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Major Crypto Adoption Trends of 2023
In this exclusive piece, we delve into the latest trends in crypto adoption to provide a concise overview of the developments over the past year as we emerge from the crypto winter. Here is a rundown of the highlights: Crypto Adoption rates dropped in Q1 & Q2 2023: After setbacks last year, grassroots crypto adoption…
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Bitcoin Halvening: A Comprehensive Analysis of Bitcoin’s Supply Dynamics
Every four years, the Bitcoin blockchain undergoes what is popularly known as “the halvening” or “the halving” event: A fundamental event where the rate of distribution of BTC will be cut in half. Initially, when Bitcoin was launched in 2009, miners were rewarded 50 bitcoins for each block they added to the chain. However, every…
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Crypto Market Snapshot: Trends and Highlights
While Bitcoin’s price was stagnant for most of Q3 2023, it has rallied by over 28% this quarter, and there are few metrics which indicate that this could be the beginning of a secular bull market.
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Crypto Security in 2023: Dissecting Hacks, Exploits, and other Security Insights
Security remains one of the biggest challenges in the digital asset industry; In 2022 alone, the total value of crypto stolen through hacks amounted to $3.8 billion. While this figure is down 77% as of June 2023 compared to the same period last year, it is hard to ignore the imminent threats that hacks and…
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Crypto Taxation Landscape: A Global Perspective
Crypto taxes around the world differ from one jurisdiction to another. While some countries have adopted a stringent digital asset tax regime, others are taking a more relaxed approach. But before diving into the specifics, it’s worth distinguishing between the two main types of crypto taxes: income and capital gains tax. Income tax, as the…
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Bear Market Blues: An Overview of the Major NFT Trends in 2023
The Non-fungible token (NFT) market has seen a sharp decline in activity since its 2021 peak, when ‘NFT’ at one point was among the most searched words on Google. According to the latest report by DappRadar, the total NFT trading volume in August 2023 was $559 million, a 16% drop from the previous month. Cumulatively,…
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Missing Point in the Energy Debate: How Blockchain Fuels Sustainability
As environmental consciousness grows globally, the demand for renewable and sustainable energy becomes increasingly pressing. However, a significant gap persists in harnessing the full potential of emerging technologies, like blockchain, to meet global climate sustainability objectives. For starters, blockchain can help create a revolutionizing solution market of globally accessible and decentralized carbon credits. Moreover, blockchain-driven…
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The Role of Crypto in Remittances: Revolutionizing Global Money Transfers
According to KNOMAD, the Global Knowledge Partnership on Migration and Development, remittances from migrants to their home communities—are projected to increase from US$791 billion in 2021 to US$840 billion by the end of 2023. This trend underscores the vital role remittances play in global finance, particularly for Low and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs), excluding China. Image:…
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Exploring the Current Landscape of Layer 1 and Layer 2 Blockchains
Blockchain technology has evolved a great deal since Bitcoin’s debut in 2009. Today, the digital asset ecosystem is not short of choices when it comes to alternative blockchain networks. While Layer 1 chains such as Bitcoin and Ethereum are still the most dominant networks, Layer 2 scaling solutions are emerging as potential challengers, especially in…
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What are DAOs and How Do DAOs Work? An Introduction to Decentralized Autonomous Organizations
Blockchain technology is gradually revolutionizing several industries, with its most pronounced impact being in financial services. Even more intriguing is the intersection of this nascent technology with corporate governance. Through Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs), blockchain is challenging and transforming the traditional hierarchical decision-making frameworks. What is a DAO? While the concept might sound unfamiliar if…
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Wall Street Going Web3: The Rise of Institutional Crypto Adoption
Cryptocurrency adoption has steadily increased over the years, with both individuals and institutions claiming a share in this growing ecosystem. According to the most recent crypto ownership survey by Finbold, 10.2% of the global population using the internet own some form of cryptocurrency. Most of this growth was attracted to the ecosystem between 2020 and…
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The Intersection Between Crypto and Gaming: A Launchpad for Great Economic Models to Take Off
With more than 3 billion gamers worldwide, the gaming industry does not need to validate itself anymore. But what’s interesting is how this sector has started to form an intersection with the crypto scene – Particularly NFTs and the Metaverse. A recent report shared by Yahoo Finance estimates that the blockchain gaming market will hit…
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Building Blocks of the Future: How Blockchain is Transforming Industries
Discover the game-changing use of blockchain technology across industries. Explore how blockchain is transforming financial services, supply chain, healthcare, energy, and real estate. Learn more about the impact and potential of blockchain.
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Crypto VC Behavior of 2023: Weathering the Winter
Major Highlights The Crypto VC market is still facing headwinds as investors are cautious, with Q2 2023 attracting $2.32 billion in funding, slightly lower than the previous quarter. Number of completed crypto VC deals increased in Q2, but pre-money valuations continued to decline, reaching $17.93 million, while the median crypto VC deal stood at $3…
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H1 2023 Crypto Recap: Bitcoin Remains Resilient Amidst Uncertainity
The first half of 2023 was quite eventful for the global financial markets and the crypto industry. Macro factors, particularly inflation, continued to play a major role, and while the US Federal Reserve put a (temporary?) pause on its 10-month aggressive rate hike in June, the rate of inflation is yet to come down to…
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The Stablecoin Debate: Types of Stablecoins, Assessing Value Proposition, Stability, and Stablecoin Regulation
The debate surrounding stablecoins has been gaining momentum since the collapse of Luna’s algorithmic stablecoin ‘UST’, which resulted in the loss of over $60 billion worth of investors’ capital. This year, the discussion has intensified even further, with regulators, especially in the US, tightening their grip on the crypto industry. Most notably, the SEC issued…
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Crypto Banking in Europe & Rest of the World: An Adaptation to Change
Following the collapse of FTX exchange and other major crypto-oriented firms such as BlockFi and Voyager Digital, crypto companies and users are facing challenging times in accessing banking services. Challenging Times for Crypto Banking The first quarter of 2023 exposed cracks in the global banking sector, resulting in the downfall of three crypto-friendly banks in…
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The Current State of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs)
The debate around Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) has been gaining momentum following the adoption of decentralized digital assets, such as Bitcoin, in recent years. According to the latest statistics from the Atlantic Council CBDC tracker, over 114 countries across the globe are currently exploring CBDCs. Of these, 11 have fully launched a CBDC, with…
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Blockchain and AI: The Forces Shaping the Fourth Industrial Revolution
The world of technological innovations is currently witnessing a monumental shift as novel technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and blockchain take center stage. Since the debut of ChatGPT in November 2022, AI has become particularly popular within and outside the tech community. However, what’s even more exciting is the potential for integrating AI with…
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Tokenizing Real World Assets (RWAs): The Holy Grail of Decentralized Finance (DeFi)
Image source: Bitcoin Global Macro Decentralized Finance (DeFi) yields have been on a free fall since the crypto market peaked in November 2021. But with the bull market hype cooling down, innovators in the DeFi space are pivoting to a new source of yield: Tokenizing Real World Assets (RWAs). This new crypto asset class is…
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Bitcoin: The Antidote to Global Uncertainty
Image source: Bitcoin Global Macro With Covid-induced monetary policies sparking inflation in economies all around the world, central bankers were forced to raise rates at unprecedented speeds, severely impacting the capital markets. As a result, Bitcoin’s valuation – much like the speculative tech stocks of Netflix, Google, and Amazon – took a significant hit in…
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How the Crypto Venture Capital Space Turned Risk Averse in the Bear Market
Across the board, valuations on practically all crypto projects rose significantly during the 2020-2021 bull market, but as the market contracted throughout 2022, VC’s also started to see valuations of investments taking a heavy nosedive.
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Optimistic vs ZK Rollups: A Deep Dive into Ethereum’s Layer-2 Scaling Solutions
Optimistic rollups are a layer 2 protocol designed to increase the throughput of Ethereum’s base layer. They are called “optimistic” because they assume that off-chain transactions are valid and do not publish proofs of validity for transaction batches posted on-chain. Similarly, Zero-knowledge rollups bundle transactions into batches that are executed off-chain. ZK-rollup operators submit a…
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Revolutionizing Traditional Finance: How DeFi is Poised to Disrupt the Status Quo
Banner Image: Generated by Bitcoin Global Macro The DeFi space had a tumultuous 2022, with the valuation of leading projects as indicated by the market cap being significantly down for the most part of 2022. Average weekly trading volumes for the DeFi sub-crypto market declined by more than 100% from an all-time high of over…
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Regulating Cryptocurrency: One Step Closer to Regulation of the Crypto Ecosystem
Banner Image: Generated by Bitcoin Global Macro The regulation of cryptocurrency is a rapidly evolving and diverse landscape. Anyone with any knowledge about the space knows how challenging it is to regulate. Nonetheless, a lot of efforts are being made by regulators to tango with the cryptos. Six Reasons Why Regulating Cryptocurrency is so Difficult There…
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How the Crypto Regulation Debate is Shaping up in the US and Europe
Crypto regulation has been a major topic of discussion over the past two years, with different jurisdictions moving quickly to formulate oversight structures. Recently, this nascent industry has come under heavy pressure due to a serious clampdown by the US authorities, which some crypto natives have branded as Operation Choke Point 2.0.
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The Current State and Future of Decentralized Exchanges (DEXs)
Banner Image: Generated by Bitcoin Global Macro Decentralized Exchanges (DEXs) have undergone a significant evolution since the debut of NXT Asset Exchange, one of the pioneer DEXs to launch in 2014. At the time, using decentralized platforms for exchanging tokens was quite complicated and may in hindsight even have been a little ahead of its…
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The Metaverse vs the Billion-Dollar Gaming Industry
Banner Image: Generated by Bitcoin Global Macro The term “Metaverse” was used so frequently during 2022 that everyone should have heard it, even if they don’t know what it means. The hype around the metaverse arguably peaked following the end of 2021 as Mark Zuckerberg announced plans on rebranding “Facebook” to “Meta” and allocating $10 billion…
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Crypto VC Behavior Reveals Market Trends for 2023 and Beyond
Banner Image: Generated by Bitcoin Global Macro The venture capital space has been somewhat shaky lately due to general economic uncertainty, rising inflation, interest rate spikes, fears of recession, and volatile economic situations. Some obvious evidence of this can be seen in overall VC deal value from 2021 to 2022. More precisely, the overall VC…
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NFTs and Traditional Industries: A New Frontier for Creative Commerce
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have been a topic of interest for most techies over the past few years. But more recently, this nascent space started gaining popularity across other industries, with several Hollywood celebrities and gaming publishers joining the bandwagon. Last year alone, the NFT market generated over $24.7 billion in trading volume amidst a tough…
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Top 5 Crypto Narratives to Watch for in 2023
Banner Image: Generated by Bitcoin Global Macro The year 2022 will certainly go down in history as one of the toughest years for the digital asset industry, from a hawkish Fed to idiosyncratic risks that saw crypto giants such as Three Arrows Capital and FTX bite the dust. But for those who have been around…