First engine: Litecoin and Mimblewimble, Ether Futures, Chainlink, Curve

Bitcoin was mostly subdued over the weekend, remaining in its recent range of $ 11,000 to $ 12,000. Ether, trading around $ 430, is looking to extend a series of four consecutive weeks of gains during which prices have nearly doubled.

In traditional markets, US stock futures and European equities rose after China’s central bank pumped about $ 100 billion into the country’s banking system.

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Hope Springs Eternal for Litecoin underperformance as Mimblewimble approaches – By Omkar Godbole

Litecoin (LTC) cryptocurrency is often referred to as the silver for bitcoin gold. This year, litecoin investors would have done better to stay in the analog world: while bitcoin (BTC) earned twice as much gold, litecoin has only recently hit silver.

Some investors now anticipate a developing rally in litecoin prices, with a key update looming and signs of increased activity on the blockchain network.

The update consists of adding a “privacy protocol” known as Mimblewimble, which is expected to help protect the identities of litecoin token sender and recipient holders while improving the processing capacity of the network. A Mimblewimble testnet, which has been in the works for almost a year, is expected to be implemented by the end of September.

And based on market data, it appears that the looming addition is generating excitement among users: transactions confirmed daily on the litecoin blockchain have more than doubled this year, reaching a 7-day average of 48,948 last week, the highest since February 2018, according to data from Glassnode.

Litecoin supporters are hoping the token’s additional privacy features from the Mimblewimble update will help attract users who might otherwise gravitate towards existing privacy coins such as monero (XMR) and zcash (ZEC). These tokens carry their own risks, such as the possibility of holders being diluted by new issues.

The speculation is that the update could help Litecoin, which gained around 50% this year at $ 63, catch up with bitcoin’s 64% rise.

“Litecoin’s upcoming Mimblewimble update has resulted in a spike in active transactions and addresses,” said Matthew Dibb, co-founder of Stack, a cryptocurrency and index futures tracker provider.

For a longer version of this online article, click here.

While bitcoin appears to be stuck in a falling price range, investor interest in Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) futures, a sign of higher institutional demand, continues to grow.

Open interest on the CME, or the number of outstanding contracts, rose to a new record high of $ 864 million on Friday, surpassing last week’s record of $ 841 million, according to data source Skew. The CME recently rose through the ranks to become the third largest bitcoin futures exchange for open interest.

The growth in the volume of futures trading, however, has stalled in the past two weeks, which may actually be bullish – a combination of rising open interest and low volumes usually indicates that investors hold their positions. Typically when this happens, the market continues its previous trajectory, which in this case was up.

So bitcoin could break out of the current price consolidation model, represented by an ascending triangle on the daily chart, with a convincing move above $ 12,000. Such a breakout, if confirmed, would imply a continuation of the rally from July lows below $ 9,000 and open the door to stronger gains. As of press time, bitcoin is changing hands at $ 11,870 on major exchanges.

– Omkar Godbole, market reporter

Ether (ETH) futures hit a new high Investor interest in ether futures and options hit a new high on Friday as the cryptocurrency’s price soared to a 25-month high. Open interest in futures or the total value of outstanding contracts rose to a record high of $ 1.73 billion on Friday, according to data source Skew. Prices for the token have more than tripled this year to around $ 430.

Chainlink (LINK) Developers Taking Profits? – According to the Trustnodes website, Chainlink developers sold around $ 40 million worth of link tokens this month. Trustnodes, citing their own analysis, said around 500,000 link tokens are sent to the cryptocurrency exchange Binance and other locations each week. The “oracle” token became a treasure trove in the cryptocurrency markets in 2020 due to its perceived potential for rapidly growing “decentralized finance” trading and lending systems. The token has risen 10x this year, the best performance by far among digital assets with a market value of at least $ 1 billion.

Curve (CRV) debuts soon in another crazy DeFi moment – After this week’s frenzy in Compound’s COMP tokens and last week’s madness in YAM tokens, no one knows how the new decentralized finance token, or DeFi, will perform in its early days. In this case, the nonsense has already begun: according to CoinDesk’s Colin Harper, an anonymous DeFi user late last week deployed Curve Finance’s Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) and token smart contracts without the team’s permission. After the implementation, Curve Finance tweeted that they have “no choice but to adopt it”, saying in another tweet that it appears “to be an acceptable distribution with the correct code”. Here’s what trading in the token looks like so far, for CoinGecko:

Bitcoins Are Tokenized Faster Than They Are Mined As The DeFi Craze (CoinDesk) Continues
Since Sunday, 1,043 more bitcoins have been tokenized via Wrapped Bitcoin than those produced by bitcoin miners, as the Ethereum-based decentralized finance (DeFi) boom shows no signs of abating.

Businesses would use DeFi, if it weren’t so public (Coindesk)
Decentralized finance is taking off, but few large companies are venturing into space in search of use cases.

Money that rots like potatoes, money that rusts like iron, hot money and CBDC (Forbes)
The concept of money with an expiration date to stimulate a failing economy is not new, however, central bank digital currencies can also facilitate that role in a time of crisis.

As traditional economies crash, NFTs and DeFi promise (hacker noon)
This year’s recession is one of the deepest on record. Could non-fungible tokens and decentralized finance pave the way for the future?

– Sebastian Sinclair, journalist