Author: NBTC

Deribit Ethereum (ETH) options contracts with a strike price of $2,550 are set to expire on Friday. There are over 24,600 outstanding contracts worth more than $62 million at this price, even as the ETH’s price is $2,541.79 ahead of an exchange-traded fund (ETF) approval deadline in May. The large volume of contracts appears to reflect market sentiments around the potential approval of exchange-traded funds that track the price of ETH directly. ETH ETFs May Not Live Up to Expectations The market expects the ETH price to rise to $2,900 on March 29, 2023, and $5,000 by June, following the…

Israel-based zero-knowledge technology startup Ingonyama raised $21 million in seed funding. The company hosts open-source libraries for zk proof acceleration with a longer-term goal of creating zk-focused semiconductors. The round was led by Geometry, Walen Catalyst Ventures and IOSG Ventures, with participation from Samsung Next and the companies behind ZCash, Arbitrum and Filecoin, among others. Zero-knowledge proofs are a cryptographic tool that allow a statement to be proven true without revealing the contents of the statement itself. Zk proofs are commonly used in crypto for verifying transactions on blockchain-scaling rollups. Read more: There’s too much trust in zero-knowledge tech Though…

While no timeframe for W token distribution has been revealed by Wormhole so far, speculators have already started ‘buying’ and ‘selling’ the token. Speculators are driving the price of Wormhole‘s anticipated W token above the $1 mark on over-the-counter (OTC) markets, anticipating significant attention for the yet-to-be-distributed token in the crypto market. According to Whales Market data, speculators have traded what appear to be “W tokens” worth a total of $248,300 at the time of writing, even though it remains unclear whether these transactions involve IOUs (I Owe You), representing a debt acknowledgment, or something else. Filled deals with an…

Total value locked (TVL) on Blast slumped from $2.3 billion to $650 million after withdrawals were opened on Friday. 50% of the upcoming airdrops will be issued to Blast depositors, with the other 50% being allocated to developers. Several protocols including Zora and Pyth have announced Blast integrations. Investors that staked ether (ETH) on newly-launched layer-2 network Blast have withdrawn $1.6 billion of assets in the first 24-hours after the mainnet went live, DefiLlama data shows. Blast, promising on its website to be the “only Ethereum L2 with native yield,” announced a deposit-only bridge in November that quickly garnered more…

Ethereum price struggled to rise above $2,550 and $2,580. ETH started a fresh decline like Bitcoin and traded below the $2,500 support zone. Ethereum attempted a fresh increase but failed to surpass $2,550. The price is trading below $2,500 and the 100-hourly Simple Moving Average. There is a connecting bearish trend line forming with resistance near $2,480 on the hourly chart of ETH/USD (data feed via Kraken). The pair continue to move down if there is a move below the $2,425 support. Ethereum Price Extends Decline Ethereum price struggled to gain pace for a move above the $2,550 and $2,580…

Polymer Labs has raised $23 million in Series A funding to advance the building of its Ethereum-based interoperability hub. The funding round was co-led by Blockchain Capital, Maven 11, and Distributed Global and included contributions from a number of big-name investors, such as Coinbase Ventures, Placeholder, and Digital Currency Group. Polymer Labs emerged from stealth nearly two years after closing its seed funding of $3.6 million. Polymer has developed a layer 2 network that employs the Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) – originally developed for the Cosmos ecosystem to allow different blockchains to communicate with one another – to build an Ethereum-based…

Shiba Inu-based inscription marketplace WoofSwap intends to welcome the ERC404 token standard for Shibarium. In a recent post on X, WoofSwap, a hub for trading Shiba Inu-themed SRC-20 token inscriptions, unveiled a significant update for the SHIB Army. Specifically, WoofSwap seeks to explore the feasibility of implementing the ERC404 standard on Shibarium, the layer two blockchain designed for the Shiba Inu ecosystem. The WoofSwap team expressed admiration for the ERC404 concept. Notably, this standard amalgamates the characteristics of ERC20 for fungible tokens and ERC721 for non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Essentially, ERC404 provides fungibility and unique identifiers. Given its potential benefits for…

Ordiswap V2, the first-ever Automated Market Maker (AMM) on the Bitcoin native layer, has officially launched. It promises improved speed and functionality. Users can now enjoy faster swap times and cross-chain token transfers between Bitcoin and Ethereum via THORChain LPs. They have the opportunity to provide liquidity to their favorite BRC-20 tokens for rewards and yields. Moreover, they can create their pools with LP tokens. 🧪🧪 ORDISWAP V2 IS LIVE 🧪🧪The 1st-ever AMM on the Bitcoin native layer is now officially bigger, better and faster than ever ⚡️Now, users can:→ Swap BRC-20s (and more to come) at 2x speeds with…

Ethereum (ETH) has reached a significant milestone, with 24% of its total supply now staked. This development reflects a growing tendency among ETH holders to prioritize earning passive income through staking rather than selling their assets for immediate price appreciation. This shift highlights the holders’ increasing confidence and commitment to the network’s future. Especially, after recent advancements such as the Shapella upgrade. Ethereum Holders Prefer Staking One of the most anticipated features of the Shapella upgrade was the introduction of withdrawal functionality for staked Ethereum. This change allowed validators and stakers to withdraw their staked ETH along with the accrued…

On Thursday, activist short-seller J Capital Research published its investigation into the once-multi-billion dollar Bitcoin miner Hut 8. Investors immediately offloaded shares which dropped from above $9 when the report was published to $7 by the close of trading. Hut 8 shed hundreds of millions of dollars in market capitalization within hours of J Capital’s report. By close of trading, shares had dropped by 22% from over $9 to $7. J Capital listed a litany of red flags, including backing by penny stock promoters, all-in mining costs of $60,000 per bitcoin, dubious executives, multiple run-ins with regulators, and the risk…