Category: Crypto News

Months after a storm of controversies, Nuggets News founder and crypto influencer Alex Saunders issued a public apology over last year’s controversies and the way he handled things. 

Back in 2021, Saunders faced a series of allegations claiming that he had failed to pay loans and investment funds. Those who were affected claimed that Saunders owed them Bitcoin (BTC). This compelled Australian media entities to conduct investigations and conclude that the influencer owes as much as $7 million.

The Nuggets News CEO faced a $350,000 lawsuit filed by Ziv Himmelfarb, claiming damages from unpaid loans. Himmelfarb said that he invested 4 BTC, 30 Ether (ETH), and $50,000 worth of stablecoins. As Saunders did not respond, a default judgment was handed down, requiring Saunders to pay the investor’s losses.

Apart from this, the influencer also came under fire because of a failed launch of a Decentraland-based project. The crypto influencer had raised funds for a virtual headquarters in the Decentraland platform. However, it was later revealed that Saunders failed to pay the studio that was supposed to build the virtual HQ.

After a long hiatus, the Nuggets News founder issued a public statement on Twitter claiming that he has settled most of his debts and is in the process of settling the others. The influencer admitted that he was “not thinking clearly and handled things poorly.” He said:

“Everyone I had any kind of dealings within the crypto space has now been contacted and either repaid, or in the process of being repaid.” 

Related: Shopify facing another lawsuit from crypto holders over Ledger data breach

Despite the apology, not everyone believes Saunders’ recent announcement. In one of the replies, Twitter user Jexxa said that he thinks this is a “cop out” and that Saunders knew what he was doing to his “trusting followers.”

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While I feel for anyone with mental health issues, this is just a cop out. You knew very well what you were doing to your trusting followers and their funds. Second last paragraph, straight back to shilling… things never change.

— Jexxa – mind your own keys (@j_jexxa) April 22, 2022

STEPN (GMT) has rallied strongly against the U.S. dollar this week as it looks likely to form a classical bullish technical pattern called the “bull flag.”

GMT eyes more upside

GMT’s price rose 30% week-to-date, including a strong rally to establish an all-time high near $3.85 followed by a relatively modest correction to nearly $3. In particular, the correction phase occurred inside a descending parallel channel, raising possibilities that the price would eventually break out of it to the upside.

That is precisely because traditional analysts consider strong run-ups, followed by range-trapped price corrections, as bullish continuation setups. And the one GMT has been painting — a bull flag, as mentioned above — could lead to an upside boom in the weeks ahead, as shown in the chart below.

As a general rule, traders realize a bull flag target by measuring the previous uptrend’s height and projecting it from the breakout point. Applying the classic setup on GMT’s chart shows that it now eyes a run-up above $5, about 65% above today’s price.

Bull flags’ success rate of meeting their upside targets sits near 64%, according to Thomas Bulkowski, a veteran investor and analyst.

But the risk of a drop toward $2 becomes high if the GMT’s price breaks below the bull flag’s lower trendline, the last line of support, which coincides with the 50-4H exponential moving average (50-4H EMA; the red wave) at $2.91.

STEPN’s 38,000% gains ‘an absolute joke’? 

GMT surged by nearly 38,000% in less than two months, amid the hype surrounding STEPN’s “move-to-earn” economic model that rewards its app’s users with a native currency, called Green Satoshi Token (GST), for merely moving.

STEPN generates revenues (it made $26.81 million in Q1/2022) via the sales of its so-called “NFT Sneaker” — a unique digital image whose ownership enables players to earn GST in the first place. The game uses the proceeds first to buy and then burn GMT, thus creating upward pressure on its prices if the demand for the token goes up.

Independent market analyst Wangarian believes the hype around STEPN looks similar to what Axie Infinity (AXS), a play-to-earn gaming metaverse, witnessed in May 2021. AXS/USD rallied from around $2.50 to about $178 between May and November last year.

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Tell me how $APE + $GMT ripping in a sideways market doesn’t look similar to $AXS back in May 2021.

— Wangarian (@0xWangarian) April 21, 2022

Fellow independent market analyst Michaël van de Poppe, however, fears that GMT’s market capitalization, which sits near $1.9 billion — with a fully diluted valuation of around $18 billion — is an “absolute joke.”

But GMT “valuations can still become ridiculous,” he adds, owing to STEPN’s marketing tactics.

The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph.com. Every investment and trading move involves risk, you should conduct your own research when making a decision.

April 22 is Earth Day and with environmental sustainability one of the key topics in the global debate surrounding Bitcoin mining, analysts say the industry has begun to naturally gravitate towards cleaner and cheaper energy sources.

According to a January report by the Bitcoin Mining Council, by Q4 2021, the global Bitcoin mining industry ran on an estimated 58.5% renewable energy.

The preference for clean energy is due to a combination of environmental conscientiousness, political pressures, and an eye on the bottom line. It’s resulting in a sea change that could have ripple effects that extend well beyond Bitcoin (BTC) mining onto power grid systems around the world.

Bitcoin miners in Norway are cleaner than almost anywhere else on the planet thanks to the country’s access to hydropower and other renewables. In fact, 100% of Norway’s electricity is generated from renewable energy.

Of Norway’s 157 Terrawatt hours (TWh) of power produced per year, 88% is from hydroelectric, with wind and thermal force making up the remainder.

Miners use that renewable energy to produce about 1% of the total Bitcoin hashrate according to data from blockchain research firm CoinShares.

Mas Nakachi is Managing Director of Miami-based XBTO Group’s Bitcoin mining operation XBTO. Founded in 2015, XBTO’s mining operation takes in upwards of $25 million per year and claims to be completely powered by renewable energy sources. 

He believes “hydropower is one of the most reliable renewable energy sources available to us.”

Wind power depends on the weather and solar power depends on daylight, but rivers can flow all day every day — and in various locales water can be pumped uphill during off peak periods as a way to store excess energy to run generators when needed. Nakachi told Cointelegraph that:

“Harnessing hydroelectric power has remained an effective mechanism to maintain the most efficient mining possible.”

Whereas a Feb. study published in the Energy Research & Social Science journal concluded “cryptocurrency is unsustainable by design,” Nakachi believes there is a simple path for mining operations to develop both an economically and environmentally sustainable model: 

“Prioritizing some form of clean energy to power the majority of operations is, in the long term, a sustainable model for successful mining operations.”

As reported by Cointelegraph, another option being explored in Texas is the utilization of flexible data centers which can switch from the public grid to temporarily generating its own clean energy from dedicated energy generators to relieve stress on the grid during periods of high retail demand.

Related: Marathon Digital moves Montana BTC mine to pursue carbon neutrality

Tech entrepreneur and self-proclaimed environmentalist Daniel Batten described a multi-pronged way in which the Bitcoin mining industry is creating positive change on the April 22 podcast from Brave New Coin. Batten argued that Bitcoin mining incentivizes building renewable energy plants and helps decarbonize power grids.

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0/18
BREAKING: #BTC Mining can drive us to 70% renewables-based energy consumption by 2030.

To say “#BTC mining is good for the environment” is like saying “the sun is warm”: a massive understatement. #BTCmining is our unexpected superhero. Here’s how.https://t.co/Arl1zZXTY6 pic.twitter.com/AleegYAbwM

— Daniel Batten (@DSBatten) April 13, 2022

Batten believes Bitcoin mining drives increased demand for electricity and therefore investments in renewable energy plants. Mining is suited to intermittent power sources and it can be easily moved to far flung locales to take advantage of excess generation of renewable electricity.

The only problem that Batten sees is that the industry may not be big enough to incentivize all the renewable energy required:

“My only real concern is ‘Is Bitcoin mining requiring enough electricity to help us build up that grid to the extent we need to?’”

United States House of Representatives member Jared Huffman and 12 other lawmakers have requested the Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, assess crypto mining firms potentially violating environmental statutes.

In a letter addressed to EPA administrator Michael Regan on Wednesday, Huffman said he and other Democratic House members had “serious concerns” around crypto firms in the United States reportedly contributing to greenhouse gas emissions and not operating in accordance with either the Clean Air Act or the Clean Water Act. The lawmakers identified efforts to “re-open closed gas and coal facilities” as a means to produce energy for crypto mining operations as a particular area of concern, as well as “energy-inefficient” proof-of-work mining for Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Monero (XMR), and Zcash (ZEC).

“Cryptocurrency mining is poisoning our communities,” said the letter. “The rapidly expanding cryptocurrency industry needs to be held accountable to ensure it operates in a sustainable and just manner to protect communities.”

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@RepHuffman is right: @EPA must address pollution caused by digital currencies like #Bitcoin. #ChangeTheCode #CleanUpBitcoin https://t.co/3WVBQxNuXQ

— EWG (@ewg) April 21, 2022

In addition to air and water pollution as a result of energy production, the U.S. lawmakers pointed to “large amounts of electronic waste” due to crypto miners becoming obsolete, and “significant noise pollution” reported around communities with mining operations in New York, Tennessee and Georgia. House members including Representative Brad Sherman — who has previously called for a ban on cryptocurrencies in the United States — and progressive lawmaker Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez signed the letter in support of action against mining firms.

“We request that the EPA evaluate PoW mining facilities’ compliance with environmental statutes, such as the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, and engage with the communities when reviewing permits,” said the letter to Regan. “Further, we ask that the EPA investigate and address any harm these existing PoW facilities are causing communities including, but not limited to, ensuring that electronic waste is responsibly disposed of, and noise pollution is abated.”

“As cryptocurrency continues to gain popularity and demand more mining, we must ensure communities are not left with the toxic burdens associated with this technology.”

Related: Are we misguided about Bitcoin mining’s environmental impacts? Slush Pool CMO Kristian Csepcsar explains

The energy requirements for cryptocurrency miners continue to be controversial among policymakers in the U.S. and many other countries. Bloomberg reported in March that oil and gas giant ExxonMobil had been using excess gas from oil wells in North Dakota to run BTC miners as part of a pilot program started in January 2021. In addition, a New York state supreme court judge recently dismissed a petition requesting mining firm Greenidge Generation halt operations, saying organizations had failed to prove residents would suffer from an “environmental injury” with the company expanding.

Sentiment in the cryptocurrency market is on the upswing after small gains from Bitcoin (BTC) and altcoins hint that the market could be in the process of a bullish breakout.

A handful of altcoins are also finding momentum and a round of fresh partnership announcements appear to back the 40% gains seen in select assets on April 21.

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that the biggest gainers over the past 24-hours were Steem (STEEM), TrustSwap (SWAP) and 0x (ZRX).

Binance lists STEEM

The community-focused blockchain network Steem is the underling chain for the social media platform Steemit, which allows users to earn rewards for their posts and interactions within the community.

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows the price of STEEM hit a low of $0.344 on April 20 and then proceeded to surge 77.16% to hit a daily high at $0.61 on April 21 as its 24-hour trading volume exploded.

The sudden burst in momentum and trading volume for STEEM follows an announcement from Binance exchange that it was adding support for the STEEM/USDT trading pair.

TrustSwap trades at Bithumb

TrustSwap is a decentralized finance protocol that specializes in the creation of multi-chain token swaps and offers a host of other features including staking, the ability to mint new tokens and an in-house launchpad.

VORTECS™ data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro began to detect a bullish outlook for SWAP on April 16, prior to the recent price rise.

The VORTECS™ Score, exclusive to Cointelegraph, is an algorithmic comparison of historical and current market conditions derived from a combination of data points including market sentiment, trading volume, recent price movements and Twitter activity.

As seen in the chart above, the VORTECS™ Score for SWAP spiked into the green zone and hit a high of 75 on April 16, around 65 hours before the price surged 120.96% higher over the next three days.

The rally in SWAP price follows a new listing on the South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Bithumb and an increased effort to market the protocol’s minting module, which allows users to easily create a cryptocurrency and launch it on the BNB Smart Chain as well as the Ethereum and Polygon blockchains.

Related: Coinbase is planning to purchase crypto exchange BtcTurk in $3.2B deal: Report

0x partners with Coinbase

ZRX is a decentralized exchange infrastructure protocol that specializes in facilitating the trading of assets on the Ethereum blockchain without needing to rely on centralized intermediaries.

VORTECS™ data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro began to detect a bullish outlook for ZRX on April 19, prior to the recent price rise.

As shown above, the VORTECS™ Score for ZRX peaked at a high of 75 on April 19, just one hour before its price began to rally 71.56% higher over the next two days.

The rapid spike in ZRX price came on the heels of an announcement that Coinbase had partnered with 0x to power their new social marketplace for nonfungible tokens, or NFTs.

The overall cryptocurrency market cap now stands at $1.94 trillion and Bitcoin’s dominance rate is 41.3%.

The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph.com. Every investment and trading move involves risk, you should conduct your own research when making a decision.

Major United States-based cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase is reportedly planning to purchase BtcTurk for $3.2 billion.

According to Turkish tech media outlet Webrazzi citing a Thursday report from Mergermarket, the two exchanges negotiated a price based on the market behavior of the Turkish lira and Bitcoin (BTC), arriving at roughly $3.2 billion. One or both of the two firms have reportedly already signed a term sheet.

The potential acquisition would follow Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong announcing plans to expand to every country in which the exchange can legally operate. Cointelegraph reported in March that Coinbase was preparing to purchase 2TM, the parent company of Latin America-based crypto brokerage firm Mercado Bitcoin.

Coinbase is also currently hiring a country director for its operations in Turkey. According to the job posting, part of the director’s responsibilities include accelerating the exchange’s “strategic partnerships” in the country. Binance announced on April 14 that it had launched a customer service center in Turkey in an effort to end fraud cases involving crypto.

Related: Crypto and NFTs meet regulation as Turkey takes on the digital future

Launched in 2013, BtcTurk is one of the largest and oldest crypto exchanges in Turkey, sharing the market with its competitor Paribu and others. According to data from CoinMarketCap, the firm has had more than $196 million in trading volume over the last 24 hours.

Cointelegraph reached out to Coinbase and BtcTurk, but did not receive a response at the time of publication.

Alex Zinder, a capital markets veteran who jumped on the blockchain train last year, attended the Paris Blockchain Week Summit, where he sat down with Cointelegraph to discuss blockchain projects, crypto adoption and the traditional financial world’s necessary embrace of digital assets.

After almost two decades in capital markets technology, Alex Zinder joined Ledger Enterprise in March 2021. He previously worked at Nasdaq, where he worked as the global software development director and associate vice president of enterprise architecture.

Zinder now leads Ledger Enterprise Interact, a suite of solutions that allow businesses to manage interactions in smart contract-enabled protocols that support staking, nonfungible tokens (NFTs) and other decentralized finance (DeFi) possibilities.

“Being on the Nasdaq side of things that was very much more involved in the distributed ledger ecosystem of the DLT platforms and looking at that from a more traditional financial services perspective,” Zinder said, adding: “There was a tremendous amount of interest activity experimentation happening in the space, but not a tremendous amount of adoption from real use cases.”

Zinder was asked whether cryptocurrency must develop even further for it to be considered a viable alternative by the traditional sector. According to him, it’s not a “requirement or a prerequisite” since traditional players are ” smart business companies” and they see opportunities. He stated that what he thinks is happening currently, is that “these opportunities are of sufficient scale” for the traditional players to want to participate. 

He pointed out that now” it’s no longer can we kind of play around and really understand the space to make sure we don’t miss it, and now it’s more actually have a financial opportunity here that we can monetize and grow and scale our businesses, which is a very different dynamic.”

Zinder also highlighted three primary factors that align well with Ledger Enterprises’ overall strategy. As per him, the scale of value, the scale of complexity, and the complexity of operations are much greater in the enterprise space. He added that:

“The demand is definitely coming, but I think we’re literally just at the preference of what’s coming because the growth is going to continue exponentially for a significant period of time.”

Zinder addressed corporate crypto adoption and custody solutions by explaining that the issues aren’t technological in nature but rather about processes, organizations and business model innovation because traditional firms must adapt to new models. 

Related: Enterprise blockchain to play a pivotal role in creating a sustainable future

For years, government regulation has been a major topic in the crypto space. Zinder summarised his thoughts on enterprise blockchain, cryptocurrency adoption and regulation as follows:

“So regulation is a factor, we’ve been having a lot of conversations with regulators. […] We actually have several customers that are fully regulated entities. So several are well-known custodians, custodians are fully regulated in their regions.”

Proof-of-stake blockchain protocol Algorand will implement a smart contract that will automate the offsetting of the network’s carbon emissions.

In a recent announcement, Algorand revealed that a new smart contract would take a portion of each transaction fee within its blockchain network and automatically process it to purchase verified carbon credits at ClimateTrade, a blockchain-based carbon offset marketplace.

According to Algorand Foundation CEO Staci Warden, the move will allow the network to scale while still being carbon negative. Warden told Cointelegraph that the smart contract will ensure that their blockchain remains eco-friendly in the long-term and hopes that other firms do the same. 

“We hope this encourages our partners and other blockchain protocols to lower their carbon footprint,” said Warden. She explained that all tech companies have a responsibility to help build a sustainable future, and their team is happy that they are able to provide a blueprint on how this can be achieved.

The CEO also praised the blockchain industry’s efforts to be more eco-friendly. Warden said that:

“The industry is moving in the right direction by adopting proof-of-stake as the preferred consensus mechanism. While there are certainly valid criticisms against Bitcoin and proof of work, the future is bright.” 

Related: Blockchain and oracles can help clean energy transition, study claims

Back in 2021, the Algorand team made a pledge to be a carbon-negative blockchain. Through its partnership with ClimateTrade, Algorand was able to log its on-chain carbon footprint and put an equal amount of carbon credits in a green treasury. 

Meanwhile, in an attempt to combat the effects of climate change, insurance firm Lemonade partnered with blockchain companies to form a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) that aims to help African farmers from climate change effects. The DAO, called the Lemonade Crypto Climate Coalition, provides climate insurance to farmers and allows them to be compensated if they ever get affected by natural disasters. 

Crypto investors from the United States realized crypto gains nearly six times higher in total than the UK, the second highest country in terms of realized gains. 

According to a report by Chainalysis, crypto investors in the US accrued a record $46.9 billion in realized gains throughout 2021, leading the rest of the world by a wide margin. The US is followed at quite some distance by the UK at $8.1 billion and Germany on $5.8 billion.

The report comes as global cryptocurrency adoption continues to gain widespread traction. The US witnessed a massive increase in adoption and realized gains, with the total estimated gains for 2021 up 476% from $8.1 billion the year before.

Special mentions were given to countries that outperformed their “traditional” economic rankings. Despite Turkey being globally ranked as number 11 by GDP, the country was ranked at number six when it came to realized crypto gains.

China was one of the only large nations that did not see the same massive gains as other countries. In 2021, China’s total estimated realized cryptocurrency gains stood at $5.1 billion, up from $1.7 billion in 2020, which equates to year-over-year growth rate of 194%. However, this is still impressive growth considering the extensive crypto bans that were progressively enacted in China in 2021.

China’s result pales however besides other countries such as the UK and Germany which saw a respective 431% and a 423% increase last year.

Related: What is driving institutions to invest in crypto? BlockFi’s David Olsson explains

Another notable trend was the increase in total gains from Ethereum (ETH), which saw ETH investors around the world cash out a total $76.3 billion, beating out Bitcoin (BTC) as the highest realized earnings crypto asset in 2021. Bitcoin inventors still performed well however, with the global crypto investing community securing $74.7 billion in gains throughout 2021.

Ethereum Layer 2-based crypto derivatives trading platform dYdX has vowed to become “100% decentralized by EOY” via the protocol’s V4 update.

dYdX primarily offers perpetual contracts, which are derivatives products that borrow elements from both spot margin trading and futures trading but do not have an expiry date.

At present only certain components of dYdX are decentralized, including its Ethereum smart contracts, governance and staking. However its “orderbook and matching engine” are managed by dYdX Trading Inc. — the team that developed the platform.

dYdX announced the V4 update on Twitter yesterday with a new roadmap outlining that: “You are not ready.”

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#DYDX will be 100% decentralized by EOY.

You are not ready.https://t.co/0StvepVlgb

— dYdX (@dYdX) April 19, 2022

In a blog dYdX explained that the “primary aspect” of fully decentralizing the platform is focused on the orderbook and its matching engine. The team noted that the main challenges will be scaling throughput (transaction processing power), finality (off-chain trade matching) and fairness (operators not being able to extract value from legitimate trading activity) in a decentralized manner.

“With V4, dYdX will become fully decentralized. There will no longer be central points of control or failure of the protocol; all aspects of the protocol that can be controlled will be fully controlled by the community,” the roadmap reads.

Outlining why the platform is going fully decentralized, dYdX emphasized the “fundamental improvement” that decentralized finance (DeFi) provides over centralized financial services:

“DeFi offers a massive improvement in transparency. For the first time, the financial system itself is no longer a black box to users. With DeFi, users can trust code instead of corporations.”

The V4 update will see dYdX Trading Inc. receive zero trading fees moving forward. Additionally, the platform will also roll out more products and services, such as synthetics and spot and margin trading.

While many DeFi projects often tout that they are “decentralized” due to smart contracts and their automated setups, they are often controlled by a small core team with access to a multisig admin key that gives them ‘god mode’ powers over the protocol. This is often a useful strategy to recover from errors while building the platform, but introduces centralized risks.

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Gary Gensler argued that DeFi is mostly centralized during an interview in August last year, noting that:

“These so-called ‘decentralized finance’ platforms actually have a lot of centralization. There’s a group of entrepreneurs that are running these platforms.”

Another DeFi project to announce the move to full decentralization, or being “fully self-sufficient” was DAI stablecoin creator and pioneering protocol MakerDAO in mid-2021.

Related: DeFi token AAVE eyes 40% rally in May but ‘bull trap’ risks remain

Maker Foundation CEO Rune Christensen noted in a blog post at the time that “the Protocol and the DAO will be determined by thousands or perhaps millions of engaged, enthusiastic community members.”

Critics note however that MakerDAO has 5.1 billion centralized USDC stablecoins backing its DAI reserves so the true extent of its decentralization is arguable.

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There are currently 5.1 billion USDC and 499 million USDP in the PSM as reserves for Dai’s liquidity.

Dai peg You can swap Dai for 1 US dollar at any time.

— Maker (@MakerDAO) March 31, 2022