Digital yuan gets green light on buses, trains in Xiamen, Guangzhou cities
Three China’s digital yuan is now accepted on Guangzhou city trams and can be used to recharge Xiamen’s city public transport card, as the metropolises join an expanding network of cities using the digital currency.
See related article: Chinese state media calls for wider e-CNY adoption
Fast facts
- According to Guangzhou local media, passengers on the city’s Tram Line 1 can now pay for fares with the payment QR code of the digital yuan app.
- Xiamen city’s public transportation swipe cards can be reloaded with digital yuan beginning May 6, Xiamen local media reported.
- Xiamen’s public transportation system will next allow passengers to pay fares using a digital yuan payment QR code, the report said.
- With Guangzhou and Xiamen, at least 12 of China’s 23 digital yuan pilot cities have started to accept such payments on their public transportation systems, according to a Forkast analysis.
- The digital yuan, or e-CNY, is China’s central bank digital currency (CBDC), which began public tests in October 2020 and is now piloting in 23 cities in China.
- Total transactions using e-CNY reached 87.565 billion yuan (US$11.238 billion) as of the end of 2021, China’s central bank announced in January.forkast.news
DeFi TVL lowest since October, Terra leads losses
The total value locked (TVL) in decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols has dropped from US$217.82 billion to US$179.5 billion in the past 30 days, reaching its lowest point since October 2021, according to DefiLlama data.
See related article: DeFi wizard Cronje’s departure sends TVL sinking
Fast facts
- Terra’s Anchor Protocol played a significant role by dropping more than 20% of its TVL over the last week.
- Terra’s native cryptocurrency LUNA lost up to 25% of its value over the weekend.
- Terra’s TVL declined by 20.54% over the past seven days, as its stablecoin UST briefly lost its peg during the weekend’s market selloff.
- Ethereum still dominates DeFi TVL with a 54.82% share but has dipped to US$98.39 billion, its lowest mark since August, DefiLlama data shows.
- Binance’s BNB chain and Tron are both up nearly 10% over the past seven days. forkast.new
Crypto Bets: A Wider Array of Altcoins are Being Used
Crypto bets: A report from inside the online gambling industry has shown that more people are starting to use crypto to gamble online, forgoing fiat. And there is a greater interest in betting with altcoins.
· Over the past 2 years, gamblers using crypto online instead of fiat has significantly increased. This is according to a recently released new report, confirming the growing adoption of cryptocurrencies.
· The study comes from Softswiss, which provide software for managing iGaming operations. The organization holds several gaming licenses, and in was the first company in the world to offer a Bitcoin-optimized online casino solution.
· The report shows comparative data for the 1st quarter of 2021 and 2022. This is based on the results of their game aggregator and casino platform.
· Crypto bets: Double the growth
· Global trends show growing popularity of crypto, and in parallel, this is also true for crypto gambling. The sum of bets in digital coins, accruing to the report, in Q1 2022 more than doubled compared to the same period in 2021. In fact, it has grown by116.7%.
· Andrey Starovoitov is COO at Softswiss. “Crypto gambling has become an independent, full-fledged, and extremely promising line of business. Brands adapted to these conditions have an advantage such as wider opportunities for operation and, accordingly, a wider audience.” beincrypto.com
Not an Inflation Hedge: Bitcoin Showing Close Correlation With Stocks, Says Bank of America Analysts
Bank of America has released a report recently, questioning the status of bitcoin as an inflation hedge considering its recent correlation with the stock market.
Two analysts from the Wall Street giant Bank of America have called bitcoin a risk asset rather than an inflation hedge in a recent report, saying that cryptocurrency often tracks stock market behavior. Alkesh Shah and Andrew Moss pointed out the high degree of correlation between the S&P 500, Nasdaq 100, and Bitcoin, the 180 days ending Jan. 31, 2022. The macro trend continues, with bitcoin dropping to just under $36K following the Federal Reserve’s announcement of an interest rate hike this past Thursday, in line with a significant stock selloff. The Federal Reserve’s announcement of a 0.5% interest rate increase comes as it battles to fight rising inflation due to government stimulus packages necessitated by the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Interest rates increased, crypto markets dumped. As far as Bitcoin goes, it looks like we’re going to kiss the $35000 are,” said TikTok crypto pundit Wendy O on Friday.
Ukraine war also a contributing factor
The war in Ukraine has also played its part. “Like all risk assets, crypto prices this year have been disproportionately driven by the war in Ukraine, inflation, and the outlook on Fed Policy (particularly the taper schedule),” said Ben McMillan from IDX Digital Assets. “So while we’re seeing crypto prices at relatively attractive prices on a longer-term outlook, there could still be a considerable downside in the near-term,” he concluded.beincrypto.com
TerraUSD dollar peg rocked by weekend dump, LUNA drops 20%
A seemingly coordinated attack on the Terra ecosystem occurred this weekend, May 7th, as hundreds of millions of dollars worth of UST was dumped on Curve Finance. This happened in tandem with an increase in short interest in Terra Luna and a surge in Twitter volume that led to “Ponzi” trending globally for a few hours.
Several accounts on Crypto Twitter posted tweets with screenshots of the moment UST dropped below $0.992 as breaking news that the dollar peg had broken down. Some even declared it a “moment in history.”
The monumental de-pegging however was seemingly short-lived as the current price for UST on Binance shows.
The trading volume on Curve soured to three times that of Uniswap as “someone started selling UST en masse, so it started to de-peg. However, that was met with a great resistance, so the peg was restored,” according to a statement from Curve.cryptoslate.com
Cardano plans 2 developer events before next hardfork
Cardano (ADA) will hold two developer events in Barcelona and Austin within the next couple of weeks before it commences its hard fork in June. The Vice President of IOHK, Tim Harrison, announced this on Twitter.
Cardano developer events
The Barcelona event will focus on certification and audit and will be held by the end of May. And the next one in Austin will focus on Marlowe and Plutus and will be in the middle of June.
Marlowe is one of the programming languages on Cardano and is used for developing and executing financial contracts. On the other hand, Plutus is a smart contract platform based on Cardano.
Upcoming Cardano improvement proposals
By June 29, Cardano will have its Vasil hard fork, which is expected to improve the network and its smart contract capabilities. Already, IOHK has outlined Cardano improvement proposals (CIPs) coming with the hard fork.cryptocurrencies.
Reference Scripts will make transactions cheaper by making them smaller. Users won’t have to include new scripts in each transaction as they can interact with a script by referencing it.
Collateral Output will improve the transaction validation process with enough collateral to complete a transaction. This means that users will no longer lose their collateral if a transaction should fail.
All these CIPs aim to improve Plutus’s performance and make Cardano more efficient while allowing its apps to execute faster when the hard fork is complete.cryptoslate.com
Bankless Crypto Channel Banned From YouTube
Bankless, which claimed 150,000 subscribers to its Ethereum-focused newsletter and podcast, channel on YouTube, said it had been banned from the social media platform without warning or justification.
- The channel, which boasted more than 10,000 hours of content and featured people as notable as Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, said in a tweet its account had been terminated.
· Officials from YouTube weren't immediately available to comment; commentators on Bankless's Twitter thread made comments like "Wow guys I finally get why we need web3" which would prevent an organization from shutting down a channel through decentralization.
- The removal of the Bankless channel may not be permanent or a signal that YouTube found anything objectionable in the channel's content. The social media giant has shut down other channels in the past without explanation only to reinstate them at a later time, again without explanation .www.coindesk.com
Meta’s Instagram to Support NFTs From Ethereum, Polygon, Solana, Flow
NFTs from some of the most popular blockchain networks for crypto art are coming to Instagram with the announcement of a pilot as soon as Monday.
The social media powerhouse owned by Meta is planning non-fungible token (NFT) integrations for Ethereum, Polygon, Solana and Flow, CoinDesk has learned. Those networks host the vast majority of trading in digital collectibles, with Ethereum and its Bored Apes leading the way by market cap.
The pilot will feature a small group of NFT aficionados based in the U.S. It wasn’t immediately clear whether Instagram would support NFTs from all four chains at launch.
Instagram intends to support widely used crypto wallets such as MetaMask. Plugging in their wallets, users will be able to prove NFT ownership, showcase them on their profiles and tag the creators who made them.
CoinDesk has confirmed Instagram will not charge users for posting and sharing NFTs, as Twitter initially did for its hexagonal NFT profile pictures in January.
The decision likely spells a rush of new cultural visibility for NFTs. Instagram has over one billion monthly active users; many of whom use the platform to promote and market their art. www.coindesk.com
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