Author: Ibiam Wayas

Ibiam is an optimistic crypto journalist. He loves to associate with like-minded individuals and collaborate with them on similar projects. He spends much of his time honing his writing and critical thinking skills.

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Crypto News Dogecoin

More DOGE Inspired Tokens Flood The Market – Husky, Akita, MoonPaw, Shib

Iba Shinu dog photo
Iba Shinu dog photo https://unsplash.com/photos/Aka2x2D4Ph0

More dog-themed cryptocurrencies are flooding the market, following the surprising success of Dogecoin (DOGE), which was considered only a joke cryptocurrency at the early stage.

The growing interest in Dogecoin seems to have inspired the launch of similar cryptocurrencies on the Binance Smart Chain (BSC), including:

SHIB: from Dogecoin Killer to COVID Relief

SHIB has the largest market capitalization amongst these coins. It’s known as “DOGECOIN KILLER” and recently took rank 23rd on CoinMarketCap, with a $9.5 billion USD market cap. Fifty percent of the maximum supply was burned to Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum, while the remaining percentage was locked on the decentralized exchange, Uniswap.

However, its price tanked shortly after Vitalik donated his SHIB to Indian charity CryptoRelief – a donation worth about $1 billion USD.

DOGE Surged Over 4,300% YTD 

Many crypto users are increasingly stacking up these dog-themed coins with the hope of replicating the profits from Dogecoin. However, it remains unknown how well these new coins can play relative to DOGE.

Dogecoin was trading at $0.4602 USD during the time of writing. It’s down by 8.78 percent on a 24-hour count. 

Dogecoin price chart from CoinMarketCap

It is currently the fourth-largest digital currency, with a market capitalization of over $58 billion. The price of DOGE is up by over 4,300 percent on a year to date (YTD). Notably, the crypto gained mainstream popularity this year as many prominent personalities, including the billionaire founder of SpaceX Elon Musk, showed interest in it.

On several occasions, Elon Musk tweeted about DOGE and recently talked about it on a TV show, bringing attention to the coin.

Categories
Crypto News Dogecoin E-commerce

Will Amazon accept DOGE payments?

Amazon Day Delivery
Amazon Day Delivery [amazon.com]

A Doge-like image on Amazon website has got some Dogecoin enthusiasts thinking that one of the largest e-commerce companies, Amazon, would consider accepting payments with the meme cryptocurrency.

This would be a milestone for Dogecoin (DOGE), which could also push price above the $1 mark, owing to the popularity of the e-commerce company.

However, that doesn’t seem to be the case. The image on the Amazon app was actually a “Corgi” and not Dogecoin’s “Shiba Inu,” as some DOGE-fans thought. Amazon users confirmed this, saying that the Corgi image has been on the mobile application for years.

Meanwhile, this doesn’t negate the fact that many Dogecoin enthusiasts want Amazon to accept payment the cryptocurrency, which is currently the fourth-largest by market capitalization.

Dogecoin Enthusiasts Wants Amazon to Accept DOGE

In a recent survey conducted by GamblersPick, nearly 53 percent of the respondents indicated that they want Dogecoin to be accepted on Amazon. Apparently a good number of them believe that the meme cryptocurrency is the future and the “next Bitcoin”.

Dogecoin as a currency [GamblersPick]

Amazon is not the only big company to have expressed interest in cryptocurrency payments and blockchain technologies.

At the time of writing, DOGE was listed at $0.5007 USD on CoinMarketCap. On a weekly count, the cryptocurrency lost about 11.5 percent of its value. Its market capitalization sits around $64.8 billion USD.

Tesla Might Add Dogecoin 

On Tuesday, Elon Musk opened a Twitter poll on whether to accept Dogecoin for payment in Tesla. At the time of writing, the results indicate that about 78 percent out of over 3 million respondents want the electric car company to add Dogecoin (DOGE) as a payment option.

Categories
Binance Coin Bitcoin Crypto News Cryptocurrencies Dogecoin Ethereum Litecoin Markets Ripple

Top 10 Cryptos Prices in 2016 vs 2021

Crypto prices and market caps, 2016 (left) vs 2021 (right)
Crypto prices and market caps, 2016 (left) vs 2021 (right) [CoinMarketCap]

A lot has changed in the cryptocurrency market over the past five years. There have been many coin ranking reshuffles, with massive growth in the global market capitalization as more people got to know and invest in digital currencies.

Back in 2016, the top-ten digital currencies by market capitalization (according to data from CoinMarketCap) and their corresponding prices were:

  1. Bitcoin (BTC) at $455.25 USD
  2. Ethereum (ETH) at $9.82 USD
  3. Ripple (XRP) at $0.006069 USD
  4. Litecoin (LTC) at $3.98 USD
  5. Dash (DASH) at $6.89 USD
  6. DigixDAO (DGD) at $12.17 USD
  7. Dogecoin (DOGE) at $0.000233 USD
  8. MaidSafeCoin (MAID) at $0.052008 USD
  9. NEM (XEM) at $0.001491 USD
  10. FedoraCoin (TIPS) at $0.000029 USD

At the time, Bitcoin was only a three-digit price cryptocurrency ($455 USD), with a total market valuation of $7.075 billion USD. Also, Ethereum was less than $10 USD, while XRP traded around $0.006 USD, according to data from CoinMarketCap.

Crypto prices and market caps, 2016 (left) vs 2021 (right)
Crypto prices and market caps, 2016 (left) vs 2021 (right) [CoinMarketCap]

As of May 2016, the global cryptocurrency market capitalization was $8.449 billion USD.

Crypto total market capitalization [CoinMarketCap]

The Crypto Market is up by Over 29,000% Since 2016

Fast forward to today, the crypto market has seen immense growth of over 29,000 percent in the market cap – in other words, more than 290 times. The total valuation of global cryptocurrencies now sits around $2.47 trillion USD compared to $8.4 billion USD cap in the past five years. This follows the wake of more retail and institutional investors.

The leading cryptocurrency Bitcoin (BTC) saw over a 12,300 percent increase from 2016 to date, with a market capitalization of over $1 trillion USD. This means that a $100 USD investment in BTC over the past five years would be worth more than $12,000 USD in today’s value. At the same time, the second-largest cryptocurrency Ethereum (ETH) surged by over 41,000 percent, which is a much higher return compared to Bitcoin.

Some of the top-ten coins in 2016 are no longer ranking high on the list today, including DigixDAO and FedoraCoin. It remains to be seen how the list will change in the next five years. Do you think Bitcoin and Ethereum can be overthrown by the likes of Binance Coin (BNB) or even Dogecoin (DOGE)?

Categories
Crypto News DeFi

DeFi Tokens Generated $252 Million In Revenue For April 2021

DeFi Tokens Generated $252 Million In Revenue For April 2021

Last month, cryptocurrency users gained over $250 million USD from top protocols in the decentralized finance (DeFi) market, according to data from The Block.

This is the highest monthly revenue ever generated by DeFi protocols, which includes Uniswap, Maker, Compound, Aave, SushiSwap, and seven others.

Monthly DeFi revenue [TheBlock]

According to the data, the protocols precisely generated about $252 million USD in April revenue. This revenue accounts for the profits made by DeFi token holders as well as protocols’ liquidity providers and other users.

Daily DeFi revenue [TheBlock]

Daily revenue increased by six percent to $8.45 million USD, from April to May. The cumulative DeFi revenue reached about $1.13 billion USD, as of 1 May 2021.

Uniswap Leads DeFi Revenue With Over $113 Million

The leading decentralized exchange (DEX), Uniswap, posted the highest revenue, about $113.66 million USD, followed by Compound ($46.08 million), SushiSwap ($35.23 million), Aave ($24.72 million), Maker ($10.45 million), while the other protocols generated combined revenue of $22.17 million USD.

The increase in the DeFi revenue last month could be attributed to the overall growth of the DeFi market, especially in April.

DeFi Pulse graphs on 11 May 2021
DeFi Pulse graphs on 11 May 2021

Following the data provided by DeFi Pulse, the total value of assets locked in decentralized protocols increased by about 40 percent from April to May. The total value locked in DeFi is worth $83.01 billion USD at the time of writing.

Categories
Bitcoin Crypto News

Square’s Cash App Recorded $3.5 Billion Bitcoin Revenue in Q1

Square's Cash App Recorded $3.5 Billion Bitcoin Revenue in Q1

Cash App, the crypto-friendly mobile payment application owned by Square Inc., generated $3.51 billion USD in Bitcoin revenue within the first quarter of the year.

Cash App Bitcoin Revenue Soared 11x

The peer-to-peer payment platform had a stellar record in Q1 of this year. Its Bitcoin revenue soared to about $3.51 billion USD and gross profit of $75 million USD from Bitcoin, according to the “Shareholder Letter” published by the parent company. The Bitcoin revenue and gross profit each represent about 11x increase from the previous record in Q1 last year.

In total, Square generated  net revenue of $5.06 billion USD in Q1 – about 266 percent increase year over year. This means that its Bitcoin revenue from Cash App made up about 70 percent of the entire Q1 revenue.

Bitcoin Boosted Square’s Revenue in Q1

The Bitcoin revenue is the total sale amount of Bitcoin to customers. The 11x increase indicates that Cash App saw significant growth in the number of crypto transactions and customers. Unarguably, there has been an increase in demand for Bitcoin since the beginning of the year, following the massive increase in the value of the coin.  

Bitcoin revenue and gross profit benefited from a year-over-year increase in the price of bitcoin, bitcoin activities, and growth in customer demand.

the letter reads.

Bitcoin reached a record high of $64,863 USD last month. At the time of writing, however, the largest cryptocurrency was trading at $58,253 USD on Coinmarketcap. This price places BTC at over 100 percent increase on a year to date (YTD).

This news also follows MicroStrategy is HODLing 91,579 BTC Announcing 10% Revenue Growth for 2021.

Categories
Bitcoin Crypto News

CFO of World’s Largest Hedge Fund, John Dalby, Joins Bitcoin Company NYDIG

CFO of World's Largest Hedge Fund, John Dalby, Joins Bitcoin Company NYDIG

John Dalby, the Chief Financial Officer of the world’s largest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates, is joining a Bitcoin company, New York Digital Investment Group or NYDIG.

Bridgewater CFO Joins The Crypto Space

According to the announcement of Friday, Dalby has been appointed to serve as the new Chief Financial Officer at NYDIG. The company considers Dalby as valuable personnel, whose rich experience in the financial services industry will help to accelerate the growth of its institutional Bitcoin solutions.

Personally, I share NYDIG’s vision for Bitcoin’s ability to propel economic empowerment for all. I eagerly look forward to doing my part to help NYDIG deliver innovative Bitcoin solutions to institutions and individuals.

Dalby commented.

Fintech Execs Are Becoming Interested in Bitcoin

NYDIG specializes in Bitcoin investment and technology solutions for financial institutions like insurers, banks, and HNW individuals. Some people, including the co-founder and CEO of NYDIG, Robert Gutmann, see Dalby’s appointment as a sign that financial executives are becoming convinced of Bitcoin (BTC).

Working on Bitcoin is increasingly what many of the best and brightest employees seek – including industry leaders like John – and NYDIG is uniquely positioned to offer them the platform, resources, and culture to shine, in pursuit of our collective mission to bring Bitcoin safely to everyone.

Gutmann said.

Dalby’s appointment comes at a time where NYDIG sees massive growth in its operations and services. Recently, the company announced a global Insurance Solutions aimed at developing bitcoin-powered products and services for the insurance industry. Also, NYDIG recently raised over $300 million USD from major financial companies, including MassMutual, Morgan Stanley, Stone Ridge Holdings Group, and many others.

Categories
Bitcoin Crypto News

Biggest Latin American E-commerce Firm MercadoLibre Bought $7.8 Million Bitcoin in Q1

Biggest Latin American E-commerce Giant MercadoLibre Bought $7.8 Million Bitcoin, according to their Q1 financial statement published earlier this week.

The largest e-commerce company in Latin America, MercadoLibre, has revealed that it is holding some Bitcoin (BTC) as part of its treasury reserve. The company made this known as the largest online commerce and payments ecosystem in Latin America.

MercadoLibre Added Bitcoin to its Reserve in Q1

The company purchased $7.8 million worth of Bitcoin as part of its treasury reserve in the first quarter of 2021, although the exact date of the purchase wasn’t disclosed.

As part of our treasury strategy this quarter we purchased $7.8 million in bitcoin, a digital asset that we are disclosing within our indefinite-lived intangible assets.

MercadoLibre precisely noted.

MercadoLibre is considered the Alibaba of Latin America. The Argentina-based e-commerce giant sees nearly 70 million users and a market capitalization of over $73 million. Owing to its popularity, we can expect more companies in Latin America to follow suit by adding Bitcoin to their balance sheet.

Many companies, including Tesla, added Bitcoin to their treasury reserve this year, as a better store of value. Some bought Bitcoin to hedge against inflation.

Interest in Bitcoin Soars in Argentina

It even makes sense that MercadoLibre bought Bitcoin in the first quarter of the year, just when the rate of inflation increased in Argentina. The national currency has been deflating in value as the inflation rate in Argentina soars to over 40 percent.

Interestingly, the concern for the declining value of the currency has sparked a high level of interest in Bitcoin amongst Argentines, as they seek a viable alternative to hedge against inflation. This is evident as crypto exchanges are seeing an increase in user accounts from Argentines who are investing in cryptocurrencies.

Categories
Crypto News Fan Tokens

$UFC Fan Tokens Set To Launch on Chilliz Blockchain

UFC Fan Tokens Set To Launch on Chilliz Blockchain

The world’s biggest mixed martial arts organization, Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) has officially announced its launch for a UFC fan token, in partnership with Chiliz.

UFC considers the creations of its fan token as one of the ways to connect and boost engagement with global fans.

$UFC Fan Token Set to Launch in June

The UFC Fan Token will be launched in June on Socios, a fan engagement and rewards mobile app which is co-founded with Chiliz. The token will be developed on the Chiliz blockchain, and only 20 million of $UFC Fan Token will ever exist.

We are continually looking for ways to increase engagement with our fans. […] UFC has more than 625 million fans around the world, and Fan Tokens are a unique way to connect with them through a compelling, authentic product that brings them closer to UFC and gives them influence, while also rewarding their passion for the sport.

Tracey Bleczinski, one of the officials at UFC, commented.

As with other fan tokens, holders of $UFC will be able to access some of the exclusive contents offered by UFC, including VIP rewards and fan voting opportunities.

The Fan Token Ecosystem is Growing Rapidly

Chiliz has seen immense growth in its fan token ecosystem. The growing network of Chiliz led to about a 7,000 percent increase in the price of Chiliz (CHZ) within three months.

It’s interesting to note that the sole purpose of increasing fans’ engagement is resulting in more adoption of cryptocurrency in the sports industry. UFC only adds to the list of major sports entities to launch a digital currency. In March, Crypto News Australia reported that Manchester City has also launched its fan token dubbed $CITY.

Categories
Bitcoin Crypto News Ethereum

Ethereum Outperformed Bitcoin by 50% in April 2021

Ethereum Flips Bitcoin With Over $20 Billion USD in Trading Volume

Ethereum (ETH) has seen more growth in market value than Bitcoin (BTC) over the past month.

Recent market data confirmed that Ether’s monthly return for April surpassed that of Bitcoin by almost 50 percent. On a year-to-date (YTD) chart, Ethereum has gained over 350 percent in market value. Below we take a look at the reasons why ETH has performed so well in the past month or so.

This might not be a surprise following the increasing demand for ETH, which pushed the coin to a new all-time high above $3,000 USD.

Ethereum price chart. Source: Coingecko

Although some cryptocurrencies including Ethereum soared in April, the past month was obviously not that favourable for Bitcoin (BTC). For the first time since 2021, Bitcoin posted a negative return of -2.7 percent. BTC declined from $58,889 USD on April 1 to $57,261 on May 1.

Bitcoin price chart. Source: Coingecko

Notably, the price suddenly dropped to about $55,000 USD on April 18, and even further to $49,754 USD on April 23rd, as per data from Coingecko. Since the drop, BTC has struggled to return back to $60,000 USD level.

What’s Behind ETH’s Rise?

One possible reason for the growing price of Ethereum is the fact that the cryptocurrency is becoming more scarce. More ETH are being staked on the Ethereum 2.0 deposit contract than mined.

Currently, over 4.14 million ETH has been staked, according to the network explorer beaconcha.in. This represents more than 3.5 percent of the current circulating supply of ETH.

CryptoQuant, a crypto on-chain analytics platform, also confirms the scarcity of ETH. At the moment, there is less than 20 million ETH available on all crypto exchanges. ETH exchange reserve has been declining since Q3 2020, as the price of the coin began increasing.

ETH exchange reserve. Source: CryptoQuant
Categories
Crypto News Payments

eBay is Considering Accepting Cryptocurrency as Payment Option

eBay is Considering Accepting Cryptocurrencies as a Payment Option

One of the world’s leading e-commerce giants eBay is now considering accepting Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as a payment option. Reuters reported the new development on Monday, citing the Chief Executive Officer, Jamie Lannone.

eBay is Open to Accepting Crypto Payments

While speaking with CNBC, the CEO of the online shopping platform disclosed that the company was considering adding new payment options for its millions of customers. Among other payment options, the company enlisted digital currencies as a potential payment method.

This is an important development for the cryptocurrency space, given eBay’s popularity and user base. As of mid-2019, the e-commerce platforms recorded over 182 million users worldwide. Supporting cryptocurrency as a payment method creates more room for mainstream adoption of digital currencies. This will also add to the list of major e-commerce platforms where users can pay for items using their cryptocurrencies.

In addition to supporting cryptos, Lannone also disclosed in the interview that the e-commerce company is also considering “ways to get into the business of non-fungible tokens (NFTs)”.

More Platforms to Pay With Cryptocurrency

eBay news today comes some days after the online payment giant, PayPal, announced that its users can now check out from supported shops with cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash. In a separate development, Dan Schulman, the CEO of PayPal, admitted to a rapidly-growing demand for cryptocurrencies. He said the “demand on the crypto side has been multiple-fold to what we initially expected”.

In Australia, more companies are increasingly supporting cryptocurrencies as a payment method for their customers. Some of the Aussie companies accepting crypto payment include the NBN Internet RSP Launtel, Queensland Solar and Lighting, Dream PC Australia, Pet Parlour Australian Online Pet Shop, and so on.