The supply of wrapped Bitcoin (wBTC) dropped to its lowest since May 2021 after the second-largest single-day burn on Feb. 27. A total of 11,500 WBTC worth about $260 million linked to now-bankrupt crypto lender Celsius was burned, turning its growth rate to negative. The current total supply of the wrapped token is 164,396 WBTC, with a monthly growth rate of -7.39. WBTC is an Ethereum-based ERC-20 token that mirrors the value of Bitcoin and is pegged 1:1 with the Bitcoin (BTC) price. Bitgo co-developed wBTC in 2019 alongside blockchain interoperability protocol Ren and multi-chain liquidity platform Kyber. wBTC is …

Bitcoin (BTC) miners consume massive amounts of energy to secure the network and process transactions. While the network offers many benefits, like banking the unbanked, Bitcoin’s energy consumption is a controversial topic for critics. However, new solutions are emerging to reduce the environmental impact of Bitcoin mining. The Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance estimates that the Bitcoin network currently consumes about 109.34 terawatt-hours (TWh) per year. Bitcoin miners use this energy to generate hash keys. When they guess the correct key, they receive BTC as a reward for their contribution to securing the network. Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance The …

Crypto industry has been raising its lobbying efforts amid the crypto winter that began last year. In 2022, the market participants spent $25.57 million on lobbying in the United States. This number appears in a study, published by the Money Mongers on Feb. 23. The count is based on data from OpenSecrets, a nonpartisan nonprofit, tracking the lobbying expenses (which should be publicly accessible by law) in the U.S. According to this data, the general rise of the industry’s lobbying budgets made up 922% in five years between 2017 and 2022. In 2017, when the price of Bitcoin rocketed for …

Bitcoin (BTC) exchanges have less BTC to buy than at any time since early 2018, the latest data shows. On-chain analytics firm Glassnode confirms that as of February 2023, exchange reserves are at five-year lows. "Wild stat" shows Bitcoin supply maturation The latest statistics to reflect the determination of Bitcoin hodlers, major exchanges’ BTC balances are in “down only” mode. As of Feb. 27, the latest date for which data is available, the platforms tracked by Glassnode held a combined 2,272,798 BTC. It was in March 2018 that the number was so low, which March 2020 represents the current all-time …

Ras Al Khaimah, one of the seven emirates that make up the UAE, is set to launch a free zone for digital and virtual asset companies as the country’s approach to the industry continues to attract global crypto players. The RAK Digital Assets Oasis (RAK DAO) will be a “purpose-built, innovation-enabling free zone for non-regulated activities in the virtual assets sector.” Applications will open in the second quarter of 2023, the statement said. The free zone would be dedicated to digital and virtual assets service providers in emerging technologies, such as the metaverse, blockchain, utility tokens, virtual asset wallets, NFTs, …

The community supporting Illuvium, an interoperable blockchain game, has demonstrated the power of decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) after blocking a scheduled nonfungible token (NFT) pack-opening event between Illuvium CEO Kieran Warwick and Three Arrows Capital (3AC) founder Su Zhu. Warwick was scheduled to go against Zhu in what’s called an “Influencer Illuvitars D1sk Battle” where prominent crypto personalities go against each other to open NFT packs. However, due to the controversies surrounding Zhu and 3AC, the Illuvium community expressed concerns over the potential risks of being associated with Zhu, who currently faces various accusations of unethical behavior. Influencer Illuvitar D1sk …

In the aftermath of the FTX collapse, Forbes published an article that focused on the recent “shuffling” of funds by the cryptocurrency exchange Binance. However, the following day on Feb. 28, Binance co-founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) took to Twitter to tackle the FUD. In response to the article, the CEO said: “They seem to not understand the basics of how an exchange works. Our users are free to withdraw their assets any time they want.” In his series of tweets, he addressed various claims from the Forbes article. This included what it called a “backroom maneuver” when Binance …

Crypto ATM installations have seen a steady decline across the world over the past several months. While some ATMs have been taken out of operation due to geopolitical tensions and revenue decline, some providers like Bitcoin Depot have started converting their physical Bitcoin (BTC) ATMs to software. Bitcoin Depot recently converted all of its 7,000 crypto ATMs and kiosks to a software-based offering powered by BitAccess. The software conversion drive came after Bitcoin Depot acquired majority equity in BitAccess back in November 2022. Months before the deal, Bitcoin Depot had revealed plans to go public in 2023 via an $885 …

The Ethereum blockchain's Sepolia testnet has undergone a successful upgrade that simulates the upcoming Shanghai hard fork that is expected to take place in March on the network's mainnet. The "Shapella" upgrade, which combines the names of the upcoming Shanghai and Capella hard forks, was successfully implemented on the testnet on Feb. 28. Sepolia testnet has successfully upgraded to Shapella! Some of the Prsym validators are offline due to the old geth version. They will come online in the next 10 mins! Next stop: Goerli pic.twitter.com/pb43Gq7w9C — terence.eth (@terencechain) February 28, 2023 Shanghai is the fork’s name on the execution …

One of the original core developers behind Bitcoin (BTC), Luke Dashjr, has taken to social media to call out an auction site that has used his name and code without his consent to create and sell a “misleading” NFT. The core developer said he hasn't been the first Bitcoin developer to have his name or his work used in this way. In a Feb. 27 post on Twitter, the developer revealed a non-fungible token (NFT), featuring a picture of code he wrote, was sold at auction site for 0.41 Bitcoin (BTC), or roughly $9,500 at the time of writing. I …

A wallet provider for the Algorand (ALGO) network, MyAlgo, has warned its users to withdraw funds from any wallets created with a seed phrase amid an ongoing exploit that has seen an estimated $9.2 million worth of funds stolen. MyAlgo tweeted the advice on Feb. 27 adding it still doesn’t know the cause of the recent wallet hacks and encouraged “everyone to take precautionary measures to protect their assets.” IMPORTANT: ⚠️We strongly advise all users to withdraw any funds from Mnemonic wallets that were stored in MyAlgo. As we still don't know the root cause of recent hacks, we encourage …

Anatoly Yakovenko, the founder and CEO of Solana Labs has downplayed claims that Solana's network outages were being caused by a high volume of validator messages and its on-chain voting system clogging its consensus layer. While the Solana Foundation confirmed in a Feb. 27 post that the “root cause” of the recent 20-hour network outage is still not clear, the CEO responded to speculation that Solana’s decision to include on-chain votes as transactions is a “massive design flaw” that has led to its many outages. The controversial thread in question was posted by Twitter user DBCryptoX earlier on Feb. 27 …