According to a press release published on Feb. 16 by Norway's National Authority for Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and Environmental Crime (Økokrim), authorities have seized 60 million Norwegian Kroner ($5.85 million) in stolen cryptocurrencies linked to the Axie Infinity Ronin Bridge hack last March. According to senior public prosecutor Bender, "Økokrim is good at following the trail of money. This case shows that we also have a great capacity to follow the money on the blockchain, even if the criminals use advanced methods." According to Bender, Økokrim worked with FBI agents and the U.S. Department of Justice to track …

Axie Infinity (AXS) has rallied 135% month-to-date to reach approximately $14 on Jan. 23, its highest level in two months. Nonetheless, the AXS/USD pair could suffer major losses in the coming weeks owing to a flurry of negative technical and fundamental indicators. Axie Infinity price prints "gravestone" doji The AXS price formed a "gravestone doji" candlestick on Jan. 23, which technical analysts view as a bearish reversal pattern. A gravestone doji appears when an asset's opening, closing, and the lowest price comes to be nearly identical except for the highest price, as shown in the chart below. The long upper …

Despite the bullying that gamers inflict on traditional gaming companies dipping their toes into nonfungible tokens (NFTs), executives working within the NFT gaming industry are hopeful that more traditional gaming firms will jump into the space this year. From mainstream gaming companies jumping in, to the relevance of NFT gaming models like play-to-earn (P2E) and move-to-earn (M2E), various industry professionals shared their insights on NFT gaming trends in 2023. Aleksander Larsen, the co-founder of Sky Mavis, the team behind the popular P2E game Axie Infinity, told Cointelegraph that it’s just a matter of time until more big players enter the …

Derivatives marketplace CME Group is planning to launch reference rates and real-time indices for three metaverse crypto assets, allowing investors to track pricing data more reliably using a methodology commonly used in traditional finance. Beginning Jan. 30, CME Group and CF Benchmarks will launch reference rates for Axie Infinity (AXS), Chiliz (CHZ) and Decentraland (MANA), the company announced on Jan. 5. The reference rates and indices are not tradeable products but instead can be used by investors to “price sector-specific portfolios, develop structured products … And manage price risk around various Metaverse-based projects,” said Giovanni Vicioso, CME Group’s head of …

Cointelegraph looks back on the best and worst-performing cryptocurrencies of 2022 among the top 100 assets by market capitalization. We used the highest and the lowest year-to-date (YTD) returns through the close of Dec. 25, 2022. Overall, Cryptoindex.com 100 (CIX100), an index that tracks the 100 best-performing cryptocurrencies, fell nearly 68% YTD, suggesting most top coins underperformed in 2022. Stablecoins are naturalomitted from the list below. Similarly, coins tracking the value of gold and similar mainstream assets have also been ignored. Instead, the coins mentioned below include decentralized currencies, smart contract tokens, exchange tokens, and others. Top five crypto of …

2022 has been a bumpy year for the cryptocurrency market, with one of the worst bear markets on record and the downfall of some major platforms within the space. The global economy is beginning to feel the consequences of the pandemic, and clearly, this has had an influence on the crypto industry. Below is a breakdown of some of the biggest disappointments in the crypto space this year. Axie Infinity’s Ronin Bridge hacked In March of this year, Ronin, the blockchain network that runs the popular nonfungible token (NFT) crypto game Axie Infinity, was hacked for $625 million. The hacker …

The relief rally in the United States equities markets took a breather this week as all major averages closed in the red. Traders seem to have booked profits before the busy economic calendar next week. The S&P 500 index dropped 3.37%, but a minor positive for the cryptocurrency markets is that Bitcoin (BTC) has not followed the equities markets lower. This suggests that crypto traders are not panicking and dumping their positions with every downtick in equities. The range-bound action in Bitcoin suggests that traders are avoiding large bets before the Federal Reserve’s rate hike decision on Dec. 14. However, …

Blockchain gaming is only four years old — a toddler compared to the rest of the industry. It has a lot of growing up to do, particularly when it comes to play-to-earn games. I’m a 28-year game industry veteran. I’ve produced 32 titles in that period of time on everything from Sega Genesis to Oculus Rift. Some of them were great. Many were forgettable. I didn't hear much chatter about blockchain gaming from traditional developers and players until Axie Infinity began to take off. Cut to the peak of 2021, and the game had nearly 2 million players logging on …

The metaverse is a futuristic iteration of the internet, featuring a digital economy and an immersive virtual environment alongside other interactive features. This relatively nascent space has gained so much traction in recent years that conservative estimates suggest that by 2024, its total valuation could top $800 billion. Meta (the parent body behind Facebook and Instagram), Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, Nike and others have made Fortune-100-sized metaverse splashes. But with great valuations comes great scrutiny from increasingly tech-savvy financial regulators. Unlike traditional tech products, which often spend years putting growth over revenue, some metaverse projects push questionable monetization schemes on their …

The blockchain-based gaming industry will need to look at localized strategies to attract Web3 gamers, says decentralized gaming guild Yield Guild Games (YGG). Speaking with Cointelegraph at the 2022 Tokyo Games Show last week, Andy Chou, YGG’s head of ecosystem development, and Brian Lu, partner of Taiwan-based VC firm Infinity Ventures Crypto (IVC) gave a rundown of YGG’s plans moving forward, including how it is using its subDAOs. YGG was initially launched in the Philippines in late 2020, but following an early-stage investment from IVC, the duo teamed up to expand YGG across the globe via subDAOs, initially starting in …

For nearly a year now, a mysterious Axie Infinity wallet has been quietly amassing billions of Smooth Love Potion (SLP), the in-game cryptocurrency powering one of the industry’s most popular play-to-earn (P2E) crypto games. Today, the anonymous whale wallet now holds a little over 22 billion SLP — more than 50% the total circulating supply of the token. The problem? No one knows who it belongs to and what their intentions are. The wallet in question was brought to Cointelegraph’s attention by Axie Infinity player and tech co-founder Michael Benko, who first caught wind of this mysterious wallet on Aug. …

Play-to-earn (P2E) blockchain-based games gathered investors’ attention in late 2021, with Axie Infinity leading the pack with over 2 million active users. In P2E games, players are awarded tokens or nonfungible token assets (NFTs) as they progress throughout the game. These digital assets can be sold using marketplaces and cryptocurrency exchanges, generating income in a decentralized manner. However, there is a large discrepancy between P2E and traditional PC and console gaming experiences. In that sense, crypto games are a couple of decades behind due to the restrictions imposed by blockchain technology. Yes, most crypto games lack a decent user experience …