Author: BTCLFGTEAM

Over the last couple of years, the world has been grappling with the lack of semiconductors, which are the substances that conduct electricity between metals and isolates. The most famous semiconductor is silicon. 

If correlating this concept to electronic devices, then the key semiconductors are processors and other microcircuits that are present in almost all devices that people use every day, from smartphones to cars. 

In 2021, semiconductors hit a world record in terms of sales. Electronics production also boomed, with hundreds of millions of complex semiconductors being devoured by gaming consoles. The number of GPUs produced grew to unseen levels, with major manufacturers like Nvidia seeing all-time highs in terms of production.

Despite all this, electronics prices skyrocketed and manufacturers of related goods were struggling to find semiconductors. 

Crypto miners: Guilty or innocent? 

It has become customary to not only mention but to blame cryptocurrency miners for the global shortage of GPU cards and semiconductors. To their credit, miners would buy up huge swaths of graphics processing units, sometimes emptying whole stores at once.

Some countries that are feeling the shortage of cards acutely are already fighting against cryptocurrency mining.

At the same time, the manufacturers, themselves, do not take such a definite position. AMD CEO Lisa Su said in June 2021 that miners are far from guilty for the lack and even complete absence of certain GPU cards. She said that their influence on the market is generally minimal and does not exceed 5%–10% of the total demand. 

Andy Long, CEO of White Rock Management, a digital asset technology company situated in Switzerland, agreed with Su that mining isn’t entirely to blame:

“GPUs are still in high demand to power Ethereum and other altcoin mining. Nvidia’s published estimate for the percentage of traditional GPUs going to miners is in the single digits, but the true figure is likely higher than that — somewhere around 20%.”

Another important factor behind the shortage of GPU cards is the COVID-19 pandemic. The supply chain showed that due to the many employees who began to work at home, the number of buyers increased so much that graphics processors — a crucial component in home computers — simply disappeared from sale.

However, the situation with miners’ appetite for GPU cards began to change noticeably at the beginning of this year. 

Firstly, the change is due to Ethereum (ETH) switching to the proof-of-stake (PoS) protocol, which is slated to take place in the summer of 2022. 

Currently, the Ethereum blockchain is maintained by miners solving cryptographic puzzles and subsequently receiving a reward, the value of which is calculated according to the hash rate of each individual GPU.

This is called proof-of-work (PoW). As soon as Ethereum switches to the new protocol, miners will no longer be needed as crypto holders will validate block transactions based on the number of tokens they stake.

Since GPU cards will no longer be needed for Ether mining, once Ethereum 2.0 goes into effect, the demand for them will reduce drastically. 

This shift in demand is already very noticeable. In the first two months of 2022, Nvidia’s GPU card sales are down by 75% compared to 2021 as large mining companies that used to purchase such cards have stopped buying. This also means that Nvidia will be forced to redirect GPU cards to the gaming sector and cut prices. 

There are other reasons for the price decrease. Since April of this year, the United States has reduced import tariffs on the supply of goods from China by 25%. America is one of the main players in the GPU market, where companies such as Nvidia, AMD and Intel operate, so the tariff cuts have led to lower prices for GPU cards.

Buyers’ interest in the cards is also declining against the backdrop of a gradual return of people to offices after two years of remote work and the need to have a modern computer at home to comfortably perform work duties.

“Dedicated mining cards are also a larger part of the picture now,” said Long, “These are cards without video output that are solely for data processing. We first saw these in 2017 with the launch of dedicated Pascal architecture cards such as the P106 and P104. Now the Nvidia CMP range explicitly targets the miners — with some dedicated high-end SKUs only available to those willing to place orders in the tens of millions of dollars. The shortage in dedicated gaming cards is as much to do with simple supply and demand for the core purpose of gaming — and also “HPC” type applications where people use gaming cards for rendering and AI tasks.”

The deficit is not over

The solution to the problem of the shortage of GPU cards sounds simple: Producers need to make more cards to meet the demand. However, in practice, this is not the case. One of the problems is the supply of silicon wafers, which are used to produce the chips. In 2019, the demand for wafers was rather low, but in 2020, after the whole world went into quarantine, the demand for computers, tablets, TVs and other equipment that requires chips rose sharply. The demand for wafers has increased so much that Sumco Corp, the second-largest manufacturer of wafers, said that its production is booked until 2026.

However, the production of processors, GPU cards and memory cards requires more than just silicon wafers. After the start of war actions in Ukraine, world manufacturers of semiconductors faced a shortage of neon, which is necessary for the operation of the laser systems used to create the chips. The problem is that the two Russian companies, Ingas and Krion, produce 45%–54% of the world’s supply of neon-containing gas mixtures. How global manufacturers will look for a way out of this situation is not yet clear.

In March 2022, some experts believed that the semiconductor shortage could end in 2023. In particular, the head of Micron Technology, one of the biggest producers of computer memory and computer data storage, believes that starting this year, manufacturers will be able to build up a significant stock of chips as well as arrange supplies. In 2023, there will be no such problems and global companies will largely be able to reach the level of production that they had before the pandemic. 

But the situation in Ukraine can stop this recovery and redouble the deficit of chips, forcing the price to rise with renewed vigor. Recently, Intel has claimed that it has stockpiled and continues to monitor supply disruptions while trying to find alternative sources of neon. Samsung stated that some factories may face shortages, the Dutch ASML, which produces scanners for printing chips that are used by TSMC and Samsung, didn’t hide their concerns and said that over the next two years, producers could face a shortage of major machinery equipment. 

So what will happen to semiconductors in the nearest future, and therefore to equipment? The GPU market could likely recover from the COVID-19 pandemic and the declining demand from miners, but global events are once again putting manufacturers to the test with the lack of components for the production of equipment. Of course, it is worth believing that the business will find the raw materials and build new supply chains, but no one can predict how soon this can happen. In any case, the shortage of semiconductors seems to continue, and GPU card prices will go up again, but in this case, the miners will have had nothing to do with it.

NFTs and the Metaverse are the hottest topics in the cryptocurrency ecosystem right now, but the next big thing might just be decentralized social media. Like decentralized finance, decentralized social media platforms don’t have a centralized governing body and may, someday, provide viable alternatives to established platforms like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok. The technology is currently evolving just beyond the embryonic stage of development.

Yung Beef, or YB — who serves as content lead and community manager at Subsocial — says that centralized social media platforms are unfair to community members and content creators. “It seems pretty obvious that centralized social networks are susceptible to lots of shady stuff, with the mystery algorithms controlling what people see, people getting shadowbanned or banned outright for whatever reason, etc. And it just gets worse when you factor in that a lot of people earn their livelihood on these platforms and their food bill is totally at the whim of the central authority.”

According to Subsocial, the centralized social media industry is plagued by global censorship, a lack of customization, unfair monetization, algorithm dictatorship and a monopoly on network effects. 

Stani Kulechov, the CEO of Aave and a decentralized social media developer, believes that content creators should have a permissionless, censorship-resistant distribution channel with their audience. He tells Magazine that “At least the people that are posting the content, creating the content, consuming it, sharing it — they would definitely benefit from decentralized social media.”

Kulechov made headlines in and outside of the cryptocurrency community last summer when he hinted that crypto giant Aave was considering building “Twitter on Ethereum.”

Since @jack is going to build Aave on Bitcoin, Aave should build Twitter on Ethereum

— stani.v3 (👻,🌿) (@StaniKulechov) July 17, 2021

Michael Marra, founder and CEO of Entre — a social media application that runs on the DeSo blockchain — believes that decentralized social media is really about “giving the power back to the people.” According to him, one of the problems with centralized platforms is censorship, while another is monetization, but more on both of those later.

How does it all work?

Centralized and decentralized social media platforms both utilize some type of social graph — a model of a social network that maps everyone on a platform and how they’re related — and allow users to communicate with each other on a front-end platform. Traditional social media platforms are totally self-contained, and the host company controls the data servers. Twitter owns and controls all its content — all your content. The same is true with Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, etc. Decentralized social media platforms live on public blockchains, and for the most part, anyone, anywhere, can operate a node, access the back end, create an app and curate a feed. 

According to its website, “DeSo is a new layer-1 blockchain built from the ground up to scale decentralized social applications to one billion users.” The blockchain is open-source, with the code and all the data stored directly on-chain. There are over 200 apps deployed on Deso, and users who create a profile in any app can easily take that profile and their community of followers along with them to any app on the blockchain.

This new category of decentralized infinite-state applications that we are exploring with DeSo is a huge and untapped market for the crypto space to disrupt.

With DeSo, we can now enable so much more to live completely on-chain and become truly decentralized like never before.

— DeSo (@desoprotocol) March 24, 2022

Entre, short for “entrepreneur,” is a social Web3 application that runs on DeSo. On Entre, the self-employed, the traditionally employed and any other professional can post Twitter-like content and carry out business transactions. They can conduct meetings, host virtual events and hire staff members, with the app functioning like a decentralized, digitally monetizable alternative to LinkedIn, Zoom and Google Calendar — all jammed together into a single product.

While Entre runs on a social blockchain, the Aave-backed Lens Protocol is deployed on Polygon. Kulechov says that Lens is ”actually a decentralized social graph.”

According to Kulechov, when a user of an app on the protocol creates a profile, that profile is tokenized as an NFT. Whenever someone follows a profile, they create a relationship on-chain that can’t be arbitrarily broken by the platform or by anyone else, as those relationships are also tokenized as NFTs that can be viewed in a digital wallet like MetaMask or on the web on OpenSea.

Subsocial doesn’t consider itself a decentralized social network, rather a platform for building social networks. It allows users to create profiles and customize personal “Spaces” and claims to have serverless public timelines, roles and permissions, user governance, moderation, Spaces for DAOs, and a treasury. The platform runs on the Polkadot and Kusama blockchains, and it recently built its first app, a decentralized Reddit–Medium hybrid.

According to YB, Subsocial plans to remove the profiles in the future. To save space, all content uploaded onto Subsocial (pics, videos and text) is hosted on the InterPlanetary File System, with an IPFS content identifier uploaded to the blockchain. Each IPFS node is hosted by one or more people, and those node operators are in control of what they host on their servers.

While developers at Lens Protocol, Entre and Subsocial build out the next generation of decentralized, Web3 social platforms and apps, other platforms such as Theta and Audius are integrating social media tools into decentralized video and audio streaming services. Theta is a peer-to-peer network operating on its own blockchain, with users sharing bandwidth to relay video to one another. On its website, YouTube co-founder Steve Chen is quoted as saying the project can bring “improved video delivery at lower costs.” Like on YouTube, brands and creators can stream content as followers comment in real time.

Audius, meanwhile, is a decentralized audio streaming platform that runs on Solana and hopes to afford everyone the freedom to distribute, monetize and stream any audio content. Artists can easily upload musical clips to the platform, while fans can listen to original compositions and mixes, curate libraries, and repost, follow, like and share content. It offers the same amount of fun but without middlemen throwing trivial ads your way and then taking a hefty cut from content creators. 

What about the bad guys?

If creators are expected to monitor their own content on a completely decentralized platform like Subsocial, how can the distribution of illegal content and disinformation be controlled? Social media moderation has been a controversial topic for years, and platforms like Facebook and Twitter haven’t always done a good job both filtering out dangerous content and maintaining a commitment to open dialogue. 

YB explains to Magazine that Subsocial is censorship-resistant, while Kulechov says that Lens Protocol “is built completely to be agnostic in the sense that it’s a technical solution, basically to build social media applications.” Entre’s Marra says:

“If it is open, that means anything kind of goes. You can control it to some degree.”

Marra believes that blockchains can be built to facilitate the community’s ability to report things. Community members, especially those with higher authority — like those with lots of followers or a good reputation — can signal that a bad actor is posting dubious content. The offender’s content should then go way down in the feed. Marra argues that blockchain verification will also prevent a lot of “this stuff,” saying “You will instantly know that this person is not legit.” 

According to Kulechov, moderation is all about creating choices for everyone. Lens Protocol has a common social graph where all user information is actively linked, and unlike traditional social media, that social graph is decentralized. Kulechov believes that decentralizing the social graph so that everyone has access to it provides more opportunities to moderate more humanely.

This accessible interconnectivity affords developers opportunities to create algorithms focused on content moderation. It essentially puts the front ends of the protocol, the applications, into a position where they compete to offer accessibility to accurate, appropriate information. Kulechov says:

“Maybe the right type of content moderation might be community-led, where the community’s site people announce themselves and moderate or select the algorithms.”

Subsocial has three levels of moderation. To start, every post is made in a Space. “Think of Spaces like a subreddit, a Facebook group, a Twitter profile or a blog,” YB says. Each Space has at least one owner who can moderate its content. Also, each IPFS node is hosted by at least one community member. Those operators can control what they host on their servers. Lastly, anyone can build a front-end social application on the platform. A front end connected to one of the Subsocial blockchains can read all the content on the chain. The operator can control what is distributed on the front end.

Learn the difference between moderation and censorshiphttps://t.co/zb923stv1o

— Subsocial (@SubsocialChain) March 22, 2022

Still, if a front-end operator and a group of bad actors were determined to disseminate misinformation or illegal content, YB says it could be shut down with an on-chain vote. “[That] would be a big deal and likely a big hassle, but it also would be pointless, as those people could just make another Space right away and continue on.” YB argues that people use the internet to coordinate violence and share illegal content all the time — it’s just hidden, which it still would be, as large social networks built on Subsocial wouldn’t show that stuff.

One thing to note, however, is that centralized social media platforms with the power to shut down a creator or community with the click of a button have struggled for years to contain the distribution of illegal content and misinformation.

As such, even though relying on the community to moderate itself is egalitarian and sounds good in theory, it may not prove effective in practice. Self-moderation on censorship-resistant platforms would likely require fully engaged community members. That may not always be the case in the Web3 environment, as active members of communities need to be present in significant enough numbers to monitor bad actors on any given decentralized network. For example, a recent analysis ranking community engagement in DAOs showed mixed results.

How might a censorship-resistant platform respond when an extraordinarily large community goes off the rails? Considering the massive amount of disinformation that could be generated by an organized, well-funded army of bots, could a universally adopted, decentralized network moderate a community of thousands of such propagandists?

Show me the money — all the money

Equitable monetization for community members and content creators is one of the key features of the decentralized social media ecosystem. Juxtaposed against unbalanced monetization schemes in traditional social media, decentralized social earning could be a game changer for content creators and magnetize universal adoption efforts.

YB tells Magazine, “Personally, I think the monetization stuff will be much more attractive to content creators than any censorship resistance. YouTube, for example, takes 45% of ad revenue, which is pretty insane.” He adds further, ”I’m really interested to see what happens with the tips. I hope we see the emergence of a micro-tipping economy, since it will be so easy. Scrolling through the timeline and see a joke that brightens your morning? Why not tip them $0.50 in a second or two?”

Lens Protocol is taking a hands-off approach to monetization. “We wanted to touch monetization as little as possible and give a lot of space for our developers to come and solve that,” Kulechov says. Lens is currently building a very basic monetization function around content collection and amplification. Whenever creators post music, text, audio or video, followers can then collect that content as NFTs. There are different collection modules, and followers can mint the NFTs themselves. If those followers then amplify that content, the creator collects mirror fees, which is like monetizing a retweet on Twitter.

On the DeSo blockchain, the DESO token can be used to purchase creator coins. BitClout, Diamond and CloutFeed are Twitter-like applications that allow followers who support a particular creator to invest in their coin, exponentially increasing its value. Although not recommended, the coins can be converted back to DESO and actively traded or cashed out for fiat. Entre, according to Marra, isn’t “into creator coins” and is more focused on allowing creators to earn DESO through tipping when they livestream.

Entre users can also sell tickets to in-person or virtual events and charge for private one-on-one services like consulting and coaching. The app offers a Slack- and Discord-like community feature where membership fees can be charged and users can offer services like graphic design. Currently, DESO is the only cryptocurrency accepted on the app, but Marra intends to offer multiple tokens in the future.

Theta has been in the monetization game for some time and offers crypto rewards for creators, fans and hosts. The platform has two tokens: THETA and TFUEL. Owners of THETA, its native token, can participate in governance and earn more THETA by staking or running a node. TFUEL is essentially a utility token for the platform and can be earned by community members for watching streams on Theta.tv or hosting Guardian and Edge Nodes. They can spend TFUEL on real-world merchandise in the TFUEL Shop or use it to buy subscriptions to paid content.

Just got Presessence vol 1 up on @AudiusProject ! LFG – thanks to everyone sharing It on there Right now!

I see the value in web 3 streaming services, along with NFT platforms for songs. It’s important, especially for the transition from web 2. https://t.co/55XIITyUNX pic.twitter.com/2B4YajNpkG

— Domino △ (@dominosmusic) March 8, 2022

Audius, meanwhile, uses its AUDIO token to help artists monetize their work and fans support them. Community members can earn AUDIO for uploads, invites, going mobile, linking social media accounts and sustaining listening streaks. Fans can send AUDIO directly to artists.

Decentralized social media certainly has the potential to tip the equity and privacy scales in favor of users and content creators. It could reshape the social media industry and redefine an era of digital free speech in the Web3 era. But in order to achieve that, it may still need to find an elusive solution to content moderation, and it will need to achieve universal adoption. Thought leaders in the space have their eyes toward the future, with Kulechov saying: 

“Adoption is gonna be a long game, for sure. It might take years to adopt. It’s basically one application at a time.” 

When traders get enough money for life from their Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Dogecoin (DOGE), or any crypto trading plays, what comes next? Crypto-savvy Reddit users shared their best ideas in a lively subreddit.

A user who goes by the tag u/LifeReboot shared how a stroke of luck led to less satisfaction than expected. Because of this, LifeReboot asked the crypto community about their thoughts on what to do next after making enough profit for the rest of their lives.

In a reply, user Adamant27 sent some congratulations and compared life to video games. “you passed a quest called financial stability and independence, but this game called Life has much more quests,” wrote Adamant27. The user encouraged LifeReboot to take on some “bigger quests” like personal development and spiritual enlightenment.

Exploring the world is the answer for Reddit user Snowboarding_kook. In a reply, the Redditor wrote that there’s “nothing better than travel.”

On the other hand, Redditor Feodal_lord believes that disappearing and living without contact with other people is a good idea. The user wrote: “if I had made enough money for my whole life, I would say fuck to society and live my life in isolation.”

Because the creator of the thread didn’t “sound like the greedy crypto maniac,” user Goonzoo suggested launching a crypto project. “Make it unique and let it work as a foundation. […] Maybe it can fill your life in some way,” they wrote.

Related: Answering a morbid question: What happens to your Bitcoin when you die?

The Forbes crypto and blockchain list shows that crypto billionaires increased by 60% within a year. At the moment, the list includes 19 crypto billionaires including Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried and Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong. Newcomers to the list include FTX co-founder Gary Wang and Alchemy founders Nikil Viswanathan and Joseph Lau. 

Waves (WAVES) lost around half its value in April so far and risks further correction due to weakening technical and fundamental factors.

WAVES price risks another 30% decline 

WAVES dropped from nearly $64 on March 31 to around $27.50 on April 7 — down by over 55%. As it fell, the WAVES/USD pair also broke below a key support confluence, hinting further correction.

Notably, the confluence comprises WAVES’ 50-day exponential moving average (50-day EMA; the red wave) and the 61.8% Fib line of the Fibonacci retracement graph — drawn from $64-swing high to $8.34-swing low.

Now broken, they suggest that WAVES’ path of least resistance is to the downside, with $25 acting as interim support due to its historical relevance as a price floor in October 2021 and March 2022.

Additionally, WAVES’ daily relative strength index (RSI) also shows room for a further decline, being only 11 points away from slipping below the “oversold” threshold of 30.

Meanwhile, breaking below $25 would risk crashing WAVES’ price to its 200-day simple moving average (200-day SMA; the orange wave) near $20, coinciding with the 0.786 Fib line, about 30% lower than today’s price.

The bearish setup emerged amid allegations that equaled the Waves Platform with a “Ponzi,” namely a Twitter thread penned by 0xHamZ, who accused Waves’ team of artificially inflating the price by more than 650% from February to March.

Meanwhile, Neutrino USD, a “stablecoin” backed by WAVES reserves, also lost its U.S. dollar peg following 0xHamZ’s accusations, further dampening market sentiment.

Related: Bitcoin slides below $44K in April first as trader warns ‘something is off’ with BTC

Jolyon Horsfall, the co-CEO of NFT prediction platform SparkWorld, noted that the Waves Platform founder, Sasha Ivanov, “will need to step up if the token is to be revived and the project re-aligned on its ambitious path.” He warned:

“For the time being, the dumping is expected to continue, and the WAVES price may fall to its 30-day low of $21.”

Bull flag retest?

However, WAVES shows some signs of defying bearish predictions while keeping its long-term uptrend intact.

Notably, the ongoing correction brings WAVES closer to testing another double-layered support zone, defined by its 20-week EMA (the green wave) and the upper trendline of its previous “bull flag” setup, as shown in the chart below.

A bounce from this weekly support confluence could see WAVES rally to test its “bull flag” target near $70.

The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph.com. Every investment and trading move involves risk, you should conduct your own research when making a decision.

The cryptocurrency market is nearly completely red on April 6 after hawkish comments from multiple members of the Federal Reserve highlighted their opinion that aggressively raising interest rates and cutting bond purchases would need to happen in order to combat inflation. Members did concede that this would result in negative pressure being placed on financial markets and this seems to be exactly what happened on April 6. 

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that the downward move for Ether (ETH) accelerated on April 6 and dropped the top altcoin to a low of $3,178 before the sell-off subsided and the price recovered to $3,200.

Here’s what several analysts are saying about this latest pullback for Ether and what levels of support to keep an eye on in case of a further move to the downside.

Ether could dip to $2,600

The outlook for Ether following a rejection of the monthly resistance at $3,400 was discussed by market analyst and pseudonymous Twitter user Rekt Capital, who posted the following chart noting that if this were to happen, “Ether could revisit $3,000” as indicated by the black line on the chart.

Rekt Capital said,

“But September 2021 has shown that when black gets retested on a dip — downside wicks occur. So if Ether does dip to black, it could wick into the green higher low.”

Based on the chart provided, this would result in a potential drop to $2,602.

Will the $3,200 support hold?

A word of reassurance for concerned Ether holders was offered by crypto trader and pseudonymous Twitter user CryptoBatUSDT, who posted the following chart highlighting a retest of an important support level.

CryptoBatUSDT said,

“The market structure is still bullish, currently in both the Range (Eq) and a Swing Low (HL) zone. Unless this level is lost, I will look to open a long position in these regions.”

Related: Bitcoin price drops to $43.5K, but data and BTC’s market structure project strength

Price is still between the 200-MA and 200-EMA

Further insight into the support for Ethereum at this current price level was provided by crypto trader and pseudonymous Twitter user Don Yakka, who posted the following chart noting the importance of the 200-day moving average (MA) and exponential moving average (EMA).

Don Yakka said,

“Very similar to BTC chart, the 200MA is resistance and the 200EMA is support, as long as 200EMA holds on [the] daily, I would not panic.”

The overall cryptocurrency market cap now stands at $2.003 trillion and Bitcoin’s dominance rate is 41.5%.

The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph.com. Every investment and trading move involves risk, you should conduct your own research when making a decision.

On Wednesday, centralized cryptocurrency exchange Binance launched its new TerraUSD (UST) staking program. Although Binance did not name the underlying decentralized finance protocol responsible for the staking rewards, Do Kwon — Terra Luna’s (LUNA) co-founder — attributed the origins of the high yield to Terra’s flagship Anchor protocol. 

Anchor rate is now available to 30M+ binance users

The anchor yield of web3 is living up to its name.

https://t.co/awubGdRJgP

— Do Kwon (@stablekwon) April 6, 2022

Terra’s (Luna) ecosystem consists of its algorithmic stablecoin UST and governance/equilibrium token LUNA. The Anchor protocol alleges that it operates as a “crypto savings account,” allowing users to deposit their UST and earn up to 20% APY. The savings rate is funded via a combination of borrowers paying interest on UST loans and staking income from their collateral.

At the time of publication, there is a continued imbalance between borrowers and lenders, with 12.4 billion UST worth of deposits relying on income generated by just 3.47 billion UST of loans. Anchor must tap into its reserves to pay out its promised APY when this occurs. According to data from an unofficial tracking resource called Terra.engineer, Anchor has less than 340 million UST remaining in its reserves, compared to approximately 450 million UST last month. Despite the declining reserve count, the Terra development team is using initiatives such as injecting more reserve capital and launching more income-generating methods to maintain protocol. 

Earlier in the day, data from Luna Foundation Guard’s (LFG) official Bitcoin (BTC) address shows that the entity purchased another 5,040 BTC ($222 million), bringing its total stack to 35,768 BTC ($1.577 billion). LFG launched in January to grow the Terra ecosystem and improve the sustainability of its stablecoins. Earlier, Do Kwon said he wanted to build a decentralized foreign exchange, or forex, reserve for UST, utilizing both LUNA and BTC. LFG plans to expand its BTC reserves to $10 billion, with additional purchases after that based on how much UST is minted. 

Bitcoin (BTC), the entire crypto sector and the S&P 500 index are correcting on April 6, which highlights the tight correlation between the two sectors.

Despite the weakness, institutional investors do not seem to be halting their purchases, suggesting that they remain bullish in the long term. Terra used the dip to buy an additional 5,040 Bitcoin, which takes its total holding to 35,768 Bitcoin. 

Terra was not alone in this venture. MicroStrategy, the treasury with the largest Bitcoin reserves, also increased its holdings by 4,197 Bitcoin through its subsidiary MacroStrategy. After the latest purchase, the business intelligence firm holds 129,218 Bitcoin.

Another sign of strong appetite for Bitcoin is seen in the inflows to the two Canadian Bitcoin exchange-traded funds. According to Glassnode data, the funds boosted their holdings to an all-time high of 69,052 Bitcoin, an increase of 6,594 since January.

Could Bitcoin and altcoins enter a deeper correction or will lower levels attract buying? Let’s study the charts of the top-10 cryptocurrencies to find out.

BTC/USDT

After staying in a tight range between the 200-day simple moving average ($48,240) and $45,000 for the past few days, the bears made their move and have pulled the price below the 20-day exponential moving average ($44,567).

The relative strength index (RSI) has dipped to the midpoint and the 20-day EMA is flattening out. This suggests that the bullish momentum could be weakening. If the price rebounds off the 50-day SMA ($41,752), the bulls will again attempt to push the BTC/USDT pair above the 200-day SMA.

Conversely, if the bears sink the price below the 50-day SMA, it will signal that the pair could extend its stay inside the ascending channel. The pair could then gradually drop toward the strong support at $37,000.

ETH/USDT

The failure of the bulls to sustain the price of Ether (ETH) above the 200-day SMA ($3,487) may have resulted in profit-booking by short-term traders. That has pulled the price to the critical support at the 20-day EMA ($3,223).

If the price rebounds off the 20-day EMA, it will suggest that bulls are buying on dips. The bulls will then make another attempt to push and sustain the price above the 200-day SMA. If they succeed, the ETH/USDT pair could start its northward march toward $4,150 where the bears are expected to mount a strong defense.

Contrary to this assumption, if the bears sink the price below the 20-day EMA, the selling could pick up momentum and the pair may drop to the 50-day SMA ($2,907).

BNB/USDT

Binance Coin (BNB) once again failed to break above the 200-day SMA ($468) on April 5. The long wick on the day’s candlestick showed that the bears are defending the 200-day SMA with all their might.

The BNB/USDT pair has dipped to the 20-day EMA ($424). The bears will now attempt to sink and sustain the price below the 20-day EMA. If they succeed, the pair could extend its decline to the 50-day SMA ($398). A strong rebound off this level will suggest that the pair may remain range-bound between the 200-day SMA and the 50-day SMA.

Conversely, if the price rebounds off the 20-day EMA, the bulls will attempt to drive the pair above the 200-day SMA and challenge the resistance at $500.

SOL/USDT

Solana’s (SOL) recovery stalled on April 2 and the price has dipped below the breakout level at $122. The bulls are expected to defend the 20-day EMA ($113) with vigor.

A strong bounce off the 20-day EMA will suggest that the sentiment remains positive and traders are buying on dips. The bulls will then attempt to push the price above the overhead hurdle at the 200-day SMA ($149).

Alternatively, a break and close below the 20-day EMA will suggest that the bullish momentum has weakened. The pair could then drop to the 50-day SMA ($96). A strong rebound off this level could keep the pair stuck between the 50-day SMA and the 200-day SMA.

XRP/USDT

Ripple (XRP) turned down and slipped below the 20-day EMA ($0.81) on April 5. The selling continued today and the price broke below the 50-day SMA ($0.78).

The RSI has dropped into the negative territory and the 20-day EMA has started to slope down, suggesting that bears have a slight edge. If the price sustains below the 50-day SMA, the XRP/USDT pair could drop to $0.70. This is an important level for the bulls to defend because if it gives way, the decline could extend to $0.60.

On the contrary, if the price turns up from the current level and rises above the 20-day EMA, the bulls will attempt to propel the pair above the 200-day SMA ($0.89).

ADA/USDT

The failure of the bears to propel Cardano (ADA) above the overhead resistance at $1.26 may have tempted short-term traders to book profits. That has pulled the price below the 20-day EMA ($1.09).

If the price breaks below the 20-day EMA, the pair could drop to the 50-day SMA ($0.96). The bulls are likely to defend this level aggressively but if the bears overpower them, the ADA/USDT pair could drop to the strong support at $0.74. A strong rebound off this level will suggest that the pair may consolidate between $0.74 and $1.26 for some more time.

Alternatively, if the price rises from the current level, the bulls will again attempt to drive the pair above the overhead resistance. If they succeed, the ADA/USDT pair could rally to the 200-day SMA ($1.47).

LUNA/USDT

Terra’s LUNA token had been in a strong uptrend but the Doji candlestick pattern on April 5 cautioned that the bullish momentum could be weakening. The negative divergence on the RSI also suggested that the bulls may be losing their grip.

The uncertainty of the Doji candlestick pattern resolved to the downside today. The bears will now try and pull the price to the 20-day EMA ($102). This is an important level for the bulls to defend because a strong rebound off it will suggest that the sentiment remains bullish and traders are buying on dips.

Conversely, if the price breaks below the 20-day EMA, the selling could intensify as traders rush to the exit. That may sink the LUNA/USDT pair to the 50-day SMA ($86).

Related: Bitcoin slides below $44K in April first as trader warns ‘something is off’ with BTC

AVAX/USDT

The bulls purchased the dip to the 20-day EMA ($89) on April 4 but they could not push Avalanche (AVAX) above the overhead resistance at $98. This suggests that bears continue to defend the overhead resistance aggressively.

The 20-day EMA is flattening out and the RSI has dropped into the negative zone, indicating that bears have a slight edge. If the price breaks below the 50-day SMA ($82), the AVAX/USDT pair could drop to the next major support at $65. A bounce off this level will suggest that the pair may remain range-bound between $65 and $98 for a few more days.

Conversely, if the price turns up from the current level, the bulls will make another attempt to climb above the overhead zone between $98 and $100.

DOT/USDT

Polkadot (DOT) rebounded off the 20-day EMA ($21) on April 4 but the bulls could not overcome the barrier at $23. This may have tempted short-term traders to book profits.

The DOT/USDT pair has plunged below the 20-day EMA today and the RSI has entered the negative territory. This suggests that the bulls are losing their grip. The next stop could be the 50-day SMA ($19). The bulls are likely to defend this level with vigor but if the support cracks, the decline could extend to $16.

Alternatively, a strong rebound off the 50-day SMA could suggest that the pair may consolidate between $19 and $23 for a few days. The bulls will have to push and sustain the price above $23 to signal the start of a potential new uptrend.

DOGE/USDT

Dogecoin (DOGE) soared above the overhead resistance at $0.17 on April 5 but the bulls could not clear the hurdle at the 200-day SMA ($0.18). This may have attracted profit-booking by the short-term bulls and selling by the aggressive bears, resulting in the sharp reversal today.

The DOGE/USDT pair is likely to retest the 20-day EMA ($0.14). If the price rebounds off this level, it will suggest that bulls continue to buy on dips. The buyers will then again try to clear the overhead hurdle at the 200-day SMA.

This positive view will invalidate if the price continues lower and breaks below the 20-day EMA. Such a move could open the doors for a possible drop to $0.12. The pair could then remain stuck between $0.10 and $0.18 for a few more days.

The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph. Every investment and trading move involves risk. You should conduct your own research when making a decision.

Market data is provided by HitBTC exchange.

According to a new industry report published by DappRadar, the number of users engaging in decentralized applications, or DApps, every day surged 396% year over year to 2.4 million. This is only 5.8% below the same user activity level witnessed in Q4 2021.

The overall growth was impressive, considering that during the quarter, the cryptocurrency sector saw a short-lived bear market, as well as experiencing $1.19 billion in decentralized finance, or DeFi, hacks, and exploits.

Two of the worst affected token bridge protocols were that of Ronin and Wormhole. Last month, Axie Infinity’s Ronin bridge was breached for over $600 million after an attacker used hacked private keys to forge fake withdrawals. Meanwhile, the Wormhole protocol lost $321 million via a minting exploit in February. Though, in a rather heroic move, venture capital firm Jump Crypto dug into its own wallets and replenished the lost funds. 

In addition, the staff at DappRadar wrote:

“The first quarter of 2022 had its ups and downs but was tainted by the war in Ukraine. This was one of the biggest events since the 2008 Global Financial Crisis that shook world markets and had a negative effect on the industry.”

Number of Unique Active Wallets Interacting with DApps | Source: DappRadar

Gaming DApps accounted for over 50% of all user activity in Q1 2022. Simultaneously, nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, generated $12 billion in trades despite warnings of a bubble. In terms of DeFi total value locked, Ethereum (ETH) once again held the top spot with $127 billion, followed by Terra Luna (LUNA) at $29 billion and BNB Chain at $13 billion.

Central bank digital currencies — digital currencies backed by a central bank — have received renewed interest with the United States President Joe Biden’s Executive Order on Ensuring Responsible Development of Digital Assets. Proponents of CBDCs argue that widespread adoption will promote financial inclusion, expand public access to safe money, improve the efficiency of payments and more.

But their rationale remains tenuous. Many analysts and practitioners increasingly view CBDCs as fundamentally at odds with the purpose of cryptocurrency, which is to provide a secure, decentralized peer-to-peer mechanism for transferring funds. And the hypothetical benefits of CBDCs remain hypothetical — no evidence exists yet that suggests any advantages over other examples of distributed ledger technologies in financial services, especially given the new risks they pose.

The status of CBDCs worldwide

Nine countries have already developed their own CBDCs, and the U.S. has joined a list of over 100 countries exploring issuing one. Most CBDCs take a hybrid approach whereby “The central bank issues the CBDC to banks and other and other payment service providers, which in turn distribute the CBDC to users throughout the economy and provide them with account-related services,” according to a recent report by the Hoover Institution.

There are other types, according to leading experts at the Bank for International Settlements — which consists of stakeholders from major central banks. These include a synthetic CBDC, where the consumer has a claim on an intermediary, with the central bank only keeping track of wholesale accounts; and a direct CBDC, where the consumer has a claim on the central bank, with it handling all the retail.

Some scholars have underscored that DLT has a role to play in helping central banks become more efficient and secure, but such technology should be introduced with “a ‘minimally invasive’ CBDC design — one that upgrades money to current needs without disrupting the proven two-tier architecture of the monetary system,” according to Raphael Auer, head of the BIS Innovation Hub Eurosystem Centre, and Rainer Böhme, a professor at the University of Innsbruck.

The fact that central banks are interested in digital currencies is not surprising. As countries look to rebound from nearly two years of lockdowns and other restrictions on mobility, coupled with rising inflation, central banks have been feeling the pressure to promote employment and manage price levels u20 their “dual mandate.” Across the world, central banks have bought a significant amount of bonds, thereby expanding the money supply and arguably further contributing to inflation. For example, the Federal Reserve has expanded the U.S. money supply from roughly $4 trillion to over $20 trillion over the past two years, but we are only now seeing the resulting inflationary effects.

Evaluating the potential benefits

In a 2020 report, the BIS outlined a handful of potential benefits brought up by proponents of CBDCs: financial inclusion, cross-border payments, financial resilience and stability, increased efficiency of fiscal transfers, and privacy. But cryptocurrency fulfills all of these aims better than government-backed currencies.

Let’s take a look at these potential benefits one by one.

Financial inclusion: The expansion of decentralized finance and emergence of nonfungible tokens are already changing the economic landscape. Thousands of content creators have sold NFTs and joined the DeFi community, removing intermediaries and allowing revenues to go directly to the creators.

“We’re entering a ‘Web2.5 era’ where content creators have benefited from the rise of social media, but what they create is owned by centralized groups,” Avery Akkineni, president of VaynerNFT, tells Magazine. “Now they are starting to own the end-to-end process, and we’ve seen some of these creators become wildly successful. […] That is inspiring a new generation of creators.”

Furthermore, existing financial institutions have already expanded access to credit by lowering the barriers to adoption. My research from 2021 found that the expansion of mobile banking in the U.S. since 2014 has been concentrated among those who are younger, single or a part of minority groups.

Even if these patterns were not true, it’s unclear how CBDCs expand financial inclusion.

Cross-border payments and efficiency of fiscal transfers: While financial transactions across borders are already possible, they are time-intensive and costly. However, several Web3 companies enabling cross-border transactions have emerged, including Ripple.

Financial resilience and stability: Resilience is integral to cushion against unanticipated shocks to the system. The 2007–2008 financial crisis in the U.S. and many developed countries was arguably driven by a concentration of risky, securitized assets. In the run-up to the crisis, the number of mortgages increased rapidly, but many new homeowners were not financially prepared to pay their mortgages — a pattern that was, at least partially, influenced by the Federal Reserve through its impact on interest rates and failure to attend to the warning signs.

The financial crisis could have been avoided if these warning signs had been taken more seriously. The United States’ 2011 Financial Crisis Inquiry Report reads: “The prime example is the Federal Reserve’s pivotal failure to stem the flow of toxic mortgages, which it could have done by setting prudent mortgage-lending standards. The Federal Reserve was the one entity empowered to do so and it did not.”

Central banks are making analogous claims to those made in the run-up to the financial crisis when they play down the risks of CBDCs, especially the possible monopolization of the financial system by the central bank, and talk only about their benefits. “A core instrument by which central banks carry out their public policy objectives is providing the safest form of money to banks, businesses and the public — central bank money,” according to the BIS.

Charles Calomiris, Henry Kaufman professor of financial institutions at Columbia Business School, tells Magazine that CBDCs seem more like a power grab than useful financial technology.

“CBDC is the latest attempt to expand their power at our expense by self-interested central bankers, which have done more in developed countries to expand their power at the expense of democracy over the past two decades than any other instrument of government.”

The architectural design of CBDCs matters. If they are designed so that they, even if not explicitly stated, can replace private commercial and retail banking, as the Peoples’ Bank of China has suggested, then central banks will have yet another mechanism for creating money that has no collateral or underlying asset value. Such an approach would have grave inflationary implications.

Last year, several economists published research on CBDCs and bank runs, finding that large-scale intermediation by central banks could lead to them becoming monopolies. Since central banks’ contracts with investment banks tend to be rigid, they have the potential to deter bank runs. Consumers “internalize this feature ex-ante, and the central bank arises as a deposit monopolist, attracting all deposits away from the commercial banking sector,” according to the research’s authors.

A nail in the coffin for privacy

Even though public documents from central bankers talk about privacy as a feature of CBDCs, no explanation exists for how this will work. In contrast, the BIS reported that “Full anonymity is not plausible. […] For a CBDC and its system, payments data will exist, and a key national policy question will be deciding who can access which parts of it and under what circumstances.”

Such a rollout could mean that every central bank would be able to identify each user. Today, a bank cannot tell who is using a euro versus a dollar bill, but “The key difference with the CBDC is the central bank will have absolute control [over] the rules and regulations that will determine the use of that expression of central bank liability, and also, we will have the technology to enforce that,” said Agustin Carstens, general manager of the BIS, during a 2020 panel discussion.

There is little doubt that illicit transactions occur with cryptocurrency, but illicit transactions have always taken place, whether a thousand years ago with gold or today with cash. The question is how to create a framework that preserves privacy and counters illicit activity.

If central banks can track every transaction, what is to stop them from shutting down people’s access to finance, travel and their livelihoods? Furthermore, what would stop central banks from coordinating, as outlined in the BIS’ 2020 report?

“CBDCs don’t just threaten but fully infringe upon our financial autonomy, stripping away our most basic rights and freedoms as enumerated by our forefathers,” Eric Waisanen, co-founder of Hydro.Finance and host of the Secret Code Podcast, tells Magazine. In contrast, “DeFi provides freedom from the alleged protection that strips us of our ability to participate,” Waisanen continues.

pic.twitter.com/VGa6W52a6J

— Sats Symbol (@SymbolSatoshi) March 31, 2022

The future of money and DeFi

The future of finance lies in decentralization. While we have traditionally known and interacted with large, centralized institutions, we have seen a widespread preference for and adoption of decentralized technologies arise from technological advances coupled with a recognition of the ills of centralization.

But DLT, and blockchain more generally, is only a tool. It still needs good governance and proper stewarding. The emergence of CBDCs is likely to centralize the “creation” and flow of finance even further by granting central banks even more authority to issue tokens rather than buy and sell bonds on a somewhat “open” market.

“A CBDC is an authoritarian government’s dream and represents a giant step backward for consumer privacy,” says Paul Watkins, managing director at Patomak Global Partners.

Many architectures for CBDCs have been proposed. There is widespread enthusiasm for the use of DLT in central banking, but not for retail CBDCs that simultaneously can create money without collateral and require individuals to share personally identifiable information. It is important to seriously consider the architecture of a CBDC when thinking about design; otherwise, CBDCs will be launched in competition with the growing move and appetite for decentralization.