will go down in crypto history as one of its most catastrophic events. Billions of people lost their life savings and investments. In the meantime, a small group of insiders benefited. Related Reading | LUNA Classic Jumps 90% Following Support From Crypto Exchanges According to a report from Arcane Research analyst Anders Helseth, the Terra (LUNA) ecosystem, now known as Terra Classic, operated as a long-term “pump and dump” scheme. The analyst looked into on-chain activity to support his claims and found revealing information on the distribution of LUNC and its value inflows, how the token supply moved from one group of addresses to another, from exchange platforms from 2020 to a few days before the crash. The analyst called the Terra Classic ecosystem the “perfect exit liquidity” for early LUNA holders. This scheme was supported by the high popularity in the Anchor Protocol, the UST (Terra Classic’s algorithmic stablecoin) and LUNA mint mechanism, and this token’s supply. As seen below, the LUNA supply was “highly concentrated” by Terraform Labs (TFL), Terra Classic’s developing company co-founded by Do-Kwon. Excluding exchange platforms, TFL controlled over 537 million LUNA tokens as of October 3, 2020. The analyst claims unidentified wallets founded by Terraform Labs, the largest LUNC holder, moved their funds to “bridges and centralized exchanges”. The funds began moving in late 2020 and “frequently” saw transactions from TFL to as many as 3,000 unidentified wallets. A total of $6 billion in net outflows were recorded between Terraform Labs to these wallets to bridges/exchanges. As seen below, these funds were later transferred to the “others” group of wallets. In other words, according to the analyst’s research, Terraform Labs seemed to have moved their LUNA supply to exchanges where they were bought by retail investors. The “others” wallets saw $6.5 billion in net inflows. Did The LUNA Crash Made Billions To Early Investors? In theory, $6.5 billion is the profit scored by TFL and early LUNC investors, but the analyst believes the number could be much higher. The report claims the following: Therefore, we have reason to believe that the potential for creating outside profits was larger than the $6 billion net flow that’s calculated based on the assumption that portions of the early deposits of LUNAto exchanges were not sold. Thus, the report claims the Terra Classic ecosystem, levering the popularity and the upside volatility on the price of LUNA (LUNC), created “exit liquidity” for these investors. The analyst concluded the following on the alleged mechanism that enabled early LUNC investors to transfer value to retail investors: By pumping the LUNA token, the burn/mint mechanism, and creating a sustained demand for the UST token through Anchor, the perfect exit liquidity for large LUNA bags was created (…). At best, the profits can be described as collateral winnings in a failed bootstrapping attempt. Related Reading | Daily Pump & Dump | May 31, 2022 Crypto Market Report At the time of writing, LUNA trades at $9 with a 3% loss on the 4-hour chart.

Inventor of Cardano and Input-Output Global (IOG) CEO, Charles Hoskinson, gave his opinion on the recent events related to the crash in the Terra Classic network, formally known as Terra. A collapse in the price of its native token LUNA caused the algorithmic stablecoin UST to deppeged from the U.S. dollar. Related Reading | Cardano Activity […]

The infamous collapse of Terra may have hastened the creation of a supervision and control entity for digital assets, which is set to launch in early June.

The Terra ecosystem’s rise and fall has had major consequences all around the world, but there’s no doubt that South Korea, the birthplace of its creator, was the most concerned country of them all.

Amid signs that Terraform Labs co-founder Do Kwon was facing legal trouble in South Korea, the country’s ruling party announced Tuesday that it would launch a new Digital Asset Committee in early June, according to local news outlet NewsPim.

According to the report, the committee will serve as a watchdog over the crypto industry and will be responsible for policy preparation and supervision — that is, until the forthcoming Framework Act for Digital Assets is enacted and a formal government entity devoted to crypto is established.

The committee is an expansion and reorganization of an existing body overseeing digital assets and is expected to enhance policy effectiveness by streamlining the government’s oversight efforts on crypto.

The Terra (LUNA) crash takes another remarkable turn.

Legal documents have revealed the liquidation of two South Korean offices and the dissolution of the Terraform Labs Korea corporation in the days preceding the dual currency collapse. https://t.co/hjEb1rXV4q

— Cointelegraph (@Cointelegraph) May 21, 2022

Related: Do Kwon summoned to parliamentary hearing following UST and LUNA crash

According to a translated version of the original report, which appeared in Korean, Hwang Seok-jin, a professor at Dongguk University and a member of the Special Committee on Virtual Assets, suggested that “a ministry should be established to protect digital asset investors at the same level of stock investor protection.”

The professor also compared the country’s daily cryptocurrency trading volume to that of the Kosdaq stock exchange, suggesting once again that the industry should be treated in a similar fashion as traditional equities.