A NFT, which was priced at $99 after release, sells in the $700 to $1,400 range.

Donald Trump’s arrest triggered a burst of interest in his NFT. Trading volume of digital tokens from the former U.S. president increased by 89.8% overnight, according to CryptoSlam.

On the evening of April 4, Trump was arrested pending arraignment the same evening. He was charged with 34 episodes, including falsifying business records. The 45th U.S. president himself considered what was happening to be “political harassment and election interference at the highest level in history” by Democrats. He did not admit guilt.

Trump issued a collection of 45,000 NFTs on the Polygon blockchain last December 15. The tokens represent images of him in the form of collectible baseball cards. There were 44,000 NFTs for sale at $99 apiece. All tokens were sold out in the first 24 hours, primary sales brought the project almost $4.4 million.

On April 3, token sales totaled $22,600, but NFT was sold for $70,300 on April 4. During the last day, 78 tokens were sold at prices ranging from $700 to $1,400.

Our experts note that despite a short-term increase in interest in Trump’s NFT collection against the backdrop of the trial. His NFT sales this past March were down from previous months. Thus, in March the volume of trading was $2 million, in February – $4 million, in January – $2.6 million. And for the half of December, when the collection was released – $9.9 million.

LayerZero is a project whose solutions use the leading DeFi protocols for conducting cross network transactions. It will spend funds to promote in Asia and add to the team

Crypto protocol developer LayerZero has raised $120 million at a valuation of $3 billion, The Block reports. LayerZero Labs developers have closed a Series B funding round. Thirty-three investors participated in this funding round, including a16z Crypto (Andreessen Horowitz), Sequoia Capital, Circle Ventures, Samsung Next, OpenSea and Christie’s.

LayerZero is a protocol for exchanging data between blockchains from different ecosystems. The Series A funding round for the project took place in March 2022. At the time, LayerZero raised $135 million at a valuation of $1 billion.

Leading DeFi protocols such as Uniswap, SushiSwap and PancakeSwap use LayerZero for cross-network transactions. LayerZero Labs co-founder and CEO Brian Pellegrino said. That the company now plans to expand its cooperation with gaming projects and for this purpose will increase the number of employees from 40 to 70.

Also the company will direct the received funds to expand its presence in the Asia Pacific region.

LayerZero is also one of the potential contenders for the release and distribution of their own tokens. The project is often mentioned in topical discussions of possible airdrops on social networks. Commenting on the fundraising, Pellegrino declined to say when his token would launch.

Other Perspective Projects that have not yet launched their token

Our experts note that earlier this spring hardware wallet maker Ledger reported raising funds from investors. As well as the development-oriented artificial intelligence (AI) crypto project Fetch.ai.

Ledger has raised the bulk of the planned €100 million at a valuation of €1.3 billion, and intends to continue fundraising in April. The company will use the money raised to develop its business and expand its distribution network. As well as increasing production and improving its products.

Fetch.ai has received $40 million from the investor, which will be spent on blockchain infrastructure development. It will also be used to create and deploy automated applications using artificial intelligence.

Also on April 4, it became known that Dragonfly Capital invested $10 million in the cryptocurrency derivatives exchange Bitget. The platform will spend them on the development of spot trading, the creation of new profitable products. As well as supporting startups and attracting new users to cryptocurrency industry.

According to CoinGecko, Bitget ranks fifth among derivatives exchanges in terms of open interest (OI) and trading volume. At the same time, the Japanese regulator in March issued a warning to the site for working with Japanese residents without proper registration.

A wave of repression by U.S. exchange regulators is affecting the companies behind development of decentralized crypto exchanges. Review by Crypto Upvotes experts

The cryptocurrency exchange dYdX, one of the most popular DeFi trading platforms. It is on its way to becoming a fully decentralized project, not the least of which is the policy of the U.S. government. Right now it’s running on a hybrid decentralized model. But in September, developers plan to launch a new version of it. This should help reduce the influence of centralized structures, on which it still has to rely.

The exchange depends at least on the dYdX Trading behind its development and StarkWare’s solutions for scaling trading capabilities on the Ethereum network. In the new version, dYdX will run on the Cosmos blockchain and leverage its own protocols. This is to minimize reliance on centralized links, any of which could potentially be pressured by regulators.

Decentralized finance (DeFi) projects are characterized by the absence of intermediaries for trading or loan transactions in crypto-assets. An automated protocol, the smart contract, plays the role of an intermediary. However, as in the case of dYdX, the development of this protocol is the responsibility of a specific company and team of developers.

Most DeFi projects issue their own tokens, which are traded on cryptocurrency exchanges. After the head of the U.S. SEC Gary Gensler said. that almost all existing crypto-assets are considered securities by the agency, any token issuer potentially falls under the agency’s oversight.

Repressions from the SEC of epic proportions

Speaking to community members during a conference call on March 30. The head of another decentralized exchange, SushiSwap, Jared Gray. Said he “stopped getting inspired” by his work. Gray spoke candidly about his attitude towards American regulators. In particular, he mentioned Senator Elizabeth Warren’s campaign platform, which included a total ban on cryptocurrency transactions in the United States. Politico published an article about Warren, saying in the headline that she was “raising an army against cryptocurrencies.

The week before, Gray revealed that he had received a subpoena from the SEC regarding his involvement with SushiSwap. To fund the impending lawsuit, Gray brought a proposal to the exchange’s existing Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO). In it, he proposed setting aside $4 million from the Treasury of the Record to create a “Sushi DAO Legal Defense Fund.”

“This is about an onslaught and retaliation of epic proportions, and it’s only going to get worse,” warned former SEC official John Reed Stark in a commentary for Bloomberg. Stark served as a senior adviser to the agency. And headed the Internet enforcement offices. He observed that regulators initially left market leaders untouched, focusing on easy-to-access projects. But now they’re targeting the big players as well.

What’s already happened this year

Also earlier this year, the SEC sued the cryptocurrency exchange Gemini because its Earn. Which allows users of the site to earn interest from lending their tokens. The service then fined Kraken exchange $30 million, while equating its stacking service with making money from unregistered securities. Later, the agency banned Paxos from issuing the BUSD token. It was second only to Tether’s USDC and Circle’s USDC in terms of capitalization.

In late March, the SEC accused Tron blockchain founder and Huobi exchange co-owner Justin Sun of artificially inflating trading volumes on the exchange. Just the same day, Coinbase received a notice from the SEC. It threatened to sue over a number of tokens and financial products available on this platform.

Full decentralization is needed to save crypto exchanges

Decentralized exchanges are already passing Coinbase in terms of trading volumes. Uniswap reached $71.6 billion in March, according to The Block Research. This is 45% higher than Coinbase’s $49.4 billion in the same month. Among traditional crypto exchanges, Coinbase is second only to Binance in terms of volume.

Summing up the results of the first quarter of this year Coinbase representatives wrote. That the trends on the exchange reflect a larger market. The actions of the SEC and CFTC only underscore the uncertainty surrounding Ethereum and other altcoins.

Referring to the Coinbase situation, in an interview with Bloomberg, dYdX head Antonio Giuliano says. About more and more cryptocompanies refusing to actively engage with regulators in the U.S. against the backdrop of what is happening. His company, dYdX Trading, will continue to work on the protocol after the launch of the new version of the exchange.

According to Giuliano, the network on which the next version of dYdX will run will work with multiple transaction validators. This is to minimize the risks of being banned or censored, to which the centralized mechanism is subject. The exchange will not technically have the ability to reject or censor transactions.

Our experts believe that the final form for everything in DeFi should be complete decentralization !

Solana developers managed to get rid of associations with bankrupt FTX and Alameda. Our experts talk about the prospects of blockchain and its SOL token

The Solana eco systemic connection to the collapsed FTX exchange and the Alameda Research fund took a huge knock on its reputation. This is despite negative assessments from the community. As well as the departure of a number of projects to other blockchains and a decrease in the price of SOL token, the protocol itself managed to hold up. And new services are increasingly allowing to rid it of unwanted associations. The Solana network remains technically innovative. And it has seen an increase in activity, both in the number of developers participating in projects. Also by the amount of funds in the turnover of existing decentralized financial protocols.

The consolidation of the Solana community has made it possible to create a replacement for those ecosystem entities in which FTX or Alameda previously played a prominent role. For example, the decentralized exchange OpenBook succeeded Serum, a key liquidity provider for the ecosystem. Losing more than 96% of its value in 2022, the network’s native token Solana (SOL). Once again, judging by its capitalization growth, it looks attractive to investors.

Increasing liquidity in Solana

Record low transaction fees on the Solana network. This is one of the key factors contributing to its attractiveness for developers of DeFi- and NFT-platforms. As well as the expansion of these spheres in the cryptoindustry as a whole. In the case of Ethereum, even when using network scaling solutions such as Arbitrum or Optimism. Then almost any network interaction scenario will cost a few dollars per transaction. Which in itself is uncomfortable for the mass user and, as a result, slows down the spread of the technology.

It is possible to work comfortably with Solana platforms even at the lowest available liquidity, which is about $10 or less. Low network fees also matter for games and social networking applications. Which can run on the main Solana network without the need for any add-ons. Similar decentralized applications for Ethereum on Layer 2 blockchains are creating additional networks that meet the necessary requirements, such as Arbitrum’s Nova.

In February, the developers of the Helium Network protocol, with a market capitalization of more than $180 million, planned to move it to the Solana network at the end of March. But they later pushed it back to April, citing unpreparedness in the community. The postponement of the expected date had a negative impact on the price of the project’s native token (HNT), which plummeted more than 21% in the moment. However, if Helium’s transition to Solana does happen soon. The ecosystem will see an impressive influx of new liquidity. As well as additional activity from new community members.

The second significant recent event for the Solana ecosystem is the Grizzlython hackathon, the organizers of which have recently finished accepting applications. The contest has attracted 800 new projects, with up to $5 million in development funding. The success of even a small number of projects in this hackathon could lead to the emergence of innovative infrastructure products in the Solana ecosystem.

Price of SOL token

Despite the generally optimistic fundamental analysis. The technical indicators of the SOL price do not look bullish. The price of the coin failed several times to pass the resistance and consolidate above the level of $25. The asset is trading inside a symmetrical triangle pattern. And the next move could start with a rapid spurt after the price breaks above or below the triangle.

The closest level of support, which has stopped the price fall in 2023 more than once, is the $20 mark. More conservative and less risky purchases are possible at the next support level of $15-16. The lowest point from which we can predict an upward price movement in case of a new bear market or ecosystem problem. It could be the support level of $10, which on the daily timeframe also coincides with another indicator, Doji candle. Which indicates a change in the trend of the coin on January 1, 2023.

The situation on the chart of token in pair with BTC looks worse than in pair with dollar. The price has been in a distinct trend decline since January 15. For this chart the range of 0.00072-0.00073 BTC may be considered as a resistance area. The key area of purchases in case of a bearish scenario will be the range of 0.00064-0.00054 BTC. This also coincides with the value of the Doji candle indicator of the daily timeframe of January 1.

Weaknesses of Solana

A significant disadvantage of Solana is the excessive centralization of nodes for the sake of speed and network stoppages that have occurred in the past. Situations where developers shut down an entire blockchain are isolated and anomalous. Solana has had such cases more than once.

So far, no consensus has been reached on the way Bitcoin is represented on the Solana blockchain. Already, more than ten technically suitable tokens are competing for user liquidity. The previously used soBTC has been found to be out of business. And its exchange rate has long since decoupled from the Bitcoin price and is around the $1,000 per token mark. As a result, Solana’s financial protocols are almost completely devoid of liquidity pools paired with the main asset and flagship of the crypto sector. Even if the situation changes, the issue of the reliability of using BTC in Solana protocols will remain open.

Our experts note that competing blockchains with unique characteristics also continue to expand in the cryptosphere. The fast-growing Aptos, Sui and other blockchains could potentially replace Solana in the crypto market. Which use different programming languages from Solidity and similarly give users record-low fees and speed.

The meme cryptocurrency Dogecoin rose in price by 29.8% and reached the 7th place by capitalization. After Elon Musk changed the logo on Twitter to the image of a Shiba Inu dog. Crypto Upvotes expert review

Traders lost $30 million in liquidated positions on Dogecoin (Doge) during the day. According to Coinglass, 58.6% of the forcibly closed positions were short and 41.4% were long.

An unusually large number of liquidations on Doge occurred after its exchange rate rose after a logo change on Twitter. On the evening of April 3, Elon Musk replaced the familiar image with Dogecoin. Doge reacted with a sharp increase of 25%.

Traders on the OKX exchange incurred the largest losses, losing more than $15 million on Dogecoin positions. Open Interest (OI), or the total amount of active futures contracts, on cryptocurrency exchanges rose to more than $683 million. The index increased by 90.7% during the day.

On April 4, Dogecoin trades at $0.1, a daily rate increase of 29.8%. According to Coinmarketcap, Doge reached the 7th place by market capitalization with an indicator of $13.9 billion, overtaking the cryptocurrency Cardano (ADA).

CPIC and investment firm Waterdrip have launched new crypto venture capital funds. Which targets institutional and high net worth private investors from Hong Kong

Hong Kong-based China Pacific Insurance Company (CPIC) has partnered with investment fund Waterdrip Capital to launch two investment funds in Hong Kong. Which are focused on the blockchain and digital assets industry, reports the Chinese publication 36kr.com.

Hong Kong-based Chin Pacific Insurance Investment Management is part of the CPIC group. According to Forbes, the group’s income for the year 2022 exceeded $68 billion. CPIC is the fourth-largest insurance company in China and more than 60% of its shares are owned by government.

Waterdrip Capital is an investment fund specializing in blockchain projects and has already supported more than 45 crypto startups. This includes the blockchain Polkadot and the Web3 infrastructure project MetisDAO.

The companies launched two digital asset funds, Pacific Waterdrip Digital Asset Fund I and Pacific Waterdrip Digital Asset Fund II. The funds will target institutional investors as well as high net worth private investors.

Pacific Waterdrip Digital Asset Fund I will invest in early stage blockchain projects. Pacific Waterdrip Digital Asset Fund II will manage digital assets that can be channeled into staking (cryptocurrencies on the Proof-of-Stake algorithm).

Our experts note that more and more companies are thinking of opening cryptocurrency-related businesses in Hong Kong. According to The Wall Street Journal, more than 20 industrial companies have informed the government of their plans to open branches there. As well as another 80 have expressed interest in doing so.

The authorities claim that the damage from the illegal activities of ex-managers of Terraform is not less than this amount. That is why the suspects’ property was seized during the investigation. Crypto Upvotes expert review

The Financial Crimes Investigation Unit of the Seoul South District Prosecutor’s Office seized property of former Terraform Labs employees worth 200 billion KRW ($153.6 million), local newspaper KBS News reported.

According to the South Korean law enforcers, the total damage from financial crimes. Terraform Labs creators are suspected of at least 200 million KRW, according to the report. Authorities have seized the property of eight former Terraform employees for that amount, including real estate. This will prevent the suspects from disposing of the property while they are under investigation.

Among those whose assets were seized is the company’s co-founder, Daniel Shin. The South Korean prosecutor’s office suspects him of making about $105 million in illegal profits from the sale of LUNA tokens. And it has already twice asked the court for a warrant for his arrest. Both times, the court refused, citing the vagueness of the charges and the fact that Shin is unlikely to destroy any evidence or flee.

Sheen faces charges of scam, breach of duty and capital markets laws. He denies all of the charges and claims that when he left Terraform Labs in 2020, he was no longer involved in its operations.

Do Kwon, the former head of Terraform Labs, was arrested in late March. This happened in Montenegro while trying to fly to Dubai with false documents. He is now in a local prison awaiting trial on a document forgery case. South Korean authorities have already requested his extradition. However, he will first have to serve his sentence in Montenegro if the local court finds him guilty.

Hackers have stolen a total of $255.8 million in cryptocurrencies and another $31.5 million in NFTs since the beginning of this year

Hackers made 26 hacks of crypto projects in March. In doing so, they stole $211.5 million in cryptocurrencies, according to PeckShield. In addition, attackers stole $10.9 million worth of NFT.

The largest amount in cryptocurrency was stolen in the attack on DeFi-platform Euler Finance. About $197 million was stolen here, but the hacker later apologized and returned $182.7 million to the project.

The second largest loss was the SafeMoon ecosystem hack. Hackers there withdrew about $9 million worth of assets, followed by the ParaSpace protocol attack with $5.2 million in losses and the hack of the General Bytes ATM network, which claimed $1.7 million.

A total of $255.8 million worth of cryptocurrencies were stolen in the first three months of this year. $8.8 million was stolen in January and $35.5 million in February.

In addition to cryptocurrencies, $10.9 million worth of NFTs were stolen in March. Half of the stolen tokens were sold on trading floors within the first two hours of the theft. About 74.9% of the NFTs were sold on the Blur Marketplace, while 19.5% were sold on OpenSea.

Since the beginning of the year, a total of $31.5 million worth of NFTs were stolen. In January they stole $4.4 million worth of tokens, in February – $16.2 million. Our experts recommend everyone to be careful and closely study the site before you connect your wallet.

Our experts have analyzed the situation on crypto market and told how it can change in the short term and what will happen to Bitcoin price

The final week of March on the crypto market began with a decrease in the pair BTC/USDt. Bitcoin fell by 5.81% to $28,484. The fall was caused by negative news in the crypto industry. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) filed a lawsuit against the head of Binance, Changpeng Zhao, and the heads of three other organizations that run the Binance platform. The regulator claims that the exchange failed to register as a platform that trades cryptocurrency derivatives. And therefore had no right to provide services to U.S. clients. However, it actively worked with U.S. investors, ignoring legal regulations.

In zone $26.5-26.6 thousand buyers regrouped and fought back on the positive news from the banking sector and the rise of American indices. The U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) announced that deposits and loans from bankrupt Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) are going to U.S. First-Citizens Bank.

On March 29, bitcoin recouped earlier losses, returning to the $29,184 level. Risk appetite returned for market participants as concerns about the banking sector eased following congressional hearings on the SVB bankruptcy.

Rising movement did not continue. The buyers, having met sellers’ volumes, started to fix profits from long positions. It was a purely technical factor, because this day external background was on the side of buyers. Also the dollar index was declining and S&P 500 futures were rising.

In the evening the buyers’ activity might have been low because of the speeches of the U.S. Federal Reserve representatives, who supported the further tightening of the monetary policy, despite the collapse of the three American banks.

On Friday (March 31), the price corrected to $27,511 and then went back to $28,656. Buyers have so far ignored the U.S. crackdown on Binance, Coinbase and TRON founder Justin Sun. This comes amid a rally in stock indexes and weakness in the U.S. dollar.

The S&P 500 index rose 3.23% to 4,109 points for the week and 6.88% for the quarter. Bitcoin in the first quarter of 2023 rose 72.08% against the dollar to $28,465.

Waiting for a level test of $30,000 for Bitcoin

In this week of April 3-9, the focus of market participants will be on U.S. statistics. These statistics will include: business activity in the manufacturing and services sectors, industrial production data, the labor market report for March. In Europe, it is a shortened week. Europeans will celebrate Good Friday on Friday (April 7) and Easter on Monday (April 10). Liquidity will affect the dollar, and through the currency market, the crypto market.

According to our experts’ estimates, the quarterly timeframe indicates a price recovery to $34,000. At the same time, the monthly – to $43,000 by August (with a very positive external situation). If the market gets stormy because of the actions of U.S. regulators or new bankruptcies, then by mid-September. Here we need to look at what wave structure of upward movement will be formed when the level of $34,000 is reached. Therefore, we are waiting for the test of $30,000 for Bitcoin this week.

Crypto Upvotes experts evaluated the effectiveness of airdrop Arbitrum and told how ARB token exchange price may develop in future

After the sensational airdrop project Arbitrum (March 23), 1 billion ARB tokens were released to market. Which were distributed among 625 thousand addresses. The total market capitalization of token stabilized at $1.63 billion.

At the time of publication, the price of ARB is at $1.28. Having analyzed the experience of projects such as Optimism, Aptos and Blur, whose tokens have also entered the market as part of large-scale airdrops. Our experts told us how the rate of ARB token may behave in the future.

The general bullish trend continues

After listing on exchanges, tokens of projects with airdrops tend to exhibit high volatility. Therefore, there can be both sharp price jumps and drawdowns of tens of percent all at once. Overall, ARB is in line with the “most positive trend.” That’s because the token price didn’t collapse after the start of trading on Bybit, Kucoin, MXC, Huobi, Okex. And then on Binance, although it experienced serious fluctuations. On Huobi, the exchange rate was as high as $11 per token on listing day, though the price went down almost immediately.

First of all, such volatility is due to the fact that those who received ARB tokens during the Airdrop. And then decided to lock in profits immediately after listing, which put pressure on exchange rates. On another note, our Crypto Upvotes experts observed that a significant number of sell orders were placed well in excess of the market price, pushing the rate higher.

If you compare listing of ARB on exchanges with other large tokens with airdrop. The similarity can be seen in the high volatility at the start of trading. The major difference is the “general bullish sentiment” of investors regarding ARB. And this is favored by such data as the growth of total blocked value (TVL) of Arbitrum network by a quarter during the last week. According to DefiLlama, Arbitrum’s TVL stands at $2.18 billion, while its closest competitor, Optimism, has $907 million of locked-in capital in its ecosystem.

Predicting the price of Arbitrum after trading starts is difficult

Starting ARB trading was marked by the fact that on some exchanges trading started a little later than announced. And also the fact that the influx of users led to disruptions in the resources for receiving tokens and on exchanges. Listing of Arbitrum on exchanges was immediately accompanied by high trading volumes, which further attracted crypto-traders. This gives big players an opportunity to form positions without much damage to the average purchase price.

Our experts note that it is difficult to predict the further development of ARB price. Because the price levels have not been fully formed yet. In the short term it is necessary to focus on the level of $1, as it will be a psychological support. In case of a positive scenario, we should be attentive at the price level of $1.5. If this level of resistance is exceeded, the price is likely to quickly approach $2.

Why airdrop Arbitrum became successful

The effectiveness of an Airdrop depends directly on marketing work that the project has done before distributing these tokens. First, the project needs to develop their community, to attract new capital. And constantly pointing to the possibility of a profitable airdrop for active participants. Under such conditions, you can talk about success – even if some of the users in the community decide to sell ARB tokens.

The effectiveness of such a model is good for the popularity a project – it’s an excellent marketing move, our experts say. In the case of Arbitrum, the popular topic media “literally bursting with news”. Because people like to get something for free, especially if it will bring good profits in the future.

However, most traders will fix some part of the received tokens, e.g. 20-30%. The rest will go into stacking or long-term storage waiting for price growth if the project really deserves it. According to experience of our experts, even now we can see that large participants of crypto market actively accumulate ARB in their wallets.