First Mover: Scaling Narrative Prope ls Polygon’s MATIC Token Closer to $1

Everything you need to make sense of the crypto markets and beyond

By the CoinDesk Markets Team

Edited by Lawrence Lewitinn, Managing Editor, Global Capital Markets

April 30, 2021

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Bitcoin (BTC)

-0.6% $54,269

Ether (ETH)

-0.5% $2,764

(Price data as of April 30 @11:00 UTC)

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Biggest Movers

These are the biggest movers in the CoinDesk 20 over the past 24 hours:

Gainers:

Losers:

Aave (AAVE): -6.0%

Cardano (ADA): -4.5%

The CoinDesk 20 are 20 digital assets filtered from the larger universe of thousands of cryptocurrencies and constitute roughly 99% of the market by volume at eight of the largest and most trustworthy exchanges.

Market Moves

by Omkar Godbole

Scaling Narrative Propels Polygon’s MATIC Token Closer to $1

Polygon Network’s MATIC token continues to rally in a sign of persistent demand for layer 2 scaling projects helping decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols bypass Ethereum’s high transaction costs and attract more users.

MATIC reached a new record high of $0.9459 early today, surpassing the previous lifetime high of $0.92 reached on Thursday, according to data provided by CryptoCompare. Messari puts the cryptocurrency’s daily high at $1.05.

The token has rallied by 150% this month, outperforming ether’s 45% rise.

Scaling refers to increasing the throughput of the system, as measured by transactions per second.

MATIC price chart (Source: Messari)

Layer 2 scaling solutions facilitate faster and cheaper transactions by running sidechains or tangential networks alongside the main Ethereum blockchain. Demand for these projects has picked up in the wake of network congestion and high transaction costs on Ethereum’s blockchain., with prominent DeFi protocols like Aave announcing integration with Polygon earlier this month.

Derivatives market data shows the focus has shifted to Ethereum-based scaling solutions in recent weeks from rival blockchains like Solana.

MATIC futures open interest (Source: bybt)

Open interest in MATIC futures listed on Binance, FTX, and Huobi has skyrocketed along with the cryptocurrency’s price. Open interest refers to the number of contracts traded but not squared off with an offsetting position.

Solana futures (Source: bybt)

Open interest in Solana’s SOL token has turned south since mid-April, having seen a solid rise in preceding months. Vinokourov expects continued growth in Polygon at the expense of Solana.

Ethereum’s scalability could improve, bringing transaction fees down once the sharding upgrade is implemented. However, Polygon’s Sandeep Nailwal doesn’t foresee Ethereum’s improved scalability affecting demand for sidechains.

“Ethereum 2.0 will become 64 times more scalable than Ethereum is now, but the demand is 1,000 times than where we are. You will need L2 scalability,” Nailwal told CoinDesk.

Ethereum’s founder Vitalik Buterin plans to implement the sharding upgrade after the completion of the switch to proof-of-stake mechanism by early next year.

Read the original story here:

Scaling Narrative Propels Polygon’s MATIC Token Closer to $1

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Technician's Take

by Damanick Dantes

Bitcoin Stabilizes Near Support; Resistance Around $56K-$58K

Bitcoin (BTC) has fully recovered from Thursday’s price drop of near 5%.

The cryptocurrency was trading around $54,000 at the time of writing after holding support around $52,000. The short-term trend is improving, although there is strong resistance around $56,000 and $58,000 that could limit upside into the weekend.

Hourly BTC chart shows support and resistance levels with RSI (Source: TradingView)

Original story found here:

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ICYMI

In case you missed it, here's the most recent episode of "First Mover" on CoinDesk TV:

America's oldest bank ventures into new territory: crypto. BNY Mellon's Lory Kehoe explains what crypto services the bank will offer, why and when. Also, Matt Weller of Forex.com joins "First Mover" for bitcoin and ether markets analysis, and Greg King of Osprey Funds on its new trust fund for accredited investors and why it chose Polkadot.

Introducing CoinDesk Indexes

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Introducing CoinDesk Indexes: the industry standard for institutional-grade digital currency price references with billions of dollars in monthly trading volume quoted against them.

Underlying new brand names, TradeBlock's index methodology will continue to adhere to the standards of integrity and reliability that have always differentiated its indexes.

Read more about CoinDesk Indexes, the industry standard in crypto benchmarks.

Latest Headlines

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Before Fidelity, Mrinalini Bhutoria served as senior research analyst at Circle and spent three years at Credit Suisse.

Zambia’s Largest Land Titling Project Gets Blockchain Backing by Medici

"This program has the overall objective of ensuring security of tenure for our people," said Hon. Jean Kapata, Minister of Lands and Resources.

NYSE-Owner ICE Sold Coinbase Stake for $1.2 Billion

The NYSE participated in Coinbase’s Series C $75 million funding round in January 2015.

CoinDesk Research: Does Bitcoin Have an Energy Problem?

Is Bitcoin bad for the environment? This CoinDesk Research report looks at the data behind the most common critiques and shows that, while Bitcoin uses a lot of energy, the mix is evolving toward renewables. Bitcoin also incentivizes investment in clean energy sources, can convert pollution into value, and redistributes wasted power production.
Download the free report.

Disclaimer: The information presented in this message is intended as a news item that provides a brief summary of various events and developments that affect, or that might in the future affect, the value of one or more of the cryptocurrencies described above. The information contained in this message, and any information liked through the items contained herein, is not intended to provide sufficient information to form the basis for an investment decision. The information presented herein is accurate only as of its date, and it was not prepared by a research analyst or other investment professional. You should seek additional information regarding the merits and risks of investing in any cryptocurrency before deciding to purchase or sell any such instruments.

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