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Bitcoin dives in red as Cardano experiences a huge boost with its DEX addition and several crypto initiatives begin to roll out.

It has been quite an emotional week in the crypto space as bitcoin and several altcoins took a dive in red. For this week’s edition of crypto space, we will be reviewing:

Bitcoin and several altcoins dive in Red.
Cardano ADA’s huge boosts following its recent addition
LinkedIn’s report on a 400% increase in Crypto Job listings
Twitter, Meta and Microsoft NFTs and Metaverse initiatives
Crypto adoption initiatives in El Salvador

Bitcoin's Price Chart (Source: Coinmarketcap)

Bitcoin And Several Altcoins Dive In Red

Bitcoin has been on a red trend for a few months. However, it experienced a five-month low this week, bringing it below $40,000.

The previous week bitcoin had recorded price gains bringing it closer to $45,000, but then, it saw a price dip that had it closing in on $38,000.

Bitcoin wasn't the only cryptocurrency experiencing a dip. Ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency, also recorded a 13.10% price dip bringing it closer to $2738.78. Several altcoins like Solana, DOGE BNB, XRP have also recorded price dips.

Morgan Stanley head of cryptocurrency research, Sheena Shah, explained that the crypto market was weakening because Central Banks are tightening the pressure on Cryptocurrencies.

On this note, the Russian Central Bank, in a report on Thursday, noted that cryptocurrencies are volatile and largely used for illegal activities such as fraud and pose a risk to the national economy. The bank has suggested laws and regulations that will effectively ban crypto-related activities and mining.

Although Citizens are still allowed to own cryptocurrencies, financial infrastructures should be banned from pursuing crypto-related activities. The bank proposed that the existing ban on using cryptocurrency for payments should be strengthened, and penalties should be imposed on Russian individuals and businesses who buy or sell products, services, or labour using cryptocurrency.

Will the proposal of Russia's central bank impact Bitcoin and several other cryptocurrencies' already declining price, or will it spur a crypto agitation movement that will spur the prices upward?

Pavia, the first metaverse project launched on Cardano (Bitcoin.com)

Cardano ADA sees Huge Boost As the First DEX project launches.

While other cryptos were diving in red, Cardano recorded a price gain of about 10% during the week. This spike could be traced to its new addition, a decentralised exchange (DEX) called SundaeSwap. The firm has also announced its plans to create a blockchain roadmap to introduce scalability features and a layer 2 scaling solution called Hydra.

Pavio.io has also announced the launch of Pavia, a metaverse on the cryptocurrency's blockchain. Pavia has 100,000 land parcels, and each of the land parcels is being minted as a unique NFT with coordinates.

Cardano’s pseudonymous Twiter based ADA whale noted that the price gains could be traced to Ethereum's founder Vitalik Buterin’s Twitter poll results which showed that Cardano was the next in line after Ethereum. He continued, "Cardano Chain is currently running at pretty much full capacity and. Transactions per second should scale to 500-1,000 this year in various ways.”

Binance Burns 1.6 Million BNB Tokens

While ADA recorded a price increase, Binance has also made moves to make Binance Coin(BNB) deflationary and more appealing to the crypto community. Binance destroyed 1.6M tokens of BNB worth about $750 million.

CEO of Binance, Changpeng Zhao, explained, "The implementation of the BNB auto-burn is a natural next step in BNB’s journey and will help the BNB community grow through providing greater autonomy, transparency, and predictability.” Binance is committed to destroying 100 Million BNB tokens which are about 50% of its circulation through quarterly burns, and has successfully burned 35 million tokens since 2017.

USDC supply has also surpassed USDT on Ethereum. Although USDT remains the most popular and largest stablecoin in market cap, rival USDC is fasting gaining grounds as it surpassed the supply of USDT on the Ethereum network.

Although both stablecoins are available on other networks, they are mainly on the Ethereum network. The value of USDC on the Ethereum network currently amounts to $40.4 billion compared to USDT, which is at $39.8 billion

LinkedIn Revealed A 400% Increase in Crypto-Related Job Listings.

According to LinkedIn, job listings with the words "ethereum," "bitcoin," and "cryptocurrency" increased by about 400% in 2021 compared to the previous year. During the same time period, the cryto field overtook even technology, which only had a 98 per cent increase in job listings.

The investigations revealed that this increase was aided by crypto's public visibility and the start of a fresh bull market last year. The majority of the job listings were for software and finance positions, according to the research. LinkedIn also reported an increase in demand for employees in professional services like accounting and consulting, as well as staffing and computer hardware.

Twitter Launches NFT Profile Picture Verification feature on iOS

Twitter has added NFT profile verification to its platform via OpenSea's API. On Thursday, Twitter announced that some users will be able to import NFTs from their cryptocurrency wallets and use them as profile images on the popular social media platform. For the time being, the service is only available on iOS, but Android users will be able to examine the NFTs.

The feature is available for iOS users who sign up for the "Labs" feature. The NFT will appear as a soft hexagon over all surfaces where your avatar is visible once you've been validated. People can discover more about the work, its collection, provenance, and more by tapping on it.

A Gift to Pope Francis by United Arab Emirates Crown Prince, a historic Pontifex carpet has been sold as an NFT to raise $80,000 for vulnerable Afghanistans. The original carpet remains in the Vatican, but the digital representation of the carpet was sold for 25ETH.

According to a Financial Times report, teams at Facebook and Instagram are working on a feature that will allow users to post their NFTs on their social media profiles. Meta developers are also working on a prototype that would allow users to mint their own NFTs on Facebook.

Meta's venture into NFTs aligns with its big aspirations of establishing a worldwide metaverse. Last year, Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, remarked that NFTs had the potential to become an indispensable aspect of the metaverse, where they would be utilised to sustain a digital commodities market.

Microsoft, a leading software and technology firm, also announced that it had closed a contract to acquire Activision Blizzard, one of the industry's most prominent game creators and publishers. Microsoft will gain ownership of significant franchises such as "Call of Duty," "Candy Crush," "World of Warcraft," and "Diablo" as part of the $68.7 billion all-cash acquisition. The firm also stated that this acquisition would provide necessary metaverse building bricks.

El Salvador offers bitcoin loans To Small Business Owners at Minimum interest.

The government of El Salvador is attempting to create a Bitcoin-backed loan product for micro and small businesses across the country. Monica Taher, an advisor for the government of El Salvador, stated during a recent Facebook Live Audio discussion titled "Bitcoin loans with lower interest rates" that the next step in El Salvador's Bitcoin plan was to use Bitcoin to provide low-interest loans to small and micro-businesses.

"El Salvador has over 1.2 million enterprises." Micro-companies or subsistence firms account for roughly 66 per cent of the total. Over 90% of micro-businesses rely on informal loans or loan sharks for funding." According to Paul Steiner, president of CONAMYPE (the national institute for small and microbusinesses), the government-created El Chivo wallet will be used to execute loans. El Chivo is the government's official Bitcoin and USD wallet.

According to Steiner, loan sharks and informal lenders charge up to $15 per day in interest for a $100 loan that had to be repaid in 20 days. "The Bitcoin small loans will enable access to digital money for the unbanked while also helping people build a credit history," said Mónica Taher. "El Salvador's economy will grow as small firms are empowered."

According to its Mayor Eduardo Paes, who made the revelation at the Rio Innovation Week, Rio de Janeiro will become a crypto hub and the first Brazilian city to buy Bitcoin as a store of value. "We'll start Crypto Rio and invest 1% of the city's Treasury in Bitcoin," Paes stated.

He added that it's unclear how many coins the city will be able to buy in the market when it acts upon this initiative. According to Paes, the local government plans to offer a 10% discount on taxes if they are paid in Bitcoin.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams has also revealed that he would receive his first payment in Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) on Friday. The pay will not be paid in crypto directly. Rather, it will be issued in US dollars and subsequently converted to digital currencies on Coinbase.

Residents of the United States are often unable to receive their salary in cryptocurrency due to laws imposed by the United States Department of Labor and several state governments. This is primarily due to the fact that the Internal Revenue Service considers dollar wage payments to be income, while stock-based compensation and cryptocurrencies are considered property.

While the Russian Central Bank proposes a total crypto ban, several other countries are poised to lead crypto adoption initiatives.

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Crypto Scoop: Bitcoin Dives In Red, Dips Below $40,000