Highlights May 20: Major cryptos in the green, KNC outperforms the rest

The crypto market as a whole is bullish with most top 100 coins in the green at the time of writing. 

Top cryptos

Bitcoin didn’t have much to be happy about on Thursday. The largest cryptocurrency was fighting to remain above $30,000, way below where it was trading less than a month ago.

The flagship cryptocurrency is doing well today, as are other major altcoins. It was recently changing hands at around $30,200, up almost 4% over the past 24 hours. The increase is mirrored by Ethereum, which rose a little more than 3.5% today.

Most other cryptos registered gains as buyers continue to opt for market cap leaders over smaller, riskier ones. Solana, XRP, Cardano, and Polygon have all registered gains. 

Top movers

Outside the top 20, the tendency was similarly bullish, with most coins adding 3-8% to their value. Notable standouts include Cosmos and Kadena, both up 12%, the latter reversing recent losses.

Cosmos just announced a $GNOT airdrop for holders or stakers of its native token ATOM. GNOT is the native coin of GNO Land, a platform for interoperable concurrent smart contracts that scale.

In what looks like market support for privacy coins, Monero and zCash have each added 11% to their value. 

Zilliqa is rallying, up 10% and counting after making an important announcement yesterday. The ecosystem launched a Web3 Alliance, which will identify promising cross-vertical projects and arrange introductions that lead to an investment.

Kyber Network Crystal‘s KNC token is easily the biggest winner of the day and the week with gains of 27% resp. 78%. It announced an exciting giveaway today and enjoys the overall trust of investors. 

On the losing side, Curve DAO Token and Convex Finance both dropped, by 11% resp. 4%. Convex Finance is a DeFi protocol that allows Curve liquidity providers to earn a share of trading fees on Curve without staking liquidity there. 

TerraUSD’s losses are tapering off. Today, it’s only down by 7%. Its losses for the week stood at 49% at the time of writing.   

Trending

The biggest winner today is Neko Coin (NEKOS), a community-focused, decentralized cryptocurrency with instant rewards for holders. All fees go back into the ecosystem. 

Neko Coin focuses on supporting charities to help stray cats find shelter and care. The token has gained 1,950% today.  

The post Highlights May 20: Major cryptos in the green, KNC outperforms the rest appeared first on Coin Journal.

Ripple commits $100M towards scaling climate-focused innovation

Ripple has announced it has committed $100 million in funding towards blockchain innovation meant to scale carbon removal.

The funding, which will go into companies in carbon markets, is also earmarked for climate-focused fintech startups, Ripple said on Thursday.

According to the press release, the funds will also go into Ripple’s portfolio of programs targeted at helping it become net zero by 2030. Apart from that, Ripple will use the funds to support efforts in carbon credit tokenization as non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

This, the company noted, will occur on the XRP Ledger (XRPL), with blockchain technology helping to ensure the authenticity of carbon credit NFTs.

A ‘call to action’ on climate change

Brad Garlinghouse, the CEO of Ripple noted that the funding is the company’s “direct response to the global call to action” on climate change. He said that companies are being encouraged to deploy resources, and even talent as part of the global response to curbing emissions.

While reducing emissions and transitioning to a low-carbon future are paramount, carbon markets are also an important tool for meeting climate goals. Blockchain and crypto can play a catalytic role in allowing carbon markets to reach their full potential, bringing more liquidity and traceability to a fragmented, complex market,” Garlinghouse added.

According to the Ripple chief, the $100 million commitment is one more step towards ensuring rising global temperatures are limited below 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Ripple has partnered with several companies within the carbon markets to help achieves its goals, including carbon mineralization firm CarbonCure Technologies, UN-backed tokenization startup Xange.com and carbon offsetting firm Invert.

The company is also collaborating with Energy Web Foundation, the Alliance for Innovative Regulation, and Rocky Mountain Institute. 

The post Ripple commits $100M towards scaling climate-focused innovation appeared first on Coin Journal.

Tether attestation report ‘re-affirms’ USDT is fully backed

Tether has released an attestation report showing that the USDT stablecoin reserves are “fully backed.”

Prepared by independent accountants MHA Cayman, the attestation also shows that Tether’s consolidated assets exceed liabilities, with consolidated reserves for issued USDT exceeding the amount needed to redeem these.

Less in commercial papers, more in US Treasury bills

According to the company’s assurance report, consolidated total assets as of 31 March stood at more than $82.4 billion. Tether’s circulating supply is 74,213,168,169, data on CoinGecko shows.

At the same time, Tether has reduced its commercial paper holdings, one of the key contestations that have over the last couple of years informed increased criticism of the stablecoin issuer.

Per its report, commercial paper holdings fell 17% over the last quarter, from $24.2 billion to $20.1 billion. Holdings in commercial paper have also fallen 20% since 1 April, statistics that will reflect in its Q2 report.

As Tether reduces the more illiquid commercial paper holdings, it’s moved to increase assets in money market funds and US Treasury bills. This has seen investments in T-bills jump 13%, from $34.5 billion to $39.2 billion.

Tether CTO reiterates that USDT is fully backed

With this report, Tether is telling the market that USDT is backed and that the stablecoin won’t collapse as TerraUSD (UST) did. That USDT reserves are accounted for and that the stablecoin will continue to maintain its dollar peg. 

But is this enough to enhance the crypto community’s trust in USDT?

Three Arrows Capital co-founder and CEO Su Zhu says USDT’s $9 billion wipeout over the past week proves that indeed “USDT is redeemable” for USD. Some within the industry still don’t trust Tether’s word.

Paolo Ardoino, Tether CTO, commented on this aspect, noting:

This past week is a clear example of the strength and resilience of Tether. Tether has maintained its stability through multiple black swan events and highly volatile market conditions and, even in its darkest days, Tether has never once failed to honor a redemption request from any of its verified customers.”

According to the Ardoino, the independent opinion indicates that USDT “is fully backed and that the composition of its reserves is strong, conservative, and liquid.”

Tether’s USDT is the largest and the most utilised US-dollar pegged stablecoin in the market today. It dominates the stablecoin market in terms of daily trading volume- CoinGecko shows that at the time of writing, USDT’s 24-hour volume was over $51.6 billion.

The next largest stablecoin is USD Coin (USDC), issued by Circle, a US-based Financial Services Company.   USDC’s 24-hour trading volume was just over $7 billion on Thursday (12:10 pm ET).

The post Tether attestation report ‘re-affirms’ USDT is fully backed appeared first on Coin Journal.

Highlights May 19: Major cryptos deep in the red

Crypto Crash represented by coins falling into flames

The crypto market as a whole is bearish with most top 100 coins in the red at the time of writing. 

Top cryptos

The crypto market was in the red this morning, with the majority of top 10 cryptos registering significant losses. Bitcoin was down around 3% at time of writing, trading below $30,000. 

Ethereum was around 4% lower, XRP was down around 5%, and Cardano registered losses of 6%. The biggest top 20 loser is Avalanche, which shed 12%.

NEAR Protocol dropped out of the top 20. Its place has been taken by UNUS SED LEO, which has registered some of the smallest losses of all top 100 coins. 1 LEO is about to break $5. 

Tron is the only gainer in the top 20. Currently ranking at #14 by market cap, it has gained 3% in the last 24 hours and is trading for 7 cents. 

Top movers

Outside the top 20, the tendency was similar, with most coins losing 3-8% of their value. Outside that range were Decentraland with -10%, The Graph with -12%, IOTA with -11%, and STEPN, Waves, and Convex Finance, each down 13%. 

Chiliz reversed yesterday’s gains, shedding 14% of its value. Kadena also lost 13%, but it’s still up 66% this week. 

The second-biggest loser is Curve DAO Token, which lost 17% today. TerraUSD dropped another 42% and is currently trading for 8 cents.  

Apart from a few stablecoins, Decred is the only top 100 gainer. It added 4% to its value today.  

Trending

The biggest winner today is a BNB Smart Chain token called Fairy Forest NFT (FFN). Fairy Forest is a project you can play on the web, from a computer, tablet or mobile, anywhere. No previous knowledge about cryptocurrencies is required. FFN is up 1,131% today. 

The post Highlights May 19: Major cryptos deep in the red appeared first on Coin Journal.

DeFi Land launches a new P2E agricultural-related game feature

DeFi Land, a multichain agriculture-simulation game built on Solana to gamify Decentralized Finance (DeFi), has launched a new play-to-earn (P2E) agriculture-related game feature.

Up to date, DeFi Land is the third largest game in terms of the market cap and yet more features are expected to be introduced today.

According to the DeFi Land team, the platform was able to raise $1.75 million from the sale of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT) while it was being launched earlier this year.

DeFi Land

Normally, DeFi Land is a free-to-play game where players can join without any starting funds and strive to earn XP as well as compete with other players on the leaderboard to earn monthly rewards.

DeFi Land’s new P2E game feature

After the full P2E launch, users can perform all agricultural-related activities like farming, shooting, and fishing. The team also promised that the P2E game will be accessible to players and it will also be displaying basic farming simulations like Stardew Valley and Harvest Moon titles.

Players will be rewarded with the game native tokens, DFL tokens, alongside, a new in-game currency called GOLDY will also be introduced.

With the two, GOLDY and DFL, players can upgrade their NFTs and also craft, customize and repair in-game items. According to the developers, players can also use the currencies to interact socially with other players.

However, these P2E game features will only be available to players who possess DeFi Land Gen-0 NFT. According to OpenSea data, the floor price of the collection is currently at 1.55 SOL which is approximately $88 in the current market.

More integrations coming

DeFi Land developers noted that in the coming months they will be exploring ‘’a multichain future’’ as well as announcing more chain integrations this June.

In addition, the DeFi Land alpha mobile version is currently under development with its release expected to come between July and September this year.

The post DeFi Land launches a new P2E agricultural-related game feature appeared first on Coin Journal.