Why is LUNA up by more than 4% today?

The cryptocurrency market is experiencing a mixed start to the week, but LUNA is performing above the other leading coins.

The broader crypto market is experiencing a mixed start to the week. The total market cap is up by less than 1% in the last 24 hours and currently stands above $1.7 trillion.

Bitcoin is up by nearly 2% so far today and could be set to target the $40k resistance level soon. However, the other major cryptocurrencies are currently underperforming.

LUNA, the native token of the Terra ecosystem, is the best performer amongst the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market cap.

LUNA has added more than 4% to its value in the last 24 hours and currently trades above $83 per coin. The rally comes as UST, the stablecoin of the Terra ecosystem, overtook BUSD (Binance’s stablecoin) to occupy the tenth place in the cryptocurrency market. 

The rally can also be attributed to Celsius Network’s recent adoption of Terra’s UST stablecoin. Celsius Network is one of the leading centralised finance entities currently operating in the crypto space.

Key levels to watch

The LUNA/USD 4-hour chart is bearish as LUNA has been underperforming in recent days. However, the technical indicators show LUNA’s price action is improving.

The MACD line is still below the neutral zone, indicating that the recent bearish trend is still affecting LUNA’s performance. The 14-day RSI of 49 shows that LUNA is no longer in the oversold region.

If the positive performance continues, LUNA could surge past the first major resistance level at $90.52 before the end of the day. However, it would need the support of the broader market to cross the $95.31 resistance point. 

If the bears regain control of the market, LUNA could slip below the $80 over the next few hours. Unless there is an extended bearish run, LUNA should comfortably stay above the $75 support level in the short term. 

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CRO token down 12% after Crypto.com reduces rewards on Visa Cards

Cronos (CRO) has become one of the worst-performing cryptos, trading at $0.310417, down 12.86% in the last 24 hours.

One of the main reasons for the price of CRO to drop token is a blog post that Crypto.com exchange published on Sunday, May 1st, noting that they had reduced the rewards they were offering on their lower-tiers Visa cards. Crypto.com also said that it had reduced the CRO staking rewards by more than a half.

The exchange also added that from 1st June its Midnight Blue card tier will not be offering rewards to its customers but other tiers like Icy White, Obsidian and Ruby steel will offer reduced rewards. In addition, there will be a reward spending cap, where the highest amount of the reward will be locked at $50 per month.

Crypto.com, however, termed this a “difficult decision”  saying that it had to be done because of the need for sustainability.

The slashing of the rewards earned the exchange a lot of criticism on social media where users stated that they were given fewer CRO staking options and less use of the Visa cards. Some also threatened to opt for other crypto card operators like Coinbase and Binance.

However, this is not the first incentive cut the exchange has made this year. In March, it cut the interest rate on token deposits twice giving prior notice to its users. 

Despite the challenges, the Crypto.com exchange still seems to be growing by the day with over 10 million users besides the fact that it will be the official sponsor of the FIFA World Cup 2022.

Reduced crypto Lending activities

Crypto.com’s recent move portrays a broad issue in crypto lending due to the rising U.S interest rate, high inflation, high returns, and weak market performance which are becoming unsustainable. An increase in crypto adoption leads to more account holders which makes big payouts unachievable.

However, this issue has been mostly experienced in the majority of the DeFi lending platforms where they are forced to lower the interest rates as the user counts and deposits continue to grow. Crypto lending platforms could also follow suit as the adoption rate increase.

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Highlights May 2: Cryptos mixed, Cronos sheds 15%

The crypto market as a whole is mixed with most top 100 coins adding or losing 1-5% of their value at the time of writing. 

Top cryptos

The majority of top 10 cryptos registered gains. Bitcoin was up around 2% at time of writing, trading above $38,000. Ethereum climbed around 3%, and Cardano and XRP registered gains of around 2% and 5%, respectively. 

Crypto.com’s Cronos dropped to #20, losing around 15% today. For most of the year, the CRO token has been trading at relatively low levels. The price is now close to its lowest level this year.

The dynamic exchange sponsors many sports events and featured Matt Damon in an endorsement, but this has failed to reflect on CRO’s price.   

Top movers

Outside the top 20, Tron gained 6% after reporting the total accounts on its network have now exceeded 90 million. 

Fantom jumped in Asian hours, up by almost 15%. It is still growing with gains of 6% at the time of writing. Fantom integrated Chainlink this week and announced a series of exciting giveaways today. 

As for the losers, the main ones today are all coins that registered major gains last week. These include Kyber Network’s KNC with -9% and ApeCoin with -11%. 

Trending

The biggest winner today is MetaPay, a token that you can shop in the Metaxion universe, a new metaverse. With MetaPay, you can sell the parcels and avatars you buy in the metaverse or convert these into MetaPay tokens. 

The Metaxion demo has been released on the website. MetaPay is having another rally, up 1,069% at the time of writing.  

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