February 2023

With regulators quickly clamping down on crypto, Coinbase seeks to foster grassroots support for the industry and influence politicians to be more welcoming of it. 

During the run up in crypto assets, traditional financial institutions like VISA and Mastercard scrambled to get in on the trend and announced new initiatives that involved Bitcoin, Ethereum, or other cryptocurrencies. These same companies are now rethinking their strategy in the wake of the FTX collapse and additional negative industry events, according to a […]

Coinbase has listed Euro Coin (EUROC), according to an announcement from the company on February 28.

The post Coinbase lists Circle’s euro stablecoin, EUROC appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Platypus Finance has launched a portal that will allow users to see how much compensation they are owed, according to a post from the project on February 28.

The post Platypus Finance provides recovery estimates after flash loan attack appeared first on CryptoSlate.

The existing moratorium expires on February 28th.

Eighteen projects scheduled their unlocks to take place in March, which will release about $650 million worth of tokens into circulation, according to Token Unlocks data.

The post About $650M in token unlocks scheduled for March appeared first on CryptoSlate.

A former UFC champion’s NFT collection will allow holders to mine Bitcoin – but the Internet Detective isn’t bullish on it. 

The possibility of hosting Bitcoin NFTs on Stacks pushed STX price to new yearly highs, but there are concerns on whether the bullish thesis becomes reality.

Stacks is one of the first blockchains to enable a way for minting Bitcoin (BTC) Ordinals, which puts it in an excellent position to benefit from the hype. However, Ordinals have invoked an issue from the past where Bitcoin maximalist ideologies will be tested if the NFTs lead to network congestion.

On top of that, Stacks has yet to deliver all the functionalities required to support an NFT trading ecosystem and it faces competition from projects in other blockchain ecosystems. The fundamental and technical analysis of the project suggests that the price surge might have reached overbought conditions and may correct in the near term.

Ordinals development is unpredictable for now

The recent focus on inscribing NFTs on the Bitcoin network peaked in the last month after Casey Rodarmor inscribed an Ordinal on Jan. 29. While the trend took off to an overwhelming start, the minting is limited to technical users with a Bitcoin node and trading primarily takes place through OTC channels.

In comparison to Ethereum NFT marketplaces, the infrastructure for Bitcoin NFT trading remains significantly underdeveloped in regards to complex activities like decentralized trading. Many investors have expressed their belief that there needs to be a way to spin up marketplaces and NFT minting platforms for Ordinals.

The Bitcoin developer community has previously discouraged using the network for anything other than payments because it clogs the space and increases transaction fees. In the bull run of 2020 and 2021, many Ethereum users paid hundreds of dollars in fees per transaction as user activity on it exploded. On the other hand, Bitcoin’s fees stayed at optimum levels throughout the bull run, but the usage and earnings of the protocol lagged behind Ethereum.

According to a CoinShare report, the adoption of Ordinals will again be subject to the social acceptance of the method to inscribe additional data on the Bitcoin blockchain, which is bound to present challenges such as network congestion and increased fees.

The report goes on to review previous failed attempts to use the Bitcoin blockchain for smart contract activity, saying that “similar projects of Bitcoin’s past have had little impact on investors and users alike.”

The number of Ordinals inscribed on Bitcoin surged significantly at the start of February as the instrument exploded. However, the trend slowed down due to a lack of trading infrastructure, with less than 10,000 NFTs inscribed on most days.

Stack blockchain’s native STX (STX) token jumped by 256% in February, thanks to hype around Bitcoin NFTs and an upcoming upgrade to the project. 

It remains to be seen how the Bitcoin community reacts to an increase in network congestion and Bitcoin fees if the Ordinals hype grows. 

Stacks price rises on speculation, while activity is low

The idea is that Stacks will make Bitcoin Ordinals more accessible to users by facilitating minting processes and hosting marketplaces.

Stacks Foundation, the team managing the blockchain, on Feb. 22 announced a new upgrade to the protocol, Stacks 2.1, which seeks to improve the blockchain by adding EVM compatibility and synthetic Bitcoin (sBTC) through a secure bridge to Bitcoin.

On top of that, the .BTC naming service lives on the Stacks network, which could generate a lot of trading activity if the demand for .BTC addresses increases. In its current state, a .BTC Stacks address is largely detached from the Bitcoin network. Meaning, users cannot send and receive Bitcoin at these addresses like its .ETH counterpart.

After the 2.0 upgrade, Stacks will enable direct sending of Stacks assets to Bitcoin addresses. It will enable proxy access to the Bitcoin blockchain without creating a separate Stacks address. It remains to be seen if Bitcoin users find the feature attractive.

While the upgrades sound promising, there’s still insufficient blockchain activity to justify the STX price surge. Only around 1,000 unique active wallets engaged with DApps on Stacks in February. The most striking part of Stack’s usage data was that the NFT marketplace Gamma also failed to attract considerable users to its platform, with less than 100 wallets trading daily on the marketplace.

Gamma supports minting and sending Bitcoin ordinal NFTs via Stacks. However, many users have faced UX-related problems while using the feature, as it requires a separate address in a Stacks wallet that is Ordinal compatible. Many users have mistakenly sent their NFTs to wrong addresses. The wallet issue has also restricted the trading of Bitcoin NFTs.

Developers in the Stacks ecosystem, like the Xverse team, are working on a wallet to bring user-friendly Ordinals support. There's also an experiment with atomic swaps between Bitcoin NFTs and STX in the works. The aim is to develop this functionality into a complete marketplace.

However, other ecosystems are also looking to bank on this trend. For instance, Ordinex is developing an Ordinals trading platform, which will be accessible for Ethereum users through Metamask. Some Ethereum native projects, like OnChainBirds and SappySeals, have also inscribed the NFTs on Bitcoin and enabled trading on OpenSea. However, the trading activity of these collections remains average, with little hype.

Besides Stacks, many other ecosystems are trying to bank on the opportunity by facilitating Bitcoin NFTs. While Stacks enjoys a technical advantage over others, Ethereum has a loyal user base and adequate liquidity to outperform Stacks’ ecosystem if a feasible solution emerges. Moreover, in the end, it will depend on the response and demand of these NFTs from the Bitcoin community, which may not support euphoria around it.

STX/USD reaches key resistances zones

The STX token dilutes at the rate of 2.5% annually. The inflation will reduce after the Bitcoin halving, which is expected to occur in April 2024. The rate of supply increase of STX is low compared to other layer-1 blockchains like Solana and Cardano, which is encouraging. However, the network’s total fees or token economics do not balance the inflation, which needs to change soon.

Technically, the STX/USD pair is near the top of its two-year trading range at $1.02, which is a potential yellow flag for buyers. If bulls are able to overcome this level, STX can possibly take a shot at the all-time highs near $3.00. However, given that network activity doesn’t correlate to the price rise as of yet, there’s a chance of a pullback toward $0.68 and $0.24.

Similarly, the STX/BTC pair is also near its all-time range of 0.00004350 BTC, which raises the possibility of a correction once those levels are tagged. The downside targets of STX are at 0.00002744 BTC and 0.00001233 BTC.

Bitcoin NFTs have a lot of potential, but it is still unclear if the Bitcoin community, which is usually against speculation and activities that clog the network, will allow the trend to prosper. 

Currently, the most crucial aspect of NFT trading — an easily accessible marketplace and wallet — is still missing from the Ordinals ecosystem. As a Bitcoin sidechain, Stacks enjoys technical advantages with Bitcoin integration and it has a slight advantage over other blockchains in providing the tools to support an Ordinals craze.

However, the applications to support Ordinals are still in development. Meanwhile, Stacks faces competition from other more liquid ecosystems, which could develop more feasible solutions to integrate Bitcoin NFTs on their chain.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the authors’ alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.

Fujitsu a multinational information and communications tech firm, has led a group of ten major Japanese companies in collaboration to creating the infrastructure for Japan's open metaverse and immerse the country into Web3.

In the official agreement posted on its website, Fujitsu announced the creation of an Open Metaverse Infrastructure on February 27, marking a milestone in Japan's Web3 efforts. Along with Fujitsu, Japanese manufacturing giant Mitsubishi as well as financial giants Mizuho and Sumitomo Mitsui are among the project's members. The infrastructure itself is to be made by JP Games (under the TBT Lab), whose founder and CEO is no less than Hajime Tabata, famed game director and producer of the Final Fantasy series.

The metaverse infrastructure, called RYUGUKOKU (TBD) is meant to "update Japan through the power of games" as envisioned by Tabata, who also serves as the Web3 advisor of Japan's Digital Agency. RYUGUKOKU will incorporate elements of role-playing games in order to ease its users into the different Web3 services offered by companies and government agencies.

There are three main features of the infrastructure. One is the "Auto-Learning Avatar" function created to provide the user a more personalized metaverse experience. The "Pegasus World Kit" will enable users to create their own gamified events within the metaverse. The "Multi-Magic Passport” is a payment function optimized for the different services.

Japan has been inching closer to integrating Web3 into its financial and governmental agenda. Prime Minister Fumio Kishida back in October has announced further expansion into the metaverse and investments to digital technology. The following month, the country's Digital Agency announced plans to develop its own decentralized autonomous organization (DAO). Japan has been steadily investing and exploring the possibilities of Web3 with Kishida claiming that NFTs and DAOs can be the key to revitalize Japan's other regions and further promote Japanese culture to the world.

2023 started out tough for cryptocurrency in Japan with Kraken pulling out just before the year started and Coinbase following suit in the middle of January. Some light at the end of the tunnel was the launch of the country's own central bank digital currency (CBDC) primed for this April. Now, the unveiling and construction of Japan's own metaverse project looks to be the catalyst to further propel the country's digital transformation.

Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

The biggest news in the cryptoverse for February 28 saw Coinbase announce a campaign called Crypto 435 in order to advocate for pro-crypto policies in United States politics.

The post CryptoSlate Wrapped Daily: Coinbase launches Crypto 435 campaign; FTX’s Nishad Singh pleads guilty appeared first on CryptoSlate.