Anchor Protocol (ANC), a DeFi platform built on Terra blockchain protocol, rebounded nearly 300% in over a month after bottoming out near $1.26. ANC price went as high as $4.97 on the Bitfinex cryptocurrency exchange on March 3, 2022, breaking above the previous record peak near $4.50 established on Dec. 3 last year. In doing so, the Anchor Protocol also erased all the losses it had incurred during what some called "crypto winter" that started in Q4/2021 — against the prospects of the Federal Reserve's aggressive rate hikes. ANC is the governance token of the Anchor Protocol's decentralized money market …

Terra (LUNA) emerged as one of the best performing financial assets in February, a month mired by geopolitical conflicts and their negative impacts on the crypto market. LUNA decouples from the crypto market LUNA's price surged by a little over 75% to reach $91.50 at the month's UTC close. In comparison, the percentage performance of other top tokens, mainly Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH), in the same period came out to be around 12.25% and 9%, respectively. Interestingly, most of LUNA's gains in February surfaced on the month's last day. The Terra token jumped 26% on Feb. 28, in part …

Stablecoins used to be a sort of taboo subject in the crypto community after it became common practice to criticize Tether’s reserve backing. Are you really a seasoned crypto investor if you haven’t gone down the USDT rabbit hole? Some of those concerns were finally quelled in May 2021 when Tether passed an assurance test by disclosing its reserves for the first time. For some onlookers, the reserve breakdown created more questions than answers due to the stablecoin issuer’s oversized exposure to commercial paper. The stablecoin market has grown leaps and bounds over the past four years. While Tether remains …

A rebound rally in the Terra (LUNA) market this week risks exhaustion as the price retests a key trendline for a potential pullback. Descending channel risks LUNA decline LUNA has been trending lower inside a falling channel—made up of two parallel descending trendlines—since December 2021. In doing so, the Terra token typically tests the lower trendline as support for a rebound to the upper trendline, as shown in the chart below. Similarly, a pullback from the upper trendline sends the price to the lower trendline. For now, LUNA looks poised to repeat the correction move, taking further cues from its …

For a state with a small-town feel, Wyoming moves with big-city alacrity when it comes to things crypto. According to the bipartisan bill introduced into its legislature last week, a Wyoming stablecoin could debut before the end of 2022. The announcement caught even Wyoming banker and cryptocurrency champion Caitlin Long by surprise. “Didn't know it was coming,” tweeted the Avanti Bank CEO. It also raises some questions: Is a stablecoin really needed by Wyoming’s citizens? Is it feasible? Will it upset the state’s commercial banks including its recently chartered special purpose depository institutions (SPDIs) like Avanti which has issued a …

Against the backdrop of an ongoing Russian invasion, the price of Tether's USDT stablecoin on Thursday soared to as high as 36.97 Ukrainian hryvnia (UAH) on Ukraine's Kuna exchange. The total trading volume of all cryptos on the exchange amounted to about $4.4 million in the past 24 hours. During the same period, mid-market rates from foreign exchange data provider XE indicated that the UAH currency had only surged to a maximum of 29.89 per U.S. dollar. In other words, the conversion rate for USDT was much higher than typical UAH/U.S. dollar transactions. USDT has a theoretical peg of one-to-one …

USD Coin (USDC) operator Circle has launched a new account service aimed at helping businesses transact in cryptocurrencies — potentially opening the door to wider mainstream adoption of digital assets. The new business-centric Circle Account allows enterprise clients to deposit, withdraw, receive and store cryptocurrencies and have all payments settled in the USDC stablecoin, the company announced Wednesday. Circle's new account features give businesses the ability to seamlessly integrate crypto payments into their operations and use digital assets as collateral. Account holders can send and receive USDC across eight blockchains, including Ethereum, Algorand, Solana, Stellar, Tron, Hedera, Avalanche and Flow. …

Japan’s biggest financial conglomerate, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG), will abandon its three-year-old blockchain payment project to focus on other digital and fintech initiatives. MUFG officially announced Tuesday the suspension of Global Open Network (GO-Net) Japan, a blockchain-based project aiming at high scalability and multi-connectivity data processing “in response to the rise of the internet of things.” The project was officially introduced back in February 2019, with MUFG joining forces with the United States content delivery network Akamai, planning to create a payment service featuring multiple functions like communication and “management of value through blockchain.” The initiative was first announced …

Terra (LUNA) has fared better than its top crypto rivals when it comes to withstanding the negative market impacts of the ongoing Ukraine-Russia conflict. LUNA's price rallied nearly 18% this week to over $58, more than Bitcoin (BTC), whose returns in the same period came out to be a little over 1.5%. Similarly, the Terra token did better than its rival Ether (ETH), which is up around 4% this week. Over the weekend, Bitcoin fell below its psychological support level of $40,000 as fears of a possible Russian invasion of Ukraine dampened risk-on sentiment. It continued declining on Monday after …

Move aside Bitcoin (BTC), stablecoins are holding the spotlight. Crypto research outlets Arcane Research and CryptoRank confirm that stablecoin supply hit the milestone amount of $180 billion. The growth in stablecoins continues to outpace the rest of the market, up 6% in the past 30 days. In times of market volatility, stablecoins can offer price stability, backed by specific assets or algorithms. Over the month of February, three stablecoins entered the top 10 coins by market cap, as Binance USD (BUSD) briefly entered. According to Arcane Research, the three largest stablecoins, Tether (USDT), USD Coin (USDC), and Binance USD (BUSD) …

USDT stablecoin issuer Tether cut its reserves allocation to commercial paper by more than one fifth between September and December last year, dropping from around $30.5 billion to $24.16 billion. Tether is legally required to disclose its reserves every quarter as part of an $18.5 million court settlement with the Office of the New York Attorney General from February 2021. The firm was alleged to have misrepresented the specific amount of fiat backing USDT in 2017 and 2018. The latest attestation was conducted by Cayman Islands-based Accountants MHA Cayman and provides a breakdown of Tether’s reserves as of 31 December …

The nonprofit organization focused on the open-source stablecoin network behind Terra USD, Luna Foundation Guard, has closed on a $1 billion raise through the sale of LUNA tokens. In a Tuesday tweet, Terra said Jump Crypto and Three Arrows Capital led the $1 billion round with participation from DeFiance Capital, Republic Capital, GSR, Tribe Capital, and others. The platform said proceeds from the sale — $1 billion — would “go towards establishing a Bitcoin-denominated Forex Reserve for UST,” a stablecoin in the Terra ecosystem. 1/ The long awaited [REDACTED] 3 is here! The Luna Foundation Guard (LFG) has closed a …