Optimism Token Prices Slide 7% Ahead of $580M OP Unlock, Doubling Token Supply

The floor price of the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) collection has slumped to a five-month low of 55.59 ether (ETH), according to Cryptowatch data. The slide in non-fungible token (NFT) prices occurred after pseudonymous holder 'franklinisbored' said on Twitter that he sold the majority of his collection. On-chain data shows that the user sold at least 27 BAYC NFTs over a 12-hour period, securing 1439.5828 ETH ($2.8 million) in the process. Franklinisbored explained his decision was due to 'unfortunate' real-life issues that prompted him to liquidate his NFTs. He fell victim to a rug pull on a nearly 2,000 ETH investment, which appeared 'credible' due to who else had invested in it. ApeCoin (APE), the native governance token for the Bored Ape Yacht Club ecosystem, remains flat over the past 24 hours in terms of its dollar valuation despite falling against ether trading pairs.Traders who have bet on a USDC revival are in healthy profit, but downside risk remains if the stablecoin depegs again. According to DeFiLlama, there are $70.8 million in positions that can be liquidated between $1.00 and 90 cents. Two recently filled positions on Compound are worth $20.7 million and $15.4 million, respectively. If USDC hits 99 cents, the first position will be liquidated, and if it hits 93 cents, the second position will be liquidated. The immediate panic appears to be over with USDC regaining its peg on Monday, but the risk of liquidation remains. Traders using DeFi protocols to bet on a USDC revival over the weekend are at risk of eight-figure liquidations if the stablecoin loses its $1 peg again this week.The foundation behind layer 2 blockchain Optimism has sold 116 million OP tokens ($157 million) to seven separate buyers, according to an announcement on the Optimism governance website. The token sale was described as a 'private' and 'planned' event with the tokens originating from an unallocated portion of the OP Token treasury. Optimism's treasury remains at around $1.25 billion, all of which is made up of its own token, DefiLlama data shows. The seven buyers will be allowed to delegate the tokens to third parties in order to participate in blockchain governance. The foundation also issued its third community airdrop earlier this week, with over 31,000 users receiving a share of 19.4 million tokens. Circulating supply, however, remains relatively low compared to the total supply with a further 570 million tokens being allocated to future airdrops. OP's circulating supply is 18.59% of its total supply, according to CoinMarketCap. OP is currently trading at $1.35 having lost 2.19% of its value over the past 24 hours, according to CoinDesk data.

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Crypto Markets Look to Recapture Momentum Following Down Week

ApeCoin DAO has passed a community proposal that would see the launch of an Accelerator to support projects utilizing apecoin tokens (APE) and bolster the Bored Ape Yacht Club and ApeCoin ecosystems. The new AIP-209 will incubate and launch community-approved projects that focus on improving the value of the BAYC NFT collection and other projects that use ApeCoin. The 'Ape Accelerator' aims to engage the ApeCoin community as initiators, voters, and participants. Initiators can submit proposals for projects to be incubated, while voters can use their APE tokens to vote on whether the proposed projects should be launched. Participants will be able to support approved projects by purchasing NFTs and other yet-unspecified tokens. Projects which finally launch on the Accelerator will utilize apecoin, which may ultimately accrue value as they generate revenue and returns for holders. ApeCoin was initially issued as a governance token by creator Yuga Labs to holders of the popular BAYC NFT collection, which is composed of 10,000 unique images of cartoon apes that sell at $83,000 apiece as of Thursday. These tokens find use in other Yuga Labs projects, such as Otherside, Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC), CryptoPunks, MeeBits, and Bored Ape Kennel Club (BAKC) – all popular and influential NFT collections. The launchpad within Ape Accelerator will initially operate on the Ethereum network and feature a tiered structure for participation, based on users' APE stakes and qualifying NFT holdings.GMX, the largest protocol on Arbitrum, has announced its integration with Chainlink's low-latency pricing oracles to enhance its derivatives and perpetual swap exchange. The move marks a shift towards low-latency trading in the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector, as trading firms and hedge funds require faster platforms to execute sophisticated trading strategies without delays. The integration follows a community vote, with over 96% of votes approving the integration and 2 million GMX tokens being used to vote. The low-latency oracles will help mitigate the risks of front-running and bring the industry one step closer to the performance level currently existing outside of it. GMX contributors have been working with Chainlink Labs since last year on the specifications of the new oracles. The total value locked (TVL) on Arbitrum is at $2.1 billion, with $567 million of that value from GMX, according to DefiLlama data. The surge in GMX's native token has seen a 78% increase since the turn of the year, as capital continues to flow to Arbitrum-based protocols.A rise in open interest shows more participation from crypto traders and a bullish market sentiment, a trading firm said.Open interest in bitcoin (BTC) across crypto derivatives exchanges has surged to $10 billion, a five-month high after leverage subsided in the wake of FTX's collapse in November, according to data from Coinalyze.A rise in open interest, which is a metric that assesses the value of all unsettled derivatives positions, alongside an increase in price is often used to confirm the legitimacy of a move. At the time of writing, bitcoin was trading at around $30,000 after it surged to a 10-month high of $30,540 on Tuesday.Zahreddine Touag, head of trading at Woorton, a crypto trading firm and liquidity provider, said that bitcoin broke out in a 'global risk-on environment,' with the Nasdaq also rising by 10% in the last 30 days.'We think this move is driven by technicals, BTC broke a major resistance at $28.5k and rebounded on its 2023 bullish trendline,' Touag said.'We noticed futures open interest has been moving up vertically which shows more participation from crypto traders and a bullish market sentiment,' he added.'For now, we do not see signs of extreme exuberance; indeed, the fear and greed index is at 61, funding rates are still negative on many exchanges for BTC while short-sellers did not capitulate yet. We will monitor these metrics to predict a potential trend reversal.'It's worth noting that an increase in open interest means that whilst short-sellers have added to their shorts in this region, traders betting on long trades are doing so with leverage that may unwind if price begins to reverse.A total of $98 million in crypto derivatives positions have been liquidated in the past 24 hours as bitcoin momentarily slipped below $30,000, according to CoinGlass.UPDATE (April 10, 2023, 20:03 UTC): Updates quote attribution.Edited by Parikshit Mishra.

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Kokomo Finance Developers Accused of $4M 'Exit Scam'

Investors in the Hector Network, a stablecoin project, are demanding that the group's leaders kill it faster after the project suffered major losses from the Multichain bridge's collapse. The community is angry over the timeline for liquidation, which could take six to twelve months, and the fact that the project's remaining $16 million treasury may be whittled away by legal fees and other expenses. The situation highlights the messiness of operating a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) and the complexity of unwinding such a project. The article also mentions that the DAO never approved the creation of a corporation, and that the project's leaders plan to proceed with liquidation in the British Virgin Islands. The community is crying foul over the lack of transparency and the fact that they were bamboozled. The article quotes a former employee of the group and a prominent figure in the Hector community, who say that the project's ambitions were too broad and that infighting and delays drained the treasury. The article also mentions that investors had identified Hector as a risk-free value trade and that some had already been pushing for a rage quit before the announcement of liquidation.Aventus (AVT), the native token of a blockchain service provider of the same name, has shed 4.2% to $1.22 Wednesday morning, with volatility spiking on minimal liquidity following a decision to pause a planned token split. The move was met with disappointment among the community after a December governance vote voted in favor of the split. Although AVT trades on Coinbase, daily volume remains low at just $65,000, and market depth – a metric that assesses how much capital it would take to move an asset by a certain percentage – is minimal at around $3,000 per 2%. The AVT token was issued in 2017 and hit a record high of $6.905 at the start of 2018. It currently has a market cap of $7.3 million, according to CoinMarketCap.Shiba Inu developers are working towards a public restart of the Shibarium network after a much-hyped launch was marred by network issues and a faulty bridge. The network was closed to the public following the issues, but developers are now monitoring validator data and transactions before a planned reopening. The project's key developer, Shytoshi Kusama, announced that the network is almost ready to reopen and has implemented new mechanisms to prevent a repeat of the outage. The Shibarium network is an Ethereum layer-2 network that uses SHIB tokens as fees and has a focus on metaverse and gaming applications. A testing period for Shibarium saw significant success, but the launch was plagued by issues, causing SHIB prices to plunge 10%. Developers have since responded to the outage, stating that there was no bridge issue and that the problem occurred due to an unprecedented mass influx of transactions from users. The network is set to reopen once the errors are fixed, and validators are already being allowed to start taking initial steps for the reopening. SHIB prices were down 4.3% in the past 24 hours, according to CoinGecko data.

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Ether Holders Embrace Near Month-Long Wait for Staking ETH

A new report by on-chain analytics firm Santiment suggests that pepecoin (PEPE) may face challenges in its rise to the top of meme coins due to the absence of retail investors. Despite its stellar rise to a $1.5 billion market cap in a few weeks, pepecoin's trading volume of $2 billion is significantly lower than that of shiba inu (SHIB) and dogecoin (DOGE) during their peak. The report notes that retail participation in the market for PEPE is far less than what DOGE and SHIB experienced in previous years, which could result in dwindling volumes for meme coin projects among retail traders. However, PEPE's social volume within the crypto media is on par with DOGE and SHIB during their peak periods. Some pepecoin holders remain bullish on the token's potential, citing its popularity among influential Crypto Twitter users and the general populace. Despite the challenges, the report suggests that PEPE has untapped potential for growth when overall market conditions are better.GoldenTree Asset Management has moved the majority of its SUSHI token holdings, sparking fears in the Sushi community that it is exiting its position. At press time, GoldenTree's crypto wallet held just $1 million in SUSHI tokens, a precipitous drop from its nearly $7 million in exposure earlier this week. The move comes as Sushi, a decentralized exchange for trading cryptocurrencies on the Ethereum blockchain, faces fresh scrutiny from U.S. regulators. SUSHI is the governance token for Sushi DAO and gives its holders a voice in how the exchange operates. It was trading at $1.22 immediately before Tuesday's news but has fallen 11% in the days since and was around $1.08 at press time, according to CoinGecko. A GoldenTree employee who goes by MarkOKW, who last October announced the firm's SUSHI investment, didn't immediately comment. Grey declined to comment on GoldenTree's SUSHI position. On-chain activity reveals how GoldenTree has shuffled its holding in recent days. The asset manager started the week with xSUSHI tokens worth over $7 million. Then on Wednesday, it swapped 4.4 million of those tokens for 5.95 million SUSHI tokens that it had staked with Sushi. CoinDesk identified the wallets using Nansen. On Wednesday night and Thursday morning, it sent two batches of tokens valued at $5.4 million total to an address controlled by crypto trading desk Cumberland. Cumberland sent the first half to a Binance deposit address Wednesday night; the other half hadn't moved out of Cumberland's wallet at press time. Members of SUSHI's Discord server speculated the on-chain activity indicated GoldenTree had already sold its position.GoldenTree Asset Management has moved the majority of its SUSHI token holdings, sparking fears in the Sushi community that it is exiting its position. At press time, GoldenTree's crypto wallet held just $1 million in SUSHI tokens, a precipitous drop from its nearly $7 million in exposure earlier this week. The move comes as Sushi, a decentralized exchange for trading cryptocurrencies on the Ethereum blockchain, faces fresh scrutiny from U.S. regulators. SUSHI is the governance token for Sushi DAO and gives its holders a voice in how the exchange operates. It was trading at $1.22 immediately before Tuesday's news but has fallen 11% in the days since and was around $1.08 at press time, according to CoinGecko. A GoldenTree employee who goes by MarkOKW, who last October announced the firm's SUSHI investment, didn't immediately comment. Grey declined to comment on GoldenTree's SUSHI position. On-chain activity reveals how GoldenTree has shuffled its holding in recent days. The asset manager started the week with xSUSHI tokens worth over $7 million. Then on Wednesday, it swapped 4.4 million of those tokens for 5.95 million SUSHI tokens that it had staked with Sushi. CoinDesk identified the wallets using Nansen. On Wednesday night and Thursday morning, it sent two batches of tokens valued at $5.4 million total to an address controlled by crypto trading desk Cumberland. Cumberland sent the first half to a Binance deposit address Wednesday night; the other half hadn't moved out of Cumberland's wallet at press time. Members of SUSHI's Discord server speculated the on-chain activity indicated GoldenTree had already sold its position.

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Crypto Casino Stake Targeted in Reported $40M Exploit

The Mantle community has approved the creation of an economics committee to manage the layer 2 blockchain's $4.2 billion treasury. The committee will decide how to allocate the majority of the treasury, which is in the form of MNT, the governance token for Mantle. The governance proposal also authorizes Mantle LSD and an ether (ETH) staking strategy in collaboration with Lido. The allocation of 40,000 ETH from Mantle's treasury to stETH is aimed at boosting DEX liquidity and integrations across Mantle. The Mantle treasury currently holds over 264,000 ETH. The new governing body is expected to bring more liquidity into the ecosystem and further establish Mantle as a major player in the layer 2 space.Crypto traders have found a novel way to generate returns as bitcoin (BTC) remains flat and the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector fails to fully shake off the bear market lull. Actual hamsters – the living, breathing, and oft-cute rodents – have been put to the races on the blockchain-based platform Hamsters.gg. 'The hamsters are real and the bets are real. The hamsters are running on a track and the first hamster to cross the finish line wins,' the site explains. Star hamster racers like 'Rocky' and 'Buster' are already drawing bets of up to $500 per race. Others like 'CK' aren't so lucky – losing 326 races; winning just 8. These races seem to occur every few hours, during which a chatbox lights up, drawing at least 1,000 viewers and complete with virtual beer and hotdog emojis. 'Sipping wine, betting on hamster racing...does it get any better than this?,' a recent message on the Hamsters chatbox reads. Some others are trying to mathematically win: 'Who's got some stats on these hamsters? do we have weight classes?' Crypto traders have a knack for jumping on gambling platforms and memecoins, mainly after the rise of tokens such as dogecoin (DOGE) and shiba inu (SHIB) – which jumped to tens of billions in market capitalization in the previous bull market. Anyone can call a smart contract and issue tokens on Ethereum (or other blockchains) for a few cents, and the presence of decentralized exchanges means tokens can instantly be issued, supplied with liquidity and traded soon after. Most of these do not last beyond a few weeks. Last year saw hopefuls bet on articles from the English language to McDonald’s branded Grimacecoins, both of which fell to nearly zero after a few weeks of trading. But some, like Pepecoin (PEPE), jump to billions in market capitalization and seem to become big-name projects. Data shows HamstersGG went live earlier in July and live-streamed a series of races through Twitch on Thursday. Bets could be placed via U.S. dollar-pegged binance USD (BUSD) by depositing tokens from either Ethereum or BNB Chain. Racer 'Teddy' won a race in Asian morning hours - raking in thousands of dollars for those who bet on its victory. (Hamsters.gg) And – to little surprise – there’s a HAMS token as well. A whitepaper on the Hamsters.gg site explains the platform takes a 5% cut of all bets, of which 4% is distributed to HAMS token holders. The Ethereum-based HAMS has zooted to over $6 million capitalization nearly overnight. On-chain data shows each HAMS exchanged hands for 60 cents at the time of writing time, a nearly 1,000% increase compared to Thursday. A Uniswap pool holds $450,000 in liquidity and has garnered $9 million in trading volumes over the past 24 hours. Meanwhile, Hamsters.gg developers say this is just the start of the novel hamster betting platform. 'Our vision is for long-term development and scalability. We've been working on this project for over three months, and we're committed to building a sustainable and thriving ecosystem,' they said in a tweet last week. Ridiculous or not. It's fun. Just as the wild west of crypto should be.Bitcoin prices briefly spiked to $138,000 on crypto exchange Binance.US earlier today before immediately reverting to normal levels. The sudden price wick was likely due to low liquidity for bitcoin against tether on the exchange, according to market depth data. The move was unlikely to have been caused by a trader wanting to pay a nearly 450% premium for bitcoin, which currently exchanges hands for just over $29,000 in European morning hours on Wednesday. Market depth data shows a $400,000 bitcoin buy on this trading pair can increase prices by 2%, compared to a minimum of $842,000 for the same impact on a bitcoin/USD trade pair. Binance.US's market depth has dropped 76% compared to May, suggesting market makers and traders have fled from the exchange. The bizarre wick is a reminder of the volatility and unpredictability of cryptocurrency markets.

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Coco Casino Makes a Splash with $36M in Volume and Soaring Token Prices

Arbitrum-based asset management protocol FactorDAO has released its much-awaited staking service, days after ending a token sale on the decentralized exchange Camelot. The move comes as the project faces rumors on Crypto Twitter alleging that part of its code was 'copied' from other crypto projects. nnFactorDAO's pseudonymous founder Kurapika has hit back on the claims, telling CoinDesk that the allegations were started by an anonymous Crypto Twitter user referring to minor documentation mistakes accidentally left in Factor's technical documents. The project's code is brand-new, and the team is not sure what 'copied code' means in an open-source environment. nnDespite the tremors, Factor has focused on releasing its staking and vaults services for users in the past week. Staking refers to locking up one's tokens to participate and help maintain the security of that network's blockchain in turn for rewards. Factor will take a percentage of the deposit, withdrawal, transaction, vault management, and performance fees and redistributes 50% to FCTR stakers, and 50% to its decentralized autonomous organization (DAO). nnFCTR stakers will, therefore, earn yields on staking their tokens as liquidity to the platform while the platform will use the increased liquidity to offer even more products to potential users. Users who lock tokens for up to four years will receive the highest yields, the highest percentage of governance rights, and a higher amount of vested factor (veFCTR) – a token issued to users who lock their FCTR on the staking platform. nnFCTR sees volatile trading last week, with the token launch on Camelot prompting several Arbitrum users to criticize the initial high market capitalization and overall issuance mechanism. Factor ended up raising $7.5 million from 4,000 unique wallets, but the final pool of money raised was equally distributed with the total number of issued tokens to determine the initial price of FCTR in the open market. However, these tokens were almost immediately dumped on the open market on Sunday, falling to as low as 44 cents, DEXTools data shows. Buying pressure after the initial dump saw tokens regain the pre-sale price of 75 cents on Monday morning, but have since seen a gradual sell-off to just over 58 cents at writing time on Tuesday. nnUPDATE (Feb.28, 12:11 UTC): Adds comments from Factor founder and clarifies the rumors.GMX, the most popular decentralized exchange on the Arbitrum layer 2 network, has launched version 2 of its trading platform, offering liquidity pools for riskier assets at lower fees. The new version expands the list of tradable assets to include alternative currencies such as dogecoin (DOGE) and offers annualized yields of up to 47%.nnThe initial model of GMX version 2 went live Thursday, attracting over $1.2 million for its liquidity pools in a muted launch. The platform allows users to trade spot and perpetual futures through an on-chain interface at low fees, with part of its recent popularity attributed to the rise of the Ethereum-based Arbitrum. nnThe new version of GMX will exist alongside the current platform, offering traders a service for betting on price movements of major tokens using leverage. Liquidity on V2 is provided through individual GMX Market, or GM, pools, with liquidity providers rewarded with a cut of fees earned from services such as leverage trading, borrowing, and swaps. nnInitial GM pools include solana (SOL), xrp (XRP), litecoin (LTC), dogecoin, and arbitrum (ARB) on the Arbitrum network, alongside SOL, XRP, LTC, and DOGE on the Avalanche network. A GM pool comprises long tokens, which back positions betting on higher prices, a short token, which bets on lower prices, and an index pool token. nnAs of Friday, GM pools for DOGE are paying out as much as 45% annualized, while the solana pool is paying 47%. The rates are subject to change. nnThe introduction of V2 could help GMX's prospects among traders in an increasingly competitive market. Ultimately, attractive rewards and increased revenues could drive value to GMX's namesake governance tokens (GMX). nnGMX locks up over $447 million on Arbitrum and $74 million on the Avalanche network, data from DefiLlama shows. The platform has traded over $117 billion worth of tokens and generated $184 million in fees for its Arbitrum users alone, data shows.A proposal to split Rook's nearly $50 million crypto treasury between Rook Labs and a new community-run entity called Incubator DAO is gaining traction, with the token price surging ahead of the vote. The proposal aims to divorce the project's tech from its governance token, and would see Incubator DAO inherit the old DAO's unique representative democracy structure. The move has been praised as a win-win for both Rook Labs and token holders, with the former gaining sufficient capital to develop products while the latter receives a return of value. The token itself has nearly tripled in value since late March, and the debate over the project's future has attracted investors of many stripes. Some have voted with newly-acquired bags, and the single-largest 'yea' position in the poll to create Incubator DAO was voted by a wallet controlled by insiders at crypto yield project TempleDAO. However, the TempleDAO wallet has already started selling some of its ROOK tokens on decentralized finance (DeFi) exchanges.

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