As XRP token has gradually resumed growing but is so far stuck at the $0.40 level, whales continue to move staggering amounts of this crypto asset, trading it or redistributing their riches. Over the past 10 hours, large crypto holders, widely known as whales in the crypto space, have transferred more than 260 million XRP in just a few transactions, according to data provided by Whale Alert. The largest portion was shifted by Bithumb exchange, whose owner has again gotten in trouble with the authorities. 263 million XRP shifted mostly from Bithumb According to the popular cryptocurrency tracker mentioned above, over the past 10 hours, four large amounts of XRP have been moved. Whale Alert has marked the majority of the participating wallets as anonymous. However, it then provided some more details, showing that the largest transfer here, carrying 160,000,000 XRP, was made by major South Korean crypto exchange — Bithumb — internally, between its own wallets. Another internal transfer here was made by the Bitso exchange, which is a major Ripple partner in the Latin America region, where it is doing its best to spread Ripple's ODL technology (On-Demand liquidity) that enables quick and cheap cross-border payments and remittances. Bitso transferred 39,500,000 XRP from one its address to another.

Chinese crypto journalist and blogger Colin Wu has shared recent data provided by Token Terminal regarding the growth of the DAU – daily active users – for various blockchain platforms. According to it, Polygon has become the second biggest one after Binance.

Polygon outdoes Ethereum, Solana and Cardano Token Terminal data shows that the number of daily active users on Polygon has surpassed that of the second largest blockchain, Ethereum. A total of 344,000 for Polygon compare with Ethereum's 324,000. Therefore, Polygon has become the second biggest platform in DAU. Ahead of it comes Binance Smart Chain (BSC), also known as BNB Chain, with its 781,000 daily active users. Popular crypto YouTuber and trader Lark Davis shared a screenshot from the same source with some more details on this. His image shows that after Ethereum, next comes Solana, with 135,000 active users per day, and Near protocol with 69,000 active users on a daily basis.

With general sustenance in the ongoing rally in the cryptocurrency ecosystem, Aptos (APT) has become one of the best-performing altcoins over the past 24 hours. Within that time frame, the digital currency has grown by 29.49% to $6.68, solidifying the 81.95% growth it has recorded over the past week.

Aptos is designed as a Layer 1 Proof-of-Stake (PoS) blockchain protocol that employs a novel smart contract programming language called Move, a Rust-based programming language that was independently developed by Meta's (formerly Facebook's) Diem blockchain engineers. Recognized for its versatility, Aptos is gradually plugging itself in as a viable Ethereum killer.

In terms of its price action, Aptos might be one of the best-performing altcoins when compared to its proximity to its all-time high (ATH). The digital asset attained its price peak of $10.25 about three months ago and, at current prices, Aptos is just 34.87% away from retesting this new high.

By comparison, Ethereum (ETH), despite its transition to PoS, is about 71.15% away from its ATH of $4,891.70, Solana (SOL), Avalanche (AVAX) and Binance Coin (BNB) are also more than 50% away from their ATHs, making APT an outperformer.

Aptos ecosystem growth

Aptos token's growth is notably being fueled by the growing utility of the blockchain protocol as well as the now visible popularity of the APT coin. As a relatively young blockchain protocol, Aptos has continued to create a robust awareness of its capabilities and broadening integrations.

As confirmed by decentralized finance (DeFi) trading platform, Onus Finance, Aptos remained the most discussed altcoin in its community. This revelation complements the goal of the protocol to present itself as ready for everyone in Web 3.0 as it seeks to empower an ecosystem of dApps to solve real-world user problems.

The second largest canine crypto in terms of market capitalization, Shiba Inu, has demonstrated an impressive rise over the past week as its price jumped by nearly 20%.

SHIB price close to "burning" a zero

Since the middle of last week, Shiba Inu has been growing by leaps and bounds.

On Tuesday, Jan. 10, the price soared by 10%, and from Wednesday to now, it has spiked by over 12%, hitting the $0.00000980 price mark.

In early November when the crypto market was hit by the insolvency of the FTX giant and its founder, former crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried, Bitcoin and altcoins have plunged.

Shiba added the fifth zero to its price, and now, it seems, it is preparing to eliminate it once again.

Bitcoin rising close to $19,000

Another factor that has likely contributed to the coin's growth is the rise of the Bitcoin price. Over the past few days, BTC suddenly regained the $18,200 level, and on Jan. 12, it touched $19,000 before rolling slightly backward.

SHIB and other altcoins surged on the back of the flagship cryptocurrency. Besides, Twitter has recently added a "cashtag" for Shiba Inu, as it did for Dogecoin, ADA and other cryptos as January began.

Little things like this generally contribute to an overall background upon which a token's price can go up.

Aside from that, SHIB Metaverse hub WAGMI Temple is going to be previewed by the attendees of SXSW 2023 in Austin, Texas, as covered by U.Today.

RippleX, the team that provides XRPL developers with the infrastructure, tools, services, programs and support needed to advance their solutions and innovations, has announced the Wave 4 awardees of XRPL grants.

As stated in a blog post, 25 projects representing the themes of sustainability and diversity, equity and inclusion, as well as general technical projects, received $2.6 million in Wave 4 financing from XRPL grants.

Announcing the Wave 4 awardees of #XRPLGrants! We’re excited to award more than $2.6 million in funding to 25 teams from six continents building new use cases on the #XRPLedger. Learn about the grantees here👇https://t.co/pF7zXjiOzR — RippleX (@RippleXDev) January 12, 2023 Projects in the e-commerce sector, such as wallets, payment systems, event ticketing, Shopify-related apps, pet ownership that uses NFTs for identification, ID verification and fraud protection, health and wellness projects involving athletic performance data and NFTs, and others, are among the additional funded projects in the Wave 4 range. By highlighting Wave 4 Sustainability Focused Projects, RippleX reaffirms that the XRPL Grants program is dedicated to assisting with initiatives and solutions that are concerned with sustainability and combating climate change by utilizing the carbon-neutral XRP Ledger.

Applications for the next round, which is Wave 5, will open in February 2023, as stated in the blog post.

Sustainability focus In a long line of predictions, Sendi Young, Ripple's MD for Europe, predicts that consumers and policymakers will continue to scrutinize the sustainability credentials of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology.

With less energy-intensive blockchains and blockchain-enabled solutions, like the tokenization of carbon credits, she thinks more sustainability will be possible.

XRPL touts its capability of being carbon neutral and more energy efficient than POW (proof-of-work) blockchains. Ripple announced a $100 million commitment to carbon markets in 2022.

Through investments in carbon removal businesses and climate-focused fintechs, the financing is aimed at expediting carbon removal activity and assisting in modernizing carbon markets.

The second largest dog-themed token, Shiba Inu, has sustained the trend of growth in its long-term holders, who now account for 62% of its total holders, which began in 2022.

The year 2022 was a tough one for cryptocurrencies, defined by falling prices, but Shiba Inu saw a rise in its long-term holders while the percentage of its short-term holders held relatively steady. According to IntoTheBlock's data on holder composition by time held, 62% of SHIB holders have held onto their tokens for more than a year, 34% have held within a year and 4% have held onto their tokens for less than a month.

Shiba Inu has surpassed the 1.2 million mark in holder count as it continues to set new records.

 According to data from WhaleStats, there are now 1,280,762 Shiba Inu holders. This remains a positive sign because it demonstrates long-term interest in the project.

 SHIB prepares for next move as ''burn catalyst'' appears At the time of publication, SHIB was changing hands at $0.0000091, up 3.81% in the last 24 hours. The SHIB price is gaining momentum for its next move as the "burn catalyst" appears for its price.

 According to the SHIB burn website, the SHIB burn rate is up a whopping 937% as millions of SHIB are sent to dead addresses. In the last 24 hours, over 23,680,004 SHIB tokens have been burned, and four transactions have been made. 

While the crypto market anticipates a bullish comeback in 2023, it should be noted that the current picture remains one of consolidation for now. Shiba Inu ranks as one of the most used smart contracts by Ethereum whales that WhaleStats tracks.

According to a recent piece from The Paypers, CoinGate crypto payment processor has entered into a partnership with Wix, a global SaaS platform. Now, merchants working with it will be able to accept various cryptocurrencies for payment, including popular meme coin Shiba Inu.

SHIB utility and adoption expand

Thanks to the new collaboration between the two companies mentioned above, merchants who work with Wix in Spain, Lithuania, Germany and Netherlands will get an opportunity to use the new solution for crypto payments in their online stores.

Apart from Shiba Inu, Wix will offer payments in Bitcoin and other 70 coins, as well as in the most popular fiat currencies — EUR, USD and GBP.

As reported by U.Today, last fall, Elon Musk also allowed thousands of users to utilize SHIB and Dogecoin, along with other cryptos, through buying his exclusive collector's item — "Burnt Hair" perfume produced by The Boring Company, which is run by the tech mogul.

The price of SHIB jumped on that news briefly. Each bottle cost over $100, and more than 10,000 of them were sold within a week.

Whale moves 3.3 trillion coins to new wallet

As reported by Whale Alert crypto transaction tracker, over the past two hours, a massive SHIB transfer was spotted as a total of 3,323,256,285,484 meme coins was moved between anonymous wallets. This is the equivalent of $30,458,751.

Earlier this week, U.Today covered that a similar amount was moved from an anonymous address to a blank wallet, thus creating a new SHIB whale.

According to on-chain analytics portal Santiment, the mood of the crowd toward cryptocurrencies is mixed at the moment, with some of the tokens appearing extremely bullish and others the exact opposite. In particular, crypto market participants are the most euphoric about XRP; it has even overtaken Ethereum (ETH) in terms of total weighted sentiment.

Even the claims by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which has been trying for two years to get the cryptocurrency recognized as a security, have failed to dampen the crowd's enthusiasm for XRP.

Recall that the litigation between the SEC and crypto company Ripple, which uses XRP in its cross-border transactions, is expected by many participants to end in the first half of 2023 with one of three options: a court decision, a settlement or a summary judgment.

At the same time, XRP's price action is not something to get too excited about. Over the past three weeks, XRP quotes were slowly but still declining, at one point squeezing to $0.3 per token, where it last was back in early summer 2022.

The price of the SAND cryptocurrency tied to the popular metaverse project has recently shown solid performance on the market with a 12% price increase in less than a few days.

The rise could be tied to a recent $9.9 million transfer made by whales. According to the daily chart of SAND, we are seeing a solid short-term trend that puts the token back at the local resistance level reflected in the 21-day moving average, which has acted as a guideline for the sharp downturn we have been seeing in the last few months.

In 2021, Sandbox became one of the most popular metaverse and GameFi projects on the market, attracting millions of users and venture capital. Unfortunately, the situation changed in 2022 as GameFi, NFT and DeFi industries stumbled upon the changed monetary policy that pushed investors away from unnecessary risks and investments. The situation we are seeing today is far from the ATH SAND reached previously. However, the returned activity of whales and addresses associated with them could be a major sign of recovery for the whole industry. GameFi has positioned itself away from the cryptocurrency industry in general as the target audience of both highly differs.

At press time, SAND is trading at $0.45. The $9.9 million worth of tokens transferred to an anonymous wallet are currently sitting at their initial destination and will most likely move further on Monday after liquidity returns to the market. Generally, the cryptocurrency market has not seen any major changes since the beginning of the year, hence we will not see any major changes in the existing market composition in the short-term perspective.

A recent criminal complaint unsealed by the U.S. Federal Court in Brooklyn is among the first-ever precedents of criminal investigation against creators of non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

NFT dev charged with rug pull with $2.9 million stolen

According to a statement by the Eastern District of New York U.S.

Attorney's Office, Aurelien Michel, a French citizen and UAE resident, was arrested for defrauding the purchasers of Mutant Ape Planet NFTs. The collection closely resembled the famous Mutant Ape Yacht Club by Yuga Labs, but had nothing in common with it.

Michel has already appeared before the U.S. Magistrate Judge James R. Cho.

The NFT artist created and distributed a collection of tokens that were equipped with falsely promoted utilities, rewards and bonuses. However, he just "pulled the rug" and withdrew $2.9 million from investors' deposits. As buyers were left with "worthless" tokens, Michel allegedly spent all the money for his own benefit.

Breon Peace, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, admitted that unfortunately this scheme is not unique: many investors were defrauded in a pretty similar manner: As alleged, the defendant used a traditional criminal scheme to defraud consumers eager to participate in a new digital asset market.

Protection from fraud and manipulation extends to all consumers and investors, including those participating in the fast-evolving market for NFTs and other crypto assets.

It is interesting that, according to the statement, the rug pull mastermind is only charged with the fact that the purchasers of his NFTs did not get "rewards," "bonuses" and "airdrops." "Community went way too toxic" There is a certain irony in the fact that 6,797 "mutants" of this collection are still being offered on OpenSea, the largest NFT marketplace.

Meanwhile, some of them are only $10 worth. Michel has allegedly confirmed the fact of the rug pull privately. However, he is sure that the purchasers of the NFTs themselves are to blame for this drama: We never intended to rug but the community went way too toxic

According to an IRS officer, the defendant "can no longer blame the NFT community" for his criminal activity and should be held accountable for the fraud.