Blockchain analysis firm Glassnode recently characterized the 2022 bear market as the worst on record. This seems to be the case due to events such as the war in Ukraine and rising inflation, coupled with serious problems among centralized crypto exchanges. Yet, the bear market hasn’t negatively impacted all players in the crypto ecosystem. Hardware wallet providers seem to be benefiting from the massive amount of crypto withdrawals from centralized exchanges. Pascal Gauthier, CEO of hardware wallet crypto firm Ledger, told Cointelegraph that the company’s revenue dropped about 90% during the 2018 crypto winter, but this hasn’t been the case …

Cryptocurrency exchange Unizen has scored a $200 million investment from private equity group Global Emerging Markets (GEM), which it will use to expand its business and its ecosystem. Rather than receiving the $200 million in funding all at once, Unizen noted on Monday that the investment will come in the form of a “capital commitment,” with part of the funding released upfront and the rest will be provided later based on achieved milestones. Unizen did not disclose what particular criteria it had to achieve to receive the funding. Unizen calls itself a “CeDeFi” exchange mixing features of both centralized exchanges …

The price of THORChain’s token RUNE is up 16% since the project announced the official launch of its mainnet on Wednesday. The team announced the mainnet launch on Wednesday, alongside the rollout of a “Rune in a Million Campaign” on Binance that contains a total of $1 million worth of RUNE rewards for users of the exchange. The announcement has been followed by a 16% bump for RUNE to $2.18 at the time of writing, and the price is up 31.6% over the past seven days. The surge has provided some much-needed relief for RUNE, though the price is still …

Decentralized exchange (DEX) Uniswap has overtaken its host blockchain Ethereum in terms of fees paid over a seven-day rolling average. The surge appears part of a recent spate of high demand for DeFi amid the current bear market. Decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms such as Aave and Synthetix have seen surges in fees paid over the past seven days, while their native tokens and others such as Compound (COMP) have also boomed in price. According to data from Crypto Fees, traders on Uniswap accounted for an average daily total of $4.87 million worth of fees between June 15 and June 21, …

After one week of pausing user withdrawals, swaps and transfers, the firm said it was maintaining an open dialogue with regulators and officials and plans to continue working with them regarding this pause. Celsius has yet to comment on when the company is going to stabilize its operations. Celsius has also paused communications on Twitter Spaces and ask-me-anything (AMA) sessions “to focus on navigating these unprecedented challenges.” Although Celsius has refrained from communication, media and social media have been buzzing with news and speculation going on around the past, present and future of the company. One of the most interesting …

Decentralized exchange (DEX) Uniswap announced the acquisition of the nonfungible token (NFT) marketplace aggregator Genie on Tuesday. Uniswap said this move is part of its mission to unlock universal ownership and exchange on its platform. Uniswap is now integrating NFTs into its product line, beginning with the Uniswap web application, and later integrations are said to include developer APIs and widgets. This isn’t the first time Uniswap has worked with NFTs. In the spring of 2019, it launched Unisocks, which offered NFT liquidity pools backed by real-world assets. Uniswap said in the announcement: “We’re excited to bring what we’ve learned …

What is the next evolution for cryptocurrency exchanges? The modern DEX is designed to take advantage of the benefits of both CEX and DEXs by leveraging innovative technologies to enable more efficient transactions. Since limitations are presented for both the modern CEX and DEX, many propose that for widespread asset adoption, a non-custodial platform that supports assets across many networks is needed. In theory, this experience would enable users to control their funds at all times without giving up the flexibility of a promising user experience. Polkadex has proposed this next exchange iteration as a decentralized peer-to-peer order book-based cryptocurrency …

Bancor, a decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol often credited as the pioneer of the DeFi space, paused its impermanent loss protection (ILP) function on Sunday, citing “hostile” market conditions. In a blog post on Monday, the DeFi protocol noted that the ILP pause is a temporary measure to protect the protocol and the users. The blog post read: “The temporary measure to pause IL protection should give the protocol some room to breathe and recover. While we wait for markets to stabilize, we are working to get IL protection reactivated as soon as possible.” When a user gives liquidity to a …

The crypto sector may be maturing, but regulatory clarity around the treatment of digital assets continues to remain cumbersome. This was recently highlighted by Commissioner Hester Peirce — also known as the United States Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) “crypto mom” — in remarks she made at “The Regulatory Transparency Project Conference on Regulating the New Crypto Ecosystem: Necessary Regulation or Crippling Future Innovation?” Peirce began her speech by emphasizing the importance of “regulating the new crypto ecosystem.” While this may be, Peirce also noted that the crypto industry is still in search of an actual regulator. She said: “A …

The cryptocurrency market is growing to include more assets and chains available than ever before. Unfortunately, despite the number of assets at play, most decentralized exchanges (DEXs) are still unable to deliver and facilitate the frequency and volume of trades necessary to satisfy the market. As a result, these exchanges face a lack of liquidity and high slippage, often occurring when fractions of an order are completed at a lower price and the rest at a higher and less advantageous price. For this reason, investors often seek out manual workarounds, including checking for the best trading prices on all DEXs …

On Wednesday, Uniswap announced that former New York Stock Exchange president Stacey Cunningham will join the company as an adviser. Cunningham served as the first female president of the New York Stock Exchange after beginning her career as a trader on its floor. She said in a statement that she believes in the potential of Uniswap’s commitment to fairer markets. Uniswap is betting on her experience with TradFi translating over to decentralized finance (DeFi) to further help them evolve their place in Web3. Cunningham has also been listed as one of BBC’s 100 Women and joined the NYSE board of …

Ethereum's native token Ether (ETH) fell to as low as $950 on Uniswap—a decentralized crypto exchange— this June 13, about 20% lower than its spot rate across other exchanges. Over $130M ETH sold in six hours The incident happened at around 3:00 am UTC after a whale dumped 65,000 ETH for multiple "stablecoins," including USD Coin (USDC), Tether (USDT) and Dai (DAI). A piece of evidence noted that the whale sold its ETH holdings to pay off nearly $73 million worth of debt at Oasis.app, a DeFi lending platform. The duration of the sell-off saw ETH's liquidation price dropping from …