The KuCoin cryptocurrency exchange is partly restoring deposits and withdrawals following a major hack. As KuCoin officially announced on Oct. 7, the platform has completed the wallet security upgrade for major cryptos like Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), and Tether (USDT). Following the upgrade, KuCoin has resumed the deposit and withdrawal service of BTC, ETH, and ERC-20-based USDT. According to the announcement, USDT running on other blockchains like EOS, Tron, and Omni is not yet available for withdrawals. KuCoin stated: “KuCoin is gradually restoring the deposit and withdrawal services of all tokens, and the full service of USDT will also resume …

The DeFi sector is still going strong with the newly launched yield farming platform APY.Finance attracting more than $67 million in locked funds within one hour of launching liquidity mining earlier today. APY.Finance’s mining contracts incentivize users to provide liquidity in the form of the DAI, USDC, and USDT stablecoins, with users rewarded with the platform’s governance token, APY. The first month will see 900,000 APY tokens mined, the official blog post outlined, but “incentivization details” will vary month-to-month. The total amount of APY to be mined will total 31.2 million tokens, or 31.2% of total supply. The APY token …

Researchers at the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance recently revealed that 100 million people around the world currently hold Bitcoin (BTC) and other blockchain-based assets. In 2018, the 2nd Global Cryptoasset Benchmarking Study estimated the number of identity-verified crypto users at about 35 million globally. As of Q3 2020, there are up to 191 million accounts opened at crypto exchanges — a figure which doesn’t include self-hosted wallets. The researchers explained the significant increase: “This 189% increase in users may be explained by both a rise in the number of accounts (which increased by 37%), as well as a greater …

The surging DeFi sector has resulted in a mass minting of Tether in 2020 — including $3B last month alone — which has pushed its market capitalization over $15 billion. At the beginning of the year there was just over $4 billion USDT in circulation, and today that figure is over $15 billion. DeFi has been the driving force behind the Tether mining machine as more and more liquidity pools are based on stablecoins. It was reported that Tether’s average daily transfer value had exceeded that of PayPal late last month as demand for the stablecoin continues to surge. Tether …

Mike McGlone, Senior Commodity Strategist at Bloomberg, is convinced Bitcoin will continue to appreciate thanks to its fixed supply coupled with increasing demand. “I don't see what [could] make it stop doing what [it’s] been doing for the last 10 years. And that's going up”, he told Cointelegraph in a recent interview. McGlone sees Bitcoin’s capped supply as the main feature. He said that this potentially makes it a better store of value than gold, the total amount of which is unknown. Given the fixed supply, Bitcoin is going to appreciate as demand for it increases. McGlone points at the …

New data from CryptoQuant, an on-chain analytics firm, shows $113 million worth of Binance USD (BUSD) has flowed into Binance exchange over the past week. This means BUSD stablecoin now has the highest potential buying power over all other USD-based stablecoins except for Tether (USDT). BUSD inflow to Binance. Source: CryptoQuant Binance’s new USD-backed stablecoin is ERC-20-based and was launched in 2019 in partnership with Paxos. Since then, BUSD has steadily been gaining traction as its volume increased and recently surpassed that of USD Coin (USDC) on Sept. 4. Main USD-backed stablecoin contenders - 24h volume (USD). Source: Skew Binance …

On August 20, a Tether swap worth $1 billion happened — it involved Binance, Bitfinex, and a major fire dumpster on TRON (TRX) blockchain. Tether flows. Source: Flipside Crypto. From time to time, the news of Tether burning some of its supply on one blockchain and then minting it anew on another appears in the headlines. Although it sounds easy enough, in reality, it involves quite a bit of planning and more importantly — trust. Tether $1 billion swap transactions. Source: Cointelegraph. During the six-transaction swap that spanned two blockchains and took 1 hour and 1 minute to complete, the …

The supply of the Coinbase-backed stablecoin USD Coin (USDC) has grown by 250% since the start of 2020, including an 80% expansion in just the past two months. After starting the year with a nearly $520 million market cap, USDC now ranks as the 16th-largest crypto asset with a $1.86 billion capitalization — beating out all other major stablecoins except for the $14.5 billion Tether (USDT) by at least four times. Meanwhile, other stablecoins (most of which are pegged to the value of $1 US) have also seen significant growth this year, with DAI and Binance USD expanding by 970% …

The rise of DeFi protocols and the demand for tokens in liquidity pools may be contributing to a huge surge in the supply of stablecoins. According to an Sept. 3 tweet from Coin Metrics co-founder Nic Carter, the current supply of stablecoins Binance USD (BUSD), Dai (DAI), HUSD, Paxos Standard Token (PAX), USD Coin (USDC), USDK, Tether (USDT), USDT_ETH, and USDT_TRX has been increasing by roughly $100 million daily for almost two months. “Everyone got so excited about DeFi no one pointed out that stablecoins have been adding $100m/day since mid-July,” said Carter. “DeFi yields/interest rates are clearly a vacuum …

Data from on-chain analytics firm, Flipside Crypto, reveals that members of the decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem are turning to USD Coin USDC in order to interact with DeFi protocols either by earning high-yield income on lending protocols like Compound and Aave. Users are also providing liquidity to liquidity pools like Uniswap and Curve, the latter of which offers stablecoin to stablecoin trading. Following the launch of Curve’s governance token, CRV, on August 14, there was a surge in USDC on-chain activity. The launch of the token has also helped Curve earn the third place in terms of value locked, following …

Tether (UDST), the world’s largest stablecoin by market capitalization, has again surpassed major altcoin XRP. On Sept. 1, Tether surpassed XRP as the third-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, becoming the second-largest altcoin after Ether (ETH). As of press time, USDT market cap accounts for more than $13.4 billion, according to data from crypto analytics website Coin360. XRP is now the fourth-largest coin by market cap at $13 billion. The latest movement in ranking is not new to the crypto market in 2020. Tether surpassed XRP as the third-largest crypto in May 2020. Both cryptocurrencies have significantly increased their market cap …

At $11,400, Bitcoin (BTC) is ripe for a fresh price surge thanks to stablecoin investors buying up cheap coins, data suggests. Highlighting the latest readings from its stablecoin supply ratio (SSR) metric on Aug. 26, on-chain monitoring resource Glassnode forecast upside for BTC/USD. Stablecoin supply ratio “3x stronger” than July 2019 SSR refers to the potential buying power of stablecoins over Bitcoin. A low Bitcoin price allows stablecoin owners, for example, on exchanges, to purchase more of the BTC supply. This demand pushes the price of Bitcoin up, given its predictable, verifiable supply and high stock-to-flow ratio. As the price …