NBA basketball franchise the Miami Heat today announced a long-term partnership with FTX, the cryptocurrency exchange co-founded by Sam Bankman-Fried and Gary Wang.
FTX had already signed a deal with the Heat to rename its home venue “FTX Arena.” Now, it’s being named the “the official and exclusive cryptocurrency exchange partner of the Miami Heat.”
In addition to FTX being featured prominently within the stadium, it will also take part in contests and promotions, as well as link up with the “HEAT digital content series.”
“Internet technology and digital finance are evolving incredibly quickly,” said said FTX.us CEO Bankman-Fried in a press release. “We wanted to partner with a city and a franchise that are dynamic, diverse, innovative and always forward-looking.”
Miami mayor Francis Suarez has put the full court press on cryptocurrency and blockchain companies to relocate to the Magic City. In January of this year, he told the founders of crypto exchange Gemini that he wanted to make Miami “the most crypto competitive city on the planet.”
Today’s news goes beyond Suarez, however. The Heat specifically thanked Miami-Dade Country Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, her COO, and the entire board of county commissioners for helping make the partnership possible.
FTX is one of the largest crypto derivatives exchanges in the world despite launching just two years ago. It’s registered more than $14 billion in trading volume in the last 24 hours, according to trading volume data from CoinMarketCap.
In a blog post yesterday, decentralized finance (DeFi) management and protocol aggregator platform Instadapp announced the launch of their governance token, INST. While not currently transferable by the average user, the token is set to go fully live later in the year to coincide with a transfer of control over the protocol to a DAO governance process in Q2.
The project, which currently counts over $2.3 billion in its 18,000 “Smart Accounts” wallets, connects to a variety of DeFi protocols from a single interface and offers a development toolkit in an effort to position itself as “middleware” for devs building DeFi products.
According to Instadapp community manager Steven Zapata (who may be more familiar as ‘seb eth monk‘ to community members), the pivot to becoming a development platform is a key part of Instadapp’s growth strategy.
“Instadapp is known as being an aggregator, but we are much more than that,” he said. “Instadapp is a complete toolkit for building DeFi applications. As we transition our platform into a defi middleware, we are not only aggregating different protocols but our platform will create unique use-cases by leveraging different components across defi.”
As examples, Zapata points to Smart Accounts’ ability to grant fund managers limited access to private assets, as well as aggregating assets across multiple Smart Accounts for borrowing and lending purposes.
Unlike other token announcements, the team didn’t play coy about INST being a “valueless governance token.” “Implementing fees” was mentioned as one option for governance in a previous blog, and tokenholders will be able to vote on key protocol features, such as which DeFi platforms to implement.
“Token holders will determine which protocols get on-boarded and which use-cases receive funding and support,” said Zapata. “We believe as the platform grows and more integrations and applications come to utilize and build on the instadapp framework, the community is incentivized to integrate worthwhile products and create meaningful partnerships with other communities, as well as, shape the protocol for their benefit.”
As of now, the INST contract is live with a max supply of 100 million undistributed tokens. There are no concrete details about a forthcoming airdrop, only that “protocol users” will have access to an initial distribution of a unspecified sum at an unspecified date.
While Instadapp is the first aggregator to go live with a token, they’re likely not the last. Zapper has long been rumored to be considering a token (though their documentation denies any “short term” plans), and likewise DeBank has a popular proposal to launch a token on their forums 91 days old.
The information on or accessed through this website is obtained from independent sources we believe to be accurate and reliable, but Decentral Media, Inc. makes no representation or warranty as to the timeliness, completeness, or accuracy of any information on or accessed through this website. Decentral Media, Inc. is not an investment advisor. We do not give personalized investment advice or other financial advice. The information on this website is subject to change without notice. Some or all of the information on this website may become outdated, or it may be or become incomplete or inaccurate. We may, but are not obligated to, update any outdated, incomplete, or inaccurate information.
You should never make an investment decision on an ICO, IEO, or other investment based on the information on this website, and you should never interpret or otherwise rely on any of the information on this website as investment advice. We strongly recommend that you consult a licensed investment advisor or other qualified financial professional if you are seeking investment advice on an ICO, IEO, or other investment. We do not accept compensation in any form for analyzing or reporting on any ICO, IEO, cryptocurrency, currency, tokenized sales, securities, or commodities.
After flirting with a $2 trillion market cap for the last couple of days, the cryptocurrency market took a 7% hit on April 7, dropping the total crypto market cap to $1.8 trillion. As the unexpected sell-off took place, investors scrambled to find a reason to explain the move.
Analysts typically identify the use of excessive leverage as the prime suspect as this usually occurs as the market reaches an all-time high and traders get greedy, but this is an easy conclusion to reach.
The actual cause could be near impossible to determine. Still, a starting place is looking at how high buyers’ leverage was compared to the previous weeks. Analysts must also question whether a $1 billion liquidation is even significant in the current bullish environment.
Leverage amplifies price movements on both sides
Total cryptocurrency market capitalization. Source: TradingView
The negative price swing on April 7 resembles the rally that took place two days earlier. However, retail traders deploy leverage by using perpetual futures contracts (inverse swaps), which can amplify price corrections.
A 5% move is enough to liquidate traders using 20 times leverage, and exchange order books tend to become thin below that level since traders seldomly have orders in place.
Cardano (ADA)/USDT orderbook. Source: Binance
As shown above, there are $4.6 million worth of bids down to $1.15 for Cardano (ADA) in the above example. Behind the 5% threshold, there’s only $1.9 million down to $1.06, or 12% below last trade.
Thin order books are a gold mine for scalpers and arbitrage desks. Once retail markets enter highly leveraged positions, there are multiple incentives to push down the price and trigger liquidations.
Aggregate liquidations. Source: Bybt
Today’s 12-hour, $1.4 billion liquidation might seem excessive, but this aggregates the entire futures markets. Moreover, this represents a mere 3% of the total $46 billion in open interest. Had this movement taken place some six months ago, the figure would have been north of 12%.
However, implying that liquidations triggered the drop is not the best answer as those are only triggered when markets drop 4% or more. Although analysts may never fully understand what has triggered the correction, a “buy the rumor sell the news” event could have taken place after Coinbase presented its quarterly earnings.
The funding rate is high but not abnormal
It’s also important to review how high the funding rate was and, more importantly, for how long. Even if the 8-hour fee reaches 0.20%, equivalent to 4.3% per week, this will not force longs to close positions.
As shown above, the average funding rate across top exchanges did not rise above 0.10%, which is substantially lower than the late February levels.
It is natural during rallies for long traders to enter excessively leveraged positions, and this situation can last from a couple of hours to weeks.
Sometimes retail traders turn into sitting ducks
Whales and market makers likely knew that the exchange order books were thin and that retail traders were excessively leveraged. Thus one cannot discard today’s price action being a premeditated maneuver.
However, arbitrage between exchanges and futures markets happens almost instantly, so no trail is left. Analysts and pundits might pinpoint numerous reasons for today’s move, but the available data suggests that leverage itself isn’t to blame.
The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of theauthorand do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph. Every investment and trading move involves risk. You should conduct your own research when making a decision.
The high-speed blockchain-based payment network recently launched its first service to connect payment service providers.
GO-NET Payment Network is Now Live
According to a report by Ledger Insights published on April 7, GO-NET – a blockchain-enabled payment network set up as a joint venture between Japan-based MUFG and tech partner Akamai – is now live.
For the uninitiated, GO-NET is positioning itself as a domestic payment settlement layer akin to the big players such as Visa and Mastercard in the same industry. Notably, the network has also partnered with these two industry stalwarts for strategic purposes.
GO-NET offers a wide variety of robust and innovative features such as low cost, minimal latency, and unparalleled security.
Per sources close to the matter, merchant acquirer fees via GO-NET are significantly low, especially for small transactions where the fees are sometimes uneconomic. This makes GO-NET an ideal platform choice for micro-transactions such as card payments at vending machines, loyalty points, and others. The network is also keeping a close eye on IoT payments in the future.
It is worthy of note the GO-NET network claims to be capable of processing 100,000 transactions per second. This high-performance could majorly be attributed to the network’s permissioned nature.
With regard to IoT-based payments, Hitachi is GO-NET’s major partner and is actively mulling implementing the new payment network in its IoT platform Lumada.
Plans Ahead
GO-NET already has additional services and features that are slated to be unveiled later in the year, including the ability to send pass-through payments data, providing balance and related data, and plans for a blockchain as a service offering, the report reads.
Commenting on the development, Stephen Adams, Head of Business Strategy and Planning, Visa Worldwide (Japan), noted:
“Cashless payment needs for low-price, high transaction frequency markets like vending machines are rising. Through our partnership with Global Open Network Japan, Inc., we will continue to endeavor our goal to create an environment to enable payment anywhere, anytime.”
In similar news, BTCManager reported that the Bank of Japan has commenced its first testing stage involving CBDCs.
Smart contracts platform Solana has performed undaunted by the bears’ onslaught. In the past month, SOL has posted gains exceeding 92%. Its features and applications promise an extension in its uptrend.
Firm Sino Global Capital has published a report pointing out Solana‘s strong points. From its low latency, high performance, its operability with the Proof of History mechanism, Solana’s blockchain is capable of processing 50,000 TPS. Sino Global Capital stated:
(…) without compromising decentralization or security. Solana is uniquely positioned to gain market share from existing smart contract blockchains as well as attract new projects and users to the crypto/blockchain space.
In parallel, Solana users can leverage low fees averaging $0.0007 per transaction with a high level of composability that sets it apart from alternatives.
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In the long term, composability in Solana’s blockchain could favor the growth of its DeFi ecosystem, much more so than in other platforms that will implement sharding and second-layer solutions. Sino Global Capital adds:
(…) composability with the entire layer 1 ecosystem. Without fiat onramps on any EVM layer 2s, new users must first transfer funds through Ethereum, costing (~$50 ), while the same onboarding on Solana costs less than 1 cent. Solana.
Solana’s interoperability with Ethereum
To achieve this, BSC has capitalized on its interoperability with Ethereum, low fees, and the broadening of its DeFi ecosystem.
Solana is a platform that offers low costs and speed of BSC, with greater decentralization, its blockchain has more than 600 validators. In comparison, BSC has 21 validators.
During the year, Solana is expected to be portable to Etheruem by receiving support for the EVM as a second-layer solution. Coupled with a more “simplified” user experience, a community of more than 25,000 contributors on GitHub, Rust-based smart contracts.
The firm claims that Solana has greater “accessibility” for new developers and huge potential to implement numerous use cases:
huge potential to build out a new class of decentralized applications that can only be made possible by a high-performance scalable blockchain. With Solana’s scalable processing capacity these use cases can thrive. (…) Decentralized projects for high-frequency trading, central limit order books(CLOB), derivatives, cloud computing, and cloud storage
Another key factor is the significant number of partnerships that have been consolidated around this platform and the DeFi projects that continue to emerge. For example, Audius, Oxygen, Serum, and others. Sino Global Capital concludes:
Solana fills a major performance gap in the world of blockchains while remaining decentralized and composable. A bet on Solana is a bet that one day we will need fully decentralized systems that can support thousands of high-value complex transactions per second and that the chain that can support that scalability and finality today will accrue significant value.
With a parabolic rise across the board, SOL reached an ATH with $27 in the 24-hour chart. However, after a small drop is trading at $26,13 with 8% gains during that period.
SOL with moderate gains in the 24-hour chart. Source: SOLUSDT Tradingview
Cryptocurrency asset management firm Grayscale is reiterating its commitment to launching a Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF).
In a blog post, Grayscale pledges to transform its Bitcoin investment product known as the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) into an ETF.
“First and foremost we wish to make clear: we are 100% committed to converting GBTC into an ETF.”
Per Grayscale, transforming GBTC into an ETF will happen if and when the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) allows it. The crypto asset manager points out that it first applied to issue a Bitcoin ETF five years ago.
“Grayscale first submitted an application for a Bitcoin ETF in 2016 and spent the better part of 2017 in conversations with the SEC. Ultimately, we withdrew our application because we believed the regulatory environment for digital assets had not advanced to the point where such a product could successfully be brought to market.”
While there are other entities in the race for the first Bitcoin ETF, Grayscale says it is confident in its “current positioning and engagement with the SEC.”
Lower management fees is one of the benefits that GBTC investors will enjoy once it morphs into an ETF. Currently, Grayscale charges an annual administration and safekeeping fee of 2% on the GBTC product. Higher fees of between 2.5% and 3% are charged on its other cryptocurrency products.
Grayscale also highlights that it aims to transform all of its products into ETFs, including the Grayscale Basic Attention Token Trust, the Grayscale Chainlink Trust, Grayscale Decentraland Trust, Grayscale Filecoin Trust, Grayscale Horizen Trust, Grayscale Livepeer Trust, Grayscale Stellar Lumens Trust, Grayscale Zcash Trust, Grayscale Bitcoin Cash Trust (BCHG), Grayscale Litecoin Trust (LTCN), Grayscale Ethereum Classic Trust (ETCG), Grayscale Digital Large Cap Fund (GDLC), Grayscale Ethereum Trust (ETHE).
“Each Grayscale product is at various stages of this lifecycle and our intention has always been to convert these products into an ETF when permissible.”
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XRP price is back trading at right around a dollar per token, but according to a rare bottoming pattern spotted by a legendary technical trader on the Bitcoin trading pair, the surge is only just getting started.
However, there’s a catch. When it comes to this particular chart pattern and crypto – the same trader has gotten it very wrong before. Is this time different, or will this “powerful” bottom signal confirm?
XRP Begins Long Painful Road To Recovery After SEC Storm
Ripple and company executives are still locked in a legal battle with the SEC, but just this week had a major victory in the court requiring the release of documents that offer insight into the entity’s findings on other cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin and Ethereum.
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Related Reading | XRP Targets New All-Time Highs After Surviving SEC Slaughter
Before the news even broke, XRP pumped to more than $1 per token for the first time since 2018 on the USD trading pair. On the Bitcoin trading pair, however, things have only just started to turn around from extreme bear market lows.
According to the iconic trader, there's a compound fulcrum bottom forming against Bitcoin | Source: XRPBTC on TradingView.com
A bottoming pattern taking place across the entire first quartern of 2021, according to iconic career trader Peter Brandt, is “called a compound fulcrum and can be quite a powerful buy signal.”
If he’s right, XRP will soon outperform Bitcoin by a sizable margin. But he’s been wrong before about such a pattern.
Beware: Brandt Has Been Both Wrong And Right About Bitcoin
Brandt, who is a classical chartist with decades of real world market experience, has seen several rare patterns to both confirm and fail. He’s among the few traders to have discovered the rare pattern, and he’s also among the first to identify each Bitcoin parabola forming. In the past, he’s even accurately called the bottom range on Bitcoin’s bear market, a whole year in advance.
But for all his correct calls, Brandt is still human, and gets things wrong. The last time he made the call for a compound fulcrum was back in 2018.
But the last time he spotted such a signal, it was dead wrong | Source: BTCUSD on TradingView.com
Back then, Bitcoin was trying to hold onto support around $6,000, before taking the ultimate plunge to the bear market bottom – a zone which Brandt himself also ironically called for.
Related Reading | Peter Brandt Calls For 80%+ Bitcoin Price Decline Over A Year Ago With Chilling Accuracy
Whether Brandt was trolling the last time around, or simply incorrect, is not clear. He’s the first to admit that patterns do indeed fail, but when they don’t and behave as they’re expected to, “it’s a thing of beauty.”
Whether or not Brandt will be wrong again, and XRP drops even further against BTC on the ratio remains to be seen.
Featured image from Deposit Photos, Charts from TradingView.com
Coinbase Pro revealed it is preparing to list 1inch, Enjin Coin, NKN, and Origin Token on its trading platform on Apr. 9.
The announcement has seen a significant number of investors rush to other exchanges to invest in those coins.
The relevant altcoins have seen their price rise more than 20%, benefiting from the “Coinbase Effect.”
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Coinbase has announced that it will list four new cryptocurrencies for trading: 1inch, Enjin Coin, NKN, and Origin Token.
Coinbase Listing Spree Accelerates
In a recent blog post, Coinbase Pro announcedthat starting today, Apr. 7, users will be able to transfer 1inch, Enjin Coin, NKN, and Origin Token to their respective accounts. Trading will begin after two days, on Apr. 9, if “liquidity conditions are met.”
Once a sufficient supply of 1INCH, ENJ, NKN, and OGN is established, all of these altcoins will be available for trading against Bitcoin, the U.S. dollar, the Euro, and the British Pound. Order books are expected to launch in three phases: post-only, limit-only, and full trading.
“If at any point one of the new order books does not meet our assessment for a healthy and orderly market, we may keep the book in one state for a longer period of time or suspend trading as per our Trading Rules,” reads the announcement.
Coinbase has gone on a listing spree ahead of its direct listing on the Nasdaq Global Select Market on Apr. 14, 2021. Most recently, the San Francisco-based cryptocurrency exchange addedtrading support for ANKR, CRV, STORJ andCardano (ADA), among many others.
Since the announcement was made, 1inch, Enjin Coin, NKN, and Origin Token have witnessed a massive price spike and become the latest beneficiaries of the well-known “Coinbase Effect.”
At the time of writing, each altcoin’s price surged by more than 20%, 30%, 80%, and 35%, respectively.Even though more gains can be expected, it is worth noting that insiders who bought in earlier might dump their holdings on unaware retail investors.
Disclosure: At the time of writing, this author owned Bitcoin and Ethereum.
This news was brought to you by Phemex, our preferred Derivatives Partner.
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The information on or accessed through this website is obtained from independent sources we believe to be accurate and reliable, but Decentral Media, Inc. makes no representation or warranty as to the timeliness, completeness, or accuracy of any information on or accessed through this website. Decentral Media, Inc. is not an investment advisor. We do not give personalized investment advice or other financial advice. The information on this website is subject to change without notice. Some or all of the information on this website may become outdated, or it may be or become incomplete or inaccurate. We may, but are not obligated to, update any outdated, incomplete, or inaccurate information.
You should never make an investment decision on an ICO, IEO, or other investment based on the information on this website, and you should never interpret or otherwise rely on any of the information on this website as investment advice. We strongly recommend that you consult a licensed investment advisor or other qualified financial professional if you are seeking investment advice on an ICO, IEO, or other investment. We do not accept compensation in any form for analyzing or reporting on any ICO, IEO, cryptocurrency, currency, tokenized sales, securities, or commodities.
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Cryptocurrency traders and investors in the US today awoke to significant losses across the market. Bitcoin dropped by more than 5%, falling as low as $55,800, bringing Ethereum, the second biggest crypto asset my market cap, down with it.
Ethereum today shed more than 7% to its price, losing a week’s worth of gains. ETH is currently trading for $1,948 per token.
And as Ethereum goes, so goes the DeFi market.
DeFi, short for “decentralized finance,” is a catch-all term that describes a collection of non-custodial, peer-to-peer financial products. This includes lending, borrowing, and trading services that function without the need for a middleman, like a bank. Many of these platforms have their own crypto tokens—which throughout 2020 have skyrocketed in price.
Yesterday, the combined market cap for DeFi tokens topped $100 billion,according to CoinGecko. Meanwhile, total value locked—a metric that measures the relative popularity of DeFi protocols based on the amount of money flowing through them—topped $51 billion for the first time, according todatafrom de DeFi aggregator DefiPulse. For those awaiting a “correction” to the market, that came today.
Uniswap’s UNI token had a sharp drop of almost 8%, currently sitting at $28.8 after falling to $27.90. Uniswap is a decentralized finance protocol that is used to exchange cryptocurrencies with no centralized entity overseeing any transaction. The UNI token is used to facilitate transactions on the increasingly popular platform. UNI’s price drop today brings it back to the levels registered in early April.
PancakeSwap is another DeFi protocol that runs on the Binance Smart Chain, a blockchain with support for smart contracts developed by the crypto exchange Binance. Its native token $CAKE dropped 4.7% today, falling to $15.40 before recovering a bit to its current price of $17.60.
SushiSwap is another popular decentralized exchange in the world of DeFi. It’s basically a clone of Uniswap, and its own SUSHI token today fell by 7%.
Aave, a decentralized lending platform known for its “flash loans,” also caught fire in 2020. The token has skyrocketed in price by67,000%since October. Today, however, the coin dropped by nearly 11%, now trading for around $350.
Synthetix, a DeFi protocol that lets users create artificial versions of any assets and gain exposure to their price, makes use of its own “DeFi token” SNX on the platform. SNX today dropped by 12.2% and is now hovering around $19.17.
All in all, it’s not a great day to have joined the DeFi party late. But if you got in early, or are in it for long-term “future of finance” promises, today’s sizable losses may not seem very big at all.
Disclaimer
The views and opinions expressed by the author are for informational purposes only and do not constitute financial, investment, or other advice.
