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What were the biggest crypto outcomes of 2021? Experts Answer, Part 2

What was the most important thing that happened within the crypto and blockchain space this year? How has it affected the whole industry?
Ahmed Al-Balaghi of BiconomyAhmed is a co-founder of Biconomy, a developer platform that empowers

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What was the most important thing that happened within the crypto and blockchain space this year? How has it affected the whole industry?

Ahmed Al-Balaghi of Biconomy

Ahmed is a co-founder of Biconomy, a developer platform that empowers blockchain developers to enable a simplified transaction and onboarding experience for their Web 3.0 project.

“The progress made by Ethereum was one of the most outstanding things to come out of 2021, and if all goes as planned, Eth2 will continue to help scale the ecosystem. The milestones reached by Ethereum also paved the way for other protocols to adopt market share, which has created even more innovation industry-wide. The rise of NFTs has also been a great outcome for the industry. It has brought Web 3.0 to the mainstream without branding it as blockchain or crypto.”

These quotes have been edited and condensed.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the authors’ alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

Andrew Levine of Koinos Group

Andrew is the CEO of Koinos Group, an engineering-first company led by battle-hardened blockchain veterans with unrivaled experience as core developers and architects of the BitShares and Steem blockchains.

“NFTs, as a concept, certainly broke through to the mainstream and demonstrated their staying power as an important economic primitive that can add value to applications by facilitating value transfer in relation to the sale of unique digital goods.”

Daniela Barbosa of Hyperledger Foundation

Daniela is the executive director of Hyperledger Foundation and the general manager of blockchain, healthcare and identity at the Linux Foundation.

“In 2021, government and public institutions raised their heads collectively to start exploring what blockchain technologies can deliver to society. From public permissionless to permissioned and hybrid approaches, many use cases are no longer just research projects. The surge of interest in decentralized digital trust infrastructures will continue, and across Europe, Canada and Asia, we already see our Hyperledger community working on digital identity and verifiable credentials use cases that will impact us all across Healthcare, Travel, Payments and Government Services.”

Donald Thibeau of the HBAR Foundation

Donald is the co-founder and chief strategy officer of the HBAR Foundation, which helps the development of the Hedera ecosystem by providing grants and other resources to developers, startups and entrepreneurs.

“The biggest outcome of 2021 has been developer community growth and acceleration. Although the impact has not yet been realized, developers and communities are forming across the globe to support distributed applications and adoption of crypto. They are enabled with more tooling, financial resources and market demand to innovate and build. These projects, started over the course of the next year, will continue to serve as the evergreen innovation in the crypto space that has made the industry what it is today.”

James MacFarlane of Eden Network

James is the head of business development at Eden Network, an optional, non-consensus-breaking transaction-ordering protocol for Ethereum blocks. 

“Without a doubt, it has to be the launch of other layer-one protocols and layer twos. They opened up the blockchain to millions and millions of users who couldn’t afford to pay Ethereum’s fees and opened up so many niches. 

The likes of BSC, Avalanche and Matic have been revolutionary and have affected the industry in many ways. For example, because Ethereum’s fees are so high, it eliminates spam transactions that occur on ultra low-cost blockchains like BSC. It’s also way cheaper/easier to launch a project on one of these other chains. The differences in transaction fees on blockchains have a lot of implications for the industry.

We have also seen Olympus DAO create a new product category of protocol-owned liquidity, making a lot of new projects rethink how to create the most value when it comes to the liquidity of their tokens.

Finally, we have seen the rise of traders on Ethereum being targeted for sandwich attacks, with users losing over $200 million to bots exploiting their trades in 2021. This number is likely to grow in 2022.”

Jason Allegrante of Fireblocks

Jason is the head regulatory counsel and global chief compliance officer at Fireblocks, a digital asset custody, transfer and settlement platform.

“By breaking through to the most regulated players, it opened the gateway for more products and services to be available to retail customers. We’ve seen firsthand the cascading impact of traditional fintech and banking sector showing their ambitions in the blockchain space, so by the end of 2022, it will become table stakes to support crypto, which will push corporations to add crypto to their strategies in the years to come.”

Lisa N. Edwards of Getting Started In Crypto

Lisa is an Elliott Wave specialist trader with 20-plus years of experience in traditional stocks and commodities, now exclusively trading cryptocurrency. She runs and co-owns Getting Started In Crypto, Thousand To Millions and The Moon Mag with Josh Taylor.

“DeFi was huge, but as the year progressed, GameFi, then Metaverse, have changed the space in ways it will never be the same, bridging the gap between traditional gaming like your Sony Playstation or online shopping in a metaverse, starts the road to mass adoption. NFTs, when used correctly, change the way artists, musicians and filmmakers can be paid, and how my Coinrunners NFT model works, to repay investors with royalties, straight to the holding wallet address. There are so many game-changing, mind-blowing technologies being developed every day!”

Paolo Ardoino of Bitfinex

Paolo is the chief technology officer of Bitfinex, a digital asset trading platform offering state-of-the-art services for digital currency traders and global liquidity providers.

“I believe that in years to come, El Salvador’s adoption of Bitcoin as legal tender will represent an important milestone for the industry. The country’s Volcano Bond will equally be an important turning point in the history of finance, with a government using the natural and renewable energy provided by the local environment to mine Bitcoins and secure a bond offering.

On the more technical side, the Lightning Network saw exponential growth this year, something that I believe will set the precedent for the long-term adoption of digital token payment systems. In August, LN surpassed 25,000 active nodes for the first time, providing a strong indication that the network is growing more powerful. The increased connectivity and development of more channels have resulted in fees dropping and the network doing more developed work. The higher the capacity of the network, the more transactions that can be sent. This translates into an increased potential to have a fully functioning readily adoptable cryptocurrency payment system within the next few years.”

Roger Ver of Bitcoin.com

Roger is an early Bitcoin adopter and investor. He is the executive chairman of Bitcoin.com, a site featuring cryptocurrency news in addition to an exchange and wallet service. He is also one of the five founders of the Bitcoin Foundation.

“Due to BTC’s 1MB block size limit, ETH is on the verge of flipping it in every metric. Once that happens, the masses are likely to realize that there isn’t anything special about BTC compared to other cryptocurrencies and that crippling it with a 1MB block cap in the hopes that a layer-two scaling solution could take over will be viewed as the horrendous strategic mistake that it was. It delayed the mass adoption of cryptocurrency by years.”

Simon Peters of eToro

Simon is the crypto analyst at eToro, a social trading platform that offers investing in both stocks and cryptocurrencies.

“The pandemic and associated lockdown measures have turbo-charged the transition to this technology as we close out 2021. However, as the ultimate frontier between the real and virtual worlds, the metaverse represents the most likely evolution of the internet in the coming years. 

From Facebook to Meta, from Square to Block, fresh batches of tech titans are taking bets on the future of digital assets. First coined by Neal Stephenson’s 1992 novels The Virtual Samurai and Snow Crash, the metaverse refers to a virtual world where users can move around as avatars, interact socially and economically, with other people.

Mark Zuckerberg’s latest initiative could be the catalyst of widespread, mainstream adoption of decentralized metaverse platforms such as Decentraland and The Sandbox, who have already seen extraordinary gains in the last few weeks with their respective tokens, (MANA, the token used on Decentrand is up over 400% in the last five weeks).

Additionally, Fidelity Investments recently became the latest asset manager to announce plans to launch a Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) on the Toronto Stock Exchange. However, following positive net inflows into Bitcoin from institutional investors, the Fidelity Advantage Bitcoin ETF (FBTC) will look to invest in the underlying asset of Bitcoin, or spot. This new fund, which some have dubbed the ‘holy grail’ of Bitcoin ETFs, if approved, could encourage a new wave of liquidity to enter the space. There are already hundreds of trillions of dollars of liquid investable assets globally managed by institutional investors, versus Bitcoin’s current $1.1 trillion market capitalization, so even a small percentage of these liquid assets inflowing into crypto could cause the overall market cap to double.”

Yaniv Tal of The Graph

Yaniv is the co-founder and CEO at Edge & Node and a co-founder of The Graph, a decentralized indexing protocol used by blockchains such as Ethereum.

“For sure, the biggest story of 2021 was NFTs and the rise of the creator economy. From CryptoPunks to Bored Apes, Beeple’s $69 million sale, to generative art and music projects, NFTs have captured people’s imagination and catapulted Web 3.0 into the popular zeitgeist.”

Introduction

Apart from what has been already said about the greatest achievements of 2021, I’d like to highlight what was the most important for me. Thanks to emerging technologies with blockchain at their core, we’ve witnessed the rise of the creator economy. That’s what the crypto industry was designed for — to empower people and give them the freedom and access to be in charge of their money and wealth. For me, without any doubt, the creator economy is the biggest outcome of the year. 

But that’s just me. To gain more insight on the matter, I reached out to different experts from the blockchain industry, asking: “What are the biggest outcomes of 2021 within the blockchain space that have most affected the whole industry?”

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Homes listed for sale in early June sell for $7,700 more

New Zillow research suggests the spring home shopping season may see a second wave this summer if mortgage rates fall
The post Homes listed for sale in…

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  • A Zillow analysis of 2023 home sales finds homes listed in the first two weeks of June sold for 2.3% more. 
  • The best time to list a home for sale is a month later than it was in 2019, likely driven by mortgage rates.
  • The best time to list can be as early as the second half of February in San Francisco, and as late as the first half of July in New York and Philadelphia. 

Spring home sellers looking to maximize their sale price may want to wait it out and list their home for sale in the first half of June. A new Zillow® analysis of 2023 sales found that homes listed in the first two weeks of June sold for 2.3% more, a $7,700 boost on a typical U.S. home.  

The best time to list consistently had been early May in the years leading up to the pandemic. The shift to June suggests mortgage rates are strongly influencing demand on top of the usual seasonality that brings buyers to the market in the spring. This home-shopping season is poised to follow a similar pattern as that in 2023, with the potential for a second wave if the Federal Reserve lowers interest rates midyear or later. 

The 2.3% sale price premium registered last June followed the first spring in more than 15 years with mortgage rates over 6% on a 30-year fixed-rate loan. The high rates put home buyers on the back foot, and as rates continued upward through May, they were still reassessing and less likely to bid boldly. In June, however, rates pulled back a little from 6.79% to 6.67%, which likely presented an opportunity for determined buyers heading into summer. More buyers understood their market position and could afford to transact, boosting competition and sale prices.

The old logic was that sellers could earn a premium by listing in late spring, when search activity hit its peak. Now, with persistently low inventory, mortgage rate fluctuations make their own seasonality. First-time home buyers who are on the edge of qualifying for a home loan may dip in and out of the market, depending on what’s happening with rates. It is almost certain the Federal Reserve will push back any interest-rate cuts to mid-2024 at the earliest. If mortgage rates follow, that could bring another surge of buyers later this year.

Mortgage rates have been impacting affordability and sale prices since they began rising rapidly two years ago. In 2022, sellers nationwide saw the highest sale premium when they listed their home in late March, right before rates barreled past 5% and continued climbing. 

Zillow’s research finds the best time to list can vary widely by metropolitan area. In 2023, it was as early as the second half of February in San Francisco, and as late as the first half of July in New York. Thirty of the top 35 largest metro areas saw for-sale listings command the highest sale prices between May and early July last year. 

Zillow also found a wide range in the sale price premiums associated with homes listed during those peak periods. At the hottest time of the year in San Jose, homes sold for 5.5% more, a $88,000 boost on a typical home. Meanwhile, homes in San Antonio sold for 1.9% more during that same time period.  

 

Metropolitan Area Best Time to List Price Premium Dollar Boost
United States First half of June 2.3% $7,700
New York, NY First half of July 2.4% $15,500
Los Angeles, CA First half of May 4.1% $39,300
Chicago, IL First half of June 2.8% $8,800
Dallas, TX First half of June 2.5% $9,200
Houston, TX Second half of April 2.0% $6,200
Washington, DC Second half of June 2.2% $12,700
Philadelphia, PA First half of July 2.4% $8,200
Miami, FL First half of June 2.3% $12,900
Atlanta, GA Second half of June 2.3% $8,700
Boston, MA Second half of May 3.5% $23,600
Phoenix, AZ First half of June 3.2% $14,700
San Francisco, CA Second half of February 4.2% $50,300
Riverside, CA First half of May 2.7% $15,600
Detroit, MI First half of July 3.3% $7,900
Seattle, WA First half of June 4.3% $31,500
Minneapolis, MN Second half of May 3.7% $13,400
San Diego, CA Second half of April 3.1% $29,600
Tampa, FL Second half of June 2.1% $8,000
Denver, CO Second half of May 2.9% $16,900
Baltimore, MD First half of July 2.2% $8,200
St. Louis, MO First half of June 2.9% $7,000
Orlando, FL First half of June 2.2% $8,700
Charlotte, NC Second half of May 3.0% $11,000
San Antonio, TX First half of June 1.9% $5,400
Portland, OR Second half of April 2.6% $14,300
Sacramento, CA First half of June 3.2% $17,900
Pittsburgh, PA Second half of June 2.3% $4,700
Cincinnati, OH Second half of April 2.7% $7,500
Austin, TX Second half of May 2.8% $12,600
Las Vegas, NV First half of June 3.4% $14,600
Kansas City, MO Second half of May 2.5% $7,300
Columbus, OH Second half of June 3.3% $10,400
Indianapolis, IN First half of July 3.0% $8,100
Cleveland, OH First half of July  3.4% $7,400
San Jose, CA First half of June 5.5% $88,400

 

The post Homes listed for sale in early June sell for $7,700 more appeared first on Zillow Research.

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Survey Shows Declining Concerns Among Americans About COVID-19

Survey Shows Declining Concerns Among Americans About COVID-19

A new survey reveals that only 20% of Americans view covid-19 as "a major threat"…

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Survey Shows Declining Concerns Among Americans About COVID-19

A new survey reveals that only 20% of Americans view covid-19 as "a major threat" to the health of the US population - a sharp decline from a high of 67% in July 2020.

(SARMDY/Shutterstock)

What's more, the Pew Research Center survey conducted from Feb. 7 to Feb. 11 showed that just 10% of Americans are concerned that they will  catch the disease and require hospitalization.

"This data represents a low ebb of public concern about the virus that reached its height in the summer and fall of 2020, when as many as two-thirds of Americans viewed COVID-19 as a major threat to public health," reads the report, which was published March 7.

According to the survey, half of the participants understand the significance of researchers and healthcare providers in understanding and treating long COVID - however 27% of participants consider this issue less important, while 22% of Americans are unaware of long COVID.

What's more, while Democrats were far more worried than Republicans in the past, that gap has narrowed significantly.

"In the pandemic’s first year, Democrats were routinely about 40 points more likely than Republicans to view the coronavirus as a major threat to the health of the U.S. population. This gap has waned as overall levels of concern have fallen," reads the report.

More via the Epoch Times;

The survey found that three in ten Democrats under 50 have received an updated COVID-19 vaccine, compared with 66 percent of Democrats ages 65 and older.

Moreover, 66 percent of Democrats ages 65 and older have received the updated COVID-19 vaccine, while only 24 percent of Republicans ages 65 and older have done so.

“This 42-point partisan gap is much wider now than at other points since the start of the outbreak. For instance, in August 2021, 93 percent of older Democrats and 78 percent of older Republicans said they had received all the shots needed to be fully vaccinated (a 15-point gap),” it noted.

COVID-19 No Longer an Emergency

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently issued its updated recommendations for the virus, which no longer require people to stay home for five days after testing positive for COVID-19.

The updated guidance recommends that people who contracted a respiratory virus stay home, and they can resume normal activities when their symptoms improve overall and their fever subsides for 24 hours without medication.

“We still must use the commonsense solutions we know work to protect ourselves and others from serious illness from respiratory viruses, this includes vaccination, treatment, and staying home when we get sick,” CDC director Dr. Mandy Cohen said in a statement.

The CDC said that while the virus remains a threat, it is now less likely to cause severe illness because of widespread immunity and improved tools to prevent and treat the disease.

Importantly, states and countries that have already adjusted recommended isolation times have not seen increased hospitalizations or deaths related to COVID-19,” it stated.

The federal government suspended its free at-home COVID-19 test program on March 8, according to a website set up by the government, following a decrease in COVID-19-related hospitalizations.

According to the CDC, hospitalization rates for COVID-19 and influenza diseases remain “elevated” but are decreasing in some parts of the United States.

Tyler Durden Sun, 03/10/2024 - 22:45

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Rand Paul Teases Senate GOP Leader Run – Musk Says “I Would Support”

Rand Paul Teases Senate GOP Leader Run – Musk Says "I Would Support"

Republican Kentucky Senator Rand Paul on Friday hinted that he may jump…

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Rand Paul Teases Senate GOP Leader Run - Musk Says "I Would Support"

Republican Kentucky Senator Rand Paul on Friday hinted that he may jump into the race to become the next Senate GOP leader, and Elon Musk was quick to support the idea. Republicans must find a successor for periodically malfunctioning Mitch McConnell, who recently announced he'll step down in November, though intending to keep his Senate seat until his term ends in January 2027, when he'd be within weeks of turning 86. 

So far, the announced field consists of two quintessential establishment types: John Cornyn of Texas and John Thune of South Dakota. While John Barrasso's name had been thrown around as one of "The Three Johns" considered top contenders, the Wyoming senator on Tuesday said he'll instead seek the number two slot as party whip. 

Paul used X to tease his potential bid for the position which -- if the GOP takes back the upper chamber in November -- could graduate from Minority Leader to Majority Leader. He started by telling his 5.1 million followers he'd had lots of people asking him about his interest in running...

...then followed up with a poll in which he predictably annihilated Cornyn and Thune, taking a 96% share as of Friday night, with the other two below 2% each. 

Elon Musk was quick to back the idea of Paul as GOP leader, while daring Cornyn and Thune to follow Paul's lead by throwing their names out for consideration by the Twitter-verse X-verse. 

Paul has been a stalwart opponent of security-state mass surveillance, foreign interventionism -- to include shoveling billions of dollars into the proxy war in Ukraine -- and out-of-control spending in general. He demonstrated the latter passion on the Senate floor this week as he ridiculed the latest kick-the-can spending package:   

In February, Paul used Senate rules to force his colleagues into a grueling Super Bowl weekend of votes, as he worked to derail a $95 billion foreign aid bill. "I think we should stay here as long as it takes,” said Paul. “If it takes a week or a month, I’ll force them to stay here to discuss why they think the border of Ukraine is more important than the US border.”

Don't expect a Majority Leader Paul to ditch the filibuster -- he's been a hardy user of the legislative delay tactic. In 2013, he spoke for 13 hours to fight the nomination of John Brennan as CIA director. In 2015, he orated for 10-and-a-half-hours to oppose extension of the Patriot Act

Rand Paul amid his 10 1/2 hour filibuster in 2015

Among the general public, Paul is probably best known as Capitol Hill's chief tormentor of Dr. Anthony Fauci, who was director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease during the Covid-19 pandemic. Paul says the evidence indicates the virus emerged from China's Wuhan Institute of Virology. He's accused Fauci and other members of the US government public health apparatus of evading questions about their funding of the Chinese lab's "gain of function" research, which takes natural viruses and morphs them into something more dangerous. Paul has pointedly said that Fauci committed perjury in congressional hearings and that he belongs in jail "without question."   

Musk is neither the only nor the first noteworthy figure to back Paul for party leader. Just hours after McConnell announced his upcoming step-down from leadership, independent 2024 presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr voiced his support: 

In a testament to the extent to which the establishment recoils at the libertarian-minded Paul, mainstream media outlets -- which have been quick to report on other developments in the majority leader race -- pretended not to notice that Paul had signaled his interest in the job. More than 24 hours after Paul's test-the-waters tweet-fest began, not a single major outlet had brought it to the attention of their audience. 

That may be his strongest endorsement yet. 

Tyler Durden Sun, 03/10/2024 - 20:25

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