Global crypto exchange Crypto.com is looking to strengthen its foothold in the United States with the acquisition of IG Group's stakes in two exchange platforms. Crypto.com announced that it is purchasing the U.S.-regulated North American Derivatives Exchange (Nadex) and the Small Exchange for a reported $216 million. The deal is expected to close in the first half of 2022, following regulatory approval. Both based in Chicago, Nadex offers retail investors derivative products while the Small Exchange is known for its futures offerings, enabling Crypto.com to provide traditional instruments to its U.S. customers. Crypto.com co-founder and CEO Kris Marszalek said that …

Today Ether (ETH) price briefly touched $4,760, exciting investors and reminding the world that the altcoin is a mere 2.2% below the $4,870 all-time high reached 20 days ago. While the spot price action might be intriguing, let’s see what’s happening in Ether’s derivatives markets. While it is possible to draw a descending channel that shows support at $3,960, today's 5.4% positive move seems decoupled from Bitcoin's (BTC) negative performance. Earlier today, commodities and stocks took a hit after the U.S. Federal Reserve acknowledged that inflation is more than just a "transitory" trend and Fed chair Jerome Powell said that …

Denver-based investment firm Kelly Strategic Management has filed for an exchange-traded fund (ETF) offering exposure to Ethereum (ETH) futures contracts. The move comes just three months after VanEck and ProShares suddenly withdrew their ETH futures ETF applications on the same day in August. According to a Nov. 29 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Kelly Ethereum Ether Strategy ETF will invest in cash-settled Ether futures contracts traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME). Bloomberg’s Senior ETF analyst Eric Balchunas noted on Twitter today that Kelly’s Ether ETF may have a slim 20% chance of getting approval, …

The performance of cryptocurrencies in the past 7 days might have seemed slightly unexciting, especially since the total market capitalization increased by “only” 1.8% to reach $2.7 trillion. However, even with the muted price action, some altcoins managed a decent rally. Bitcoin (BTC), on the other hand, was down 6% until Nov. 28, but it still managed to close the week up 1.5% after a $3,200 rally on Sunday night. Metaverse tokens are still pushing to new highs The metaverse sector continued to outperform with Gala (GALA), The Sandbox (SAND), and Decentraland (MANA) among the top 5 gainers. While few …

Deribit exchange is the absolute leader in the Bitcoin (BTC) options markets and on Nov. 24 the 25% delta skew indicator signaled that sentiment among pro traders was becoming “more bearish overall.” We've seen 25-Delta put skew moved from around 0% to almost 10-15% pending time to expiry since beginning of Nov implying a more bearish overall sentiment. Premiums for downward protection are getting more expensive. In the short term, this expiry has a Max pain of $58k. https://t.co/jhpT1riX3g — Deribit (@DeribitExchange) November 24, 2021 Bitcoin price appears to following a descending channel since Nov. 9, so a “bearish” signal …

Ether (ETH) traders might have a few reasons to panic after today's 13% drop down to $4,100. The swift pullback appears to have broken a 55-day ascending channel that had a target at $5,500. Those not worried about technical analysis will understand that the cryptocurrency's 3.4% daily volatility justifies the 10% negative price swing. Still, one should not disregard externalities such as the United States infrastructure bill approval on Monday. The legislation requires that digital asset transactions worth more than $10,000 are reported to the Internal Revenue Service. It remains unknown whether that will be applied to individuals and businesses …

Dogecoin (DOGE) is potentially at risk of losing critical support if the price falls from the ascending channel traded in for the last 53 days. Although technical analysis is not an exact science, a daily close below $0.26 will likely invalidate the current movement. Aside from the Bitcoin-driven headwinds, which are weighing on DOGE price, this week, the meme token underwent a software upgrade and users were requested to implement version 1.14.5. Two important security patches were involved: "Remote Code Execution in Dogecoin QT" (CVE-2021-3401) and "Sensitive Information Exposure on Unix platforms" (CVE-2019-15947). The latest release finalized a new minimum …

As many have come to realize, Bitcoin (BTC), while offering many opportunities, is a volatile cryptocurrency, one that is no stranger to fluctuation in its prices. Like other volatile assets in traditional markets, many traders have looked to derivatives trading to help mitigate some of these risks. However, the same diverse set of professional-grade derivatives that investors have come to know didn’t always exist in the digital space of crypto. BitMEX, a platform established in 2014, arose to address this need as a Bitcoin-only platform for margin and settlement. Since then, the evolution of the cryptocurrency landscape towards stablecoins has …

Google’s parent company Alphabet has made a $1 billion equity investment in the Chicago Mercantile Exchange Group, the exchange responsible for many crypto derivatives products. In a Nov. 4 notice to investors, the CME Group announced the $1 billion investment from Alphabet in addition to a 10-year strategic partnership with Google Cloud aimed at accelerating the exchange’s move to the cloud and changing the way global derivatives markets operate. Google made the investment through the company’s nonvoting convertible preferred stock. "Through this long-term partnership with Google Cloud, CME Group will transform derivatives markets through technology, expanding access and creating efficiencies …

Whenever there is relevant growth in the number of derivatives contracts currently in play (open interest), it usually means that more traders are involved. In futures markets, longs and shorts are balanced at all times, but having a larger number of active contracts allows the participation of institutional investors that require a minimum market size. However, in Polkadot's (DOT) case, price crashes have often been anticipated by this indicator breaking the $1 billion mark. The April 17 crash happened after DOT reached its $48.30 all-time high, which led to a $1.2 billion futures open interest. Over the following week, the …

Ether (ETH) pundits have been shouting that the $5,000 price is 'programmed,' since 2018 and some go even further by calling for $20,000 over the long-term. $5000 $ETH. It is programmed. — Koroush AK (@KoroushAK) October 29, 2021 A portion of these bullish calls are based on ETH 2.0 staking and the reduced inflation resulting from EIP-1559. At this time in 2017, $BTC was around $2k Just 7 months later it was almost $20k What do you think happens when the world wakes up to the APR and deflationary aspect of $ETH that is coming in less than 2 months? …

Meme coins burst onto the scene in early 2021 and helped kickstart the bull market after Dogecoin (DOGE) rallied above $0.01 to new highs while being shilled by the likes of Elon Musk and Mark Cuban. Shortly afterwards, Dogecoin clones and other canine-themed tokens popped up to catch the wave of bullish momentum and Shiba Inu (SHIB) was one of the projects that quickly caught wind and sailed higher. Now that Bitcoin has hit a new all-time high again, it appears that the meme tokens are ready to continue their run and this time they're not waiting for the big-name …