Welcome to the latest edition of Cointelegraph’s decentralized finance newsletter. The new year is upon us, and the expectations for DeFi innovation, utility and mainstream adoption are greater than ever. Read on to hear about the inaugural stories of 2022. Reading this article, you're only receiving a portion of the content from our DeFi newsletter. Drop your email below for the full copy. Terra Research proposes new utility for TerraUSD and LUNA Decentralized algorithmic stablecoin issuer Terra published an ambitious proposal via its research team this week to expand the interchain deployment of its TerraUSD (UST) stablecoin across five projects …

Bitcoin (BTC) and the U.S. equity markets fell sharply on Jan. 5, reacting negatively to the minutes from the Federal Reserve's December FOMC meeting, which showed that the members expect the balance sheet reduction to start after the Fed begins hiking interest rates in early 2022. Adding to the negative sentiment was the shutdown of the world’s second-biggest Bitcoin mining hub in Kazakhstan, where the internet has been shut down following massive protests by citizens. This caused a dip of about 13.4% in the Bitcoin network’s overall hash rate from 205,000 petahash per second (PH/s) to 177,330 PH/s. According to …

Bitcoin (BTC) and most major altcoins are stuck in a tight range with bulls buying near the support and bears selling at resistance levels. Usually, such tight ranges are followed by an expansion in volatility. Although a few analysts have not ruled out a quick drop to low $40,000s, most traders expect Bitcoin to rebound sharply and move up to $60,000. Goldman Sachs said in a note to investors that if Bitcoin continues to increase its market share over gold as a store of value and crosses the 50% mark, then it could rally to $100,000 over the next five …

Bitcoin’s (BTC) price action has been uneventful in the first few days of the new year and it continues to languish below the psychological level at $50,000. The Crypto Fear and Greed Index is in the fear zone registering a value of 29/100. On-chain analytics resource Ecoinometrics said stages of extreme fear rarely remain for long, which means “there is a limited downside at 30 days.” Bitcoin continues to garner support from various quarters. Wharton School finance professor Jeremy Siegel said in an interview with CNBC that Bitcoin has replaced gold as an inflation hedge in the minds of Millennials. …

Bitcoin (BTC) and most major altcoins are attempting a rebound off their respective support levels, indicating that buyers continue to accumulate on dips. Data from Coinglass shows that 9,925 Bitcoin left Coinbase Pro, the professional trading arm of Coinbase, on Dec. 30, a possible sign of institutional buying. This is in sharp contrast to the strong inflows seen in Binance and OKEx. Several analysts believe that institutional buying could pick up in January. Economist and trader Alex Krüger expects a Bitcoin rally in early January based on fund flows. He also highlighted that January has produced positive results for Bitcoin …

The S&P 500 is trading near its all-time high but Bitcoin (BTC) has plunged about 30% from its all-time high at $69,000. Even after the sharp drop, Bitcoin is up 63%, year-to-date, outperforming the S&P 500, which is up about 30% in 2021. Gold, which is popular as a hedge against inflation, is down roughly 7% this year. Arcane research said in its report that Bitcoin’s outperformance in the high inflationary environment shows that “Bitcoin has proven itself to be an excellent inflation hedge.” Real Vision CEO Raoul Pal said in an interview with Vlad from The Stakeborg Talks that …

Bitcoin (BTC) and most major altcoins have bounced off their immediate support levels, indicating that the sentiment is improving and traders are buying on minor dips. Billionaire and Mexico’s third-richest person Ricardo Salinas Pliego said in his Christmas and New Year message to stay away from fiat money, terming it as “fake money made of paper lies.” Instead, he advised people to “invest in Bitcoin.” Veteran trader Peter Brandt warned that “chart pattern breakouts should be viewed with great suspicion” during the thinly traded holiday period in the last half of December. Analysts remain bullish for 2022. Crypto analyst and …

The year 2021 has undoubtedly been a bull market with Bitcoin (BTC) raising the all-time high price bar several times this year. But not all crypto assets have performed equally. There have been a number of losers in addition to the majority of winners in terms of price gains. Since the beginning of 2021, total crypto market capitalization has gained 190% from just under $800 million to over $2.3 trillion today. It hit an all-time high of just over $3 trillion in early November. Top 3 crypto gainers in 2021 The crypto top-ten in terms of market capitalization looked a …

Public blockchain network Terra has confirmed an ongoing scam attack via an official governance poll on Mirror, an in-house synthetic assets protocol. According to Mirror, the attacker launched a public poll on Mirror’s official website, which proposes a freeze on the community pool in case of a scam. NEW MIRROR POLL! ALERT: Poll 211 is SCAM -- sending 25,000,000 MIR to itself ... #vote on 212: https://t.co/FH6RqTbJ2j $MIR $LUNA #terra — Mirror Polls (@mirror_polls) December 25, 2021 According to Poll ID: 211, named “Freeze the community pool in case of scam”, the scammer proposes an upgrade of safer community governance …

Bitcoin (BTC) bounced back above the psychological level at $50,000 and the S&P 500 hit a new all-time closing high on Dec. 23, suggesting that the panic selling caused due to the omicron variant is subsiding and the much-awaited “Santa rally” may have started. Data from on-chain analytics firm Glassnode shows that about 100,000 Bitcoin is going from “liquid” to “illiquid” state every month, which means that the coins are being sent to addresses “with little history of spending.” This suggests accumulation by investors. In another sign that investors are not dumping their coins on small corrections, data from CryptoRank …

Bitcoin (BTC) lost momentum at $51,500 on Dec. 24 as traders weighed the odds of a "Santa rally" coming true for Christmas. BTC sees potent long-term retest Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView saw BTC/USD preserve its gains from Thursday, these totalling 6% with resistance most recently kicking in at just above $51,500. Opinions were mixed among weary traders about the strength of the rally and whether it could endure for long. Still in its familiar range despite the overnight uptick, Bitcoin needed to show its muscle on longer timeframes, Cointelegraph reported analysis as saying earlier. For filbfilb, co-founder …

Terra (LUNA), an open-source stablecoin network, hit an all-time high of $20.05 billion in total value locked, or TVL, across its 13 product offerings, according to industry data. On Dec. 1, Terra's TVL was at $11.9 billion, signifying a 68% increase in less than a month. This means that the platform's users are investing in large quantities into the protocol to receive staking rewards. The price of LUNA, Terra's native token, is also steadily trending upwards, trading above $94 with a 31% increase in one week, according to Cointelegraph Markets Pro. The coin now has a total market capitalization of …