Need to know what happened in crypto today? Here is the latest news on daily trends and events impacting Bitcoin price, blockchain, DeFi, NFTs, Web3 and crypto regulation. Shares of MicroStrategy (MSTR) spiked more than 20% on March 4, as the price of Bitcoin crossed $67,000. Meanwhile, Bitcoin has made a new all-time high against the euro at 60,000 euros per coin, with the Mexican peso being its next target. Elsewhere, Coinbase has introduced embedded smart contracts for developers — a move it says will address devs’ pain points when building Web3 applications.
MSTR stock spikes over 20% as Bitcoin approaches all-time high
Shares of MicroStrategy (MSTR) spiked on March 4, as Bitcoin’s ongoing price rally provided the business intelligence firm with additional rocket fuel. MSTR surged more than 20% in intraday trading to peak at $1,339. It would later pare some of those gains, but remained firmly above $1,260. The company’s stock is experiencing a huge tailwind as Bitcoin approaches a new all-time high. The BTC price crossed $67,000 on March 4, having gained more than 56% over the past month. As Cointelegraph reported, MicroStrategy added another 3,000 BTC to its balance sheet in mid-February, bringing its total holdings to 193,000 BTC. Chairman Michael Saylor has repeatedly stated that he and MicroStrategy intend to keep buying Bitcoin “forever.”
Bitcoin passes new all-time high in euros
Bitcoin has passed a new all-time high against the euro as the cryptocurrency’s price reached a new multiyear high of $65,000. According to data from TradingView, Bitcoin touched 60,393 euros at 8:30 am UTC, surging about 5% from its intraday low of 57,521 euros. At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading at 59,981 euros, up around 56% year-to-date. River Intelligence marketing head Sam Wouters said the Mexican peso is the next most ambitious target for Bitcoin to smash. According to data from Xe.com, BTC is trading at 1.1 million pesos at the time of writing, down about 24% from its previous high of roughly 1.4 million pesos set in November 2021.
Coinbase expands wallet-as-a-service offerings
Crypto exchange Coinbase has introduced embedded smart wallets for developers, allowing better integration across Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) applications. According to the announcement, the exchange’s new smart wallet solutions allow users to take their crypto balances with them across different EVM-compatible applications integrated with the Coinbase Wallet SDK. The embedded wallet feature allows developers to incorporate noncustodial white-labeled wallets into their applications. “We’ve learned a lot from our customers in the past year, and we’ve been working a lot to improve the product experience of all of the services, and where we’ve arrived at is the Embedded Wallets. So, it’s been really a continuous effort for the past year,” - Yuga Cohler, senior engineering manager at Coinbase Embedded Wallets, told Cointelegraph in an interview. The solutions expand on Coinbase’s wallet-as-a-service product line, which allows developers to integrate crypto wallets into their own applications without having to create new technology.
Biggest Crypto Gaming Tokens Launched in 2024—So Far
Huge tokens have been dropping left and right so far in 2024, and gaming projects are getting in on the excitement. Tokens tied to games and networks have been among this year’s biggest launches as the broader crypto market rebounds and airdrops accelerate.
From Portal to Pixels, these are the gaming tokens that have made waves so far this year, ranked by peak market cap to date per CoinGecko, at the time of writing. But there are sure to be more big tokens ahead, as our gaming airdrops roundup suggests, so stay tuned—we’ll keep updating this list. 1. Portal (PORTAL)
Peak Price: $3.36 Peak Market Cap: $561.6 million Just launched this past Thursday, February 29, Portal arrived with a level of hype we haven’t seen in the crypto gaming space in some time. In part, that’s because of an airdrop farming push that saw users flood Twitter with tweets—and a record-breaking Binance campaign that saw users stake over $9 billion worth of crypto in hopes of yielding rewards didn’t hurt. Can this Ethereum-based token for the upcoming cross-chain gaming platform retain the hype? We’ll see, but with staking benefits and further airdrop campaigns ahead, you can be sure that we’ll keep hearing about it.
2. Pixels (PIXEL)
Peak Price: $0.6887 Peak Market Cap: $531 million Crypto’s hottest game right now is also responsible for the hottest single-game token of 2024—at least so far. The PIXEL token launched in late February for the chill farming game on Ethereum scaler Ronin, and helped introduce even more crypto-native elements into the web game. It also generated more than $1 billion worth of trading in less than a single day. With hundreds of thousands of daily users, Pixels has the crypto world’s attention and has helped build some serious momentum around Ronin too.
3. Xai (XAI)
Peak Price: $1.59 Peak Market Cap: $440.6 million The Xai layer-3 gaming network on Ethereum scaler Arbitrum had this year’s first big airdrop, rewarding owners and operators of the network’s Guardian Nodes and certain NFT holders. It’s been a hot start for XAI so far, rising to a peak price that’s more than double what it dropped at. Games are starting to roll out on the network, which ought to drive even more attention and excitement to the token, plus Xai recently launched staking rewards too.
4. Heroes of Mavia (MAVIA)
Peak Price: $10.59 Peak Market Cap: $317.7 million Heroes of Mavia is one of this year’s biggest new crypto game launches. The Clash of Clans clone has attracted millions of downloads across iOS and Android, and Skrice Studios celebrated the release by airdropping tokens to 100,000 early players, along with tokens for virtual land owners who had previously staked their NFTs.
MAVIA saw a big price surge after launching in February, rising above $10—a more than 5x improvement on the opening price. But it was short-lived, shedding about 40% of its value since. The game hasn’t implemented its crypto features yet, but has shared a sizable roadmap.
Crypto industry momentum ‘is picking up, and it's unstoppable’ — Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin
Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin told ETHDenver attendees that crypto is part of the next super cycle and “we are ready for a new system of the world.”
Crypto appears to be in a bull market, perhaps not by a technical definition, but most of the attendees at ETHDenver would agree that it sure feels like it. Even Ethereum co-founder and Consensys CEO Joe Lubin believes that things are looking up for crypto, and he’s convinced that the best is yet to come. On Feb. 29, Lubin joined the “What will drive the next super cycle” fireside chat moderated by Axios reporter Crystal Kim, and during the conversation, Lubin touched on the current “super cycle,” whether or not a spot BTC and ETH ETF are good for retail investors and the more developer-focused community and the growing need for decentralization in multiple industries. When asked what would catalyze the next super cycle — a long period of economic expansion that is typically driven by strong growth in the demand for products and services — Lubin said,
“We are in this 4th turning, and we are ready for a new system of the world. The other way of thinking about it is that it’s a monetary super cycle, where the monetary systems of the world reach and end of life essentially, basically because of interest, and there’s too much debt in the system because certain generations broke the monetary system and other elements of the financial system.”
Lubin explained that “crypto was born into an era of free money. It was born of an era of constrained money, controlled money, top-down command and control. Essentially, we for millennia have been living in a paradigm of centralized top-down trust and its authorities imbue intermediaries with certain powers and the intermediaries help run the world, they maintain these databases or ledgers that control who owns what and who has rights and privileges.”
Crypto exchange BitForex halts withdrawals, stops responding to users
Hong Kong-based crypto exchange BitForex has halted withdrawals without giving a reason following the withdrawal of $56 million from its wallets on Feb. 23. The exchange’s X account hasn’t been updated since May 2023. On its official Telegram channel, BitForex users reported problems with their accounts, varying from the inability to enter their accounts to the dashboard not showing any assets. Several users shared a pop-up screen showing they are blocked from accessing the company’s website. BitForex was once considered to be one of the leading crypto exchanges in terms of market capitalization.
US gov’t moved $922 million of seized Bitcoin after BTC price broke $60,000
The United States government transferred $922 million worth of Bitcoin from two cryptocurrency wallets that held funds seized from Bitfinex in 2016. The transfers occurred the same day Bitcoin (BTC) breached $60,000 for the first time in over two years on Feb. 28. The government seized the funds in 2016 after Bitfinex was hacked for approximately 119,754 BTC, worth over $7.4 billion at its current price. The hacker, Ilya Lichtenstein, laundered over $4.5 billion worth of Bitcoin from Bitfinex. Lichtenstein and his rapper wife, Heather Morgan (also known as Razzlekhan), were arrested in February 2022.