UK’s FCA launches a permanent digital sandbox

Key takeaways

  • FCA’s digital sandbox is set to launch on August 1st.

  • The sandbox will serve as a testing environment for firms before rolling out their products.

UK’s financial regulator launches a digital sandbox

The U.K. Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) announced on Thursday, July 20th, that it will launch a digital sandbox.

The regulator said the permanent digital sandbox will be made available on August 1st, 2023, opening up the platform to an even broader range of innovative businesses, start-ups and data providers.

The platform will serve as a testing environment for firms to see how their products would perform at an early stage of development. 

This latest cryptocurrency news comes nearly three years after the regulator launched the sandbox on a trial basis. The FCA said the sandbox would also be available to data providers and would offer firms access to data sets, application program interfaces (API) and data security protection.

The FCA said;

“Until now, the platform has only been available temporarily to those participating in pilots and TechSprints.

The Digital Sandbox works to foster innovation and growth – more than half of the previous Small to Medium Enterprise participants in the pilots and TechSprints made positive developments, including launching new products, securing funding and partnerships, or receiving industry awards or recognitions.”

The digital sandbox provides data security protection

The regulatory agency pointed out that its digital sandbox has numerous features that would benefit developers. The sandbox’s integrated development environment allows experimentation while safeguarding the data assets on the platform. 

Furthermore, developers would have access to over 200 synthetic, public or anonymised data sets and over 1000 APIs to enable testing and validation of technology solutions.

The observation deck feature allows interested parties such as regulators, incumbents and others to observe in-flight testing at a technical level. Finally, the FCA believes that the sandbox could promote diversity of thought, share learnings and foster an ecosystem between teams, observers and mentors.

Former Economic Secretary John Glen rolled out the plans for the sandbox in 2022 with the aim of making the UK a cryptocurrency innovation hub. Previously, the sandbox was available only during pilots and TechSprints, which brought people from the financial industry together to address industry challenges.

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Binance report shows crypto industry in “good health” in H1, 2023

Key takeways

  • The crypto industry experienced growth across Bitcoin and other L1s, L2s, stablecoins, DeFi, and NFTs.
  • Bitcoin network growth included trading volume, transaction count, fees and hashrate.
  • Solana, BNB Chain led L1s, while Liquid staking emerged as a key DeFi component.

Binance has released a report covering the first half of 2023, with details suggesting that the overall global crypto industry showed remarkable resilience following the crypto winter.

Crypto growth in H1, 2023

Published on July 20, the 120-page report highlights growth metrics across key industry verticals, including Bitcoin, stablecoins, DeFi, and NFTs. The H1, 2023 report also details developments within the gaming and metaverse, as well as institutional adoption and funding.

For instance, DeFi has seen a 43% year-to-date increase, while NFT volume – despite diminishing floor prices, rose compared to the second half of 2022.  In fundraising, the report highlights that the top 10 funds raised $3.6 billion.

USDT, the leading stablecoin by market cap increased its market share by 26% even as the global stablecoin market dipped 7%. USDD, crvUSD, GHO and LUSD all saw significant increases. The report also details key pilot cases for CBDCs and tokenization.

Also trending in H1 and today is the liquid staking and LSDfi, with the new subsector of LSDfi experiencing a 460% jump in total value locked between April and end of June.

Bitcoin’s continued network growth

According to Binance, the state of crypto in terms of adoption, usage, and innovation as observed in the first six months of the year portends an even better half of the year and into 2024.

One of the indicators of a better H1 for crypto in 2023 is Bitcoin’s network growth. Binance says this was evident through metrics such as the 185% year-to-date jump in trading volume and 58% spike in transactions count. Also significant during the period was the 143% increase in average transaction fees, 40% YTD hashrate increase and 43% jump in mining difficulty.

As CoinJournal recently reported, Bitcoin’s network growth was partially fueled by the surge in Ordinals. [Read more here and here].

In terms of market performance, Bitcoin dominance peaked to levels last seen in April 2021. Meanwhile, the flagship cryptocurrency’s correlation with TradFi fell to a three-year low.

Solana, BNB and other Layer-1s

Growth was also witnessed across leading layer-1 chains, with Solana outpacing other L1s in relation to the increase of its market capitalization. Binance’s BNB Chain topped others in terms of best network performance YTD overall, with daily transactions increasing 113% compared to 48% for Ethereum. BNB Chain active addresses increased by 118%, compared to Ethereum’s 63%.

Also notable during the first six months of 2023 was the growth of subnets on Avalanche and shared security models by Cosmos.

The last few weeks have seen a bullish flip in crypto sentiment, particularly with the filing of a spot Bitcoin ETF by $9 trillion asset manager BlackRock. Ripple’s landmark win against the SEC last week is also a key factor driving market confidence today.  

Binance notes the “Bitcoin ETF season” could continue to bolster momentum even as the second half of the year sees greater adoption and innovation

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3 reasons why Chainlink (LINK) price just surged

  • Chainlink crypto price surged to the highest level since April.

  • Whales have started accumulating the coin after the CCIP launch.

  • Open interest in the futures market has jumped to 2021 highs.

Chainlink price went parabolic on Thursday as investors cheered the recent product news and purchases by whales. LINK token soared to a high of $8.20, the highest level since April 20th this year. It has jumped by more than 65% from the lowest level in June.

LINK whales are buying

Chainlink price is surging for two main reasons. First, the developers unveiled plans to introduce a new Cross-Chain Interoperable Protocol (CCIP), as I wrote here. This is an important upgrade in the network that seeks to join traditional finance companies to the blockchain.

CCIP will expand Chainlink’s use case by making it possible for companies like banks and insurance firms to join the blockchain. The announcement came a  month after Chainlink announced that it was running a trial of linking banks to the blockchain through its partnership with Swift.

Second, there are signs that whales have started buying the coin. Data shows that two whales acquired 788,877 LINK tokens this week. They bought these tokens by swapping their stETH and ETH tokens for LINK. Historically, accumulation by whales is usually one of the best buy signals in the market.

Chainlink open interest is rising

Meanwhile, data by Coinglass shows that open interest in the futures market jumped to the highest level since November. Open interest is an important metric in the futures market that denotes the number of futures contracts held by market participants. A higher figure is usually a bullish sign.

Chainlink’s open interest has jumped to more than $267 million, with most of them being from Binance. The other leading exchanges are Bybit, OKX, and Bitget among others.

How to buy Chainlink

eToro

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Crypto price prediction: Arkham (ARKM) and AltSignals (ASI)

  • Arkham (ARKM) price rose to $0.89 after its Binance Launchpad sale.
  • AltSignals (ASI) token is in presale, currently priced at $0.01875.
  • Both projects have artificial intelligence-powered algorithms, systems that could revolutionise blockchain intelligence and marketplace and trading respectively.

Arkham, a blockchain analytics platform and decentralised crypto intelligence marketplace, has a proprietary artificial intelligence (AI) layer that’s the engine of the platform’s capabilities. 

The native token ARKM currently trades on the open market and saw significant upside when it debuted after its Binance Launchpad sale, before paring the gains amid huge profit taking.

Here is the price outlook for Arkham (ARKM) and AltSignals (ASI), another project that could ride the strong AI narrative.

Arkham: deanonymizing blockchain with AI

A platform that offers access to on-chain data and analytics, and a marketplace for buying and selling of blockchain intelligence. That’s a simple understanding of what Arkham is. The Arkham ecosystem has two components – an Analytics Platform and the Intel Exchange.

At the heart of it is the native ARKM token and ULTRA, an AI-powered system that was in development for more than three years and had the backing of major AI industry players like OpenAI and Palantir. 

Arkham uses an ULTRA enabled algorithm to collect and match data and addresses, linking these to real-world entities and offering users access to key blockchain intelligence.

ARKM is a utility token that is used as the native currency on the Intel Exchange. Arkham uses the token to incentivize users, who get rewarded with ARKM when they submit intel and refer new users. The token also gives holders governance rights.

Can ARKM price reach $1 in 2023?

While the launch of Intel Exchange drew criticism from some within the crypto space, particularly on so-called “snitch-to-earn” in place of Arkham’s intel-to-earn product, the team and other proponents maintain the goal is to use the intel to expose the bad actors.

A flip in sentiment after the weak hands dumped airdropped tokens could combine with Arkham’s unique approach to crypto intelligence and the strong AI narrative to help the price of ARKM. The all-time high for the token is $0.89 and the current price is around $0.62. If bulls were to match to $1 in 2023, Arkham would need to rally more than 61%.

Not impossible, but the unpredictability of the market means it’s difficult to say with certainty ARKM will rise to $1. It could be higher or lower depending on market conditions and other factors. That said, Arkham has a great chance of being a successful blockchain platform. Its integration with leading blockchains, including Ethereum, BNB Chain, Arbitrum, Optimism, Avalanche, Polygon and Tron2 is a crucial milestone in its growth trajectory.

What is AltSignals?

AltSignals is a trading platform that has been operating since December 2017, providing signals to a growing number of users.

While it began by providing free crypto signals, the platform’s evolution has included expansion to setups for stocks and forex among others. Users get signals on potential buy or sell trades 24/7, factoring in market analysis and trends – all with a rising degree of accuracy and profitability powered by the proprietary AltAlgo trading algorithm.

Like Arkham, AltSignals has an AI-powered layer that is set to bring the key benefits of machine learning and natural language processing to the trading industry. 

The platform’s new AI system is called ActualizeAI and will offer a suite of AI tools for optimised performance. Traders can leverage these tools to bump the potential investment returns across all market conditions.

ASI token presale

The ActualizeAI platform will be powered by ASI. This is the native utility token that will not just give holders access to the AI stack, but also power ecosystem transactions, used for rewards and allow holders to earn through staking.

ASI is currently in presale and is seeing huge interest from investors. The token is currently priced at $0.01875 and will rise to $0.02274 in the last stage of the sale offer.

Find more about the AltSignals presale here.

AltSignals price prediction: Can ASI token reach 1 in 2023?

According to the AltSignals roadmap, its launch on Uniswap is expected in Q3, 2023 and on Binance and Bybit in Q4, 2023. Meanwhile, development of the ActualizeAI Dashboard will continue, with an Alpha launch and live trading expected to go live in Q1, 2024.  

I highlight the roadmap milestones because they could be key to ASI token’s performance after the presale, especially if an exchange like Binance announces trading support. 

The ActualizeAI system debut is also a key milestone to watch out for as demand for the token could build pre-launch. That means a lot of hype could surround ASI in the last quarter of 2023. Will price follow the likely sentiment?

To rise from $0.02274 to $1.00 between October and end of December this year would need buying pressure to push ASI value higher by nearly 4300%. While it is possible, the more likely targets would be much lower given other market forces could be at play. Targets for the immediate term would be around $0.1 by year’s end or early 2024.

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