Category: Tokens

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Blockchain Crypto News Tokens TRON

BitTorrent Token Soars 80% On News of Mainnet Launch

Bitcoin penny stock BitTorrent has soared 80 percent ahead of its Mainnet Launch on December 12. News of the mainnet of BitTorrent Chain (BTTC), the world’s first heterogeneous cross-chain interoperability protocol, going live has sent the price up 35.56 percent in 24 hours.

Interoperability Goes Live Next Week

BitTorrent (BTT), the leading torrent software site, launched its BitTorrent token native currency on the TRON (TRX) blockchain in 2019 using its TRC-10 standard. The mid-cap altcoin, however, surged after the announcement of its impending mainnet launch.

BTT is a file-sharing protocol token built atop TRX that allows users to share files peer-to-peer by paying for access to faster download speeds, more storage resources, and more bandwidth.

BTTC comes in as the world’s first heterogeneous cross-chain interoperability protocol that adopts Proof-of-Stake (PoS) mechanisms and leverages sidechains for the scaling of smart contracts. The chain allows interoperability with the public chains of Ethereum, TRON and BSC, with more chains to be supported in the future.

According to the developer community of BitTorrent, the mainnet will launch with BTT redenomination implemented. Since the company took to Twitter to announce the official launch date of BTTC, BitTorrent Inc has been exploding:

When announcing the BTTC launch in early November, the project further explained what the chain’s new capabilities would be. According to the press release, BTTC will also be compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine:

“Furthermore, BTTC will support and be compatible with TRON, Ethereum, and Binance Smart Chain (BSC) upon its release, allowing users to transfer mainstream assets among TRON, Ethereum and BSC in a decentralised manner without any restrictions.”

While maintaining its current market cap, the old BTT token will be redenominated and swapped with the new BTT tokens at a ratio of 1:1000. The total supply of BTT tokens will be increased from 990,000,000,000 to 990,000,000,000,000. The new tokens after redenomination will be referred to as BTT, while the old ones will be renamed as BTTOLD.

The announcement of the specifics of the launch date triggered BTT to surge about 78 percent from a low of US$0.0023 to a high of US$00.41. Tron, the blockchain on which BTT is built, also saw positive price action in response to the announcement.

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Crypto News DAO Real Estate Tokens

Crypto Investors Are Creating a DAO to Buy a Caribbean Island

A group of cryptocurrency investors is buying an island and decentralising it for its community. Anyone can participate in the crowdfunding by holding at least one token from the DAO (Decentralised Autonomous Organisation).

First Crypto Island in the Bahamas

Crypto Island is a group of investors that incentivises business, nonprofits and individuals to join its DAO of over 22,000 members. The Crypto Island DAO was born after the success of ConstitutionDAO.

Through crowdfunding, the DAO plans to buy a private island in the Bahamas – Little Whale Cay, 37.6 hectares in the Berry Island group – with a price tag of US$35 million. This would be the first decentralised and community-owned island, with every member of the DAO having membership rights by holding CISLA.

CISLA can be bought only with BNB on PancakeSwap. Members of the DAO will co-own the fully operational private island with its own airstrip. The DAO has already completed all the necessary negotiation and legal works. New investors only need to buy the token to help the DAO reach its US$35 million goal to buy the island.

Benefits of Tokenising Properties

The tokenisation of properties is an emerging real-estate ownership alternative with a wide set of benefits. To name a few, it provides higher liquidity for investors, making it a more accessible market for everyone, along with the benefits of using blockchain technology such as transparency and cheaper transactions.

As Crypto News Australia reported in September, HeroX announced the first tokenisation of property in Australia, offering at least a partial solution to the relatively illiquid real estate market.

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Crypto Exchange Crypto News Crypto Wallets Hackers Tokens

BitMart Exchange Hacked for $200 Million

The centralised US crypto exchange BitMart has been hit by one of the most devastating hacks to date, draining an estimated US$196 million in various cryptocurrencies.

According to a Twitter thread by Sheldon Xia, founder and CEO of BitMart, on December 5 a “large-scale breach” of its Ethereum (ETH) and Binance Smart Chain (BSC) hot wallets was discovered. The losses were estimated to be around US$200 million by security firm PeckShield, who picked it up as it was happening.

Attackers Targeting Important Private Keys

According to an official update, withdrawals have been suspended and all other wallets are secured and unharmed, as fortunately “ETH hot wallet and BSC hot wallet carry a small percentage of assets on BitMart”. Xia later announced that the breaches had been caused by a stolen private key that the attackers used to gain access to the wallets.

The hacker made away with a mix of more than 20 tokens, including altcoins such as Binance Coin (BNB), Safemoon, BSC-USD and BNBBPay (BPay), as well as sizeable amounts of memecoins such as BabyDoge, Floki and Moonshot.

After the funds were leached, they were systematically swapped for Ether (ETH) using decentralised exchange (DEX) aggregator 1inch, and thereafter deposited into privacy mixer Tornado Cash, which made the hacked funds harder to track.

In August, Hong Kong-based cryptocurrency trading platform Bilaxy also suffered a serious attack, losing an estimated US$450 million.

BitMart to Compensate Affected Users

In terms of asset deposits and withdrawals, BitMart is confident that these functions will gradually begin from December 7. The affected users at least have a silver lining after BitMart made a statement that they would be compensated and pools refunded.

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Bitcoin Crypto News Investing Tokens

STX Token Shoots Up 65% Following Jack Dorsey’s Exit: Coincidence?

The Stacks Network (STX) token has spiked nearly 65 percent in the past week, half of which came after the announcement that CEO Jack Dorsey was resigning from his position at Twitter. Some in the investor community cite Dorsey’s decision to step down as the instigator for the price movement.

STX Token Price. Source: Tradingview

In the past four days, the STX price has risen nearly 65 percent to its new all-time high of US$3.61 and at the time of writing had cooled down to US$2.60, according to data from CoinMarketCap. On the day of the Twitter announcement, the price shot up 25 percent, pointing to some sort of correlation for some in the investing community.

Dorsey’s Connection to Bitcoin

While the reason for the spike is not cut and dried, multiple things have happened that could impact the increasing price of the token. The speculation around what Dorsey will do next is one of the driving factors – now that the ex-Twitter CEO has stepped down, will he pursue his passion for Bitcoin and decentralisation?

“If I were not at Square or Twitter, I’d be working on Bitcoin,” Dorsey said at Bitcoin 2021, a conference held in Miami in June. The tech entrepreneur has shown his interest in blockchain technology multiple times. Even at Twitter, Dorsey spearheaded Bluesky – a project aimed at turning the social media company into a decentralised protocol.

Upgrades Coming to STX

Among the other reasons for the price spike, Stacks Network recently announced a major upgrade (SIP-012), due December 12. The improvement proposal aims to increase the network capacity by 100 percent as well as launch its CrashPunks non-fungible token (NFT) collection. The Stacks NFT marketplace has also contributed to the protocol’s rallying price action in the past.

Bitcoin, being the first of its kind, was not built with smart contract capabilities, therefore to utilise new functionality such as DeFi and smart contracts, a protocol will need to plug into Bitcoin.

Co-founded in Princeton University’s computer science department in 2013, Stacks Network is a layer 1 network facilitating smart contracts that settle on the Bitcoin blockchain. The STX token acts as fuel to power those smart contracts on the network, and by staking STX and supporting consensus, participants are paid in BTC.

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Crypto News Tezos Tokens

Tezos Up 22% For the Week as $XTZ Staking Increases

XTZ, Tezos’ native token, is hotter than ever, mainly driven by an increment in XTZ staking and developer activity reaching new highs on the network.

The XTZ token is up more than 22 percent for the week, currently trading at US$5.54 per coin as per data from TradingView. The price increase is followed by the growing number of stakers on the Tezos platform, which is currently up 14 percent in the past three months.

Over 260k Contracts Deployed Daily

Another important positive price driver is the number of contract calls deployed on all of Tezos’ three testnets and mainnet combined. An average of 9,635 contracts were deployed daily, totalling 269,785 over the past 28 days.

This highlights the rapid growing developer activity on the network as Tezos-based applications are being used globally. In August, Crypto News Australia reported how XTZ surged soon after a Swiss banking consortium choose the Tezos protocol to develop regulatory-compliant digital financial products.

The soon-to-be-released NFTs on Tezos are also calling the attention of investors. The 64th Grammy Awards, set to take place in January 2022, will use NFT collectibles issued on the Tezos network.

Tim Draper Bullish on Bitcoin and Tezos

Well-known billionaire Tim Draper is not only bullish on Bitcoin but also on Tezos, saying the protocol is everything he wants to see in a crypto project:

What I look for is who are the entrepreneurs and who are the engineers behind a given token. I love some of the tokens. I love Tezos because it’s got a great engineering team, and they’ve redefined how to operate a token. They do it as proof-of-stake. They use less energy, and they have a new form of governance and that’s exciting.

Tim Draper, VC investor

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Crypto News Payments Regulation Tokens

SHIB Soars 30% on Kraken Listing Despite Competitors’ Regulatory Concerns

Mercurial memecoin Shiba Inu (SHIB) shot up 31.4 percent in a day after this week’s listing by crypto exchange Kraken to reach its highest mark since November 19.

After launching on Coinbase in mid-September, Brazilian exchange NovaDAX listed SHIB a month later with Gemini, Binance and Indian exchange CoinDCX following suit in November. SHIB has also been integrated by crypto payments service CoinGate, allowing users, merchants, traders and gift card shoppers to accept, buy, trade or spend the token.

Another positive sign for SHIB is its adoption by major tech e-retailer Newegg as a means of payment on its platform.

Whale Grabs Another 24.8 Billion Tokens, Now Holds $59m in SHIB

Soon after the announcement of SHIB’s Kraken listing, an anonymous crypto whale using the alias Gimli increased his holdings by 24.8 billion tokens, worth over US$1 million at the time of the purchase, to a total of US$59 million in SHIB.

Kraken has also clarified that SHIB will be tradeable against the euro and the US dollar with a minimum of 50,000 SHIB (US$2.48) required to open an order.

Kraken Defies Competitors’ Regulatory Concerns

Kraken’s decision to list SHIB stands in stark contrast to other digital asset exchanges, such as Robinhood, that have avoided listing altcoins like SHIB over regulatory concerns.

With 93 assets in total, Kraken is considered one of the least conservative exchanges. (Coinbase supports 51 assets and Robinhood only supports seven.) Other exchanges have been hesitant to list the so-called Dogecoin-killer over regulatory concerns, despite increasing pressure from their users.

On November 26 SHIB surpassed 1 million holders, despite trading 50 percent below its all-time high. Hedge fund manager Michael Burry has publicly questioned the token’s worth. 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.

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DeFi Tokens

DeFi Analytics Platform DappRadar Set to Launch Own Token and Dapp Store

A leading platform to help people find and understand the market performance of decentralised applications (dApps) – DappRadar – has announced it will transition to a dApps store and launch a native token called RADAR. 

A go-to source for comparing the performance of dApps, DappRadar tracks and analyses market data (user numbers, activity, transaction volumes) for over 8,000 dApps used for gaming, trading, NFTs, finance and more – across 20 blockchains, including Ethereum. Users can easily find and track the most highly ranked dApps, and developers can use the platform to reach new users.

Towards Greater Self-Sufficiency

In its November 26 announcement, the crypto startup said that introducing a native token would support its aim to “become a community-curated project, with an ecosystem that is self-sufficient within the greater infrastructure of Web3 and the future of decentralisation”.

$RADAR holders will be able to take part in decision processes and be rewarded for their contributions within the DappRadar ecosystem. A launch date for the token has yet to be announced.

According to Skirmantas Januškas, DappRadar co-founder and CEO:

Decentralisation stands at the very core of our success and it’s only right to take it to the next level – true decentralisation of DappRadar. Bringing the community closer is the only way to keep ahead of the curve and remain successful in the years to come.

Skirmantas Januškas, CEO and co-founder, DappRadar

In addition to launching a native token, DappRadar signalled that its platform would now be known as “The World’s Dapp Store”, enabling purchases and providing a marketplace where dApps are curated based on quantitative methods. The marketplace will take zero commission from dApp creators. 

Launched in 2018, DappRadar is based in Lithuania and backed by Naspers Ventures, Blockchain.com Ventures, and Angel Invest Berlin.  

Growth of dApps Fuels Blockchain Networks

A growth in the creation of dApps is fuelling the growth of blockchain networks and the evolution of traditional apps.

Layer-2 scaling solution Polygon revealed in October that it was becoming less dependent on Ethereum due to the adoption of its network for natively launched dApps. 

Social media app Twitter announced a new hire in November to lead its ‘Crypto Twitter’ team to incorporate crypto, blockchain and dApps into the platform.

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Crypto News Scams Tokens

SnowdogDAO Potentially Rugged for $30 Million

SnowdogDAO (SDOG), a decentralised reserve memecoin based on Avalanche, has shed more than 90 percent of its value in what many in the DeFi community believe was the platform’s largest rug-pull.

Developers Claim ‘Failed Experiment’

Yet the SnowdogDAO team claims that what happened on November 26 was not a rug-pull, simply a “game theory experiment” that went awry. In the event, up to US$30 million in investments was lost.

Launched as an eight-day experiment that was scheduled to end with a giant buyback, SDOG understandably attracted a lot of attention. According to the development team, its so-called experiment was intended only to create awareness for Snowbank.

The buyback was to have been financed by assets acquired by the Snowdog treasury through mint sales. In eight days, the treasury market value grew to US$44 million, which meant that holders were able to compete for a portion of those funds during the buyback.

Buyback Fails Spectacularly

What the developers failed to clarify was that only 7 percent of the SDOG supply was eligible to be sold above market price before the buyback. But the buyback failed spectacularly within seconds of launching, with a single address making almost US$10 million by swapping SDOG for other cryptocurrencies, thus removing a quarter of the treasury’s buyback power.

Funds Drained into Three Wallets

Just before the buyback, the address bought around US$180,000 worth of SDOG with Magic Internet Money (MIM) in batches of $10,000 and then staked the token. A day later, they staked the funds and were able to drain over $10 million worth of MIM. Two other wallets drained $7.7 million and $3.3 million respectively using the same strategy.

The owners of the addresses are yet to be identified, though many believe they most likely belonged to people closely connected to the development team.

“This certainly looks like an inside job where someone made millions of dollars on two transactions,” said Steven McKeon of software security firm MacguyverTech.

They didn’t follow up on their promises, and unfortunately, a lot of people got wrecked. They liquidated within three or four seconds before it was launched. Someone knew something before everyone else did, and went straight to the target to liquidate everything in one shot.

Steven McKeon, MacguyverTech

Postmortem Greeted With Scepticism

Although Snowdog has published a postmortem, it was largely greeted with scepticism. “The postmortem didn’t address any of the concerns,” McKeon added. “It was really wishy-washy, and tells me they don’t care. They’re trying to cover their butts any way they can. That project has a super-high risk; I’d avoid them at all costs.”

The apparent Snowdog rug-pull is just the latest of many to have occurred in the DeFi space this year, adding to a list that includes TurtleDex, ICP Coin, WhaleFarm and Bondly Finance.

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Coinbase Crypto Wallets DeFi Tokens

Breadwallet BRD Token Skyrockets 500% After Being Acquired by Coinbase

Breadwallet, an open-source digital wallet, has seen its native token BRD surge by 400 percent following its listing on Coinbase.

Following its November 24 announcement that crypto exchange Coinbase had acquired the BRD token, the Breadwallet team revealed it would be working with the firm to provide a more decentralised service and accelerate Web3 adoption:

Shortly after, the BRD saw a massive price boost of 500 percent. Data from Messari shows the token has returned more than 370 percent in a three-month period:

As per the wallet, the team said the listing won’t affect the BRD wallet app.

Nothing will change in the BRD wallet app and, as always, your funds are safe and secure. In the future, BRD wallet users will have an optional migration path to self-custody with Coinbase Wallet.

Breadwallet team statement

A Coinbase Listing Has a Massive Effect on a Token’s Price

Being acquired by Coinbase can be one of the best things that can happen to crypto and blockchain developers, as the firm is a well-known institution in the crypto industry. The BRD token is one of the many coins that have surged tremendously after getting listed on the exchange. An example is the Voyager token (VGX), an ERC-20 that soared 44 percent overnight after being listed on Coinbase Pro.

Another clear example is CRO, Crypto.com’s utility token. Earlier this month, Crypto News Australia reported that the CRO token had rallied 30 percent after being listed on the exchange.

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Crypto Art Crypto News NFTs Tokens

Axie Infinity Land Plot NFT Sells for Record-Breaking $2.4 Million

The crypto community is witnessing what seems to be the largest sum ever paid for a single plot of digital land – 550 ETH, or US$2.48 million, was the price for which an Axie Infinity land plot was sold this week.

$2.5 Million for a Piece of Digital Land

The plot is a “Genesis” piece of virtual land, which is a rare type in Axie Infinity, located in the centre of the game’s map and with only 220 in existence.

ASX Hotter than Ever

Axie Infinity’s utility token ASX has been one of the top performers in the market. The game has been leading the P2E (Play-to-Earn) space by becoming the highest revenue-generating game in the market.

Last month, the game launched a staking rewards program that catapulted its token to new all-time highs of US$135. The game airdropped $60 million to early users, and in-game sales saw 50 percent gains in the following days.

Tokens such as MANA, AXS and SAND have soared in the past couple of weeks following the advent of the metaverse – virtual reality worlds where users can interact socially and economically using in-game digital assets. In a report released on November 24, Grayscale analysts valued the wider metaverse at US$1 trillion, with Facebook’s recent rebranding to Meta seen as “a catalyst”.