Hive Blockchain reported financial results for the last three months of 2022. It said it received 51.6% less profit from cryptocurrency mining in that period than it did a year earlier

The Ethereum blockchain’s transition to the Proof-of-Stake (PoS) algorithm was one of the reasons for a $90 million loss at major miner Hive Blockchain for the fourth quarter of 2022. The company released its financial results for the last three months of last year. In doing so, it noted that in addition to September’s Ethereum update, the losses were also contributed to the decline in the price of digital assets. As well as on mining equipment at the end of last year.

Our experts note that this report shows that the miner generated $14.1 million in cryptocurrency mining revenue during that period, down 51.6 percent from a year earlier. And the gross profit earned by Hive from mining in the fourth quarter of last year was $3.6 million, down 77% from $15.9 million in the previous quarter.

According to Miner, the average mining cost per Bitcoin in the last three months of 2022 was $13,600. While the average Bitcoin price during that time was $18k. This increased BTC production costs by 37% over the previous quarter. The company revalued its mining equipment, which also led to a $38.8 million loss on Hive’s balance sheet.

Additional reasons for losses

In addition to the “Merger” and the strong decline in cryptocurrency prices from the end of 2021. Hive’s revenue was also driven by a significant increase in global Bitcoin hashrate and an annual increase in mining complexity of 60%, to nearly 40T.

At the same time, the company noted that it mined 787 BTC during this period. And this is 13% more than in the same period of 2021, when 697 Bitcoins were mined. According to the Hive team, this reflects continued growth in its operating hashrate.

Hive also reported that the fleet of GPUs formerly used to mine Ethereum is not currently idle. And it’s generating an average annual revenue of more than $1 million by being busy with computational workloads unrelated to mining digital assets.

NFTs will allow their owners access to subscriptions GQ and opportunities to participate in fashion publication events. Crypto-Upvotes expert review

GQ men’s fashion magazine has announced its first NFT collection. The name of this collection is GQ3 Issue 001: Change Is Good.

The collection will consist of 1,661 NFTs. Artists Chuck Anderson, REO, Kelsey Niziolek and Serwa Attafua worked on the collection for four months. The price of each item in the collection is set at ETH 0.1957 (about $330). The price is set to honor the 1957 founding year of the magazine. The collection is scheduled to launch on March 8.

Buying NFT will give you access to a subscription to the magazine, a gift box from GQ, exclusive merchandise and participation in various magazine events and parties. Additionally, NFT owners will also get access to a special Discord channel and priority access to future issues of NFT.

Also our experts note that in mid-January another popular magazine, National Geographic. Launched sales of its first NFT collection called GM: Daybreak Around the World. The publication released the number of NFTs equal to the year the magazine was founded – 1888.

Attack of American regulators on BUSD and what consequences will face Binance from impossibility to issue its own stablecoin. Review by Crypto-Upvotes experts

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has informed Paxos Trust that it plans to sue it for violating investor protection laws. According to the regulator, Binance USD (BUSD), the third most capitalized stablecoin, is the third-largest. This digital asset, which Paxos issues, is an unregistered security. It is not yet known whether the SEC notice specifically relates to the issuance of BUSD, its listing on exchanges, or both.

The New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) has since ordered Paxos to cease issuing new BUSD tokens altogether. In listing the consequences of stopping the issuance of BUSD, Changpeng Zhao, head of the Binance exchange, admitted. That capitalization of this asset will continue to decline and investors will start to switch to other stablecoins.

Risks to other stablecoins are high

News about banning issue of stablecoin Binance USD (BUSD) had a negative impact on the market. But not as much as from the collapsed FTX exchange. The SEC is investigating the Binance exchange. So Paxos is also in target of the regulator and the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS).

The regulator considers BUSD to be an unregistered security. But with that logic, other stablecoins, USDT and USDC, would also be at risk. Most likely, someone wants to get control of Binance. And creating problems not only for the leading exchange, but also for the whole industry. The risks to other Stablecoins are high.

Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao said he will continue to support BUSD for the foreseeable future. The company predicts that customers will switch to other stablecoins. Therefore, the platform will make changes accordingly.

U.S. regulators declare war on stabelcoins

There are no frontiers for U.S. regulators. All it takes is one American citizen using some platform or protocol. For US regulators to consider these protocols as belonging to their jurisdiction. Attack on stablecoin issuers was expected, the SEC has been saying for years that these companies are not transparent enough. And they don’t comply with U.S. banking laws, don’t have the necessary reserves and so on. If SEC attacked a BUSD issuer, it would be wise to get ready for attacks on other stablecoins, especially USDT and USDC. Given USDT’s majority share of stablecoin market. An attack on them is fraught with a serious crisis in cryptocurrency market and subsequent collapse of all coins without exception.

Our experts note that U.S. regulators have openly declared war on at least Binance itself. In a broader sense, this is a continuation of the fight against stablecoins as an element of opposition to the classical financial system on behalf of the Web 3.0 sphere.

This is a global and extremely important event. It should be taken carefully, and you should read the contents of the documents published by the NYDFS regulator about the ban on continuing to issue BUSD. In fact, it means banning BUSD, but it may be followed by a series of lawsuits.

Our experts are sure that Binance was ready for that. And its management will find a legal and reasonable way out of this situation. Further wide usage of BUSD is out of the question. Perhaps, there will be some alternative or solution. The other major exchanges that issue stablecoins should be prepared for an attack and take some action. In fact, war has been declared on all of them.

Dubai bans coins that interfere with transaction tracking, such as Monero and Zcash. Crypto-Upbotes expert review

Dubai (one of the UAE emirates) has banned the issuance and transactions of anonymous cryptocurrencies. The restriction was imposed by a new set of rules on virtual assets and related activities published by the emirate’s regulator, The Dubai Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA).

Authorities in various countries have a negative attitude towards anonymous cryptocurrencies and take various measures to restrict their use. Because with the emergence of such coins, the number of fraudulent attacks and financial fraud with cryptocurrencies has increased significantly. Attackers often use these tokens to hide the movement of stolen funds.

A set of rules adopted by the Dubai regulator bans cryptocurrencies that “enhance anonymity,” such as Monero, Dash and Zcash. According to the document, this is a type of virtual asset that prevents transactions from being tracked or records of ownership through public blockchains, and for which the VASP (cryptoservice provider) has no technology or mechanisms to track them or determine ownership of them.

The issuance of anonymity-enhancing cryptocurrencies and all activities related to them are prohibited in the emirate, the new law says.

The new rules also establish mandatory licensing for cryptocurrency companies operating in this region. They detail the procedure for issuing, storing and exchanging cryptocurrencies, cybersecurity standards, and requirements for various activities related to digital assets.

Our experts note that after the introduction of compulsory licensing of cryptocurrency-related activities in Dubai. The regulator has already received hundreds of new license applications. To cope with the flood of applications, VARA plans to quadruple its staff over the next few months.

New trend on the crypto market or how popular AI sphere among investors affects the prices of cryptocurrencies

ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence-based chatbot with a billion-dollar investment from Microsoft. In January of this year, it gained 100 million users, becoming the fastest-growing Internet app in history.

In early 2023, digital currencies and artificial intelligence spawned a single breakthrough in the crypto-asset market. And the domestic tokens of AI-related development projects continue to rise in value.

Justin Sun, head of the Huobi exchange and creator of the Tron (TRX) coin, posted on Twitter the idea of a mechanism to create an “AI-centric decentralized payment system” for ChatGPT.

According to his idea, such an environment would create a decentralized payment system. It would thus be secure, reliable, tamper-proof, censor-proof, and able to support AI. This will build a new decentralized, intelligent financial ecosystem.

Last week, OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, announced that it would begin charging a $20 monthly subscription to cover computing costs. Until then, the chatbot, launched in late November, had remained free.

Tokens that associate themselves with AI are rising in value

In general, the coins of blockchain projects, which in one way or another involve artificial intelligence. Since the beginning of this year have been the group of the most successful crypto-assets in terms of investment.

Leader in terms of market capitalization in this category, according to CoinGecko, is SingularityNET project coin (AGIX). In the past week alone, this asset rose in value almost 2.5 times, reaching 45 cents. Although it was trading at 7 cents less than a month ago. The developers of the service position it as “the first decentralized artificial intelligence marketplace”. Which is based on Cardano blockchain.

Tokens from the other most capitalized AI projects also continue to rise. This is happening even despite the short-term decline in Bitcoin and the crypto market as a whole. Fetch.ai (FET), a coin platform with machine learning algorithms, gained more than 65% in the past month. And the OCEAN token, used by the Ocean Protocol “data economy” project, has more than doubled since the beginning of January.

Our experts note that projects with relatively low market capitalization are also included in the growth trends. Due to their lower liquidity, large purchases of their tokens inevitably lead to strong price hikes. Thus, the rate of AIRI token belonging to the barely known aiRight platform increased several times in just one day. Its developers declare the use of AI in the creation of NFT. A similar scenario was observed with the IMGNAI token, created to pay for the creation of anime-style images by a neural network project under the unsophisticated name of Image Generation AI.

Success of AI caused the growth of shares not only in crypto companies

Success at ChatGPT has spurred investor interest in AI-based technologies, not just in the crypto market. Last month, the share price of struggling media company Buzzfeed surged. This came after it announced plans to use artificial intelligence to create content. Similarly, shares of little-known public companies soared after they added the word Blockchain to their name. This was at peak cryptocurrency markets in early 2018 and late 2021.

That said, the hype around AI is borne out by the numbers. In January, JPMorgan Bank conducted its annual survey of professional traders about upcoming trends in electronic trading. It surveyed 835 industry representatives from 60 regions around the world.

AI, according to the survey, outperforms all other major categories. For its 53% citation rate, it far outpaces API integration (14%) and blockchain (12%). Only 8% of respondents confirmed that they trade cryptoassets.

Trading volume on NFT marketplaces is approaching its peak. And news surrounding the largest collections keeps investors hype going

The NFT market is recovering from the disappointing end of 2022. According to a new report from the DappRadar platform, there was a sharp increase in both prices and the number of NFT units sold on marketplaces at the beginning of the year.

There were 9.2 million transactions in January, a 37% increase over December. This was the highest marketplace volume in six months. Trading volume in dollars also rose, reaching $946 million, up 38% from December. And it’s the highest since the market peaked at $1 billion last June.

Importantly, DappRadar excludes data from transactions falling under any suspicion of manipulation in its calculations. The most popular method is so-called “wash trading”. When owner from his own wallets makes fake sales of NFT, artificially inflating its price or imitating the appearance of excitement for a little-known project.

Most popular NFT collections

The Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) and Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC) collections remain the ” Blue Chip” of NFT market. And the Yuga Labs behind them retains its status as one of the most recognizable brands in the industry. In January, a new collection of NFT company products called Sewer Pass. Which serve as keys to the blockchain game Dookey Dash, accounted for 34.3% of all transactions in January’s marketplace. The passes were issued to owners of images from the BAYC and MAYC collections. And their daily turnover on the secondary market after the launch exceeded $27 million.

Other famous collections also had high-profile infomercials in January. Doodles creators acquired Emmy-nominated animation studio Golden Wolf. And PROOF, the company behind Moonbirds collection, contracted with Hollywood’s United Talent Agency to promote the brand outside of the Web 3.0 sphere in traditional advertising and TV shows. The average image price from Doodles was up 1.82% in January and Moonbirds was up 3.43%, according to NFT Price Floor.

Overall, collections in the top 10 by market capitalization survived the market downturn best. They also had the top 10 sales in January, according to a DappRadar report. They were also the first to recover from last year’s market decline. For example, the Bitwise Blue-Chip NFT Collections Index showed a 28.6% increase in prices from December. However, it is still nearly 65% lower than in January 2021.

Main NFT marketplaces

Marketplace sites oriented toward collectors are gradually wresting market share from those whose focus is primarily on traders and speculators. Blur, which seeks to minimize commissions for art creators. They accounted for 20% of the market for the third month in a row. In terms of turnover, the site is second only to OpenSea, with X2Y2 and Magic Eden in third and fourth place, respectively.

PFP-collections (NFT-collections with profile images) remain the most successful in terms of sales on the platforms. This is due to their high liquidity and hype in social networks. OpenSea remains the largest site in terms of trading volume, ($495 million in January). Platform received about $12.3 million of income from commissions from the trades and placement of NFT by their creators.

Our experts note that despite encouraging crypto market results. NFT platform Coinbase, the second-largest cryptocurrency exchange, announced that it is suspending new collections listings. However, company representatives stressed that this does not mean the closure of its platform.

Coinbase’s NFT platform was not one of the top six trading platforms. And its trading volume, according to Dune Analytics, is only $7.3 million for its entire existence, roughly equivalent to 7% of OpenSea’s January results.

Market trends

In January, sales increased at all significant blockchains. For example, NFT sales on the Ethereum blockchain jumped from nearly $558 million in December to more than $772 million in January. And on Solana – respectively, from $69.5 million to $86 million. The largest NFT collection on Solana blockchain, called “DeGods,” showed a 113% increase in trading volumes in January. This was despite the fact that at the end of December its authors announced plans to migrate to Polygon.

NFT sales on Polygon were up 157% from December, reaching 4.5 million units. This was greatly aided by the launch of Donald Trump’s NFT collection, which has seen sales of $12.1 million since its launch.
As well as popularity of NFT passes to the “Mocaverse” meta universes from Animoca Labs and The Sandbox. Polygon token (MATIC) also had a successful start to 2023, rising 72% to $1.23 since Jan. 1.

Lending platforms that allow you to borrow crypto assets against NFT are also showing growth. NFTfi hit record highs in January with $300 million in turnover, 4,399 loans and 907 active borrowers and lenders. According to Dune Analytics, NFTfi and BendDAO together account for about 70% of the NFT lending market.

Despite the skeptical sentiment of the past six months. NFT market is starting to come to life, although its trading volumes as a whole have clearly correlated with the rise of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

The department’s proposals were published for public discussion. The new rules are aimed at implementing the UK government’s plans to make Britain a leader in cryptoindustry. Review by Crypto-Upvotes experts.

Treasury Department has submitted draft regulations on crypto-assets for public consultation. The ministry said the proposals are aimed at realizing the government’s “ambitions. Which intends to make the country a leader in the crypto industry and create conditions for work. As well as the development of cryptocompanies in the UK, taking into account the potential risks.

The UK has set a goal to increase London’s global competitiveness in the financial sector, including the cryptocurrency industry. In late November last year, UK Treasury Secretary Andrew Griffith confirmed the government’s desire to make the UK a global hub for crypto-assets and blockchain technology.

The government pledged to introduce a new regulatory regime in April 2022. Public discussions of the document submitted by the Ministry of Finance will last for three months and will be completed by April 30.

The new rules will apply to the issuance of digital currencies and the activities of crypto platforms. As well as including DeFi-services, public offering of assets, conducting transactions, credit products and ways of storing digital currencies.

The document also raises the issue of the need to regulate mining and blockchain validators. The paper’s authors point out that the computing power of UK miners is a very small percentage of global Bitcoin production – only 0.23%. Therefore, there may be no reason to regulate mining. Nevertheless, the government is interested in any opinions on the topic.

Cryptocurrency exchange Binance said it welcomes the UK government’s action because it believes in the need for effective and appropriate regulation for the mass adoption of digital assets.

Santiment analysts reported on growth of “Whales” investment in altcoins. Review by Crypto-Upvotes experts

Those socalled “Whales” of cryptoindustry, that is, large holders of crypto-assets. They have started to increase their investments in altcoins. And it is the interest of the big players, according to information and analytical platform Santiment, that is causing the rise in prices of digital assets.

Santiment experts pointed out that large holders of Litecoin (LTC) have increased their token holdings by 1.15 million coins (+4.92%) over the past six months. And in the last 7 weeks alone, the increase in their wallet balances was about 0.5% of the coin’s total supply. Analysts said on Twitter that this was the reason for LTC’s 89% rise since it fell to $50 in early November. By January 31, the value of the asset had risen to $95, a daily gain of 2.8%.

The cryptocurrency Litecoin, created in 2011, uses the same programming code as Bitcoin. But it works with some differences, offering cheaper and faster transactions. The asset has a market capitalization of $6.8 billion as of Jan. 31 and daily trading volume of $1.1 billion.

One of oldest investment companies in the crypto industry, Pantera, has renewed its interest in investing in digital assets. Which is different from Bitcoin and Ethereum, The Block reports. Last spring, Pantera switched from investing in altcoins to ETH to avoid losses. But now it has begun to return to coins, which Pantera co-founder Joey Krug says will “outperform Ethereum in the coming cycle.” No specific assets were named.

Prices of some altcoins rose by tens or even hundreds of percent earlier this year. Santiment analysts last week pointed out that sentiment in the cryptocurrency community may be signaling tops. But if traders don’t take emotion into account, the rise in cryptocurrency prices could continue.

Santiment also named the top 10 fastest-growing altcoins. To compile the ranking, the analytics company used data on developer activity.

Growth in volume is due to development of SushiSwap ecosystem and announcement of important developments and innovations in 2023. Crypto-Upvotes expert review

Trading volumes on decentralized crypto exchange (DEX) SushiSwap increased by 50.8% to $476 million during this week.

During the same period, competitors’ trading volumes decreased: on PancakeSwap – by 42%, on Uniswap – by 8.1%. And the Curve platform lost 3.8%. All Dex fell 9.67% over the week to $18.2 billion.

SushiSwap is a decentralized crypto exchange on the Ethereum blockchain. The trading floor allows market participants to conduct transactions with digital assets directly from their cryptocurrency wallets – without intermediaries. DEX gets its liquidity from pools, which receive funds from platform users who lock their assets in protocol.

Growth in trading volumes at SushiSwap is taking place against an active development of its ecosystem. On Jan. 16, the head of this project, or as the community calls this position, “chef.” Jared Gray presented plans for the organization in 2023, including the goal of making Sushi a leader in DEX.

The SushiSwap team plans to launch a DEX aggregator in the first quarter of this year. And to open a decentralized incubator, Sushi Studios (a platform for launching new crypto projects). A number of other new services, including the NFT marketplace Shoyu, are also in development, according to Gray’s report.

On Jan. 25, it was reported that the developers of SushiSwap would launch a decentralized futures exchange on the Sei Network blockchain. According to journalists, this will expand Sushiswap’s capabilities by linking the project to non- Ethereum-based systems.

Our experts point out that new trends in the crypto market are forcing developers of DeFi-services to adapt to them in order to keep their positions. In addition to launching new products in 2023, SushiSwap recently introduced the “xSwap” solution for simple token exchange between networks. And also Furo Streaming, a service that automates regular distribution of funds to multiple addresses.

Our experts talked about trends in the cryptocurrency market. And pointed out several altcoins worth paying attention to

Start of 2023 was positive not only for Bitcoin supporters, but also for almost the entire cryptocurrency market. The leading coin has risen in price by 36 % since the beginning of January. And some alternative coins rose in price by tens of percent.

However, not all assets linger at their peak values after significant growth. Often tokens both reach new ATH and fall off.

Our experts told us what affects altcoin rates. And which coins look promising at the moment. And also what risks an investor who wants to invest in cryptocurrencies may face.

Promising altcoins

Cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), Ripple (XRP) and Monero (XMR) have the best long-term growth prospects among altcoins. At the moment, it is worth investing only in those assets that can grow in value over the long term.

Of altcoins worth considering for purchase, tokens related to artificial intelligence (AI) may be worth considering. He noted that the trigger news for this area was a statement from Bill Gates. Who said that AI is “a really big deal” and that AI projects are revolutionary.

Another trigger for the increased attention to tokens related to AI. Our expert pointed to a post by Elon Musk. The billionaire wrote on Twitter that 2023 will be the year of AI. However, such statements are partly provoked by the emergence of ChatGPT neural network. Although it does not meet the criteria of general artificial intelligence, it has created a lot of hype in a market.

In the opinion of our expert, it is worth looking at Ocean Protocol (OCEAN) and Fetch (FET) tokens. However, FET is already trading at local highs. And in order to enter it will be necessary to wait for its correction first. Which is likely to happen in February, our specialist warned.

Ocean Protocol is a data trading platform. Including those used in the work with artificial intelligence. The main goal of the Ocean network is to create a global data supply chain for AI. The OCEAN Protocol token rose 125% in a month, from $0.16 to $0.36. The current price is 81% below the all-time high of $1.93 shown in April 2021.

Fetch is a project to build a decentralized “economic Internet” infrastructure based on artificial intelligence and machine learning. The goal of the project is to optimize the use of resources, to automate processes. As well as the development of algorithms for collective learning of Internet of Things (IoT) devices. The FET token went from $0.095 to $0.28 in a month, up 194%.

Risky investments

Because there are no fundamental prerequisites for a long-term bullish cycle in crypto market yet. The current growth of altcoins is accompanied by high volatility. Our expert noted that this is the reason for their recent growth. We should expect the same significant correction in the next couple of weeks.

At the same time, the expert reminded that altcoins always have risks – it is even more risky asset than Bitcoin. When the market is nervous because of macro signals from regulators. The first thing investors do is to sell such excessively risky assets.