The total crypto market capitalization reached the important milestone of $2 trillion on April 5. As cryptocurrencies increase in value, they are likely to attract further investments from institutional investors because they can no longer afford to neglect it. Less than three months ago, the crypto market had reached the $1 trillion in market cap for the first time ever. This rate of growth shows that investors are hugely bullish on the potential of the sector and the ones who delay their investment decisions may have to enter at much higher levels. Ark Invest founder and CEO Cathie Wood is …

A new cross-chain automated protocol based on Ethereum and Polkadot says it is using two parachains in its quest to deliver interoperability and layer-two scaling. KwikSwap enables users to swap tokens, create new markets and participate in yield farming by providing liquidity and engaging in staking. The project’s objective is to provide developers, liquidity providers and traders with an opportunity to participate in a decentralized financial marketplace that is open and accessible to all. At present, KwikSwap’s focus is on developing and integrating its testnet on Plasm and Acala Network — with both layer-two scaling solutions described as “best in …

Historical trends act as a gauge for traders to assess the possibilities for the future. April has been a bullish month for Bitcoin (BTC) with eight monthly closes in the green and only two instances of negative returns. Danny Scott, the CEO of the Bitcoin exchange CoinCorner, said that Bitcoin could rally to $83,000 if it emulates its average April return of 51% as it had over the past 10 years. This could be one of the reasons why miners have started holding their positions instead of selling at the current levels. Lex Moskoviski, the CIO at Moskoviski Capital, recently …

According to a recent research note by JPMorgan, institutional investors have withdrawn about $20 billion from their gold investments since mid-October and during the same time frame, institutional inflows into Bitcoin (BTC) have increased by $7 billion. The bank said, “any such crowding out of gold as an 'alternative' currency implies big upside for Bitcoin over the long term." JPMorgan believes that Bitcoin’s declining volatility could increase adoption from institutional investors. If that happens, the value of the private investments in Bitcoin may mirror that of gold and this gives Bitcoin an upside target of $130,000 in the long term, …

Polkadot and Chainlink have announced the release of Chainlink’s Price Feeds as a module, or “pallet” in Polkadot terminology, for the Substrate blockchain framework. The release means that any project building on the Substrate framework — which includes Polkadot and Kusama parachains, as well as independent blockchains — can integrate Chainlink oracles through a simplified library. The announcement comes as the latest result of a long-standing collaboration between Chainlink and Polkadot, now offering a tangible product that can enable a number of DeFi-centric use cases on Polkadot. The integration as a Substrate pallet means that it is up to each …

Coinbase Ventures, the investment arm of the San Francisco-based digital currency exchange, has thrown its weight behind a layer-one blockchain designed to bring full-service DeFi to the Polkadot ecosystem. The investments are focused on Acala, the Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible blockchain that is building a host of DeFi capabilities on Polkadot, as well as Karura, which is building a DeFi ecosystem on Kusama. Acala has already built four core products for the Polkadot ecosystem: Liquid DOT staking, a stablecoin, an automated market maker decentralized exchange and a sovereign wealth fund. The amounts allocated to Acala and Karura were not disclosed. According …

Following in the footsteps of Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs has announced plans to allow its wealth management clients to trade in cryptocurrencies and other digital assets. In an interview with CNBC, Mary Rich, the global head of digital assets for Goldman Sachs private wealth management division, said that the rollout may happen sometime in the second quarter of 2021. Bitcoin adoption by two of the world’s preeminent investment banks is likely to force other banks to walk down the crypto path sooner than later. The arrival of fresh money from the clients of these legacy institutions may further increase demand …

Crypto exchange platform Crypto.com has reportedly led an $18.9 million private funding round for Enjin’s new NFT blockchain platform. Enjin announced the news on Wednesday with DFG Group, BlockTower and Arrington XRP Capital among other investors in the private sale. Dubbed “Efinity,” the platform is an NFT blockchain built on Polkadot that will reportedly offer greater scalability for participants in the expanding NFT space. Detailing the technical specifications of the new NFT blockchain, the announcement stated that Efinity will have an initial throughput capacity of processing transactions every six seconds. The project team plans to utilize proof-of-stake consensus to achieve …

A decentralized platform that provides infrastructure services for DApp developers and users says its goal is to deliver safety and stability. According to Apron, the world remains reliant on the centralized artifacts of the Web 2.0 era — and its network is designed to serve as the foundational layer for the next generation. While the team acknowledges that Ethereum has contributed to DApps exploding in popularity, they say operating nodes on this blockchain is both expensive and energy intensive — prompting a centralized support structure to emerge. Apron Network is designed to shake things up by improving the infrastructure service …

Appearing on Bloomberg, Kraken CEO Jesse Powell explained why he believes dollar-based long-term price predictions for Bitcoin are flawed, emphasizing the inflationary nature of fiat currencies. Responding to a question asking Powell for end of year price predictions, Kraken’s CEO said: “I think I said Bitcoin is going to infinity and that’s kind of hard to comprehend because I’m measuring it in terms of dollars.” Offering alternative measures for valuing Bitcoin, Powell speculated the value of Bitcoin may increase from its current 'price' or one BTC per Tesla Model 3 to “one Bitcoin per Lambo” by the end of the …

PureStake, the company behind the Moonbeam and Moonriver networks, two parachain candidates for Polkadot and Kusama, respectively, announced a successful $6 million raise. The funding round was led by CoinFund and included participants such as Binance Labs, ParaFi, Coinbase Ventures, Fenbushi Capital, IOSG Ventures. Some previous seed investors, who had funded the project in September 2020, also joined. These include investors like the Polkadot-centric Hypersphere Ventures, Hashkey, Arrington XRP, A195, KR1, D1 Ventures, Mechanism Capital, Divergence Ventures, and Signum Capital. The latest PureStake round comes as the Polkadot ecosystem starts gearing up for parachain auctions. Though most parachain candidate projects …

On Monday Visa announced that it had launched a pilot program with Crypto.com to enable its partners to settle fiat transactions by sending USD Coin (USDC) stablecoin to Visa’s Ethereum address at Anchorage digital bank. This step by Visa shows that legacy finance companies are increasing their adoption of cryptocurrencies. According to a PwC report reviewed by Bloomberg, crypto mergers and acquisitions soared to $1.1 billion in 2020 compared to $481 million in 2019. The increase in these deals is likely to surpass the 2020 numbers on every single metric with the arrival of large investors and institutional players according …