Category: Tokens

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Blockchain DeFi NFTs Solana Tokens

Solana’s SOL Pumps 25% in Two Days, Driven by Surge in DeFi and NFTs

Solana’s SOL token has pushed higher by up to 25 percent on the back of numerous bullish developments this week.

By October 21, SOL was trading at its highest point in more than a month and was just 10 percent off its all-time high of US$214.36. Since then it has pulled back slightly, trading at US$201.85 at the time of writing.

Solana Runs With the Bulls

“Solana has moved into bull market territory,” notes Joe DiPasquale, CEO of cryptocurrency hedge fund manager BitBull Capital. “With this week’s jump from $160 to above $190, it placed a bullish flagpole in the chart.

Analysts will now wait to see if that pole leads to a bull flag, meaning a steadying of the price, which would signal further bullish moves and new support. If it consolidates around US$180, this could create a strong support flag leading to further gains.

Joe DiPasquale, CEO, BitBull Capital

The token has broken through some important resistance levels lately, which confirms that buyers are “not concerned about downward pressure”.

Nick Spanos, co-founder of Zap Protocol, concurs with DiPasquale’s view that SOL’s short-to-medium-term outlook looks “very bullish”.

We have seen SOL build momentum this month and it has attracted plenty of new buyers in the past few weeks, with the number of active token holders increasing considerably.

Traders will be keeping an eye on the RSI [relative strength index], but the price action is more important. In particular, the bulls will be looking for SOL to convincingly breach the US$188 resistance level before targeting a breakout through the token’s all-time high of $191.04, as this would pave the way for even stronger gains.

Nick Spanos, co-founder, Zap Protocol

Synchrony Raises $4.2 Million in Strategic Funding, MonkeyBall Makes $3M

Yesterday, Solana-native asset management protocol Synchrony closed US$4.2 million in a strategic funding round led by Sanctor Capital, with participation from Wintermute Trading, GBV Capital, HashKey Group, Magnus Capital and 0xVentures, among others.

This week also saw MonkeyBall, a crypto startup building a play-to-earn NFT soccer game based on Solana, raise US$3 million in a seed funding round. Investors included Jump Capital, CMS Holdings, Solana Capital, 6th Man Ventures and NFX.

Future looks bright for Solana after mixed fortunes in September.

Last month was one of mixed fortunes for Solana. On the one hand, the mass migration of content creators from Ethereum to Solana flagged its expansion in the NFT marketplace, with non-fungible tokens proliferating faster on Solana than in any other protocol.

But around the same time, resource exhaustion in the network caused Solana to suffer a DoS (Denial of Service) episode, which resulted in the SOL token taking a 15 percent tumble. Just two days earlier, Solana had recorded its first million-dollar NFT deal.

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Crypto News DeFi Gaming NFTs Tokens

Axie Infinity Continues to Soar, Up 86% in a Month

Axie Infinity has been leading the P2E (Play-to-Earn) movement by becoming the highest-revenue generating game in the market, with over 1.8 million daily active users worldwide. Data from Binance shows ASX, its native token, has surged over 80 percent in just one month, highlighting the interest from investors and gamers alike for blockchain-based games.

ASX Has Mooned 150,000% Since its Launch

ASX had an 86 percent price boost last month, trading at US$121.36 at the time of writing.

Daily chart of ASX/BTC

Additionally, analytics firm CoinGecko reported that ASX was the second-best performing asset of the market in Q3 2021, with a three-month best ROI (return of investment) of 965 percent, and YTD (Year to Date) gains of approximately 15,000 percent.

Two weeks ago, ASX surged above 100 percent following a massive airdrop of US$60 million to early users and a staking rewards feature, where token holders generated returns of up to 385 percent APY.

Controversial Updates

While Axie has been thriving in the DeFi and NFT markets, some recent updates have staggered its price surge. Recently, the team behind the game revealed the 1.1.0a update, which embedded three fundamental technical changes: to the Ronin Block Explorer, bug fixing and game dynamics, and game tokenomics.

The last one caused the prices of ASX and SLP to drop nearly 10 percent in a matter of hours. Normally, players sell their Axie characters with their respective levels and characteristics, but this update now automatically resets the monster’s level to 1. This has outraged the community. But what’s more is that players with less than 800 MMR are prohibited from receiving rewards for playing the adventure modes or daily quests.

Despite the setbacks, Axie continues to be the frontrunner of P2E video games when it comes to revenues. The ASX token is now one of the top 50 tokens in the crypto market, following a 50 percent price boost in just a week.

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Blockchain Crypto News Tokens

Privacy Token NuCypher Surges 760% in a Week Following Protocol Merger News

The native cryptocurrency of Ethereum cryptographic services provider NuCypher outperformed the majority of altcoins last week, including Ether (ETH) and Binance Coin (BNB). NuCypher (NU) more than doubled its market value and capitalisation on its anniversary day, following the announcement of the network’s upcoming merger with Keep Network.

NU Soared 8x Last Week

NuCypher operates several nodes optimised for threshold cryptography to enable decentralised application developers to secure their data on the blockchain. The NU token began trading on October 15, 2020.

The community seems to be positive about future prospects and its upcoming merger with the Keep Network to have incited a spike in the market value of NU. During the first anniversary celebration on October 15, the token soared from as low as US$0.300165 to an all-time high of US$2.61 within that same day. 

This represents a +760 percent increase in a daily candle, and although the price of NU has shrunk from the ATH, the token is still up by 323 percent at US$1.27 at the time of writing.

NuCypher is Merging With Keep 

The major driver of the rally in NU last week could be traced to the upcoming merger with Keep Network, also a privacy-focused blockchain network. The merger was first hinted at in June, and although it’s still unknown when it will be finalised, NuCypher and Keep are believed to be nearing completion of the first-ever crypto merger into a single network called Threshold.

Both communities unanimously voted in support of the merger, and it’s expected that both KEEP and NU holders will receive the new “T” token from Threshold Network.

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Crypto Art Crypto News Ethereum NFTs Tokens

Glenfiddich to Release Rare, Expensive $18K Whisky as NFTs

Premium single-malt Scotch whisky brand Glenfiddich has partnered with new non-fungible token marketplace BlockBar to launch a series of 15 limited-edition NFTs, each worth a tidy US$18,000.

The tokens are offered through BlockBar’s NFT platform, which allows Glenfiddich to digitise and sell exclusive spirits products as NFTs directly to consumers for personal consumption, collecting or investment purposes.

Each token corresponds to a physical bottle of a 1973 Armagnac cask finish Single Malt Scotch Whisky sold by Glenfiddich. The purchaser of each NFT becomes the owner of the physical product represented by the token, which also takes the form of a digital receipt to verify the buyer’s ownership and the authenticity of the product.

Buyers can be assured their accounts won’t be compromised and their NFTs won’t be stolen as the tokens are protected by FireBlocks’ digital asset custody infrastructure and Chainalysis’s compliance technology.

Buyers Retain Resale or Transfer Options

Each buyer has the option to resell or transfer the NFT via the BlockBar platform or redeem it for the physical version. BlockBar is also responsible for storing the product and, on request, delivering it to thirstier buyers.

“Glenfiddich continues to push boundaries in whisky innovation and this mindset transcends to those we partner with,” commented Doug Bagley, chief commercial officer of William Grant & Sons,  Glenfiddich’s parent company.

We are proud to be the first luxury spirits brand to be available on BlockBar at the time of the launch. BlockBar brings a heightened level of authenticity to our brand via its proprietary NFT platform and creates an elite club of distinguished collectors with whom we’re excited to build long-term relationships.  

Doug Bagley, chief commercial officer, William Grant & Sons

The first series of Glenfiddich NFTs will launch October 19 on a first in, best dressed basis. Buyers can purchase them from BlockBar with Ethereum (ETH) or by credit card.

“BlockBar values transparency, authenticity and quality assurance, and Glenfiddich is the perfect partner to mark the launch of our mission to bridge the physical and digital worlds of luxury,” said BlockBar CEO Dov Falic. 

We’re proud to be providing the first direct-to-consumer, fully authenticated wine and spirits platform via an NFT marketplace. This is a momentous time for the crypto, NFT, and luxury wine and spirits communities, and we can’t wait to announce many more exclusive releases in future.

Dov Falic, CEO, BlockBar

NFT Space Continues to Show its Versatility

Not only does the Glenfiddich/BlockBar partnership herald the advent of the drinkable NFT, this month Norwegian chess grandmaster Magnus Carlsen was awarded the world’s first NFT chess trophy after winning the Meltwater Champions Tour.

Not all has been rosy in the blooming NFT garden, however. Last month, when Time magazine announced a new collection of NFTs offering “unlimited access” to its website throughout 2023, all 4,676 tokens tied to the digital artworks sold out in minutes. The sale rush clogged the Ethereum blockchain, sending gas fees through the roof – so much so that buyers spent almost four times as much on transaction fees as they did on the NFTs themselves.

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Crypto News Tokens

‘Big Short’ Investor Calls Shiba Inu “Pointless” After It Soared 230%

Hedge fund manager Michael Burry has questioned the worth of the Shiba Inu token (SHIB) after its 230 percent leap over the past week.

Burry, founder of private investment firm Scion Asset Management and famous for forecasting the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, described the SHIB token as “pointless” in an October 9 tweet:

Shiba Inu (SHIB) is a token that aspires to be an Ethereum-based alternative to dogecoin (DOGE), the popular meme coin. Unlike bitcoin, which is designed to be scarce, SHIB is intentionally abundant – with a circulating supply of one quadrillion.

Michael Burry, founder, Scion Asset Management

Expanding on his statement, Burry said: “Just saying, one quadrillion seconds is about 32 million years. One quadrillion days is 2.7 trillion years, or all of time, from the beginning of the universe, multiplied by 71,000. In other words, pointless.”

SHIB Circulation No Longer One Quadrillion

Several pundits on Twitter were quick to point out to Burry that the circulating supply of SHIB is no longer one quadrillion. Coinbase’s market data shows it currently stands at 394.8 trillion coins.

As the Shiba Token website explains: “Starting with a supply of 1 quadrillion, our founder, Ryoshi, locked 50 percent in Uniswap, then ‘burned’ the other half to Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin for safekeeping.”

The token first achieved widespread attention when in May Buterin donated US$1 billion worth of SHIB to India’s crypto Covid relief fund.

Poster for The Big Short, the 2015 film adaptation of Michael Lewis’ 2010 book.

Burry is best known for being the first investor to foresee and profit from the 2007-2010 subprime mortgage crisis. He was profiled in The Big Short, a 2010 book by Michael Lewis about the meltdown, since made into a 2015 movie starring Christian Bale.

In June this year, Burry predicted the “mother of all crashes”, saying that “the problem with crypto, as in most things, is the leverage”.

What Is the Point of SHIB?

Last weekend, Crypto News Australia reported the Shiba Inu token had leapt 385 percent in the previous seven days, doubling its value in just one 24-hour period. The massive spike was partially blamed on a tweet from Elon Musk about his new Shiba Inu pup, Floki.

Soon after Musk posted an image of Foki on Twitter, even the #SHIB hashtag started trending. Meanwhile, data from Etherscan showed the number of worldwide Shiba holders had exceeded 700,000.

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Bitcoin Blockchain NFTs Tokens

Bitcoin NFTs Are Growing Fast, STX Token Up 57% in 24 Hours

The native cryptocurrency of Bitcoin-based smart contract blockchain Stacks (STX) exploded in market value this past week, following the growth in demand amid a booming NFT ecosystem. 

Giving the growing traction on the network, more from its NFTs marketplace, STX soared over 57 percent to $2.30 on October 10. At the time of writing, however, STX was down trading at $1.91 on CoinMarketCap, as Bitcoin (BTC) maintained its domination over major altcoins. Currently, the Stacks token is ranked the 58th-largest digital currency with a market capitalisation of around US$2.3 billion. 

LunarCRUSH had also confirmed STX as the top cryptocurrency with the highest social and market activity. 

Bitcoin NFTs Ecosystem is Booming 

The Bitcoin blockchain is mainly for facilitating transactions and doesn’t inherently support NFTs or smart contracts like Ethereum. While it is often criticised and downplayed for this, Stacks is looking to change the narrative. 

Based on Bitcoin, Stacks is poised to enable smart contracts on the BTC network, more like a “Layer 1.5” according to founder Muneeb Ali. More NFTs are now launching on the Bitcoin network through Stacks, which contributed to the demand in STX and overall traction on the network.

Bitcoin Birds was the latest Bitcoin NFT collection launched last week by 12-year-old Abraham Finley. The collection sold out within one hour, netting about US$8,000. Prior to the Bitcoin Birds, other NFTs have been released on the Stack marketplace, including Stacks Pops, Punks, Monks, and many others. Satoshibles NFTs are also planning on debuting on Bitcoin “where they truly belong”.

The NFT market has had a wide rally in the past few months and is starting to look lulled. SynFutures, a Singaporean decentralised derivatives exchange, is set to launch an NFT platform that will enable investors to short or bet against the price movements of NFTs. As the NFT world continues to advance, Twitter plans to integrate a verification tool for NFTs used as profile pictures.

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Crypto News Cryptocurrencies Investing Tokens

Why Has Shiba Inu Soared 385% in a Week?

Meme coin Shiba Inu (SHIB) has leapt 385 percent in the past seven days, doubling its value in just one 24-hour period this week.

Now the world’s 12th largest cryptocurrency, the “dog that ate Dogecoin” has a market cap nudging US$17 billion, placing it ahead of Chainlink (LINK), Litecoin (LTC), Avalanche (AVE), and Uniswap (UNI).

Created by a pseudonymous developer under the alias of Ryoshi and launched just over a year ago, Shiba Inu has been described as “an experiment in decentralised spontaneous community building”. But why the sudden, seemingly spontaneous spike in value?

We can at least partially blame a tweet from Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, proud owner of a new Shiba Inu pup called Floki:

Soon after Musk posted the above image of Foki last weekend, even the #SHIB hashtag started trending on Twitter. Meanwhile, data from Etherscan shows that the slavering pack of worldwide Shiba holders has now passed the 700,000 mark.

Shiba an Emblem of the Wider Crypto Market

Shiba Inu’s surge is emblematic of the wider crypto market, with bitcoin up 30 percent over the same period and Ethereum right behind it with a 25 percent spike.

One Shiba Inu whale (or whales) quietly transferred 6 trillion SHIB coins to a separate wallet address, with the overall price of the holdings worth US$80,856,857. The International Business Times reported the same whale(s) bought another 276 billion the next day, in instalments of 116 billion, 158 billion and a billion.

The whale(s) almost doubled their initial investment in just six days. Contrast this with the fact that on the first day of Shiba Inu futures markets, launched in May, traders lost over 1.34 trillion SHIB in just 24 hours.

Just days later, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin donated US$1 billion to an Indian Covid charity from the proceeds of dumping 660 billion SHIB, among other tokens.

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Blockchain Crypto News Cryptocurrencies Stablecoins Tokens

LUNA Token Up 34% in a Week, Prints New All-Time High Following Terra Network Upgrade

Terra’s native token LUNA has been climbing in an aggressive ascent towards the US$50 mark, from around just US$10 at the end of July. The new ATH was recorded on October 4 with LUNA peaking at US$49.45 following Terra’s network upgrade.

$1 Billion Worth of LUNA Tokens Burned

The highly anticipated Columbus-5 upgrade went live on September 30, introducing changes to the Terra network that will add a deflationary mechanism to LUNA’s token economics by implementing token burns. LUNA is Terra’s utility token, used for maintaining equal value to the US dollar for Terra’s Stablecoin UST.

Since the upgrade, instead of LUNA tokens being transferred to a community pool, they are now burned whenever UST is minted. About 23.4 million LUNA tokens worth approximately US$1 billion were burned on the day of the upgrade, which resulted in LUNA’s price jump. The new deflationary model is very bullish for LUNA’s future price prediction; the more LUNA tokens that are burned and taken out of circulation, the more the asset increases in value as it becomes more scarce.

The supply burn places deflationary pressure on LUNA making it increasingly scarce … This was a key driver for recent price action.

Delphi Digital

What is the Upgrade About? 

The Columbus-5 upgrade is significant for Terra investors because it increases compatibility between Terra and other blockchain networks by enabling the Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) standard. IBC will let users easily transfer LUNA, the TerraUSD (UST) stablecoin, and other assets from Terra to alternate networks and vice versa. It will position Terra to become the de facto stablecoin of the Cosmos ecosystem (a project aiming to build a network of independent blockchains communicating through IBC).

Last week, Crypto News Australia placed LUNA among the top 3 coins to watch.

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Airdrop Crypto News Gaming Tokens

Axie Infinity’s AXS Token up 100% After Launching Staking Rewards Feature

Axie Infinity’s ASX token has reached all-time highs of above US$135 following a huge airdrop to early supporters and the launch of a new staking service, where holders saw returns of up to 385 percent APY for staking their tokens.

The team behind Axie Infinity’s monster-battler NFT game airdropped US$60 million to early users and sales of the NFTs for the game also saw 50 percent gains.

Axie Infinity (AXS) is a blockchain-based battle game that has become insanely popular this year as gamers embrace play-to-earn (P2E) gaming models. The Axie project’s monthly users peaked in weekly volume in August at US$220 million.

Axie Infinity is Also Planning to Launch a DEX

Axie Infinity is set to release its own decentralised exchange, bridging the gaming world with DeFi. The new DEX, to be built on Ronin, an Ethereum-linked sidechain purpose-built for Axie Infinity, will facilitate users to trade tokens within the Axie ecosystem without having to move their tokens off the platform.

Investors in Axie Infinity, which received US$7.6 million in its last funding round, include the likes of billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban. In the three-month period since June, AXS gained a stellar 934.35 percent against the US dollar and 840.61 percent against bitcoin. 

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Crypto News DeFi Giveaways Tokens

DeFi Protocol Bug Mistakenly Rewards Users $80 Million in COMP Tokens

A bug in Compound (COMP) protocol’s new Proposal 062 has led to an over-distribution of at least US$80 million worth of COMP to some of its users.

Compound Finance (COMP), the lending protocol, reported an incident on September 30 regarding some “unusual activity” with its token distribution after executing Protocol 062, a community-driven update:

According to Protocol founder Robert Leshner, a bug in the update resulted in excessive amounts of COMP being distributed to several users, some of whom were able to claim millions of dollars’ worth of tokens.

The upgrade was designed to “split COMP rewards distribution” from the previous set 50/50 share model, and was fully verified by the community without issues.

Culprit Was Likely a Single Letter Bug

Mudit Gupta, a programmer from SushiSwap, explained that a single letter bug was responsible for the error, causing a reverse rug pull and paying out more rewards than it was supposed to.

Leshner also stated that “the impact is bounded, at worst, 280,000 COMP tokens”, worth over US$85 million at the time of writing. The impacted contract contained only a limited amount of rewards, with the majority sitting in a different reservoir contract.

Patching Under Way, Optional White Hat Rewards

Since COMP aims to run as a decentralised autonomous organisation (DAO), any changes made to the protocol have a seven-day governance process before it can make its way to production. In the meantime, Compound Labs and community members are “evaluating potential steps to patch the COMP distribution”.

Users who return the assets can keep 10 percent as a white hat reward, Leshner added, but whether the lucky recipients choose to return a few million dollars to the platform remains to be seen – although if history is any indication, it is certainly possible.

The Bigger the Jungle, the More Bugs You’ll Find

Since the DeFi boom, one of the major issues protocols have been facing are bugs in the code causing havoc in unexpected ways. In early September, a bug in OpenSea destroyed US$130,000 worth of NFTs on the marketplace.

With code in smart contracts, sometimes the simplest errors can translate into massive problems. Recently, the decentralised exchange DeversiFi had an error in a library that processes decimals, the result of which was paying US$22 million for a $100k deposit transaction.

As the DeFi industry grows and more smart contracts are created as vehicles for both simple and complex transactions, it’s important to remember that some programmer somewhere in the world sat and wrote that code. Using projects with qualified teams, and code audited by a verified third party, is something to look out for, but since the space is so new there will most certainly be kinks to iron out.