Polkadot's DOT coin has witnessed massive upside moves recently as traders assess the cryptocurrency's entry into the United States-based digital assets trading platform Coinbase Pro and the upcoming auctioning of parachain slots atop Polkadot's testbed version of Kusama on June 15. The DOT/USD exchange rate reached $26.44 on June 14, following a roughly 37% upside move that started on June 13. Nevertheless, entering the Asia-Pacific and European trading hours on June 15, the pair corrected by more than 4.5%, hitting an intraday low of $24.25. Initial upside moves in the DOT market surfaced in the wake of the Bitcoin (BTC) …

Bitcoin (BTC) has risen above the psychological resistance at $40,000 following a series of positive news flow over the past week. The first bit of bullish news that impacted the price of Bitcoin was a tweet from Tesla CEO Elon Musk who said the carmaker wil accept Bitcoin payments if more than 50% clean energy is used by Bitcoin miners with a “positive future trend.” Another piece of news that may have boosted the recovery in Bitcoin was Paul Tudor Jones' suggestion that 5% of every investment portfolio have exposure to Bitcoin, which is equal to that of gold, cash …

Bitcoin’s (BTC) failure to rise above the critical $40,000 to $42,000 resistance zone is keeping crypto traders on tenterhooks. Some analysts view the sharp rebound from $31,000 level as a sign of accumulation at lower levels while others believe the failure to cross above the overhead resistance indicates that Bitcoin is still not out of the woods yet. JPMorgan’s cryptocurrency market analysts, led by global market strategist Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou, pointed out that after the recent fall, the Bitcoin futures market has shifted from contango to backwardation for the first time since 2018. The analysts believe this is a warning of …

Stake Technologies Inc., an infrastructure provider for decentralized applications and Web 3.0 protocols, has raised $10 million in strategic investments to help build out the Polkadot and Kusama ecosystems through its wholly owned Plasm and Shiden networks. The funds will be immediately deployed to help Stake Technologies complete a successful parachain lease offering, or PLO, both on Kusama and Polkadot, the company announced Friday. The Kusama PLO will be conducted through the Shiden Network parachain, while Plasm Network will be dedicated to Polkadot. Stake Technologies has adopted a “crowdloan-centric strategy” for securing the Shiden parachain lease, which refers to one …

The cryptocurrency market flashed bullish on Wednesday as Bitcoin’s (BTC) price reversed course and rallied 20% to $37,500. For the past few weeks, analysts have been debating whether or not BTC was entering a long-term bear trend, and the argument has been further complicated by a mixture of positive and negative headlines, including the adoption of Bitcoin as legal tender in El Salvador and authorities in China ordering Chinese search engines to block results for searches related to the top crypto exchanges in the country. Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that the price of Bitcoin has surged …

Bloomberg Intelligence senior commodity strategist Mike McGlone believes that Bitcoin (BTC) is more likely to rally to $40,000 than slump to $20,000. This bullish outlook seems to be shared by traders as Bitcoin initiated a sharp recovery today. On-chain data also suggests that long-term holders (LTH) have again started accumulating Bitcoin after booking profits during the rally from $10,000 to $64,000. The total number of Bitcoin held by these long-term holders is 2.3 million more than what they held at the peak of the 2017 bull market. This shows the veteran traders remain bullish about the future prospects of Bitcoin. …

United States-based cryptocurrency exchange Kraken has announced a “first-of-its-kind” parachain auction platform enabling clients to participate directly from the exchange. In a blog post on Tuesday, Kraken revealed the new platform will enable users who qualify to pledge support for Kusama projects vying for a parachain slot by staking Kusama’s KSM tokens. The rewards for contributors who support a winning bid vary and can include referral bonuses, early participation bonuses and airdrops. Polkadot’s multi-chain ecosystem will use sharded sidechains to process transactions in parallel. These Parachains are acquired in the auction process whereby projects try to outbid each other for …

Dominic Williams, founder of Dfinity and its Internet Computer, has slammed the scaling solutions put forward by Polkadot and Ethereum for offering a disjointed user experience. The self-described “blockchain maximalist” criticized Ethereum’s burgeoning ecosystem of second-layer scaling solutions, describing Ethereum as starting to resemble a ridiculously elaborate “Rube Goldberg machine” of “layer-two cloud applications.” Williams asserted layer twos cause points of friction for Ethereum users and exposes them to counterparty security vulnerabilities, emphasizing that more than half of Ethereum’s nodes are hosted by Amazon Web Services: “A lot of these proof-of-stake networks today that people invest in are really just …

Polkadot and Kusama creator Gavin Wood has published a tentative schedule for the much-anticipated Kusama parachain slot auctions. According to a blog post posted on Tuesday, the first parachain auction slot will open on June 15 at 12:00 pm Central European Summer Time. The tentative schedule, subject to the approval of the Kusama Council and other KSM stakeholders, will see the maiden parachain auction concluded by June 17, with the bidding period continuing until June 22. If the Kusama Council approves the schedule, then the first-ever parachain slot auction winner could emerge by 11:00 am on June 22. The second …

United States Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen defended President Joe Biden’s latest massive spending package while speaking to Bloomberg. Yellen said it would be “a plus” for society even if it resulted in a higher interest rate environment. If rates inch higher, traders will explore the best possible options to hedge their portfolios. While gold is down about 2.5% year-to-date, Bitcoin (BTC) is still up 22% during the same period, even after the massive plunge in May. Bitcoin’s outperformance may not go unnoticed and several institutional investors are likely to make it a part of their portfolio along with gold. London-based …

Bloomberg senior commodity strategist Mike McGlone believes Bitcoin (BTC) is more likely to turn up and rally to $100,000 rather than correct to $20,000. In the June edition of the Bloomberg Galaxy Crypto Index report, McGlone said that Bitcoin’s correction had not dented its foundation and it was "stronger, greener and less extended" than in April. While Bitcoin has yet to witness a surge in demand, data from Coinshares show crypto funds have turned the corner and after two weeks of outflows, investors have pumped $74 million into cryptocurrency. Ether (ETH) products were leading the inflows with $47 million being …

Polkadot (DOT) and Kusama (KSM) rose in tandem on June 3 as traders assessed a venture capital firm's major investment into their blockchain ecosystems. Dubbed as Master Ventures, an Asian blockchain incubator and venture capitalist announced that it had launched a $30 million venture capital fund called Master Ventures Polkadot VC Fund. In a press release published Wednesday, the firm said that its fund would "support and finance the Parachain bids" of tier-1 blockchain projects that want to win a Parachain slot on the Polkadot Relay Chain. Master Ventures also noted that its proceeds would also assist early-stage projects in …