The value settled on the Bitcoin network has been surging recently, reaching a new daily all-time high last week. Bitcoin’s daily settlement value hit an all-time high on Wednesday, with $31 billion worth of transactions being settled on-chain using the Bitcoin network. The record high marks an increase in the network’s daily settlement volume of approximately 40 times since the beginning of 2020. There was $31 billion of value settled on the bitcoin network in a single day last week. This is an all-time high for a single day of settlement value. The global, decentralized payment system continues to become …

Financial services company MoneyGram International has partnered with the Stellar Development Foundation to enable consumers to send money using Circle’s popular stablecoin, USD Coin (USDC), and convert directly to and from fiat. Per a Wednesday announcement, MoneyGram has integrated support allowing crypto wallets connected to the Stellar Network to access its global retail platform. Working alongside Circle, MoneyGram will also enable “near-instant backend settlement,” account funding and local fiat withdrawals using the USDC stable token. United Texas Bank will act as the settlement bank to complete the process within the regulatory framework. “As crypto and digital currencies rise in prominence, …

Block production on Blockstream’s Liquid network has resumed after technical problems related to a functionary upgrade caused many transactions to queue for hours. In a Monday update from a Liquid oversight board member identified only as Wiz, Liquid’s failsafe mode was activated yesterday as “an unexpected issue occurred causing block signer nodes failing to validate certain parameters against each other.” As a result, the network stopped producing blocks and transactions steadily queued in the Liquid mempool for roughly 22 hours, starting at approximately 5:19 pm Eastern Time on Monday. Wiz reported Liquid developers have upgraded 10 of the 15 functionaries, …

High transaction costs have been a thorn in the side of investors and developers for more than a decade and the issue became worse in 2021 after the emergence of decentralized finance (DeFi) and nonfungible tokens (NFT) led to record-high levels of activity across the cryptocurrency ecosystem. Since the completion of Ethereum's London hard fork, cross-chain bridges and layer-2 solutions have been revised as options for mitigating the high fees on the Ethereum network. In the past two weeks, Celer, a layer-two scaling solution that utilizes off-chain transaction handling to help increase the throughput capacity of its network, has seen …

Crypto payments are becoming increasingly popular as Bitcoin (BTC) and other digital assets continue to go mainstream. This has become the case for both crypto holders and non-crypto owners who are primarily interested in the concept of using cryptocurrencies for payments. Recent data has found that 93% of crypto users surveyed would consider making purchases in crypto. The report further revealed that 59% of consumers who don’t hold crypto would be interested in using it to make purchases in the future. As such, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that major payment providers like Mastercard have been ramping up their …

The competition among layer-one smart contract platforms has been on the rise in the past couple of months as traders and developers continue to embrace Ethereum network alternatives that offer faster transaction times and lower fees. According to a recent report from Delphi Digital, the price of Ether (ETH) has remained relatively flat over the past month, while competitors suc as Solana (SOL) and Fantom (FTM) have seen their prices rally more than 200% during the same time. One of the drivers of the rallies seen in Fantom (FTM), Avalanche (AVAX) and Terra (LUNA) is the fact that each has …

The power of the Dogecoin meme is strong despite transaction levels of Dogecoin (DOGE) hitting the lowest they’ve been since 2017. Multiple firms have made DOGE adoption plays this week, including Robinhood, which confirmed that it was going to roll out a new crypto wallet feature in its app next month supporting DOGE deposits and withdrawals. The meme coin’s co-creator, Billy Markus (who no longer works on the project), stated via Twitter earlier today: “Okay we are allowed to overreact now Robinhood wallets is huge news for Dogecoin - it opens up so many users to the real utility of …

Interoperability has become one of the driving themes within the crypto market and as the blockchain ecosystem evolves into an interconnected web of layer-one protocols, the importance of communication and efficiency among decentralized applications (dApps) will also increase. Ren (REN), a blockchain protocol designed to provide interoperability and liquidity between different blockchain platforms, has started gaining traction over the past month and a half as activity in the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector has been on the rise. Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that after reaching a low of $00.41 on Aug. 9, the price of REN has …

As cryptocurrency investments get more popular in Russia, the country’s central bank is actively working to curb perceived suspicious crypto activity as well as block some crypto purchases. The Bank of Russia has started working with local banks to make them halt payments to cryptocurrency exchanges in order to protect customers from “emotional” purchases of crypto. Sergey Shvetsov, the first deputy governor at the Bank of Russia, argued that the new measures aim to protect Russian investors from potential losses in case the cryptocurrency market “crashes to zero,” local news agency RIA Novosti reported Wednesday. The latest anti-crypto move comes …

Block data from Blockchain.com reveals that a colossal Bitcoin (BTC) transaction worth $2 billion was processed on Monday night. Despite the enormous financial value, the unknown wallet holder only paid 0.00001713 BTC fees equivalent to $0.78. Although it is unknown what the purpose of this transfer was, or indeed which individual or entity enacted it, what has clearly been showcased is the enormous potential of financial transactions utilizing cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies. However, this is not the first instance of a transaction of this magnitude with minimal fees. Back in August 2020, a Bitcoin transaction worth $1 billion was recorded …

A blockchain project says that it has successfully completed one of the biggest protocol changes in its history. Lisk says the migration from Mainnet v2 to Mainnet v3 heralds the start of a whole new era for its network — eliminating weaknesses related to fees and its consensus algorithm. Simultaneously, it perfectly sets the stage for an upcoming interoperability release. The blockchain’s users can now benefit from an “extremely secure” account address system that comes equipped with built-in error detection for typos. Addresses are also now longer, and it is hoped that this will reduce the likelihood of address collisions. …

Macrina Kgil, chief financial officer of crypto wallet provider and exchange Blockchain.com, said an initial public offering for the platform could happen as early as 2023. In a Forbes interview released on Monday, Kgil said Blockchain.com could consider an initial public offering in 18 months or more. The company had a $5.2 billion valuation following a $300 million funding round in March and a $120 million round in February. At the time of the former, CEO Peter Smith said the company was “carefully considering its public-market options.” Major cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase did not officially go public on the Nasdaq until …