Bitcoin recovers despite unconfirmed government dump
Bitcoin experienced a dramatic crash, dropping from $30,000 to below $28,000, wiping out the day’s gains in a single hourly candle. Liquidations reached almost $200 million over four hours. The exact cause of the crash is unconfirmed, but rumors spread about Mt. Gox and US government wallets making transactions. Market intelligence platform Arkham responded but later deleted its reply, clarifying that the alert was due to a bug fix. After this was confirmed, Bitcoin regained some ground, reaching above $29,000 again.
OpenSea loses market evaluation and drops significantly in value
OpenSea, a popular NFT platform, faces challenges as its valuation dropped from $13 billion to $3 billion during a bear market. It has seen a decline in NFT volume and increasing competition from rivals like Blur. Trading volumes on OpenSea have decreased significantly, and Blur has surpassed it. In response, OpenSea launched OpenSea Pro to compete with Blur, but the effect of OpenSea Pro and the changes in volume have been lackluster.
Circle introduces cross-chain transfer protocol for USDC
Circle introduced the Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP) to simplify USDC stablecoin transfers between blockchains, making them faster, safer, and cheaper. Initially available for Ethereum and Avalanche transfers, the technology aims to overcome current fragmentation in USDC’s $30 billion market cap. Unlike bridges, which use wrapped assets, CCTP burns USDC on the source chain and mints it on the destination chain. Wallet company MetaMask, bridge operator Wormhole, and bridge aggregator LI.FI are some of the first infrastructure providers adopting this new method.
Phantom wallet creates compatibility with polygon and ethereum and Solana
Phantom, the main wallet on Solana, is set to support Ethereum and Polygon blockchains, starting on May 1. The multichain integration, available for Phantom’s 3 million users, will allow users to seamlessly transfer assets across chains, apps, and marketplaces. Users can import secret keys from an existing Ethereum wallet to have all of their assets available in the Phantom interface. This move, opening up Phantom to a larger pool of crypto users, is yet another example of a larger trend of decentralized apps going multichain.
Stargate Finance May become DeFi’s liquidity powerhouse
Stargate Finance, which offers a 70% gas cost reduction, improved credit efficiency, and multi-hop routing, could become DeFi’s unified liquidity powerhouse. Since the launch of Stargate V2, the protocol has experienced rapid growth, with over 1.2 million weekly transactions. Project Hydra aims to capture the massive wrapped asset market by consolidating non-native asset chains into a single network of Omnichain Fungible Tokens (OFTs), streamlining the bridging process. This could significantly reduce STG emissions and increase fee capture, positioning Stargate Finance as the unified liquidity layer for DeFi.
