Spanish LGBT-related token MariCoin (MCOIN) has responded to the community following skepticism around the project’s concept and goals. Some had even criticized the project for its name, which played on a homophobic slur in Spanish. But according to key people in the project, they have simply misunderstood. MariCoin CEO Francisco Alvarez told Cointelegraph that the project’s name is about “turning an insult into a fortress,” referring to peculiarities of tackling homophobic language as the very word word “gay” is still being used as an insult in some communities. “In Spain it is very common for members of the gay community …

The cryptocurrency community has raised concerns about Maricoin, a new token supposedly related to the LGBT+ community, with some people even suspecting the project to be a scam. Launched in December 2021, Maricoin promises to enable a “social, ethical, transparent and transversal means of payment” targeting the global “pink economy,” which is estimated to amount to trillions of dollars. One might question Maricoin’s ethics though, as its name is a portmanteau that plays on a Spanish slur for homosexuals. According to the project’s website, Maricoin runs on the Algorand blockchain, with creators planning to list the token on several crypto …

Decentralized finance (DeFi) dominated media headlines throughout 2021 and the sector, along with nonfungible tokens (NFTs), helped to initiate the mass adoption of cryptocurrencies. While high yields on staking and instant profits from flipping jpegs have proven to be very lucrative for investors, it’s important to remember that none of it would have been possible without the underlying capabilities of smart contract technology. The Ethereum network remains, hands-down, the most widely used layer-one smart contract platform in the crypto ecosystem, but everyone knows about the high fee and clogged network issues of the past few years. In 2021, competing networks …

Institutional interest in cryptocurrencies is increasing as the space continues to mature. A survey released on Dec. 8 by European investment manager Nickel Digital Asset Management found that 85% of institutional investors and wealth managers have dedicated teams to review cryptocurrencies and digital assets. The study noted that the investors surveyed manage around $108.4 billion in assets. The London-based firm also released a report in September of this year showing that 62% of global institutional investors with zero exposure to cryptocurrencies expect to make their first crypto investments within the next year. It’s also notable that Wall Street veterans are …

Bitcoin (BTC) and most altcoins sold off on Dec. 4 with massive deleveraging seen in the crypto derivatives markets. Data suggests more than $2.5 billion of crypto liquidations over a 24-hour period. During the recent fall, Ether (ETH) has continued to outperform Bitcoin. While Bitcoin’s market dominance has dropped below 41%, Ether has continued to gain ground and its market dominance has risen above 21%. Some analysts believe that Bitcoin’s recent decline could result in a lengthy phase of consolidation. Decentrader co-founder filbfilb expects Bitcoin to consolidate well into the first quarter of the next year. Lex Moskovski, CIO of …

There is potential for the use cases of nonfungible token (NFT) technology to expand far beyond the simple tracking of unique images with varying degrees of rareness and analysts project that one NFTs will touch every facet of our lives. Already, developers, artists and corporations are considering the tokenization of all assets and some have already experimented with NFT-based concert tickets and sports passes. One NFT project that has been gaining traction since September is Opulous (OPUL), a protocol focused on the tokenization of the music industry. The project claims to be angled toward empowering artists to the extent that …

The Watr Foundation, in partnership with blockchain platform Algorand, recently launched a project to provide ESG scoring for different commodities with a special focus on climate change. While the project has a clear environmental focus, the platform will also include labeling for everything from how a company treats its workers to the number of people participating in an asset's ecosystem by gender. Watr Foundation council president Maryam Ayati said in a statement: “We believe this next iteration on resource models should be co-created in mutually-owned profit models. It is a privilege and comfort to be collaborating with the pioneers of …

Bitcoin (BTC) continues to face strong selling as bulls attempt to flip the psychological level at $60,000 into support. Some analysts believe that Bitcoin could enter a correction as traders book profits following the successful launch of last week's Bitcoin exchange-traded funds. In the past, the launch of the Bitcoin Futures product by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange on Dec. 18, 2017, ended a strong bull run and marked the start of a multi-year bear market. A similar crash of a lesser magnitude was seen after the Coinbase IPO (COIN) on April 4, 2021. This suggests that the old adage “buy …

Blockchain platform Algorand has today announced the launch of the Algorand Virtual Machine, or AVM, a layer-1 protocol upgrade designed to enhance decentralized app scalability for developers and organizations, enable instant transaction finality and sustain a negative carbon output. In addition to these advancements, the AVM will also give developers program tools to write smart contracts in Python or Reach, a format similar to the multi-paradigm web page language Javascript. Cointelegraph reached out to Algorand's Chief Product Officer, Paul Riegle for his perspective on upgrade: This AVM upgrade allows for the development of complex smart contract based applications in DeFi, …

China has attempted to stifle the crypto sector’s growth on several occasions in the past 12 years but barring a minor blip, the blanket bans on crypto-commerce have not altered the long-term growth of cryptocurrencies. This shows that no one country, even if it is the second-largest economy in the world, can halt the emergence and growth of cryptocurrencies. Deutsche Bank analyst Marion Laboure said in an update on the bank’s website that Bitcoin (BTC) is likely to “remain ultra-volatile in the foreseeable future” as most people buy it either for investment or for speculation rather than using it as …

Bullish optimism is on the rise across the cryptocurrency market on Sept. 23 as prices continue to recover from this week's volatility which was the result of regulatory pressure on the crypto sector, the Federal Open Market Committee meeting on the Fed's interest rate hikes and monetary policy, along with fears that the Evergrande situation would ripple out to impact global financial markets. Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that after trading in a range between $43,000 and $44,300 during the early trading hours on Sept. 23, the price of Bitcoin (BTC) spiked above $44,800 in the early …

Alternative investment firm SkyBridge Capital hopes to expand its crypto offerings, filing for a crypto-focused exchange-traded fund (ETF) on Tuesday and revealing plans for an Algorand fund at this week’s SALT conference in New York. Speaking to CNBC, SkyBridge founder and former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci said the firm had raised more than $100 million toward the newly announced Algorand fund. He added that the firm currently holds roughly $700 million worth of crypto assets. Scaramucci asserted that “crypto is here to stay,” adding that regulators must act “very quickly” if they intend to stem the snowballing adoption …