Altcoins News Post

Don’t miss real-time updates

Decentral Block Post

Access real-time blockchain and cryptocurrency news updates from around the globe.

‘This will be our last post’ — LBRY throws in towel against the SEC

Blockchain company LBRY Inc. — the creators of the LBRY blockchain — has issued its final message to the crypto, citing “several million dollars” of debts that have now made it impossible for the firm to continue.

“This will be our last post,” said the LBRY Inc. team in an Oct. 20 statement on Odysee, a LBRY-powered video-sharing website, which was also shared on X.

LBRY said several millions of dollars of debt owed to the SEC, its legal team and a private debtor ended up being too big a barrier to overcome.

“LBRY Inc. must die, there is no escaping this. It has lost a judgment to the federal government, has several million dollars in debts, and has pledged to shut down.”

“Thank you to everyone who fought with us for online freedom,” LBRY added in an Oct. 19 X post.

image
Continue reading

Big Questions: What did Satoshi Nakamoto think about ZK-proofs?

From privacy coins to shiny iris-scanning orbs, zero-knowledge proofs have become synonymous with crypto, scalability and privacy.

In 2022, investors gave over $700 million in funding to companies pushing the envelope with zero-knowledge proofs. This year, ZK-proofs has arguably become one of the biggest blockchain trends, with several major Ethereum scaling protocols hitting mainnet.

ZK-proofs are a cryptographic protocol that allows one party to prove the truth of a statement to another party without sharing any of the statement’s contents. 

An often-cited example is proving to a bartender that you’re old enough to drink without showing your ID or even telling them your birthdate.

Well, it seems that Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin, once found the technology pretty interesting.


Continue reading

Sui token struggles to regain despite denial of 'unfounded' allegations

Sui's native SUI token has struggled to regain ground after plunging more than 9% amid allegations from South Korean regulators, which have accused the Sui Foundation of manipulating the supply of the token for its own gain. 

SUI token gained a little under 1% in the last 24 hours after falling from $0.41 on Oct. 16 to new lows of $0.37 on Oct. 18. Current prices mark a 7% decline in just two days, according to data from CoinGecko.

The price of the SUI token has struggled to regain ground amid allegations of supply manipulation. Source: CoinGecko

In an Oct. 18 post to X (formerly known as Twitter), the Sui Foundation — the organization behind layer-1 blockchain Sui — slammed the allegations of supply manipulation as “unfounded and materially false.”

“We want to address some inaccuracies that have been reported today,” said the Sui Foundation.

"The unfounded and materially false statements surrounding the supply of SUI tokens need to be addressed. There has never been any sale of SUI tokens by the Foundation after the initial Community Access Program (CAP) distributions. Period,” it explained.

Continue reading

Ethereum restaking: Blockchain innovation or dangerous house of cards?

Ethereum restaking — proposed by middleware protocol EigenLayer — is a controversial innovation over the past year that has some of the brightest minds worried about the potential ramifications.

Restaking involves reusing staked or locked-up Ether tokens to earn fees and rewards. The restaked tokens can then help secure and validate other protocols. 

Proponents believe restaking can squeeze additional security and rewards from already staked ETH and grow the crypto ecosystem in a healthier way based on Ethereum’s existing trust mechanisms. Restaking could serve as a security primitive for exporting Ethereum’s trust generated by its validators to other projects.

Yet Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin and a number of key devs worry that restaking is a house of cards that will inevitably tumble. Some of those Ethereum devs have even proposed a fork to head off restaking platform EigenLayer. 

Why the project’s founders promote “trust as a service” from Ethereum without the Ethereum founder and others’ willingness to participate is still to play out. Will the whole concept result in an Ethereum fork to protect the network from catastrophic failure? 

Continue reading

Reddit to wind down blockchain-based rewards service ‘Community Points’

Reddit has said it will soon shutter its long-running, blockchain-based rewards service “Community Points,” citing scalability concerns. 

In an official Oct. 17 announcement in the r/cryptocurrency subreddit, a Reddit team member said while the platform saw “some future opportunities for Community Points, there was no path to scale it broadly across the platform.”

The Community Points service, including the special memberships feature, will be wound down on Nov. 8. “At that point, you’ll also no longer see Points in your Reddit Vault nor earn any more Points in your communities,” the Reddit team member wrote.

Reddit’s Community Points will be shuttered on Nov. 8. Source: Reddit

First launched in May 2020, the community points feature rewarded users with points for positive engagement in certain subreddits and was designed to incentivize higher-quality content on the platform.

The points were Ethereum-based ERC-20 tokens stored in the platform’s in-house crypto wallet service dubbed the “Reddit Vault.”

Continue reading

TrueCoin’s third-party vendor breach potentially leaks TUSD user data

Stablecoin TrueUSD (TUSD) announced a potential leak of certain Know Your Customer (KYC) and transaction history data as one of TrueCoin’s third-party vendors got compromised. 

TrueCoin was the operator of the TUSD stablecoin till July 13, 2023. On Oct. 16, a third-party vendor’s security team informed TrueCoin of “an anomalous account change within [TrueCoin’s] organization made by a compromised support vendor.” As a result, TrueCoin suspects the compromise of some of TUSD’s existing customer data.

TrueCoin’s internal systems were not impacted or accessed, as the company confirmed that the attack was an isolated incident on a third-party vendor. “TUSD system is SECURE and not attacked. Both TUSD system and TUSD's reserves are UNAFFECTED,” affirmed TrueUSD through its official X (formerly Twitter) account.

Data collected from such breaches — names, email addresses and phone numbers, among others — are typically used for phishing attacks. Attackers reach out to unwary investors by mimicking various crypto services, often promising high profits in short amounts of time.

The impact of the attack and the resultant data leak is yet to be identified, as the total number of users’ data was not revealed during the announcement.

Continue reading

Solana wind down ‘deemed a necessity’ after low fees, says Lido Finance

Decentralized liquid staking protocol Lido Finance has announced a decision to cease operations on the Solana blockchain following a community vote in Lido’s decentralized autonomous organization.

The proposal to sunset Lido on Solana was first put forward by Lido’s peer-to-peer team on Sept. 5, citing unsustainable financials and low fees generated by Lido on Solana. Voting commenced on Sept. 29 and finished a week later on Oct. 6.

“After extensive DAO forum discussion followed by community vote, the sunsetting of the Lido on Solana protocol was approved by Lido token holders and the process will begin shortly,” Lido explained in an Oct. 16 post.

Lido will not be accepting staking requests as of Oct. 16. Voluntary node operator off-boarding will begin on Nov. 17 and Lido users will need to unstake on Solana’s frontend by Feb. 4.

“After this date, unstaking will need to be done using the CLI,” Lido added.

image
Continue reading

Price analysis 10/16: SPX, DXY, BTC, ETH, BNB, XRP, SOL, ADA, DOGE, TON

After two successive weeks of gains, the S&P 500 Index (SPX) started the week on a positive note. This suggests a risk-on sentiment which is a bullish sign. The volatility is likely to pick up as 11% of the S&P 500 companies are expected to report results this week.

The risk-on sentiment could boost buying interest in select cryptocurrencies. One area where bullish activity is seen is the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC). Grayscale’s legal victories have reduced the discount on the GBTC to its lowest level since 2021. This indicates that the investors are factoring in the possibility that the trust will finally convert into a spot Bitcoin  (BTC) ETF.

Daily cryptocurrency market performance. Source: Coin360

When the price does not break below the support levels on bad news and rises above the overhead resistance on favorable news, it shows that the shorts are running low on confidence. This increases the likelihood of an up-move in the near term.

What are the important overhead resistance levels on Bitcoin and altcoins that need to be crossed to start an uptrend? Let’s analyze the charts to find out.

S&P 500 Index price analysis

The S&P 500 Index (SPX) turned down from the 50-day simple moving average (4,401) on Oct. 12, but the bears could not sink the price below the important level at 4,325.

image
Continue reading

Bitcoin signals potential range expansion— Will SOL, LDO, ICP and VET follow?

The S&P 500 Index nudged higher by 0.45% to record its second positive week. While the United States equities markets were a slow mover, gold witnessed a massive run-up of more than 5% this week. Its rally of 3.11% on Oct. 13 was its best one-day performance since Dec. 1 of last year. However, the Bitcoin (BTC) bulls did not have any such luck as Bitcoin is on track to end the week down more than 3%.

Bitcoin’s weakness and the regulatory overhang have kept crypto investors away from altcoins. That has kept Bitcoin’s market dominance hovering near the 50% mark for the past few days.

Crypto market data daily view. Source: Coin360

Market observers are likely to keep their focus on Bitcoin for the next few days. The longer the bulls sustain the price above $25,000, the greater the possibility that the next move is likely to be higher. A bullish move in Bitcoin is likely to spur buying in select altcoins as crypto investors will then sense a bull market.

Select cryptocurrencies are showing signs of forming a base. If they breakout to the upside, a new up-move may start. Let’s study the charts of the top-5 cryptocurrencies that could outperform in the near term.

Bitcoin price analysis

Bitcoin has been trading between the moving averages for the past few days, indicating indecision between the bulls and the bears about the next directional move.

image
Continue reading

Caroline Ellison speaks on FTX-Binance war, SEC won’t appeal Grayscale BTC ETF: Hodler’s Digest, Oct. 8-14

Caroline Ellison, former CEO of Alameda Research, testified for over 10 hours this week at Sam Bankman-Fried’s trial, offering deeper details on the events that anticipated the FTX debacle in November 2022. From Ellison’s testimony, jurors learned that she planned to leave Alameda months before its collapse, but feared a bank run on FTX amidst the crypto market downturn. The week also featured a recording presented as evidence in the case showing the exact moment Ellison told employees about Alameda’s use of FTX customer deposits. Among the key moments of Bankman-Fried’s trial were revelations of fabricated balance sheets in order to deceive crypto lenders, as well as BlockFi CEO Zac Prince’s testimony. Check out this week’s highlights from Cointelegraph’s team on the ground.

Months before the collapse of crypto exchange FTX, former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried was “freaking out” about buying shares in Snapchat, raising capital from Saudi royalty and getting regulators to crack down on rival crypto exchange Binance, according to evidence presented in court this week as a part of the ongoing criminal trial. Bankman-Fried believed Binance leaked an Alameda balance sheet to the media in 2022. According to a document from Nov. 6, 2022, Bankman-Fried wrote that Binance had been “engaging in a PR campaign against us.” It continued, saying that Binance “leaked a balance sheet; blogged about it; fed it to Coindesk; then announced very publicly that they were selling $500m of FTT in response to it while telling customers to be wary of FTX.”

The United States Securities and Exchange Commission reportedly has no plans to appeal the recent court decision that favored Grayscale Investments. The ruling requires the SEC to review the firm’s spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) application. The SEC’s supposed decision not to appeal doesn’t necessarily mean Grayscale’s application is set to be approved. If the reports are true, the SEC will need to follow the court’s August order and review Grayscale’s application to change its Grayscale Bitcoin Trust into a spot Bitcoin ETF.

Terraform Labs has again pointed the finger at market maker Citadel Securities for its role in an alleged “concerted, intentional effort” to cause the depeg of its TerraUSD stablecoin in 2022. On Oct. 10, Terraform Labs filed a motion in the United States to compel Citadel Securities to produce documents relating to its trading activity in May 2022, when TerraUSD Classic depegged. In its motion, Terraform argued that the documents are crucial for its defense in the lawsuit filed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in February, which alleged Terraform Labs and its founder, Do Kwon, had a hand in “orchestrating a multi-billion dollar crypto asset securities fraud.” Citadel Securities has, however, previously denied trading the TerraUSD stablecoin in May 2022.

Mastercard has completed a trial involving wrapping central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) on different blockchains, similar to wrapped Bitcoin and wrapped Ether. The trial was conducted with the Reserve Bank of Australia and the country’s Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre CBDC. Mastercard said the solution allowed a CBDC owner to purchase a nonfungible token (NFT) listed on Ethereum. “The process ‘locked’ the required amount of a pilot CBDC on the RBA’s pilot CBDC platform and minted an equivalent amount of wrapped pilot CBDC tokens on Ethereum,” the payment processor wrote.


Continue reading

Price analysis 10/13: BTC, ETH, BNB, XRP, SOL, ADA, DOGE, TON, DOT, MATIC

A trending move in an asset class attracts traders, while a dull price action drives investors to the sidelines. Bitcoin (BTC) has largely been stuck in a range for the past several months, which could be one of the reasons for the drop in spot volumes. Bloomberg reported on Oct. 11 that Coinbase’s spot trading volume plunged 52% in Q3 2023 compared to Q3 2022.

While the short-term remains uncertain, traders need to be watchful because long consolidations are generally followed by an explosive price action. The only problem is that it is difficult to predict the direction of breakout with certainty. Considering that the bulls have not allowed Bitcoin to dip back below $25,000 in the past few months, it increases the likelihood of an upside breakout.

Daily cryptocurrency market performance. Source: Coin360

Investing legend Paul Tudor Jones said in a recent interview on CNBC that he is not bullish on the equities markets as he believes that an escalation in the Israel–Hamas conflict may bring about a risk-off sentiment. If that happens, it will be bullish for gold and Bitcoin, Jones added.

Wil bears sink Bitcoin below the immediate support and could that cause a further? Let’s analyze the charts of the top 10 cryptocurrencies to find out.

Bitcoin price analysis

Bitcoin sliced through the 20-day exponential moving average ($27,148) on Oct. 11 but the bears could not tug the price below the 50-day simple moving average ($26,634).

image
Continue reading

Ethereum price drops to a 7-month low as data points to more downside

Ether (ETH) price experienced a 7% decline between Oct. 6 and Oct. 12, hitting a seven-month low at $1,520. Although there was a slight rebound to $1,550 on Oct. 13, it appears that investor confidence and interest in Ethereum are waning, as indicated by multiple metrics.

Some may argue that this movement reflects a broader disinterest in cryptocurrencies, evident in the fact that Google searches for "Ethereum" have reached their lowest point in 3 years. However, Ethereum has underperformed the overall altcoin market capitalization by 15% since July.

Ethereum” keyword search, globally. Source: Google Trends

Interestingly, this price movement coincided with Ethereum's average 7-day transaction fees declining to $1.80, the lowest level in the past 12 months. To put this in perspective, just two months ago, these fees stood at over $4.70, a cost considered high even for initiating and closing batched layer-2 transactions.

Regulatory uncertainty and lower staking yield back ETH’s price decline

A significant event that impacted Ether's price was the remarks made by Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson regarding U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission director William Hinman's classification of Ether as a non-security asset in 2018. Hoskinson, who is also an Ethereum co-founder, alleged on Oct. 8 that some form of "favoritism" influenced the regulator's decision.

Ethereum staking has also garnered less interest from investors participating in the network validation process, as the yield decreased from 4.3% to 3.6% in just two months. This change occurred alongside an increase in ETH supply due to reduced activity in the burn mechanism, reversing the prevailing scarcity trend.

image
Continue reading

SBF’s alleged Chinese bribe, Binance clarifies account freeze: Asia Express

Our weekly roundup of news from East Asia curates the industry’s most important developments.

According to October 11 testimony from Caroline Ellison, co-founder of FTX-linked hedge fund Alameda Research, her colleague — disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried — allegedly paid $150 million in bribes to Chinese government officials in 2021, higher than the $40 million disclosed initially.  

Ellison said during the FTX trial that two years prior, $1 billion worth of Alameda Research’s digital assets on crypto exchanges OKX and Huobi were frozen by Chinese law enforcement as part of a money-laundering investigation. Senior FTX executives, such as chief operations officer Constance Wang and Alameda trader David Wa, were also involved in the incident. The individuals first tried to contact a Chinese lawyer to unfreeze the funds, which didn’t work. 

The disgraced FTX founder will be on trial throughout October. (Wikipedia)

Then, FTX and Alameda staff allegedly created accounts on OKX and Huobi using the identification of a Thai prostitute to negotiate the return of funds. When that didn’t work out, Ellison accused Bankman-Fried of paying a $150 million bribe to unfreeze the accounts. The bribe was recorded as “the thing” in future Alameda balance sheets. According to Ellison’s testimony, the funds were immediately unfrozen following the bribe.

Presiding Judge Lewis Kaplan of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York reminded the jurors that Bankman-Fried’s alleged bribery of Chinese officials is not within the scope of the ongoing FTX trial. Instead, a second trial relating to SBF’s bribery charges has been scheduled for March 11, 2024. The FTX trial will remain ongoing for the month of October. 


Continue reading

BitVM’s goal is to scale Bitcoin, not be a pseudo-Ethereum, says dev

One of the developers working on “BitVM” — a Bitcoin-based virtual machine — reiterates the tech is intended to scale Bitcoin rather than launching Ethereum-like decentralized finance applications on the network.

BitVM’s whitepaper was released by ZeroSync’s project lead Robin Linus on Oct. 10 with technical support provided by pseudonymous developer “Super Testnet” — implementing BitVM’s first proof-of-concept and working on expanding BitVM’s capabilities.

Upon its release, some industry pundits formed the impression that BitVM would bring DeFi to Bitcoin like what the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) did for Ethereum.

However, Super Testnet tells Cointelegraph that BitVM is scaling-focused rather than being about implementing smart contracts and an avalanche of altcoins:

“The real killer app is scaling Bitcoin. [Robin Linus isn’t] a big fan of smart contracts. He's not a big fan of increasing Bitcoin's expressivity. He really is interested in making it so that Bitcoin can process millions of transactions per second.”

Continue reading

Elon Musk streams, Amazon partners with Immutable, MetalCore preview: Web3 Gamer

The social media website X, formerly known as Twitter, hosted its first gaming stream — a 50-minute-long Diablo 4 gameplay — on October 6. The stream, which has over 42 million views at the time of writing, involved X owner Elon Musk playing Blizzard Entertainment’s latest title and answering questions from viewers.

The stream happened as a test of X’s new streaming feature, as Musk wanted to see if the audio sounded normal, if the image looked reasonably good and whether the comments were working. The result was a success, with the stream concluding without any interceptions or distortions.

Musk’s desire to make X a super app is no secret, and this move is just another brick in the wall of features the “everything app” aspires to offer. Musk commented on X’s place among other streaming apps like Kick and Twitch:

“I think the very specialist apps are still gonna be probably better than us in a lot of ways, but you know, I think we can be the best generalist app. There’s some value to being a generalist app for, I guess, discovery and for interacting with the largest number of people in the world.”

He continued to answer viewer questions toward the end of the stream without speaking a word about crypto and announced the streaming feature for Xbox and PS5.


Continue reading

Eleanor Terrett on impersonators and a better crypto industry: Hall of Flame

Fox Business producer Eleanor Terrett says that, as she gains more recognition in the crypto community, she is becoming a prime target for social media impersonators.

“So, I find myself having to tweet more often, saying, ‘Just a reminder, guys, I don’t have a private profile; I will never reach out to you,’” Terrett tells Magazine.

However, she warns that if you’re on the hunt for the next runaway altcoin, it’s probably not going to be her who finds it for you.

“I don’t have stock trading tips or crypto trading tips,” Terrett declares.

It’s a pity she can’t say the same for all those impersonators floating around out there: “They’re scamming people as well. There is one called Eleanor Terrett Private. They are inboxing people, saying, ‘Subscribe to my trading strategy.’”

Continue reading

Lido Finance discloses 20 slashing events due to validator config issues

Ethereum staking protocol Lido Finance has disclosed its protocol saw 20 slashing events due to a series of infrastructure and signer configuration issues from validators operated by Launchnodes.

The incident occurred on Oct. 11 at about 3:30 pm UTC, according to Launchnodes. In an Oct. 11 post on X, Lido said Launchnodes' validators nodes are now offline, and slashings have ceased while the root cause was being investigated.

The slashing took place on the Ethereum blockchain and Lido projected the impact to be around 20 Ether (ETH), worth $31,000, as well as additional penalties while the validators are offline for troubleshooting, along with inactivity penalties that the validators will accumulate.

Slashing is a process where a validator breaches a blockchain’s proof-of-stake consensus rules, which often results in the removal of that validator or slashing a portion of the staked-Ether that they provided as collateral.

In a post hours later, Launchnode said the slashing events occurred due to an infrastructure and signer configuration issue.

Continue reading

Was Chainlink’s (LINK) 35% rally just a buy rumor, sell the news event?

Since September, Chainlink (LINK) price has gained more than 25%, outperforming Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH) and most altcoins. Currently, the project is the leading decentralized blockchain oracle solution and ranks 15th in terms of market capitalization when excluding stablecoins. 

In September, LINK's price surged by an impressive 35.5%, but in the month-to-date performance for October, LINK has faced a 10% correction. Investors are concerned that breaking the $7.20 support level may lead to further downward pressure, potentially erasing all the gains from the previous month.

Chainlink (LINK) 12-hour price index, USD. Source: TradingView

It's worth noting that the closing price of $8.21 on Sept. 30 marked the highest point in over 10 weeks, but when looking at the bigger picture, Chainlink's price still remains 86% below its all-time high in May 2021. Moreover, over the past 12 months, LINK has shown little growth, while Ether (ETH) gained 21.5% in the same period.

LINK marines placed all their hope on the SWIFT experiment

The LINK bull run began after SWIFT, the leader in messaging for international financial transactions, released a report on Sept. 31 titled "Connecting Blockchains: Overcoming Fragmentation in Tokenized Assets," suggesting that linking existing systems to blockchains is more feasible than unifying different central bank digital currencies (CBDC).

Following a series of tests, SWIFT reported its capability to provide a single access point to multiple networks using existing infrastructure. This system relied on Chainlink's Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) and was said to significantly reduce operational costs and challenges for institutions supporting tokenized assets.

image
Continue reading

Price analysis 10/11: BTC, ETH, BNB, XRP, SOL, ADA, DOGE, TON, DOT, MATIC

Buyers are finding it difficult to maintain Bitcoin (BTC) price above $27,000. The selling increased after the September producer price index rose 0.5% for the month versus expectations for a 0.3% increase. This shows that the inflation pressures are unlikely to ease in a hurry for the United States economy.

The uncertain near-term environment has shifted analysts’ focus to November and the upcoming halving event expected in April 2024. Crypto analyst Miles Deutscher cited a chart from CryptoCon and said that if history repeats itself, then Bitcoin may turn up by November 21 and start its journey higher to the next halving.

Daily cryptocurrency market performance. Source: Coin360

Going further ahead to 2026, BitMEX founder Arthur Hayes is even more bullish. While speaking as a guest on Impact Theory with Tom Bilyeu, Hayes said that Bitcoin’s price could reach $750,000 to $1 million by 2026. Hayes argues that incessant money printing by the U.S. government to avoid a financial crisis will trigger a massive bull market in several asset classes.

Several analysts are bullish about the long-term but the near-term remains uncertain due to various headwinds. Could Bitcoin and altcoins stage a recovery or will they continue moving lower? Let’s analyze the charts of the top 10 cryptocurrencies to find out.

Bitcoin price analysis

After finding support at the 20-day exponential moving average ($27,227) for the past two days, Bitcoin broke below the level on Oct. 11. This shows that the bears are trying to seize control.

image
Continue reading

Beyond crypto: Zero-knowledge proofs show potential from voting to finance

In a world increasingly anxious about privacy and exploitation of one’s personal data by governments, corporations, social media platforms and banks, zero-knowledge proofs may offer some relief. 

Indeed, this emerging cryptographic protocol could partially remedy two rapidly growing global deficits: privacy and truth.

ZK-proofs have already found a home within the cryptocurrency and blockchain sector — enabling scaling protocols to make Ethereum transactions faster and cheaper, for example. But this may just be the beginning. 

One day, ZK-proofs could help convince your bank that your income is above a certain threshold — to qualify for a mortgage, for example — without revealing your actual income. Or prove to the election authorities that you are a resident or citizen without giving them your name, driver’s license or passport.

ZK-proofs open up a new world of potential applications, including “anonymous voting, decentralized games, proving personal information without fully disclosing your personal information, and fighting against fake news by proving the source of the news,” Polygon co-founder Jordi Baylina tells Magazine.


Continue reading
Image