Why Thorchain could retest all-time highs sooner than most cryptos

ThorChain (Rune) logo on a cell phone screen

  • Thorchain is up by over 90% in a month after introducing synthetic assets trading.

  • Lending and borrowing are coming soon, further adding fuel to the rally.

  • Thorchain rally is also supported by growing bullish momentum in the broader market.

Thorchain (RUNE) is up by 92% this month, and it is not showing signs of slowing down. In the last 24-hours alone, Thorchain is up by over 18%, and the momentum is rising. The rally has been triggered by a series of network upgrades that could trigger even more adoption going into the future.

The latest news regards the launch of synthetic assets trading on RUNE protocol. Rune has the edge over other protocols offering the same services because it is fast and allows traders to swap assets at a pretty low cost.

Thorchain also has ThorFi coming up soon. This is an equally big deal as it will allow traders to buy and lend on Thorchain. This is pretty much in line with the direction that the DeFi is moving, and that’s cross-chain decentralized exchanges that make atomic swaps obsolete. Such a tech breakthrough puts Thorchain in a unique space for growth as DeFi continues to disrupt finance and banking at an accelerated rate.

What next for Thorchain?

Source: TradingView

Since January 2022, Thorchain has been consolidating between $5.11 and $3.51. However, on March 9th, it broke out of this range and with high volumes. Since then, it has been trending up and is currently close to testing $10. If the current trend continues, Thorchain could easily retest its all-time highs of $21 in the short term.

Thorchain’s odds of retesting its all-time highs are enhanced by the fact that the broader market is currently gaining upside momentum. This means cryptos already showing signs of an upside could draw in more investors and rally more than the rest of the market.

Summary

Thorchain (RUNE) is currently in an uptrend, and in just one month, the coin is up by over 90%. Thorchain’s rally is driven by several key upgrades, including introducing synthetic tokens trading. With ThorFi coming up, the odds are that it could rally even further.

The post Why Thorchain could retest all-time highs sooner than most cryptos appeared first on Coin Journal.

Ethereum scaling solution Optimism raises $150 million in a Series B funding

The funding round was co-led by Andreessen Horowitz’ a16z and major crypto VC firm Paradigm.

Optimism, a layer 2 scaling solution on the Ethereum network, has secured $150 million in a Series B funding, the blockchain platform announced on Thursday.

Heavyweight crypto investors Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and Paradigm co-led the financing round. The firm added in details shared via a Medium post that the funding round had the blockchain firm at a valuation of $1.65 billion.

The Optimism mainnet has been live for over a year and in that time, the L2 solution has seen users save over $1 billion in gas. The success of its technology has also seen projects deploy thousands of contracts.

The open-source code has also seen three popular forks, with the platform firmly in the limelight across the Ethereum ecosystem.

Per the Medium post, the team at Optimism now plans to take their work across the network to the next level. This, they revealed, will happen with further strengthening of its team.

The startup is now one of the latest Unicorns in the crypto space and its continued development comes amid fresh impetus in the NFTs and DeFi sectors.  Scaling solutions such as Optimism are crucial as they help investors save on transaction fees, which can be prohibitive on the Ethereum network.

The post Ethereum scaling solution Optimism raises $150 million in a Series B funding appeared first on Coin Journal.

Heroes of Mavia partners with Tribe Gaming for esports-focused P2E gaming

Heroes of Mavia, a blockchain-based play-to-earn massively multiplayer online (MMO) strategy game developed by Skrice Studios and backed by Binance has announced its partnership with Tribe Gaming, in a major push for esports-focused P2P gaming. Tribe Gaming is one of the largest esports organizations around the world.

The partnership will give Tribe a chance to expand its esports gaming initiative into the blockchain gaming field. Tribe is already very popular in developing mobile games and computer games venturing into blockchain gives it an upper hand among its competitors.

Tribe’s game creators and players consistently bring in over 100 million views a month.

Following the partnership, the founder and CEO of Tribe Gaming, Patrick Carney, said that collaborating with Mavia was an exciting opportunity and that they are looking forward to a bullish future as ‚Heroes of Mavia‘ game nears its launch.

Tribe now owns plots in the fantasy island of Mavia

As part of the partnership, Tribe now owns dozens of Legendary plots in the fantasy island of Mavia. It shall go ahead to uniquely do its branding on these plots of land to allow its brand to appear in the Heroes of Mavia game.

Tribe shall also have exclusive in-game skins and decorations custom done to Tribe branding taste.

The partnership proves that Mavia, which is backed by Crypto.com Capital, Binance Labs, and Genblock Capital is placing a bit bet on esports gaming. It also asserts Mavia’s position as the largest esports-focused P2E game.

While commenting about the partnership, an Executive Producer at Skrice Studios Yvan Feusi said that the team at Skrice Studios was happy to have Tribe as an official partner and that it was essential for the Mavia’s team to work with seasoned veterans as they push their game into „competitive gaming and esports.„

The post Heroes of Mavia partners with Tribe Gaming for esports-focused P2E gaming appeared first on Coin Journal.

Highlights March 17: Cryptos in the green, Wall Street higher despite rate hikes

The crypto markets were higher this morning, with the majority of the top 10 cryptos registering gains over the past 24 hours.

All three major US indices rose yesterday despite the Fed’s first rate hike in five years. The SPX500 rose 2.19% while the DJ30 was up 1.48% and the NASDAQ100 increased 3.67%.

The UK100 rose yesterday on the back of positive moves from both Russia and Ukraine who announced a 15-point draft peace plan which buoyed stocks.

Top cryptos

Bitcoin climbed around 3%, trading above $40,000 at time of writing. Ethereum and XRP were both up around 4%, and Cardano and Solana both recorded gains of around 5%.

At #10, Avalanche is the biggest top 10 gainer with 10% added to its value. In the top 20, Cosmos and Polygon both added around 4%.  

Top movers

Outside the top 20, most coins added 2-6% to their value. The Sandbox’s SAND is up 9%, rallying on news of a major bank buying a plot in it. Waves is down 6% against the backdrop of positive developments in Ukraine-Russia talks.

THORChain added another 20% to its value. It introduced synthetic assets and the platform THORFi recently.

Other big winners include AAVE (+15%) and Maker and Decred, both of which added 11%. Celo gained 22% on news of getting listed on BitGetGlobal.

Trending

The biggest gainer today is CatBoy, trading for $0.04 at the time of writing. CatBoy is up 856.32% in the last 24 hours.

Catboy is a community led NFT project, founded and built by comic, manga, anime, and pet lovers. According to its creators, it’s a symbol of the spirit, cohesion, and sharing of memes, manga and comic loving communities around the world.

The price of PikaVerse, a Pokémon-based metaverse, increased by 78.27% over the past week. It is trading for $1.18e-10 with a 24-hour trading volume of $18.7 million. PikaVerse is up 32% in the last 24 hours.

 

The post Highlights March 17: Cryptos in the green, Wall Street higher despite rate hikes appeared first on Coin Journal.

Alephium announces a video creation contest with 10,000 ALPH in prizes

  • The contest seeks to unveil “compelling introductory videos” free of tech jargon, but which highlight Alephium’s value proposition.

Alephium, a high-performance and scalable blockchain that was the first to implement native shard transactions, has announced a video creation contest as it seeks to “attract and engage new users.”

Creators will compete to earn from a prize pool of 10,000 ALPH, the Swiss-based blockchain platform said in an announcement shared with CoinJournal on Thursday.

An accessible gateway to Alephium

One of the barriers to greater adoption of crypto and the underlying blockchain technology is the “complex” nature of the concepts to new users.

In most cases, it’s the less tech-savvy that find it hard to wrap their heads around some features and functionalities. Alephium’s novel Proof-of-Work mechanism, ETH-inspired smart contracts and UTXO model could be such hurdles.

Cheng Wang, the co-founder of Alephium said:

“We need something that can serve as an accessible gateway for new users, we need great introduction videos. Our community members have amazed us with their content creation skills to date, so I’m confident this video creation contest will help us gather creative videos that best describes Alephium.”

Videos should be tech-jargon free

The easy-to-understand video will cover all the basic introductory topics as articulated in “Welcome to Alephium,” the team said in their press announcement.

Participants will be expected to create a five-minute or less video. The community can do the video in any language. They also have creative license to use cartoons, 3D animations, and voiceovers with premium slides.

However, the content should be free of tech jargon and should include links to whitepapers, Github and social media channels, whitepapers.

How to submit the Alephium video

The contest will run until 15 April 2022, with all legible video entries submitted by 23:59 CET on the said date. Contestants will need to upload their videos on YouTube or Vimeo, with tags #Alephium and #ALPH.  

Once done, creators should submit a link to the video and their email address using the contest’s official submission link.

Interested users are encouraged to familiarise themselves with contest guidelines, or contact the team via Discord, Telegram, and Reddit.

Alephium’s mainnet went live in November 2021 and offers a highly efficient blockchain infrastructure environment for decentralised applications (dApps) and decentralised finance (DeFi) protocols. 

ALPH has traded 7.5% higher in the past 24 hours, with the ALPH/USDT pair hitting highs of $0.25 in early deals. The coin’s all-time high is $1.19 reached on 20 January 2022.

The post Alephium announces a video creation contest with 10,000 ALPH in prizes appeared first on Coin Journal.