Author: The Daily Hodl

The Blockchain Association, a prominent crypto advocacy group, is showing support for the two developers of mixing service Tornado Cash in their legal battle against the United States. Last year, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) charged Tornado Cash founders Roman Storm and Roman Semenov with aiding the North Korean hacking group Lazarus in laundering illicit funds through the mixing service. Last week, lawyers for Storm pushed to have the case dropped, arguing that the developer simply created decentralized software solutions to “provide financial privacy to legitimate cryptocurrency users,” which is technically not a crime. Now, the Blockchain Association is…

Banking giant HSBC has reportedly launched a tokenized gold product for its retail customers in Hong Kong as the bank and the government both push to make real-world assets available in digital form. SCMP reports that the HSBC Gold Token, which is now available on HSBC’s online banking and mobile app, is the first tokenized gold product to be issued by the bank. Tokenized gold is the digital representation of physical gold on a blockchain. Citing data from crypto data aggregator CoinGecko, the report says the value of tokenized gold assets surpassed $1 billion in 2023. HSBC’s gold token is…

Merkle Manufactory, a Los Angeles-based software company behind the Farcaster decentralized social networking protocol, is reportedly nearing the conclusion of a funding round with a $1 billion valuation. Bloomberg, citing “people with knowledge of the matter,” reported the billion-dollar valuation and noted that the crypto investment firm Paradigm is leading the round. Merkle is behind Farcaster, a decentralized social network built on Ethereum (ETH). The network, which has an open-source protocol, allows users to build profiles, make posts called “casts,” and follow other users. Anyone can broadcast short text messages on the network and connect their Ethereum address. Verifying ownership…

Digital assets manager CoinShares says institutional investment in crypto products last week helped push inflows to their highest-ever year-to-date levels. In its latest Digital Asset Fund Flows report, CoinShares says digital asset investment products brought in $646 million in inflows last week. “Digital asset investment products saw continued positive sentiment with inflows totaling US $646 million last week. inflows year-to-date at US$13.8 billion are at their highest ever level, now far surpassing the US $10.6 billion seen in 2021.” However, according to CoinShares, weekly flows are still down from March, when Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded fund (ETF) hype was at its peak,…

A widely followed trader believes that Solana (SOL) is in a position to massively outperform its rival Ethereum (ETH). Seasoned trader Peter Brandt tells his 723,800 followers on the social media platform X that the SOL/ETH chart is now trading very close to a key resistance level. Brandt says that Solana may witness 100% gains against Ethereum if the pair manages to shatter the resistance area. “The SOL/ETH chart is at huge resistance. Resistance = supply. If this supply line is absorbed, then there is a prospect of SOL doubling in value vs. ETH.”  Looking at the trader’s chart, he…

American retail trading giant Robinhood has reportedly grown its digital asset holdings substantially in the past six months, according to an on-chain expert. Parsing through data from blockchain intelligence firm Arkham, Coinbase director Conor Grogan estimates that Robinhood’s Bitcoin (BTC) stash has grown 14%, adding to its $23.59 billion holdings. At the same time, Grogan says Robinhood users’ Ethereum (ETH) holdings have decreased. “Robinhood’s BTC holdings have increased by ~14% in the last 6 months; meanwhile user ETH holdings have actually decreased ~9% Retail users are beginning to come back to crypto, just not to ETH so far.” Grogan says…

Fantom (FTM) co-founder Andre Cronje says the Solana (SOL) network is a victim of success as the smart contract platform faces criticisms due to congestion issues. In a post on social media platform X, Cronje says that Solana’s recent outages are only because of its rising user activity and popularity. “Seeing a lot of ‘I told you so’s’ against Solana, because *checks notes* Solana currently has so much demand for blockspace that they need to optimize some bottlenecks (which also by the way, is just an engineering hurdle and not a fault of consensus or any critical component).” Solana went…

Crypto short sellers are getting liquidated as Bitcoin (BTC) breaks out past the $70,000 mark once again while altcoins also rally. According to liquidation data from CoinGlass, the crypto markets have seen more than $187 million in liquidations in the last 24 hours – the majority of which are short sellers. In the last day, Bitcoin liquidations alone have accounted for $78.24 million. Bitcoin shot up to as high as $72,631 Monday from its seven-day low of $65,069. BTC is trading for $71,762 at time of writing, up more than 3% in the last 24 hours. Over the same period,…

Closely followed crypto analyst Ali Martinez says that a contrarian play on Solana might be presenting itself for SOL bulls. Martinez says that Solana’s consolidation from the yearly high and the recent outages on its network have created a low in sentiment for SOL. Late last week, Solana also dealt with some congestion issues partially stemming from a rush of users looking to speculate on memecoins. Martinez says now may be the time for a contrarian bounce from SOL. “Crowd sentiment for SOL hasn’t been this low since the Solana network outage on February 6th. Being contrarian now might just…

New data from market intelligence platform IntoTheBlock reveals that the market cap of memecoins has hit its highest level since 2021. In a new article, IntoTheBlock’s head of research, Lucas Outumuro, says that the aggregate value of meme assets has nearly tripled in Q1 of 2024 to $56 billion. “Demand for memecoins hit the highest since 2021 this quarter. Despite interest rates remaining high and no ’stimmy checks’ being sent out, appetite for seemingly useless crypto-assets has been very strong. It’s unclear whether this is due to the economy getting overheated, or perhaps just growing financial nihilism, but memecoins have…