To the observant cryptocurrency enthusiast, the sight of multiple large-cap tokens more than tripling their value since November 2020 is a healthy sign that a bull market cycle is underway. Aside from a breakout in the price of Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH) and altcoins, every bull market in the crypto sector is defined by one or two key themes that emerge as the driving force of market enthusiasm. In 2016-2017 there were ICOs, the growing popularity of collectibles like CryptoKitties and the widely held belief that blockchain was a solution to every problem in the world. In 2021 it’s clear …

The sustained bullish performance from Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) has increased the confidence of crypto investors and many are now looking deeper into projects that have strong fundamentals and offer real-world use cases. This week investors turned their attention to Theta (THETA), a decentralized network that allows users to share bandwidth and computing resources in order to stream video. In the last two months THETA price has increased by more than 350%, rallying from $0.66 on Dec.10 to a new all-time high of $3.44 on Feb.13. Three reasons for Theta’s recent price growth include the project’s plan to engage …

This week Linear Finance (LINA) emerged as a viable competitor to Ethereum-based projects in the DeFi sector that find themselves hampered by congestion and high transaction costs. Data from Cointelegraph Markets and TradingView shows that on Jan.13 LINA was trading for $0.0135 with a 24-hour trading volume of $2.3 million. Since that time its price increased by 750% to an all-time high of $0.10 on Feb.12. Originally an ERC-20 based project, LINA transitioned to the Binance Smart Chain in mid-January ahead of its mainnet launch on Jan.28. On the same day of the mainnet launch, the team also released Linear …

While Bitcoin (BTC) has been in the spotlight since the start of the year, and even more so given the recent $1.5-billion Tesla purchase, Ether has not been lagging behind. Ether (ETH) is currently sitting at $1,800, and its network has now processed over 1 billion transactions, mostly on the back of the DeFi sector and also due to growing institutional engagement. According to Lanre Jonathan Ige, research associate at 21Shares — a European issuer of crypto Exchange Traded Products — “Investors understand that Bitcoin is part of a wider asset class and are now attempting to diversify past Bitcoin.” …

In a post today on their governance and research forums, the team behind decentralized finance (DeFi) DEX protocol 0x announced initial plans to decentralize their governance by creating a “community-owned treasury seed-funded by 0x Labs.” “As we continue our mission to create a tokenized world where all value can flow freely, 0x Labs intends to experiment with seed-funding a community treasury managed by a DAO,” reads the post. “To establish the DAO, 0x Labs will identify a set of bootstrap delegates that will shepherd the initial steps of governance decentralization.” According to Theo Gonella, platform product manager at 0x Labs …

As Bitcoin and numerous altcoins surge toward new all-time highs, traders who are coin rich but cash poor are increasingly flocking to decentralized finance lending platforms where they can collatoralize their holdings to raise funds for new investments. Compound is one of the leading DeFi lending platforms and over the past month its TVL and governance token price has rallied to new highs. Compound, which ranks third among DeFi lending protocols, has $4.55 billion worth of assets locked on the platform and its COMP governance token has doubled in value over the past week. Currently COMP trades for $566, a …

In the past few months cryptocurrencies have become a frequent topic of discussion among the mainstream media and traditional investors partially because of the Bitcoin evangelism of well-known influencers like Elon Musk, Mark Cuban and Michael Saylor. One platform that has benefited from increased attention on the cryptocurrency sector is Algorand (ALGO), a scalable, secure, and decentralized digital currency platform. Since the start of 2021, ALGO price has steadily grown from $0.33 on Jan. 1 to $1.84 on Feb.12, its highest level since July 2019. Its trading volume also increased from $70 million to $1.1 billion during that same period. …

The 1inch.exchange protocol, a platform that aggregates decentralized exchanges and provides its own automated market maker, is airdropping a new stash of its 1INCH tokens. The airdrop follows the initial generation of the new tokens on Christmas, which were distributed to past users of the aggregator. A common point of contention for the initial airdrop was the exclusion of Mooniswap users and liquidity providers, as the project's AMM platform was superseded by an integrated 1inch Liquidity Protocol. The new airdrop, which was already delivered at 5 PM UTC, retroactively distributes tokens to anyone who interacted with Mooniswap before Dec. 24. …

Polkadot-powered decentralized exchange HydraDX has raised roughly $22.86 million in just the second public token sale offered using Balancer’s Liquidity Bootstrapping Pool, or LBP. However, one opportunistic trader was able to front-run the offering by exploiting the fact that Balancer’s LBP contracts are deployed in “unpaused” status by default. HydraDX is a substrate-based DEX that will use a single “omnipool” to drive automated market-making on the platform. The LBP offered Ethereum-based xHDX tokens that can be redeemed later for Hydra’s native HDX token. The LBP is designed to offer a mechanism for crypto projects to conduct fair launches that seeks …

In the early hours of Feb. 11 Yearn.finance (YFI) experienced a high volume spike which pushed the price to a new all-time high at $45,900. Data from Cointelegraph Markets and TradingView shows that YFI hit a swing low at $33,638 on Feb.10 before experiencing a 26% breakout of 26%. The move appeared to be motivated by a corporate registration filing with the State of Delaware which showed Grayscale Investments registering the LLC for a Yearn finance trust similar to its Bitcoin and Ethereum products. A range of new partnership announcements and further expansion of its vast DeFi ecosystem are also …

Shortly after Tesla announced that it will allow customers to buy products with Bitcoin (BTC), a curious job posting from Amazon suggests that the company could also be working on a platform that will allow customers in Mexico to use digital currencies for making payments. If Amazon jumps on the crypto bandwagon, it will immensely strengthen the possibility of cryptocurrencies going mainstream across the world. Today Bitcoin price is showing a new spark of optimism after the Bank of New York Mellon announced that it would hold, transfer and issue Bitcoin on part of its clients. The bank is also …

Since Feb. 6 Pundi X (NPXS) has rallied by 102%. While it would be easy to assume that it’s breakout is simply following in the hoof prints of the herd of altcoins that have been rallying alongside Bitcoin, the current move appears to be driven by an upcoming testnet launch and improving fundamentals. Pundi X is a borderless digital currency payment ecosystem that aims to boost adoption using Point-of-Sale (POS) terminals and a contactless payment card. Using an open-source system, the platform focuses on physical stores retail payments. Streamlined mobile payments is another problem which the Pundi X ecosystem aims …