Author: admin

Mantra founder and CEO John Mullin has begun an $80 million burn of OM tokens to regain users’ trust following the token’s crash earlier in April. However, the question of the underlying reasons for the crash remains unanswered, blockchain investigators told Cointelegraph.Unpacking Mantra’s OM crash would require a detailed forensic study rather than just basic blockchain analysis, said Natalie Newson, senior blockchain investigator at the blockchain security firm CertiK.“A full forensic investigation, akin to what we saw post-FTX, would be needed to substantiate claims of calculated exploitation,” Newson told Cointelegraph, highlighting challenges of tracing over-the-counter (OTC) transactions.Newson’s perspective on the…

Bitcoin (BTC) rallied above $89,000 on April 22, its highest level since early March, buoyed by strong spot demand during US trading hours on April 21. The recovery, however, faced a serious challenge in breaking above $90,000 as sell-side liquidity blocked the way.BTC/USD daily chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingViewBitcoin price faces stiff resistance on the upsideData from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that the price has been steadily moving toward the $89,000 level over the last six hours, leading to questions about whether the barrier at $90,00 will finally give in.BTC/USD hourly chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView“BTC is closing in on the big…

Global ad spend behind news to drop by a third versus 2019 Global advertising spend behind news brands is set to decrease to $32.3bn (£24.2bn) this year, down 33.1% from 2019 levels. While hard-hitting headlines, from pandemics to geopolitical conflict, engage audiences, advertisers may be disengaging with this content due to reputational risk and concerns. Indeed, in the UK specifically, figures from Nielsen show just 3.7% of TV advertising spend was allocated to news programming last year. Globally, magazine brands are suffering even more acutely than news media as a whole, with spend forecast at $3.7bn (£2.8bn) in 2025, representing…

Organized crime groups across Southeast Asia have scaled their operations by exploiting cryptocurrency and launching their own coins, exchanges and blockchain networks to launder billions of dollars, according to a new report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).The report said criminal syndicates are no longer just using existing crypto infrastructure. Instead, they are actively building tailored financial ecosystems to evade detection.One example cited in the report is the Chinese-language ecosystem and marketplace known as Huione Guarantee, now rebranded as Haowang, which has processed more than $24 billion in crypto linked to fraud over the past four…

Cryptocurrency firms and exchanges are increasingly moving into Wall Street territory, launching more traditional investment offerings and showcasing the increasing connection between crypto and traditional finance (TradFi).“There’s a growing synergy between traditional financial investments and the emerging crypto space,” according to Gracy Chen, the CEO of Bitget, the world’s sixth-largest crypto exchange.“Crypto players are now checking out traditional finance as they see the opportunity to bridge it,” Chen told Cointelegraph.“The lines are blurring — investors want flexibility, and products that can straddle both worlds are naturally attractive,” Chen said. “Some players see TradFi as a safety net; others, like Bitget,…

AI labs are increasingly relying on crowdsourced benchmarking platforms such as Chatbot Arena to probe the strengths and weaknesses of their latest models. But some experts say that there are serious problems with this approach from an ethical and academic perspective. Over the past few years, labs including OpenAI, Google, and Meta have turned to platforms that recruit users to help evaluate upcoming models’ capabilities. When a model scores favorably, the lab behind it will often tout that score as evidence of a meaningful improvement. It’s a flawed approach, however, according to Emily Bender, a University of Washington linguistics professor…

The cryptocurrency market has witnessed a surge in the adoption of automated trading solutions, with trading bots gaining prominence for their ability to analyze vast data sets and execute trades with precision.Cointelegraph has dissected historical bot revenues and token price rollercoasters and backtested strategy returns against the buy-and-hold yardstick to decode what bots shine brightest — and when — so you can pick the perfect bot to match your style and stomach for risk.We have examined three types of trading bots: Telegram bots trading on decentralized exchanges (DEX), non-Telegram bots trading on DEXs and on centralized exchanges (CEXs), and the…

Cryptocurrency exchange-traded products (ETPs) showed signs of recovery last week with minor inflows, after shedding more than $1 billion in outflows in the previous two weeks.Crypto investment products saw inflows of $6 million during the week of April 14–18, reflecting mixed investor sentiment, CoinShares reported on April 22.“While the week began with minor inflows, stronger-than-expected US retail sales figures mid-week likely triggered outflows of $146 million,” CoinShares’ head of research James Butterfill wrote.Weekly crypto ETP flows since late 2024. Source: CoinSharesTotal assets under management (AUM) in crypto ETPs edged up 1.4% from $129 billion as of April 11 to $131…

A Solana address with over 1 million tokens is sitting on more than $153 million in profit after a four-year staking play on the crypto asset. Blockchain analytics firm Lookonchain flagged the wallet address of a whale that staked nearly 1 million Solana (SOL) tokens in 2021. At the time of the staking, Solana tokens were worth around $27, which means the trader spent about $27 million to execute the play. Four years later, the whale’s total staked Solana holdings have reached 1.29 million. With Solana appreciating to about $140, the whale’s holdings have increased in value to about $180 million. On April…

As Bitcoin adoption grows, the base layer is becoming increasingly expensive and more technically challenging. Block space is scarce, and fees are always expected to rise. Onboarding directly into self-custodial Bitcoin also requires unintuitive background knowledge in Bitcoin such as UTXO management, blind signing, monitoring mempool, liquidity management, fee rate calculation, etc. At the same time, new users—especially in developing regions—are eager to experience Bitcoin’s full potential, whether as an ultra-fast payment method through the Lightning Network or as a resilient and trustless store of value. The more practical solution is to receive or buy bitcoin-backed certificates issued by a…