The US Federal Reserve (Fed) has hiked interest rates by 75-basis points, to the interval 2.25 to 2.5%, for the second time in two months. This has seen an overall improvement in crypto market sentiment, and Bitcoin and Ethereum see an upward trend. Crypto investing platform Crypso raises $3 million in seed funding in crypto winter, Blockchain domain provider Unstoppable Domains becomes unicorn – these and more in this edition of Weekly Tech News Friday Wrap Up.
Crypto Market this week
The US Federal Reserve (Fed) has hiked interest rates by 75-basis points, to the interval 2.25 to 2.5%, for the second time in two months. This has seen an overall improvement in market sentiment, moving from “Extreme Fear” to “Fear” on the Crypto Fear and Greed Index. Experts predict that if the current trends continue, BTC may surpass $25,000 in the upcoming days.
Ethereum remain strong
Ethereum (ETH) has, meantime, kept its firm position above the $1550 level. Since the last week or two, ETH has been outperforming BTC overall, with BTC’s dominance index falling below the 43% mark. The descending triangle pattern is still visible on the weekly chart for ETH-BTC, and it is about to break out. The anticipated level of resistance for ETH-BTC is 0.076.
Edul Patel Co-Founder and CEO of Mudrex- A Global Crypto Investing Platform said “Bitcoin traded sideways and dropped to the US$22,000 level after touching above the US$23,000 level in the past week. Despite the drop with increasing selling pressure, BTC has retained 6% of the gains in the past seven days. BTC may likely rise towards the US$24,000 level this week as sellers’ power is accompanied by high volume”.
WazirX Trade Desk analysts told FE Online in an email that The BTC trend has exited the ascending channel pattern on the 4-hour time frame and is currently retesting the pattern’s resistance levels. At $32,300, the next significant BTC resistance level is anticipated. In the upcoming days, we could anticipate a price movement in the direction of the $25,000 mark.
Crypto investing platform Crypso raises $3 million in seed funding in crypto winter
The Indian community-led cryptocurrency investing platform Crypso revealed on Tuesday that it had secured $3 million in seed funding from a number of illustrious angel investors, including Kunal Shah of CRED, Better Capital, Whiteboard Capital, Polygon founders Sandeep and Jaynti, Athera Venture Partners (formerly Inventus), and Hashed Emergent.
This investment in Crypso comes while the price of cryptocurrencies is falling. Since January 2021, the value of the cryptocurrency market has fallen by almost $2 trillion, and Indian cryptocurrency exchanges have suffered a comparable decline in trade volume.
Tak Lee, CEO and managing partner of Hashed Emergent said, “We like the fact that they are building for the young Indian users who will potentially be the early ones to adopt Crypto in India as we have seen across the globe”.
India has the second-highest percentage of cryptocurrency users worldwide, per the Chainalysis research from 2021. Within a month of the Android app’s launch, Crypso has amassed over 50,000 users. This is in spite of the fact that trade volumes on cryptocurrency exchanges in India have decreased after new tax legislation took effect in July 2022.
Blockchain domain provider Unstoppable Domains becomes unicorn amid crypto mayhem
Blockchain domain name provider Unstoppable Domains says it has raised $65 million in its Series A fundraising to become a new unicorn among the widespread doom surrounding cryptocurrency.
Matthew Gould, Founder and CEO, said, “For too long, companies have controlled people’s digital identities, and Unstoppable Domains is putting that power back into the hands of people.”
The company has registered 2.5 million domains, which users may use to develop decentralised websites, create their web3 identity, log into more than 150 Web3 services, substitute cumbersome crypto wallet addresses on more than 80 wallets and exchanges and more.
According to Unstoppable Domains, it has forged more than 300 alliances with big web3 firms like Polygon, Blockchain.com, MoonPay, and others.
Santander Brazil to Launch Crypto Trading Feature in Coming Months, CEO Says
According to Santander Brazil CEO Mario Leao, Spanish banking giant Santander intends to provide cryptocurrency trading to its customers in Brazil in the near future. In Latin America this year, Santander has already made great strides with cryptocurrency. In conjunction with Agrotoken, an Argentine agricultural commodities tokenization platform, it introduced loans for farmers in Argentina in March that were secured by tokenized commodities.
Recently, a number of non-crypto financial firms in Brazil declared or launched their operations in the cryptocurrency space. Brazilian fintech PicPay announced in July that it would launch a cryptocurrency exchange and a Brazilian real estate-backed stablecoin in 2022.
KuCoin survey: 80% of Indian Web 3 professionals under 30 but women hesitant to join
The results of a global poll were released by cryptocurrency exchange KuCoin in a paper titled “Journey towards Web3”. According to the poll, 34% of Indians are professionals who have experience working in Web3-related industries.
In this survey, Web3-related sectors such as blockchain-based gaming, cryptocurrency, metaverse, NFT, DAO, and DeFi are included. Web3 professionals are individuals who have worked in the sector, whether full-time, part-time, or freelance per project basis.
According to a report, 80 percent of Indian Web 3 professionals are under the age of 30, and 47 percent of the Indian workforce who had heard of Web 3 companies but had never worked for them had now entered the field.
WhatsApp adds Avatars along with more features
WhatsApp, a messaging service owned by Meta, is always adding new tools and features to enhance the user experience. WhatsApp has introduced Communities and boosted the file sharing cap to 2GB. Before making features available to all users, the instant messaging network tests them on beta users.
Various features to be included in Whatsapp are as follows:
1. Avatars: Eight emojis will soon be available for WhatsApp users to utilise when responding to status updates (Face with Tears of Joy, Smiling Face with Heart-Eyes, Face with Open Mouth, Party Popper, Clapping Hands, Crying Face, Folded Hands and Hundred Points).
2. Unread Chat Filter: The option to filter unread chats has already been made available on WhatsApp Desktop beta, and the firm now plans to make it available on WhatsApp beta for Android. Users can filter their chats with this new version to display those that only have brand-new messages.
3. Quick Reactions: Eight emojis will soon be available for WhatsApp users to utilise when responding to status updates (Face with Tears of Joy, Smiling Face with Heart-Eyes, Face with Open Mouth, Party Popper, Clapping Hands, Crying Face, Folded Hands and Hundred Points).
4. Large Group Size: WhatsApp’s group size cap is now 256 users, but the firm plans to raise it to 512 users. For administrators and users who wished to expand the group discussion, this is a relief. With this new version, WhatsApp will also move closer to Telegram. Using “Supergroups,” the administrator of Telegram can add 100,000 users.
5. More Participants in Voice Calls: The number of persons who can participate in a group call will be increased by WhatsApp to 32. The company now limits group calls to eight participants.
A web3 startup making NFTs of Picasso and M F Husain art, receives funding
A blockchain NFT ecosystem called Artfi, which is situated in Dubai, earned $3.26 million in funding at a $100 million value.Sheikha Hend Al Qassemi, member of Sharjah’s ruling family, and Raza Beig, director of Landmark Group, among others, are among the investors who took part in this round.
This firm, which was founded by art enthusiast Asif Kamal, will focus on producing beautiful art NFTs. With this money, Artfi will develop its team and products as well as a specific market place for fine art NFTs.
Asif Kamal, founder and CEO of Artfi said, “Artfi was launched with a vision to make art accessible to everyone. Each art piece that we bring and fractionalize into 5-10k NFTs will be priced at the real value of art with predefined coordinates and fraction number, unlike super inflated JPEG NFTs that is crashing badly today.”
Building legendary blue-chip works of art by well-known artists including Picasso, VS Gaitonde, M F Husain, Sacha Jafri, and Banksy, among others, are the focus of this project. Renowned artists produce highly sought-after works of art.
Asif Kamal, founder and CEO of Artfi, further said, “This is an opportunity for people to now diversify their portfolios from stocks, and fixed deposits and invest in one of the largest asset classes that have outperformed all these traditional investments for over 30 years.”
