What’s Happening In Crypto Today? Daily Crypto News Digest

Get your daily, bite-sized digest of blockchain and crypto news today – investigating the stories flying under the radar of today’s news.

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Why is crypto up today?

Global crypto market capitalization is up 0.4% over the past 24 hours. According to CoinGecko, it stands at $2.494 trillion.

In contrast to yesterday’s situation, when nearly any of the coins in the top 100 category were red, many have appreciated since.

SAFE is at the top, rising 23.4% in a day to $2.4. 

Next is Wormhole (W), the price of which increased 14.9% to $0.6135. 

The remaining green coins all increased by less than 9%. 

On the other hand, the drops are fewer and smaller. 

Immutable (IMX) fell the most: 5.3% to $2.06. 

ONDO is close by, with a decrease to its price of 4%, trading at $0.7965.

In the top 10 category, four coins’ prices are up and four are down (not counting the stablecoins).

Solana (SOL)’s price declined the most: 1.9% to $144.

Ethereum (ETH) fell the least: 0.1%, trading at $3,142.

On the other side, the increases are small as well. 

BNB rose the least, with 0.3% to $609. 

Bitcoin (BTC)’s 0.5% is the highest one. The coin is changing hands at $64,401.

Meanwhile, an “epic sat,” mined from the fourth Bitcoin halving block, was recently sold for $2.1 million at an auction on CoinEx Global. 

This rare satoshi, marked by a unique sequence number, sold for 33.3 BTC. 

Also, Block, led by Jack Dorsey, now allows Square merchants to convert between 1% and 10% of their daily sales into BTC using Cash App, for a nominal fee of 1%.

Stablecoins Trading Volume Reaches All-time Highs

In crypto news today, in April 2024, the stablecoins trading volume on centralized exchanges (CEXs) increased by 98.9% to $2.18 trillion, hitting the highest-ever stablecoins trading volume on CEXs. 

The trading activity surge coincides with the increased volatility produced by BTC reaching new all-time highs in March for the first time this cycle, according to on-chain analytics firm CCData.

USDT still dominates the trading activity on CEXs. It accounts for 77.5% market share among the top 10 stablecoins by market capitalization.

Meanwhile, the total market capitalization of stablecoins went up 4.76% to $147 billion as of April 24.

This is the seventh consecutive monthly increase in market capitalization and the highest market capitalization for stablecoins since May 2022.

Stablecoin market dominance stands at 6.3%. This is an increase from 5.43% in March and the first increase after the markets retraced due to higher-than-forecasted US inflation data and geopolitical tensions escalation. 

Lastly, the market capitalization of the two major gold-pegged stablecoins, Tether Gold (XAUT) and Pax Gold (PAXG), rose 4.2% and 4.77% to $573 million and $425 million., respectively.

This is an all-time high for Tether Gold and the highest level for Pax Gold since December 2023.

This happened as the gold price surpassed its previous all-time high amidst the geopolitical tensions in the Middle East. 

Immutable Launches the Main Quest with Up to $50 Million in Rewards Already Committed

Web3 gaming platform and ecosystem Immutable announced the launch of ‘The Main Quest,” described as “the largest ever web3 gaming quest and rewards program.” 

According to the press release, these is up to $50 million in token rewards already secured for players, and more will be announced. 

Players can get rewards immediately by exploring quests, playing games, and owning collections on Immutable

Players who have signed up with Immutable Passport or have connected their wallet on Immutable zkEVM can acquire Gems by joining tasks and quests.

Bonus incentives and rewards include game tokens and NFTs that can be used in-game.

The Immutable Ecosystem Rewards program is launched in partnership with Digital Worlds Foundation. 

It offers incentives to players for exploring games in the Immutable ecosystem of more than 270 titles currently in development.

The team said that some of the most-anticipated Web3 games are featured in the current phase of The Main Quest. 

These include Pixelmon, Illuvium, Guild of Guardians, Space Nation, and MetalCore. 

“This is single-handedly the largest rewards program in web3 gaming,” said Immutable President and co-founder Robbie Ferguson.

“As more of our 300+ signed games go to market, the opportunities for players to be rewarded by the Immutable ecosystem will grow exponentially.”

Arbitrum, Optimism, Polygon, StarkWare, and zkSync Integrate with Avail

In other crypto news today, Avail, a modular blockchain solution designed to unify Web3 and optimize data availability (DA) for highly scalable and customizable rollups, announced that five major Web3 ecosystems will integrate with its DA architecture.

According to the press release, the ecosystems include Arbitrum, Optimism, Polygon, StarkWare, and zkSync, comprising approximately 10% of Web3’s monthly active developers. 

Ahead of Avail’s mainnet launch, developers and rollup builders will be able to access Avail DA, ecosystem, development, and integration support within these five chain stacks. 

Avail DA is the first of three parts of Avail’s Unification Layer, it added. This is “a comprehensive full-stack architecture” that encompasses three solutions: DA, Nexus, and Fusion Security.

The aim is to “help usher in the unified rollup future and solve the growing scalability, fragmented UX, and cross-chain liquidity pains of the blockchain industry,” Avail said.

Limited data availability is one of the biggest obstacles to the blockchain industry’s mainstream adoption, remarked Ramon Canales, Head of Product at Matter Labs, the team behind zkSync. “Without adequate DA, data availability quickly becomes the bottleneck for limitless scaling.” 

Data availability solutions such as Avail’s un-opinionated base layer can support any blockchain, he said, thus tackling this very issue. “The additional redundancy provided by erasure encoding grants a high degree of confidence and redundancy for ongoing data accuracy and efficiency, he added.

This integration will expand the range of options available to Arbitrum Orbit developers, enabling builders to choose the solution that best suits their needs, said Nina Rong, Head of Ecosystem Development at Arbitrum Foundation. 

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