Amid the ongoing growth in cryptocurrency adoption worldwide, countries like Indonesia and Chile have seen a significant influx of public interest in cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC), according to new data. According to a Friday report by Australian blockchain education startup Coinformant, Indonesia has been leading the world in crypto interest in 2021. In Coinformant’s report, Indonesia achieved the highest crypto interest score with 5.73 out of 10, beating other counties in a combination of four factors including the number of Google searches, the number of published crypto articles, engagement level increases and crypto ownership. Chile ranked second with a score …

Emerging markets across Central and Southern Asia have registered a dramatic uptick in cryptocurrency transactions, highlighting a diverse range of motivations among locals for gaining exposure to digital assets such as Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH). New research from blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis finds that crypto transactions surged 706% in Central and Southern Asia and Oceania — a broad region that includes countries such as India, Pakistan and Vietnam — between July 2020 and June 2021. In dollar terms, the value of the transactions amounted to $572.5 billion, or 14% of the global transaction value. Institutional and large payments accounted …

The region of central, northern and western Europe, or CNWE, has emerged as the world’s most active cryptocurrency block, receiving over $1 trillion worth of digital assets over the past year, according to new research from blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis. The report, which was released Tuesday, found that the CNWE region accounted for 25% of global crypto activity between July 2020 and June 2021. The region witnessed a sharp uptick in transaction volume across all crypto sub-categories, especially decentralized finance, or DeFi. Chainalysis describes crypto transactions as anything involving trade, investments and business dealings. Europe has also become a hotbed …

California has emerged as the most crypto-ready jurisdiction in the United States thanks to the proliferation of cryptocurrency ATMs and growing interest in digital assets among the state’s population, according to new industry research from review site Crypto Head. With a score of 5.72 out of 10, California edged out New Jersey (5.44), Texas (5.28), Florida (5.03) and New York (4.29) in the crypto-ready index. The state’s point total was also 2.54 points higher than the national average. The results were tabulated using metrics such as crypto-related Google searches, the presence of Bitcoin (BTC) and other cryptocurrency ATMs, and the …

Morgan Stanley, one of the largest banks in the United States, is setting up a new crypto-focused research division. The Wall Street megabank has appointed Sheena Shah as lead cryptocurrency analyst for its dedicated cryptocurrency research team, Bloomberg reported on Monday. Shah worked as Morgan Stanley’s lead currency strategist covering G10 currencies for more than eight years and contributed to the bank’s crypto-related research efforts. In the new role, Shah will reportedly focus on analyzing the impact of cryptocurrencies on equities and fixed-income investments such as treasury and corporate bonds. Announcing the news in a memo to staff, Morgan Stanley’s …

The Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IITM) has become a member of the Hedera Hashgraph council for decentralized governance. IITM is one of the top institutes for technical education in India, which falls under the direct jurisdiction of India’s Ministry of Education. As a member of the Hedera Governing Council, IITM has become one of the 39 global organizations that run initial network nodes for governing the Hedera public ledger built on distributed ledger technology (DLT). In addition to advancing DLTs capabilities in education and research, IITM plans to test use cases around public blockchains for payments via Hedera Consensus …

Franklin Templeton became the latest investment company to go on a cryptocurrency hiring spree by posting fresh job applications seeking crypto professionals. The American asset manager is looking for two mid-senior level experts to lead its crypto trading and research efforts, according to LinkedIn job postings published on Sept. 1. Franklin Templeton’s newly opened crypto positions target professionals to work with the “largest, most liquid and tradable crypto assets,” including Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH). The company’s crypto research analyst will be responsible for creating and maintaining valuation models, and keeping portfolio managers and senior executives informed of related business …

Web 3.0, interoperability and layer zero are all terms tossed around when describing Polkadot. But what do they mean, and how will they impact the internet and cryptocurrency market? Cointelegraph Research’s new report explores how Polkadot is tackling distributed ledger scalability and centralization of the web simultaneously. For starters, imagine a world where Facebook is replaced by a decentralized social media application built on Polkadot. This is what projects like Subsocial are building in their platforms, which let users determine what data to keep private and what to share. Users can leverage their data by monetizing it on Ocean Market, …

Despite Bitcoin’s (BTC) price growing 45% over the past 30 days, cryptocurrency investors are not moving their holdings, according to new data. Blockchain analytics provider Glassnode released its new “The Week On Chain” report on Monday, noting that Bitcoin has continued rallying to new multi-month highs despite divergence in on-chain activity during the week ending on Monday. The report discovered that Bitcoin on-chain activity, such as the amount of entity-adjusted transactions, has still not responded to the ongoing bullish action, remaining at historically low levels of between 175,000 and 200,000 daily transactions. Bitcoin on-chain activity dropped this low after May …

Vietnam, India and Pakistan are leading the world in terms of cryptocurrency adoption, underscoring the resilience of peer-to-peer monetary systems in emerging economies. Chainalysis’ 2021 Global Crypto Adoption Index evaluated 154 countries based on three key metrics: on-chain cryptocurrency value received, on-chain retail value transferred and peer-to-peer exchange trade volume. Each metric was weighted by the purchasing power parity. Vietnam received the highest index score for its strong performance across all three metrics. India was a distant second, but still performed exceptionally well for on-chain value received and on-chain retail value received. Pakistan came in third with a strong showing …

Promising innovations in DeFi have given rise to a new breed of stablecoins that have the potential to reduce volatility and promote greater decentralization, according to a new research report from ShapeShift. In its latest New Frontiers research study, ShapeShift explores the recent growth of “algorithmic stablecoins,” which are cryptocurrencies that automatically adjust an asset’s supply and other important parameters to reduce volatility. In his analysis, author Kent Barton, who heads research and development at ShapeShift, focuses on three assets: RAI, FRAX and FEI. Related: ShapeShift to decentralize entire company, plans for largest airdrop in history Barton summarizes the potential …

Cryptocurrency adoption has seen an accelerated growth this year, with the global crypto population doubling since January, according to a new report. Major digital asset company Crypto.com released its latest study on measuring global cryptocurrency users on Thursday, discovering that the number of crypto users worldwide has more than doubled from 100 million in January to 221 million in June. The firm pointed out that crypto adoption has been growing rapidly this year, as it only took four months to nearly double the crypto population from 106 million in February to 203 million in May. For comparison, it took nine …