Is gold’s lack of lustre bitcoin’s fault? Investing expert asks why the precious metal has failed to shine amid rising inflation and falling bond yields

By Nicolaj Sebrell For This Is Money

Published: 05:28 EDT, 21 October 2021 | Updated: 10:26 EDT, 21 October 2021

HONG KONG (Reuters) – Bitcoin fell slightly in Asian hours on Thursday, a day after marking an all-time high on optimism around the launch of the first U.S. bitcoin futures ETF.

The world’s largest cryptocurrency was last down 1.3% at $65,184 after hitting a record $67,016 on Wednesday, but still above a previous peak of $64,895 seen in April.

“We think its going to go higher and we can get to 80 or 90,000 by the end of this year easy, but that won’t be without volatility,” said Matt Dibb, COO of Singapore-based Stack Funds.

In the past few days, he said, traders were starting to pay high rates to borrow to buy bitcoin futures, “and that’s a sign that we could be a bit overextended, and there could be a pullback to come.”

He added he anticipated traders would rotate out of bitcoin and into major ‘altcoins’ – other cryptocurrencies.

Ether, the world’s second largest cryptocurrency, rose 1%…

FTM, the native cryptocurrency of the Fantom blockchain, has been trading around record highs in the past week, having soared by as much as 14,300% so far this year.

Several cryptocurrencies have made strong gains, with bitcoin (BTC) leading the charge to approach its previous all-time high ahead of the launch of a long-awaited bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF). Others have weakened, likely driven by investors reallocating their portfolios to capitalise on the rally. 

What is the Fantom coin and what has been driving the price higher?

Let’s take a look at the protocol and the long-term price outlook to help you decide whether to buy Fantom’s coin for your cryptocurrency portfolio.

Fantom develops new smart contract consensus mechanism

Fantom is a secure and scalable smart contract platform aimed at the development of decentralised finance (DeFi) applications. It’s designed to…

Amid the explosive rise of digital collectibles, a more altruistic sub-section has emanated within the non-fungible token (NFT) space as a number of artists and crypto advocates donate funds raised by selling NFTs.

One such project is Care Package, which is launched by Jack Butcher, the founder of Visualize Value, which describes itself as “the operating system for value creators.” Care Package is a charity campaign that seeks to raise funds for Afghan families in need using the Ethereum (ETH)-based blogging platform Mirror. 

The campaign offers a single “CARE Package for Afghanistan” NFT edition for ETH 0.03 (USD 114) and 10 for ETH 0.28 (USD 1,062). The single edition package, which contained a total of 1,000 NFTs, has already sold out while there are…

Coinbase (COIN) best up its game if it wants to be a major player over the long-term in all things crypto trading, warns Autonomous Research analyst Christian Bolu. 

“Coinbase is rapidly losing market share and seeing significant take rate compression — we expect these trends to accelerate as competition intensifies (Robinhood, FTX & Binance the most dangerous),” Bolu said in a fiery note Wednesday morning. The analyst started coverage of Coinbase with an Under-perform rating. “More concerning is Coinbase lagging on almost every crypto innovation (including altcoins, derivatives, NFTs). If the trend continues, Coinbase could rapidly lose relevance, much like Netscape did in the early internet era.”

Bolu initiated coverage of Coinbase with a $160 price target, or potential downside risk of $160 from current levels. 

Coinbase shares fell nearly 1% to $248.30 in pre-market trading…

(Bloomberg) —

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Binance Holdings Ltd. is shutting down peer-to-peer trading of the yuan, closing one of the last workarounds for Chinese users after Beijing’s blanket ban on cryptocurrency transactions.

The world’s biggest crypto exchange will terminate yuan-dominated trades on its over-the-counter platform on Dec. 31, it said in a statement Wednesday. The startup will also conduct checks and any users found in mainland China will only be allowed to withdraw funds from the platform.

Binance is joining a slew of crypto businesses in making plans to completely leave China after regulators said in September crypto services and transactions of all kinds are banned. Rival exchange Huobi has said it will remove existing users based in the country by the year-end.

Read more: Huobi’s exit from China

While Binance had already exited the mainland China market in 2017,…

Jack Butcher, founder of Visualize Value, a single “CARE Package for Afghanistan” NFT edition was sold to crypto users for 0.03 ether (ETH) or 10 at a time for 0.28 ether (ETH). As of October 11, 59.54 ETH (about $208,879) had been sold.

Jack Butcher took to Twitter to express his gratitude to those who contributed to the Afghanistan care package campaign.

A massive thank you to everyone who contributed to the Afghanistan care package campaign

Shoutout to @TheGivingBlock and @viamirror for building the rails to make this happen

And @CARE for their incredible work on the ground https://t.co/dnazzF9F6S

— jack butcher (@jackbutcher) October 12, 2021

In the midst of Afghanistan’s worsening humanitarian crisis, a limited edition of the nonfungible token (NFT) “CARE Packages” has raised over $200,000 to aid Afghans in need. This NFT addressed one…

Cryptocurrency is helping countries in need of digital infrastructure by providing means of payment, financial inclusion and increasing demand for digital services.

With most women not allowed to have a bank account in Afghanistan, cryptocurrency has become a critical lifeline for women fleeing Kabul.

The return of Taliban in the front scene has seen more than 600,000 people fleeing Afghanistan, without access to bank accounts.

Afghan women were immediately put in a precarious position in their ability to help evacuate their families and contribute financially.

Roya Mahboob is empowering Afghan Women

However, the work that Roya and Forough Mahboob achieved through the creation of the Digital Citizen Fund – a non-profit aiming to help girls and women in developing countries gain access to education and technology – has given Afghan women financial freedom.

When Roya Mahboob…