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Disclaimer: The Industry Talk section Features insights by crypto industry players and is not a part of the editorial content of Cryptonews.com. UMA crypto has exploded beyond 29.5% over the last 24 hours but is still very much looking bearish on the macro trend. Despite this pump feeling rather euphoric UMA crypto is still down by 95.85% from its all time high of $45 set in February 2021.  Can UMA continue to pump and what alternatives are on the market today?  UMA Crypto Vs. IMPT Token When prospecting the crypto markets there are thousands of options to consider. You can explore many niches of crypto from DeFi, to play-to-earn and financial services but it is difficult to snipe the next 10x opportunity.  UMA crypto in my opinion has already achieved the euphoria and thrill stage of a market cycle and is now in a bearish sideways consolidation phase.  Many traders are turning their heads to presales such as IMPT Token this bear market as they h...

Bitcoin has seen a significant pullback over the past few days, causing many investors to question where the next buy zone is. By using price prediction models and technical Analysis , investors can get an idea of where Bitcoin might be headed in the near future.  On February 3, despite the release of exceptionally better-than-expected US Nonfarm employment figures, the leading cryptocurrency Bitcoin consolidated in a narrow range of $23,300 to $23,750. US Job Growth in January far Exceeded Expectations, with 517K New Jobs At the beginning of 2023, the job market looked incredibly positive due to an impressive increase in nonfarm payrolls compared to July 2022. According to a Labor Department report on Friday, January's nonfarm payrolls experienced an increase of 517,000, which was higher than the Dow Jones forecast of 187,000 and December's gain of 260,000. According to Michelle Meyer, the chief U.S. economist of the Mastercard Economics Institute, the repo...

TARO, the native token for RobotEra, is breathing new life into the metaverse and offering a massive opportunity for profitability. The token is available on presale and has raised over $760,000 in a matter of weeks. It’s already regarded as the next big thing in gaming, and now is an excellent time to invest. RobotEra - A Game Like No Other  RobotEra is a new blockchain and metaverse game seeing massive buzz from all corners of the gaming industry. The game’s impressive storyline and an abundance of earning opportunities make it one of the biggest in the space.  RobotEra transports players to a virtual planet called Taro. This planet saw a massive battle between its native people and an army of invading robots. The robot army eventually won the battle, but at the expense of the planet and its inhabitants. These robots are now stranded on Taro and must find a way to make it their new home.  The project allows players to pick avatars represe...

Source: AdobeStock / photo_gonzo Major crypto exchange Binance kept collateral for some of the cryptoassets it issues in the same wallet as the customer funds by mistake, Bloomberg reported, citing a Binance spokesperson. On Monday, Binance released a proof-of-collateral report for B-Tokens, which are the 94 Binance-minted tokens. The report, however, showed that reserves for nearly 50% of all these coins that Binance issues, were at that point stored in a single wallet called 'Binance 8'.  This wallet held far more tokens in reserve than is required by the amount of B-Tokens, which suggested that collateral was being mixed with customers’ funds instead of being stored separately.  The problem was found even earlier, on January 17, by DataFinnovation and ChainArgos co-founder Jonathan Reiter, who said that the excessive overcollateralization of some B-Tokens and Binance’s use of the Binance 8 wallet showed "obvious mixing of client and peg-ba...

Image Source: Decentraland Three Decentraland executives, including two co-founders and the platform's CFO, are named among the top creditors of now-bankrupt cryptocurrency lender Genesis Global. Decentraland co-founders Esteban Ordano and Ari Meilich and the platform's CFO Santiago Esponda are listed among the 50 largest non-insider unsecured claims against Genesis, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the US on Thursday.  The crypto lender revealed the names of its largest creditors on the same day that it filed for bankruptcy, which included crypto exchange Gemini, trading giant Cumberland, Mirana, MoonAlpha Finance, and VanEck’s New Finance Income Fund.  A company called Heliva International Corp also appeared on the list with a $55 million claim. The firm listed Decentraland’s CFO Santiago Esponda as a contact point Aside from Esponda, a closer look at the document reveals that Decentraland's two co-founders are als...

Image Source: Moonstone Bank Moonstone Bank, a digital bank focused on serving high-net-worth individuals, has revealed that it is exiting the crypto space and will be refocusing on the "community bank" role.  In a Thursday press release, the bank said it is halting plans to develop banking services for innovative industries like crypto. Moonstone cited the recent developments in the industry and the subsequent rise in regulatory scrutiny as the reason for its decision. It said: "The change in strategy reflects the impact of recent events in the crypto assets industry and the resultant changing regulatory environment relating to crypto asset businesses." As part of this change, the bank will no longer use the name Moonstone Bank and will be rebranding and re-adopting the Farmington State Bank name, known in the local community for 135 years. Moonstone was reportedly acquired by Jean Chalopin, the Bahamas-based chairman of Deltec, another FTX bank...

The cryptocurrency market has witnessed a 2.5% drop in the past 24 hours, with gains over the last week giving way to a slight correction. Still, with its total cap at roughly $997 billion, it remains up by 8% in a week and by 20% in a month. And despite today's losses, some coins have bucked the overall trend to record gains. We therefore compile the best-performing tokens into this list of the best crypto to buy today, including a variety of presale tokens with strong fundamentals. Kava (KAVA) KAVA has reached $1.03 today, representing a 9% jump in the past 24 hours and a 38% gain in a week. It has also posted a 52% return in the last 30, with Coinbase announcing that it will be listing the layer-one token from today. Source: TradingView Yes, since Coinbase announced its KAVA listing, the latter's indicators have perked up massively. Its relative strength index (purple) has shot up to 80, while its 30-day average (red) has begun moving up towards its 200-d...

Meme crypto Shiba Inu's price rallied more than most coins in the top 20 over the past week as the team announced that its Layer 2 network, Shibarium, is set to enter beta launch soon. The developers of the project insist that Shibarium has not been designed as a tool to manipulate the Shiba Inu price, but instead as a platform for achieving the vision and mission of their community. The idea with the new platform is that the community will be able to develop their own projects on their own terms and conditions. The Jan. 15 announcement on the project's blog noted that Shibarium aims to provide faster transaction times, lower fees, and an expanded development framework for the Shiba Inu Ecosystem. "This layer aims, as a protocol, to work on top of existing blockchain networks, allowing for faster, cheaper, and more private transactions to be processed off-chain, while still relying on the security of the underlying blockchain," the team wrote in th...

Image Source: FTX Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried has released an extensive Substack article talking about how his crypto empire collapsed, once again putting the blame on rival crypto exchange Binance.  On Thursday, Bankman-Fried published a Substack article titled "FTX Pre-Mortem Overview," where he extensively talked about his group of crypto-related companies and how they failed. Among other things, the disgraced crypto boss continued to argue that Binance had a big role in the collapse of his businesses.  "In November 2022, an extreme, quick, targeted crash precipitated by the CEO of Binance made Alameda insolvent," SBF said, adding that the contagion from Alameda then spread to FTX and other companies. SBF also claimed that Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) had run an “extremely effective months-long PR campaign against FTX” leading up to the fateful few days in November which culminated in the exchange’s bankruptcy. SBF's c...

Image Source: Wintermute  Wintermute, a leading global crypto market maker, has paid its 36 British staff a total of $83 million in 2021, suggesting that the crypto company gave birth to 36 new millionaires.  According to its newly filed annual report, Wintermute paid its 36 UK staff $83 million in 2021, meaning the firm had an average payout of $2.3 million for each employee. Furthermore, the crypto company paid a whopping $22.5 million to one director in the year.  The unprecedented payment came in a year when almost all cryptocurrencies hit all-time highs. Amid the surge in crypto prices, Wintermute made $582 million in profits in 2021 as revenues surged from just $40.4 million in 2020 to $818.5 million. Wintermute has emerged to be a leading global algorithmic market maker in the crypto space. The company has become an essential part of the crypto ecosystem as it helps create liquid and efficient markets on centralized and decentralized t...

Image Source: Silvergate  Silvergate Capital, a crypto-focused bank, suffered a bank run following the collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, which forced the company to sell assets at a significant loss in order to honor $8.1 billion worth of customer withdrawals. According to a Thursday report by the Wall Street Journal, the crypto bank had to sell $5.2 billion of debt securities it was holding on its balance sheet to cover around $8.1 billion in user withdrawals. As a result, it incurred a $718 million loss, which reportedly exceeds the bank’s total profits since 2013. Furthermore, the company's preliminary fourth-quarter results have revealed that it also saw a steep decrease in crypto-related withdrawals, which dropped by 68% in the fourth quarter of 2022. The bank had $11.9 billion worth of deposits from digital asset customers in 2021, which declined to $3.8 billion at the end of 2022.  Silvergate claimed that it had $4.6 billion co...

Source: AdobeStock / Syda Productions Get your daily, bite-sized digest of cryptoasset and blockchain-related news – investigating the stories flying under the radar of today’s crypto news. __________ Exchange news Liquid , a Japan-based crypto exchange owned by the now-bankrupt FTX exchange, released a plan to return assets to customers from February next year. Per the company statement, FTX Japan is developing systems to enable its customers to withdraw their assets via Liquid Japan. It will include a three-step process that will see customers open Liquid Japan accounts by mid-January, followed by balance checks, and the opening of withdrawals in mid-February. Legal news The Securities Commission of The Bahamas  confirmed it holds $3.5 billion worth of FTX ’s assets, which it had taken possession of in early November. The regulator said that assets would remain in its digital wallets until the Bahamas Supreme Court directs them to distr...

Over the course of 2022, there have been a range of problems for projects across the crypto space, with prices having falling significantly from their all-time highs at the end of 2021.  Nevertheless, certain areas of the industry have continued to excel, and the "move to earn" sector has exploded in popularity.  The nexus of breakthroughs in AI and blockchain have meant that the fitness space has found huge room to grow, and the potential for rewarding people for leading a healthier life has neber been clearer.  Earn rewards for exercising  The advent of blockchain technology provided all sorts of opportunities for incentivisation, and this has been clearly demonstrated in the play to earn space.  FightOut is a project that is competing with the likes of Stepn in the "move to earn" space, which rewards users of the platform for moving their token.  The FightOut platform operates in much the same way as a personal trainer may, except tha...

Crypto Gaming – The Next Big Thing The gaming industry is evolving fast. A brand new, dynamic niche is making waves given that it offers players a viable way of generating income. New games with cryptocurrency and digital assets like non-fungible tokens (NFTs) at their core are transforming ideas around utilizing play-to-earn (P2E) to improve player retention, as well as on how to attract new users. And games like Calvaria: Duels of Eternity, are leading the charge. According to a recent survey of game developers commissioned by blockchain entertainment firm Coda Labs, 75% of developers expect to work on web3 projects in the future and more than half think that web3 will revolutionize the gaming industry. The CEO of Coda Labs commented that the survey “shows that a majority of developers have already dipped their toes into Web3 game development, driven by benefits such as additional funding, new revenue streams, and player retention”. For the first ...

There hasn’t been much to be bullish about in cryptocurrency markets in 2022. Bitcoin is down about 63% on the year. Ethereum is down about 67%. Price declines haven’t been the only thing to batter confidence in the nascent asset class. The collapse of the algorithmic stablecoin-dependent Terra Decentralised Finance (DeFi) ecosystem back in May triggered a cascade of bankruptcies across big leveraged players in the crypto space that eventually swept up the likes of Three Arrows Capital, Voyager Digital, BlockFi and, most recently, FTX. BTC is down big on the year. Source: TradingView The main catalyst for 2022’s bear market has been aggressive monetary policy tightening by major central banks like the US Federal Reserve in order to tackle a surge in inflationary pressures. The rapid rise in interest rates battered traditional asset classes (stocks and bonds), as well as cryptocurrency. And with the Fed still talking a hawkish game at the end of 2023...