The Polkadot project released a detailed roadmap on Monday for the highly anticipated rollout of parachains and slot auctions, which should mark the full launch of the protocol. The roadmap is divided into three main stages. The current phase is the Rococo testnet environment, where developers can test mechanisms to communicate between various Polkadot parachains, its analog of shards. The platform uses a mechanism called Cross-Chain Message Passing-lite, or XCMP-lite, to allow parachains to send tokens and generalized messages to each other by going through Polkadot’s relay chain, the central coordinator of the network. The Rococo testnet was launched in …

A large part of the current crypto bull run has been driven by institutional demand. But for the first time, the institutions may be stepping back. According to CryptoQuant, the Coinbase Premium Index — the difference in Bitcoin’s (BTC) price on Coinbase Pro and Binance — has turned negative, which suggests that pro traders may be taking profits. The institutional selling needs to be monitored closely because roughly 3% of the Bitcoin in circulation is held by these investors. If they start to dump their positions, that could result in an exodus by other traders, leading to a sharp pullback. …

The Cardano Foundation's coin ADA, hit its all-time high of $0.97 on Feb. 12, having started the year trading at $0.18, thus entailing 438% gains year to date. Apart from the macro trends in the cryptocurrency industry driving up the price of flagship assets, such as Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) translating to other altcoins, such as LINK, DOT, etc., Cardano’s growth could also be attributed to the network updates that Cardano has been running on its blockchain network. On Feb. 3, Cardano’s development firm Input Output Hong Kong successfully conducted a hard fork and also applied the Goguen native …

Financial regulators across the world finally seem to be warming up to the idea that cryptocurrencies can trade in tandem with stock markets and also in exchange-traded funds (ETF). On Feb. 11, Canada’s Ontario Securities Commission approved the proposal of a Bitcoin ETF by Accelerate Financial, which marks the first approval of a Bitcoin (BTC) ETF in North America. The Australian Securities and Investments Commission has also softened its stance toward a Bitcoin ETF. ASIC commissioner Cathie Armour said a Bitcoin ETF may get the green light if the particular market has proper rules in place. The approval of Bitcoin …

A new report suggests that Cosmos, Polkadot and NEAR could fail to take off if they are perceived to have an issue with centralization — as the example of EOS demonstrates. Non-custodial crypto asset exchange ShapeShift has published a report predicting that Proof-of-Stake scalable smart contract networks Polkadot, Cosmos, and Near will be thoroughly put to the test this year. The report forecasts the networks’ claims of increased scalability without sacrificing security or decentralization will soon be tested. Shapeshift notes the distribution of Polkadot’s and NEAR’s respective native tokens appears quite centralized as a result of “relatively high insider token …

Bitcoin’s (BTC) market capitalization topped $889 billion on Feb. 9, pushing BTC above the value of Tesla and the Russian ruble, according to data from AssetDash. The current rally is longer limited to Bitcoin as several altcoins have been surging in the past few days. This shows the buying interest is broad-based and today the total crypto market cap surpassed $1.4 trillion. While the positive news flow and price rise in most cryptocurrencies may give the impression that the bull run will never stop, traders should be careful because every bull phase witnesses periodic corrections. Another important thing to note …

Equilibrium, a Polkadot-based DeFi project previously known for its EOS presence, is partnering with Curve Finance to bring the latter’s automated market maker platform, Curve, to the Polkadot (DOT) ecosystem, according to an announcement issued on Monday. The plan involves integrating a Substrate-based version of Curve on Equilibrium’s Polkadot parachain and is supported by the Web3 Foundation’s Open Grant Program. As previously reported by Cointelegraph, Substrate — Polkadot’s blockchain building framework — is already showing significant protocol-level interoperability especially in the version 2 launched back in August 2020. Upon full integration, the Curve plugin will allow for a stablecoin exchange …

XRP briefly lost its top-three altcoin position on Feb. 9 after newcomer Polkadot (DOT) overtook its market cap in an ongoing altcoin shake-up. Data from Cointelegraph Markets and CoinMarketCap confirms that XRP is now barely holding on to the fifth-largest cryptocurrency spot and could soon leave the top five altogether. Ripple gets flippled... a second time The new order among large cap altcoins comes as a new "altseason" hits the market, with investors' chosen targets differing considerably from the last in early 2018. Among the victims is Bitcoin Cash (BCH), which as Cointelegraph reported was removed from the top ten …

Binance Labs has led a $2.4 million Series A funding round for Polkadot-based smart contract platform, Plasm Network. Plasm Network's funding round is the first investment made using Binance Labs’ $10 million fund to support projects in the Polkadot ecosystem. Plasm is a leading parachain candidate on Polkadot supporting Ethereum and Layer-2 scaling solutions. Binance Labs is the venture capital and incubator arm of crypto exchange giant Binance. In December 2020, Binance Labs led a $12 million funding round for MATH, a multi-chain assets hub behind MathWallet. In August of the same year it made a strategic investment in decentralized …

With Bitcoin rallying from $30,000 to $42,000 and back again during January, BTC’s annualized volatility rose to levels last seen in April 2020, according to a new report from U.S. crypto exchange Kraken. January was a roller-coaster ride for Bitcoin, with BTC rallying 46% to a new high of $41,989 before retracing 32% to below $29,000. This resulted in the annualized volatility spiking to over 100% — which was last seen 10 months ago during the infamous ‘Black Thursday’ price plummet. In early-March 2020, Bitcoin’s price dove more than 40% in a matter of days from $9,000 to $5,200 — …

Bitcoin (BTC) broke out to a new all-time high today, buoyed by the news that Tesla has purchased $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In addition to the Bitcoin purchase, Tesla also plans to offer its customers the option of buying products with BTC. Instead of converting BTC payments to fiat upon receipt, Tesla may decide to add it to its reserves. In addition to Tesla’s purchase, legendary investor Bill Miller also plans to increase his exposure to Bitcoin by investing over $300 million in Grayscale Bitcoin Trust. These purchases by …

Bitcoin (BTC) has attracted several institutional investors in the past few months, but with the market capitalization sustaining above $700 billion, many more institutions are likely to contemplate buying Bitcoin. Similarly, Ether (ETH) with a market cap of about $180 billion also cannot be ignored by the investors. The institutional adoption of the top two cryptocurrencies is likely to attract numerous venture capitalists and early investors into smaller projects that have gained a decent size but have not yet reached their full potential. Although the risk is high in such investments, the returns could be equally attractive. For such investors, …