A crypto project that could push Bitcoin (BTC) further into the world of decentralized finance (DeFi) is exploding in price. The altcoin RSK Infrastructure Framework (RIF) is up 90% in the last 24 hours, at $0.15. The project, which was launched by Gibraltar-based IOVlabs in 2019, has built a layer-3 protocol on top of BTC. […]
The post Altcoin Built to Boost Bitcoin Soars 90% in One Day As BTC DeFi Narrative Takes Over appeared first on The Daily Hodl.
The Friendsies NFT collection responded to accusations it was behind a $5 million rug pull after announcing a “pause” of the project.
Nonfungible token (NFT) collection Friendsies has refuted claims it is “abandoning” its NFT project following a tsunami of “rug pull” accusations aimed at its founders.
On Feb. 21, the founders behind the NFT project told its Twitter followers that it was putting a “pause” on Friendsies and “all future digital goods” for the time being, citing market challenges.
Around 40 minutes later, the Twitter account was deleted, while the account of Friendswithyou, who developed the project, was made private — sparking rumors that the founders had “rugged” for about $5 million.
With the $5.3m @friendsies_ai hard rug earlier today it remains unclear how the funds could’ve possibly been spent.
— ZachXBT (@zachxbt) February 21, 2023
There have been no announcements since September, no community treasury, and no P2E game.
The team blames “market volatility” as their rationale. pic.twitter.com/FM8ytum4Ur
The project's Twitter account has since been reinstated with the founders vehemently denying it is “abandoning” the project. The founders’ account is still private, however.
“It is clear that we have upset many of you with the nature of our announcement, and perhaps we did not handle that in the best way possible,” they said, adding:
“To be very clear, we are not abandoning fRiENDSiES.”
The founders said the initial announcement was more about pausing social engagement “until further notice.”
“That was not intended to mean we are pausing building and seeking opportunities, those efforts remain on-going,” it added.
Friendsies is a collection of 10,000 Ethereum-based NFTs that launched in March 2022. It purported to give each holder a custom-built “digital companion” which could be used in the Metaverse, real-life experiences, art installations, and eventually a “Tomogatchi-like” play-to-earn game.
There are currently 3,323 owners of Friendsies NFTs, with a floor price of 0.012 Ether (ETH) (approximately $20) and a trading volume of 3,775 ETH, according to data from OpenSea.
In the initial announcement, Friendsies said the “volatility and challenges of the market have made it very difficult to move this project forward in a way we can be proud of.”
˙ᵕ˙ - Hi friends! We wanted to reach out directly to the community with an important update. As the project founders, we have decided that it would be best to put a pause on @fRiENDSiES_Ai and all future digital goods for the time being. We had the best intentions to make a
— fRiENDSiES (@fRiENDSiES_Ai) February 21, 2023
In the follow-up Twitter thread some 17 hours after the pause announcement, the project’s founders admitted they were “overwhelmed” with hate and threats over the announcement:
“We were overwhelmed with hate and threats & both our Twitter and website were attacked [...] We are sorry if we let you down today with our communication, but we are not going anywhere,” it wrote.
Related: NFTs will act as high-end property during boom cycles: Real Vision CEO
Making a public offer to take over Friendsies. I’ll install a new team and take the project forward with a different vision
— Satvik Sethi (@sxtvik) February 21, 2023
The IP has so much potential and the holders deserve better. We just cannot keep letting stuff like this slide because it really is hurting the space.
Mastercard’s former NFT product lead, Satvik Sethi, who resigned in spectacular fashion earlier this month, has even made an offer to take over the Friendsies NFT project.
“I’ll install a new team and take the project forward with a different vision,” he said.
“[Friendswithyou] if you care at all about your holders like you’ve always claimed, do the right thing. Don’t abandon people who put their trust in you despite all the noise. Hit me up, let’s discuss it.”
Some say “it takes money to make money,” but this isn’t true in crypto. Here’s a few free ways to start building a portfolio.
Starting to invest in cryptocurrency does not necessarily require attaching a bank account or spending money (fiat) to purchase Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH). Another way to earn cryptocurrency and build a portfolio is to complete a variety of tasks on various Web3 platforms.
Using decentralized applications (dApps) and decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms, users earn cryptocurrency and then swap, sell or hold them in centralized or decentralized wallets without even having to spend money.
Let’s look at a few ways to build a crypto portfolio without connecting a bank account.
A person without cryptocurrency knowledge might be intimidated by the process of downloading wallets and performing on-chain transactions. An alternative is simply interacting with technology and currently, there are multiple ways to experiment with different crypto platforms. One is replacing a Web2 technology with a Web3 counterpart browser.
Google dominates the web browser and search engine space, making money off user usage by selling data to advertisers. Brave browser is an alternative platform where users earn Basic Attention Token (BAT) and fully own their data while searching. Users earn from their activity on advertisers' websites and Brave does not sponsor search engine posts, which provides users with a more decentralized search experience.
Currently, Brave shares 70% of its advertising revenue and some users choose to sell their earned BAT at centralized exchanges or through Web3 wallets like MetaMask.
NFTs continue to grow in popularity and potential crypto investors can use a variety of free software to analyze the wallet addresses of successful NFT investors that minted high value NFTs and also try to find free NFT minting and whitelist opportunities.
Colin Helm the CEO at a free-to-play metaverse, Caesarverse noted the importance of free NFTs in the space:
“If users follow social media and community channels closely, they can always find very generous raffles, gain some assets that improve their gameplay experience and build their crypto portfolio just from playing games they may enjoy.”
Some users that have worked the free minting system have generated NFTs that eventually reached a 10 Ether floor.
Related: How to do mobile cryptocurrency mining?
Similar to how NFTs require a social media base for advertising, new blockchains and protocols also require immense amounts of testing and a user base in order to ensure sustainable growth at launch.
Some blockchains like Arbitrum do not have a token, but the hint of an eventual airdrop tends to attract users to the protocols within the Arbitrum ecosystem.
On Sept. 6, 1inch users on Optimism received an airdrop of 300,000 OP for their prelaunch usage of the blockchain.
For users without the technical knowledge to use new blockchains, social activity-based airdrops could be an easier way to earn cryptocurrency. With social airdrops, users may have to follow, like and share certain accounts on social media. Users will most likely need to use a decentralized wallet like MetaMask in order to receive social airdrops.
Many crypto and DeFi projects have set tokens aside for marketing, bug finding, beta testing and content creation tasks. Many crypto investors earn tokens by auditing, testing, creating brand designs, marketing materials, music and other content. Users willing to lend their skills to crypto projects is a perfect way to get started.
Jenny “DJen” Schorsch, Founder of GlamJam, shared her experience in how she built a brand and started in crypto without upfront costs:
“Start by creating value for the community for free first. After you have your community, you start generating profit and assets with them. I started using NFTs for ticketing and allowed Web3 companies sponsorships for my favorite projects. Before I knew it, people were offering me crypto for participation in events.”
While most users think that a bank account and fiat currency are necessary for interacting with blockchains and cryptocurrency, this is not the case.
With a little effort, aspiring crypto investors can earn cryptocurrency and NFTs without any upfront cost, other than time.
The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the authors’ alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.
This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.
BLUR price is also forming a Doji candlestick pattern on its four-hour chart, hinting at a bullish reversal ahead.
Blur (BLUR) could rise by up to 30% by March 2023 owing to a mix of technical and fundamental factors.
Blur is a nonfungible token (NFT) aggregator that indexes digital art listings across various base marketplaces like LooksRare and OpenSea. In doing so, the aggregator allows users to trade across all NFTs marketplaces via a single interface.
Since its launch in October 2022, Blur has become the leading NFT aggregator, accounting for 40%-60% of the daily NFT trading volume, according to data tracked by Messari.
The period has also witnessed the Blur team "airdropping" free BLUR tokens to users who have traded Ethereum-based NFTs in the past six months. On Feb. 15, Blur officially launched its native token of the same name, allowing airdrop recipients to trade it for fiat money and other crypto assets.
According to Dune Analytics, Blue has airdropped 360 million tokens across its users. Interestingly, users have claimed nearly 339 million BLUR tokens in the first six days of the launch against the 60-day deadline.
Typically, traders dump airdropped tokens early to secure an instant profit. Nonetheless, BLUR's price remains approximately 25% higher than its market debut price of $0.88, suggesting that most traders have decided to hold it longer.
One reason could be the Blue team's intention to conduct another airdrop in the coming months. The news coincides with Blur's total-value-locked (TVL) metric reaching a record high of 76,490 ETH, according to Defi Llama.
"Blur airdrop reminds me of the Uniswap airdrop," noted independent market analyst Nekoz, adding:
"Early sellers sold for a ps5. Diamond hand sellers sold it for 5 figures. Imo if you don’t need the funds, just chill with it. It will be the number 1 NFT platform."
BLUR price technicals are also hinting at a bullish scenario being more likely.
On the four-hour chart, BLUR has painted a Doji pattern at the end of its short-term correction phase. That is confirmed by the four-hour candlestick with almost the same open and close levels, and extreme bearish and bullish wicks.
The Doji shows indecisiveness among traders about the next market bias. But coupled with Blur's other technical indicators, namely its short-term support level of around $1 and a neutral relative strength index (RSI), it appears the Doji may result in a bullish reversal in the coming weeks.
In other words, BLUR price may bounce from its $1-support level to eye an interim rally toward $1.21, which has served as resistance and support in recent sessions. Moreover, an extended run-up can push the price to $1.39, orBLUR's recent peak, by March 2023.
Despite solid fundamentals, BLUR's price can see an extended correction below its $1-support level, per the technical setup shared by analyst Altcoin Sherpa.
The chartist maintains his short-term bullish bias for BLUR, but anticipates its price to fall toward $0.94 first, saying that it "should provide a solid bounce."
He also argues that BLUR's market bias will take cues from how Bitcoin (BTC) performs in the coming sessions.
This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.
Social media metrics show strong retail investor sentiment behind the ongoing CFX price rally.
Conflux Network (CFX) is up nearly 500% in the past week, with CFX emerging as one of the best-performing crypto assets in 2023 as China appears to be warming to cryptocurrency trading.
Interestingly, Conflux Network, also known as Shanghai Tree-Graph Blockchain Research Institute, is the only regulatory-compliant, public and permissionless blockchain in China. Conflux is a layer-1 blockchain operating on a hybrid proof-of-work and proof-of-stake mechanism.
CFX’s price has rallied nearly 1,335% year-to-date (YTD) to reach $0.3254 as of Feb. 24, its highest level in 14 months. In comparison, the combined market capitalization of crypto assets has surged approximately 45% YTD.
Strong fundamentals have primarily driven the CFX price higher in 2023.
For instance, CFX’s price increased by more than 90% on Jan. 26, two days after Conflux Network partnered with Little Red Book, a China-based social media platform, to provide nonfungible token services.
The partnership enabled Conflux Network to bring its services to Little Red Book’s 200 million users.
Similarly, on Feb. 15, Conflux Network partnered with China Telecom to develop and pilot a blockchain SIM (BSIM) card service in Hong Kong, thus gaining exposure to the latter’s 350 million users. CFX’s price has rallied 450% after the announcement.
The high-profile deals also helped boost queries for keywords related to Conflux Network, thus hinting at an increasing retail interest. For instance, the worldwide Google Trend score for the keyword “Conflux Network” reached 93 and 100 in the Jan. 22–28 and the Feb. 12–18 periods, respectively.
Social media was mostly focused on Conflux Network’s major partnership deals, according to data from Santiment show below.
In addition, the CFX market bull run also comes ahead of the vote on its token burn proposal sometime this week.
ℹ️ Did you know the Conflux Foundation has already burned close to 500 Million CFX?!
— Conflux Network Official (@Conflux_Network) February 14, 2023
‼️ Our latest DAO proposal vote CIP-107 regarding token burning will be taking place next week!
Read the full proposal here ⬇️https://t.co/zqZwmXUSWn pic.twitter.com/1odqgJEbOh
So far, the buzz for Conflux Network is palpable. However, that does not safeguard CFX’s price from undergoing a massive correction in the coming weeks.
From a technical standpoint, CFX’s ongoing price boom has left it extremely overbought.
On both daily and weekly charts, CFX’s relative strength index has crossed above 70, which hints that its ongoing uptrend is near exhaustion. In addition, the Conflux Network token is testing the $0.28–$0.41 range as resistance, which served as support from May to November 2021.
A pullback from the resistance area could have CFX’s price fall to $0.097–$0.141 as its primary downside target. The range also coincided with the token’s 50-week exponential moving average (50-week EMA; the red wave) near $0.108, down about 65% from current price levels.
Conversely, a decisive breakout above the $0.28–$0.41 range could have CFX’s price rally toward $0.84, its resistance from the May–September 2021 session.
This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.
The logo for a popular Yuga Labs NFT collection is being changed after it was seemingly ripped off from a follow-along children's drawing creator.
The logo for the Bored Ape Kennel Club (BAKC) from nonfungible token (NFT) conglomerate Yuga Labs is getting a refresh after recently surfaced allegations of intellectual property theft.
Yuga co-founder, Greg Solano, more widely known as “Garga” tweeted on Feb. 18 that the BAKC logo would be changing and the project would “debut the new logo soon.”
Saw the claims today about the BAKC logo. This was news to us and we're still investigating the situation. Have reached out to the freelancer we hired for that design and Easy Drawing Guides. We’ll be changing the logo and updating it on our site / ask marketplaces to change as… https://t.co/OwtflDXehz
— Garga.eth (Greg Solano) (@CryptoGarga) February 18, 2023
Yuga has been in the doghouse over its trademarked logo as it looks remarkably similar to the finished product of a follow-along drawing guide made for children by a company called Easy Drawing Guides.
Easy Drawing Guides released a wolf skull drawing guide on April 5, 2021, a little over two months prior to BAKC’s June 17, 2021 launch. The firm has asserted its intellectual property rights over the drawing.
Thanks for bringing this up @Jdotcolombo. @yugalabs doesn't have a license to the wolf skull drawing. The intellectual property rights for the drawing belong to Easy Drawing Guides as it's our original drawing and protected by our Terms and Conditions.
— Easy Drawing Guides (@easydrawinguide) February 17, 2023
Solano said the whole debacle “was news to us,” adding Yuga was “still investigating the situation” and had contacted Easy Drawing Guides and the freelance artist contracted for the design.
NFT sales over the past seven days have skyrocketed amid a battle for domination between OpenSea and its rival Blur — with the two sparring over fees and creator royalties.
According to data from NFT aggregator CryptoSlam, NFT sales volume has increased over 101% in the past week compared to the week prior and has hit over $524 million transacted in the last seven days at the time of writing.
One of the key factors in the rise was Blur’s token airdrop on Feb. 14 giving users the incentive to farm the drop by using the platform.
Blur has remained the dominant marketplace in terms of trading volume since the start of the year and has dominated OpenSea in that regard.
Analytics from DappRadar show the trend continuing over the past week — with Blur seeing nearly $400 million in volume compared to OpenSea’s $105 million.
OpenSea has recently spun up a comeback campaign and has slashed its platform fee to zero, enacted optional creator royalties and more lenient blocks on other marketplaces.
The pseudonymous NFT collector known as “Franklin” has made a "fat-finger" mistake bidding on a collection, which saw him accidentally bidding more than 21 times the floor price of an NFT.
On Feb. 19, Franklin owned up to the bungled purchase, which saw him buy an NFT from the Azuki project’s BEANZ collection for 35 ETH — or around $60,000 at the time — despite the floor price being around 1.7 ETH, or $2,800.
As you may already know, I placed a fat-finger collection offer of 35 ETH on Beanz. I meant to type a much lower bid with a quantity of 35, but I instead bid 35 ETH for 1 purchase (floor of like 1.73 ETH at the time). It got accepted before I could cancel.
— Franklin (@franklinisbored) February 19, 2023
Oops.
I’ll be okay.
He said he “placed a fat-finger collection offer” on the BEANZ collection but was actually meant to input a “much lower bid with a quantity of 35.”
“I instead bid 35 ETH for 1 purchase [...] It got accepted before I could cancel. Oops. I’ll be okay.” Franklin tweeted.
It however appears that Franklin was the owner of Bean #10626 for only a short time as just two hours after the blundered purchase it was sold for just 1.77 WETH — an equivalent loss of nearly $56,000.
An initially free NFT collection launched by the global cafe chain Starbucks is now seeing NFTs inexplicitly list for thousands of dollars just two months after the initial mint.
The Starbucks Odyssey Polygon NFT collection is a rewards program launched in December 2022, still in closed beta. Only four “drops” have been released amassing a total volume of $148,000, the first of which is a 5,000-strong “stamp” titled Holiday Cheer Edition 1 Stamp.
The owners of the collection initially received the NFTs for free and, despite the low trading volume, now ask for around $2,000 for one token on Nifty Gateway.
The collection on its own makes up $117,000, or around 80% of the total collections sales volume.
Related: What are the applications of NFTs in supply chains?
Being the first drop, the NFT could be seen as more special to certain collectors. Starbucks has also said rewards on its NFTs will range from NFT holder-only merch, invites to exclusive events and maybe a trip to a Costa Rican coffee farm.
Meanwhile, the other drops are seeing much lower floor prices, with another 5,000-strong drop going as low as $100, while a 30,000-strong drop is nearly half that at just $59.
KnownOrigin, the NFT marketplace from eBay, is launching no-code required creator smart contracts so artists can split earnings and earn royalties as co-creators on collections. A beta release has been tested for the last few weeks with 84 contracts deployed and 250 editions of NFTs minted.
The Web3-friendly Neal Mohan was appointed as the new chief of YouTube, his previous tentative plans for the platform included the potential for creators to tokenize videos, photos, art and experiences to bring them additional revenue streams.
On Feb. 17, 2023, Tokyo-based Sony Network Communications announced that it is co-hosting a Web3 incubation program with the multichain smart contract platform Astar Network. The program has started accepting applications, and Sony and Astar will jointly mentor Web3 projects “focused on the utility” of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). Sony and […]
The largest marketplace for non-fungible tokens (NFTs), Opensea, has announced major changes to its fee structure and policies in response to a shift in the NFT ecosystem. The company detailed that it will drop fees to zero for a limited time and offer an optional creator earnings model with a minimum of 0.5% for all […]
Opera, the Web3 browser, and Unstoppable Domains, the non-fungible token (NFT) domain provider, have announced that users can now access all domain endings, including .x, .crypto, and .nft, across Opera’s browsers. Additionally, Opera and Unstoppable are offering a free .nft domain that matches an Opera user’s Twitter handle after account verification. Opera Expands Web3 Capabilities […]