A new report by CoinShares suggests Bitcoin (BTC) has garnered 97% of the total crypto inflows in 2021. The recent correction in Bitcoin price does not seem to have deterred crypto investors as CoinShares data shows a record $1.3 billion in crypto product inflows over the past week. This suggests that investors are accumulating on the dips rather than attempting to chase higher prices. Another space that has taken giant strides in the past few months has been the decentralized finance sector. While bond yields across the world are reeling near-zero levels, the attractive yield farming opportunities in DeFi and …

The past year has been a crazy journey for the blockchain industry. Between the crippling effects of the COVID-19 pandemic across various sectors and Bitcoin’s marathon bull run, the year has been great for some and catastrophic for many. Decentralized finance is at the epicenter of most of the hype surrounding blockchain today. From the rise of mainstream decentralized exchanges to the overwhelming demand for liquidity mining, DeFi hasn’t just raised a lot of dust — it’s brought billions of dollars onto blockchains. On June 15, DeFi platform Compound started distributing its COMP token to users, handing governance control of …

Interoperability between blockchains is rapidly becoming one of the buzz phrases being thrown around when discussing decentralized finance and the coins most likely to rally during an altcoin bull run. The rapid growth of DeFi, its ever expanding total value locked and soaring ETH gas fees further highlight the sector’s need for a layer 2 option that also supports the ability to transact value across different networks. REN’s open protocol is designed specifically to fill this need by providing interoperability and liquidity between the top blockchains including Bitcoin, Ethereum and Zcash. Over the past three weeks the price of REN …

In the past year, nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, have been gaining ground as the digital art market explodes and developers experiment with a variety of use cases. Data from NonFungible shows that over the past 30 days, there were 58,400 NFT sales and $12.7 million worth of volume. In the same time period, MANA, the token behind the blockchain-based virtual world Decentraland, totaled $636,000 in NFT trades. The virtual reality platform is built on the Ethereum blockchain and provides a digital landscape where players can explore, interact with other players and purchase land plots along with other items. The sector …

Bitcoin (BTC) price tumbled more than 10% today to hit a low near $31,000 and at the time of writing it looks like the sell-off has a bit further to go. In a weekly report from crypto fund provider, CoinShares, some institutional investors seem to be booking profits and the analysts also cited the strengthening (trade-weighted) U.S. dollar. Another indicator that points to professionals selling Bitcoin is the drop in "Coinbase Premium." As markets continue lower, an increasing number of investors may dump their positions with the intent to buy again at lower levels. Guggenheim Partners chief investment officer Scott …

A recent report from CoinMetrics suggests that when a new altseason starts it will play out in a way that is vastly different from the market of 2017-2018. According to the authors of the report, the arrival of institutional investors and their interest in Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) has fundamentally shifted the cryptocurrency market landscape. Tokens with real world utility, Layer 2 technology or attractive staking ecosystems will outperform the large cap tokens from pre-2017. Bitcoin and Ethereum dominate but L2 tokens will catch up Institutional inflows firmly established Bitcoin and Ethereum as the chosen Layer 1 (L1) blockchains …

Kyber Network (KNC), a decentralized exchange platform and aggregator on Ethereum, announced plans for Kyber 3.0, a complete overhaul of its platform. With the 3.0 release, Kyber will transition to become a network of specialized liquidity pools, similar to how different exchanges optimize for different kinds of assets. For example, Kyber 3.0 will allow very high amplification factors for pairs between different wrappers of the same asset, similar to Curve. The team says this would allow a 100-fold improvement to slippage. Other, less stable pairs like Bitcoin (BTC) to Ether (ETH), would be able to benefit from a five-to-ten-fold improvement …

A recently launched decentralized finance platform, Saddle Finance, has netted one particular trader a more than 10x return on an arbitrage trade between different permutations of synthetic Bitcoin (BTC). According to transaction data from Etherscan, a user swapped 0.34 sBTC, Synthetix’s Bitcoin-based token, in exchange for 4.36 Wrapped Bitcoin, a custodial wrapper offered by BitGo. The trade offered an almost 13x return on investment, netting $150,000 to the trader. Two other similar transactions were registered on the platform, as noted by the analyst Igor Igamberdiev. One transaction swapped 0.09 tBTC for 3.2 WBTC, an even higher return of 35x. The …

Perpetual Protocol, a DeFi project offering decentralized perpetual contracts using the layer-two Ethereum scaling solution xDai, has emerged as the sixth-largest DEX by weekly trade volume after operating for only one month. Based on data from Dune Analytics shared by Perpetual Protocol, the DEX’s weekly trade volume of more than $299 million would rank the project above the likes of Synthetix, dYdX, and Kyber, and below Balancer. The milestone was shared in a blog post celebrating the project’s first month of operation — a period in which the DEX drove more than $500 million in total volume and generated more …

Leading decentralized exchange, or DEX, platform Uniswap continues to lead the sector as it nears an average of $1 billion a day trading volume for the month of January. Only two-thirds of the way into the month and the platform has already surpassed the previous monthly trade volume record of $15.3 billion set in September during the DeFi boom. The DEX passed $17 billion as of this morning and is on track to surpass $25 billion by the end of January with a daily average of $855 million. Uniswap traders are spoilt for choice with 1,558 coins traded in more …

While Bitcoin has exhibited a stagnating monetary trend over the course of the last week or so, showcasing minor gains of just 3%, its crypto cousin Ether (ETH) seems to be on a roll by not only holding its own against the U.S. dollar but also consistently floating around the $1,300 threshold, and now ultimately, briefly surpassing the all-time high value of $1,428. It’s interesting to note that unlike Bitcoin (BTC), Polkadot’s DOT and Chainlink’s LINK, as well as a host of other decently sized altcoins, ETH is one of the few premium digital assets to have not surpassed and …

Over the past 6 months, Binance Coin (BNB) has been quietly rallying higher, gaining 189% during this period and notching a new all-time high at $46.90 on Jan. 18. This price peak happened just one day before its quarterly token burn, leading investors to question whether or not BNB price will move higher once the event concludes. A token burn is a permanent removal of coins from circulation and this deflationary technique is a common practice used by many projects in the crypto sector. As Cointelegraph reported, the process does not destroy the coins but rather renders them unusable. Aside …