📈 30 Second Cryptocurrency Price Summary Current Bitcoin Price: $42,612 Bitcoin price has risen well above the $42,000 mark over the last day of trading, touching as high as $43,287 overnight. Top-20 altcoins once again continue to perform, as Ethereum rises 3%, BNB also gains 3% and Polkadot leads with a 7% jump. Top Stories for March 22, 2022 🔥 Digital asset management firm Grayscale has launched a new fund focused on smart contract platforms that compete with Ethereum. The "Grayscale Smart Contract Platform ex Ethereum Fund" will trade under the ticker GSCPxE, providing exposure to several Layer 1 platforms. This will include Avalanche, Algorand, Cardano, Polkadot, Polygon, Solana, and Stellar. Cardano and Solana each make up about a quarter of the fund's weighting, with Avalanche and Polkadot following closely with 16% each. A group of Bitcoin developers have proposed a new type of proof-of-work consensus mechanism using lasers – in an effort to reduce the energy cost of running the network. "Optical proof-of-work" or "oPoW" would utilize a new class of energy-efficient, laser-based processors. A switch to such a mechanism would replace energy costs with hardware costs. The Bank of International Settlements (BIS) has completed a pilot for an experimental central bank digital currency (CBDC) platform, involving multiple central banks across the world. "Project Dunbar" tested international settlements with the central banks of Australia, Malaysia, Singapore and South Africa. The protoypes satisfied the group's requirements of access, jurisdictional boundaries and governance and was deemed a success. | 