CryptoQuant confirms Binance reserves are accounted for

  • Binance has faced a FUD storm in the past few days about its reserves.
  • Binance has also been in the spotlight amid the ongoing FTX collapse hearing.
  • Blockchain analytics provider CryptoQuant has verified Binance reserves in its new audit report.

Blockchain analytics provider CryptoQuant has verified Binance’s proof of reserve in its recently released audit report analyzing the recently released proof-of-reserves by Binance. This settles the FUD storm that has been circulating within the internet especially following the recent surge in withdrawals.

Over the past few days, Binance has seen crypto assets worth as much as $3 billion leave the exchange in a span of 24 hours making investors worry about the future of the exchange seeing that FTX’s troubles started in a similar manner.

Binance scrambling to reassure customers

Amid the heightened customer worries after reports of increased outflows from Binance, the crypto exchange has been scrambling to reassure its customers and investors that it has sufficient reserves that are fully backed.

Earlier this month, Binance released a proof-of-reserves report for transparency purposes but it ended up being criticized for not being a full audit but rather an “agreed-upon procedure.” The tussle led to some customers withdrawing their crypto assets; something that sent shock waves throughout the crypto space since FTX’s fall started in a similar manner.

However according to CryptoQuant, the liabilities that Binance reports are close to audit firm Mazars’ estimation of 99%.CryptoQuant notes:

“The report shows Binance’s BTC liabilities (customers’ deposits) are 97% collateralized by the exchange assets. Collateralization increases to 101% when the BTC lent to customers is accounted for.”

CryptoQuant also added that Binance’s stablecoin and Ether reserves don’t show an “FTX-like” behaviour. The firm reported:

“Additionally, Binance has an acceptable ‘Clean Reserve,’ which means its own token, BNB, is still a low proportion of its total assets.”

According to data provider Nansen, only about 10% (Approx. $6.2 billion) of Binance’s reserves ($60.2 billion) are held in its native token BNB.

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Should I buy Metacade (MCADE) during the crypto market crash of 2022?

Crypto market crashes are full of prime buying opportunities. It’s often said that great projects are on sale, as 90% price reductions during the bear market mean you can buy a much bigger stack of tokens for the same initial investment cost.

Great projects never stop building, even during a crypto market crash. A project that looks set to do big things in the space is Metacade, and it’s only just getting started. If it’s still an unknown, then make sure to keep reading!

What is Metacade?

Metacade is a next-generation gaming platform that is being built on the Ethereum blockchain. Through leveraging the advanced smart contract functionality of Ethereum, Metacade can create a more secure and efficient experience for gamers from all over the world, as well as secure itself during a crypto market crash, with a stable audience.

MCADE is the platform’s native token. It’s used to power all blockchain transactions and is also used to provide crypto rewards to players while they enjoy a vast array of arcade-style games. The project is laying strong foundations during the 2022 crypto market crash, as it aims to become the single biggest arcade that you can find on the blockchain and will give gamers extensive opportunities to earn MCADE token rewards as a result.

The platform is committed to providing a fun and fair experience for all gamers and is community-driven at its core. Through building an advanced gaming hub on the blockchain, Metacade is helping to create a new era of gaming, where players are fully in control of their own data and can earn rewards while playing their favourite games.

More Games, More Rewards

By building the biggest arcade on the blockchain, players will be given more options than ever before. Metacade will be home to a seemingly endless list of arcade-style titles with some of the hottest names in the space for Metacade community members to enjoy.

With so much on offer, Metacade players will have unprecedented earning opportunities available after the market recovers from the recent crypto market crash. With the unique functionality being delivered in blockchain-based games, all players can earn while playing some amazing new titles. Metacade delivers this earning potential in a significant way.

Contribute-to-Earn

In addition to all the arcade games on offer at Metacade, the platform aims to become a hub for the crypto community to enjoy. Players can access the latest info for the best Play-to-Earn games in the space and connect with other blockchain gamers to share the latest insights.

Metacade connects players to the best opportunities and the most valuable alpha. Plus, users will earn MCADE token rewards for contributing insights to the community, which provides direct incentives for the community to grow and share the fun as they journey through the world of Play-to-Earn gaming.

Community-Governed

Metacade is committed to putting the needs of its players first and ensuring that their voices are heard, which is vital for finding stability during a crypto market crash. The Metacade community will have a direct say in how the project is governed and over time the project will become a decentralised autonomous organisation (DAO). This DAO will allow MCADE holders to influence the direction taken by the project.

DAO voters will also be able to influence the growth of the wider GameFi industry. Up-and-coming projects will submit proposals to the community, who will then get the chance to vote on which they think are the best. After deciding, the community will be able to provide funding through the Metagrants program, supporting development teams in their early stages.

GameFi set to grow

Over time, it is widely expected that blockchain-based games can revolutionise the wider gaming industry. They offer some unique features that are unmatched by traditional titles, with the foremost being integrated earning opportunities for players. This is important to investors also, who currently seek investments that can offer more robustness, even during a heavy crypto market crash.

The gaming industry is currently dominated by a handful of large companies such as Electronic Arts (EA) and Activision Blizzard (ATVI). These companies control the development and distribution of games, which gives them a lot of power over gamers.

Blockchain games are important because they provide a decentralised alternative to this current system, regardless of price action during a crypto market crash. By giving power back to gamers, projects like Metacade have the potential to flip the $100 billion gaming industry on its head and move a large chunk of operations on to the blockchain.

The user experience for decentralised applications (dApps) has been improving year-on-year, as blockchains themselves have been getting faster, cheaper, and more secure. Metacade, built on Ethereum, gains all the benefits from a continually expanding ecosystem, and offers a long list of benefits to its community. It can grow to a massive scale as a result.

Should you buy Metacade?

Projects that launched during the market crash of 2018-2020 saw some insane percentage increases with some rising 40,000% or even higher. Now, during the 2022 bear market, MCADE has just launched its presale event, which is the earliest investment opportunity available in crypto and a fantastically low barrier for those looking to put some skin back in the game after the recent crypto market crash.

For a project with such high potential, these opportunities are rare. Often, high-potential projects are kept under wraps and only offered to a small number of institutional investors. Metacade is doing things differently and is launching its token directly to the crypto community.

These kinds of opportunities do not come around very often. While there is always a risk involved when investing in digital assets, and no token is guaranteed against a crypto market crash, the MCADE presale offers huge upside potential with limited downside. At this point, you can buy MCADE at just $0.008 per token with this number set to rise during the presale to $0.02. For sure, it could be worth including in your portfolio over the coming months.

You can participate in the MCADE presale here.

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Bitcoin mining difficulty falls 7.3%, largest since July 2021

  • Bitcoin’s mining difficulty fell by 7.32% over the past two weeks, the largest negative adjustment in almost 18 months.
  • Mining difficulty adjusts every 2,016 blocks or roughly two weeks and depends on average block time (10 minutes) and hashrate.
  • Bitcoin’s next mining difficulty is expected to increase by 4.24%.

Bitcoin mining difficulty, a measure of how hard it is for miners to find and ‘mine’ a new block, fell by 7.32% last week.

The downward adjustment occurred at block height 766,080,  the largest negative adjustment in the metric since July 2021. As of 15 December 2022, and according to data on BTC.com, the last biggest downward adjustment occurred at block height 689,472 in July 2021 when difficulty fell by 27.94% . 

Incidentally, that negative adjustment is the largest in Bitcoin mining history and happened at a time when the crypto industry recorded a massive exodus of miners from China following the country’s crackdown on Bitcoin. Other huge downward adjustments occurred in May 2021, March and November 2020 and December 2018.

Next difficulty estimated to jump 4.24%

Mining difficulty is a metric that looks at the number of hashes or guesses a miner needs to make to arrive at the correct one and be able to mine BTC. It’s been increasing since Bitcoin’s inception and adjusts every two weeks, or after about 2,016 blocks – going up or down to keep the creation of new coins within the network’s average block time.

The current difficulty is 34.24 trillion and the next difficulty adjustment is expected to rise by 4.24% to an estimated 35.69 trillion.

How does mining difficulty work?

This is how difficulty works – it will adjust downwards if it takes less than 10 minutes to create a new block, or upwards if the average block time is above 10 minutes. 

Also critical to difficulty adjustment is Bitcoin’s hashrate, which is the total computing power of all the miners on the network. Hashrate increases with an increase in the number of miners dedicating their computing power to processing transactions and secure the network. 

The metric falls when miners decrease. In this case, the more miners join the network, the higher the difficulty adjusts and the more miners switch off their equipment, the lower the adjustment.

Bitcoin’s hashrate has increased slightly from 245.10 exahashes per second (EH/s) at the last difficulty adjustment, with on-chain data showing its currently at 257.04 EH/s. 

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FLOKI price surges by more than 10%: here’s why

  • FLOKI has hit a daily high of $0.00001066 today.
  • OKX has promised to list FLOKI this week.
  • At press time, FLOKI had risen by 10.47% over the past 24 hours.

FLOKI is today’s biggest gainer after surging by more than 10% in a day when the general crypto market is bearish. The global crypto market cap has dropped by 1.72% to $859.37 billion today.

With the recent market plunge, it is evident that the bearish market sentiment after the FTX collapse is likely to reverse the little gains that the market had made in the past month. Bitcoin, for example, is threatening to go below 17000 while Ethereum has dropped below $1300.

Why did FLOKI price surge today?

The main reason for the Shiba Inu-inspired meme coin FLOKI to stage a bullish rally at a time when the general crypto market is on a downward trend is the announcement by the OKX crypto platform.

OKX has announced that it will list FLOKI trading pairs starting December 16 at 10 AM (UTC). According to the press release, OKX will list FLOKI/USDT and FLOKI/USDC.

The move offers an opportunity for OKX users to expand their trading portfolio while also giving FLOKI investors an opportunity to trade the token on OKX.

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Bitcoin price retreated: pattern points to a comeback

  • Bitcoin price has retreated after the Fed decision.

  • The Fed decided to hike rates by 50 basis points.

  • The inverted head & shoulders pattern points to more upside.

Bitcoin price pulled back on Thursday as the market reflected on the latest interest rate decision by the Federal Reserve. After soaring to $18,378 on Wednesday, Bitcoin retreated by 4% to $17,673. It is still substantially higher than the year-to-date low of $15,470.

Central banks downshift

The BTC/USD, BTC/GBP, and BTC/EUR prices declined slightly after central banks started to downshift their policies. On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve decided to hike interest rates by 0.50%, which was lower than the last four hikes of 0.75%.

And on Thursday, other influential central banks decided to lower the size of their rate increases. In the UK, the Bank of England (BoE) decided to hike rates by 0.50%, which was lower than the previous increase of 0.75%. The same happened in the European Union, where the European Central Bank (ECB) increased by 0.50%.

Federal Reserve decision

Bitcoin’s main catalyst was the Fed statement. In it, the bank sounded more hawkish and hinted that it will continue hiking in 2023. Precisely, it guided that it will deliver another 0.75% hike in 2023 before hitting a pause. 

As such, it will likely hike interest rates by 0.50% in February following another 0.25% in March. Alternatively, it could deliver three 25 basis point increases, as we wrote in this article.

Still, I believe that the Fed was concerned about the falling bond yields and the signal they were sending. In the past few weeks, bond yields and mortgage rates have been falling. As such, the trend could spur more inflation in the coming months.

Bitcoin also reacted to the latest outflows from key exchanges, which is a signal that many investors are afraid of the industry. This is confirmed by the fear and greed index, which has dropped to 24. Binance has seen outflows worth $5.2 billion in the past 7 days.

Bitcoin price prediction

BTC/USD chart by TradingView

The 4H chart shows that the BTC price formed a bearish engulfing pattern on Wednesday. In price action analysis, this pattern is usually a bearish sign. A closer look shows that the coin formed an inverted head and shoulders pattern. The neckline of this pattern is at $17,437.

Therefore, I suspect that Bitcoin will form a break-and-retest pattern, which is a bullish sign. If this happens, it will likely resume the bullish trend as investors digest the latest decision. A such, the coin will likely rise to a high of $19,000.

How to buy Bitcoin

eToro

eToro is a global social investment brokerage company which offers over 75 cryptocurrencies to invest in. It offers crypto trading commission-free and users on the platform have the option to manually invest or socially invest. eToro even has a unique CopyTrader system which allows users to automatically copy the trades of popular investors.

Buy BTC with eToro today

OKX

OKX is a top cryptocurrency exchange which offers over 140 cryptocurrencies to invest in. OKX takes customer security very seriously, they store almost all of their clients‘ funds in cold storage, and the exchange is yet to be hacked. On top of this, the exchange offers very low fees and customers can even use their crypto as collateral for loans on the platform.

Buy BTC with OKX today

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