ChatGPT, Banking on Ripple, Adoption Rising

Crypto News: Here are the most popular stories from the crypto world as featured in BeInCrypto in the past week.

Big banks have taken a keen interest in the Ripple’s ongoing battle with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). For instance, London-based IG Bank published an article on the ongoing Ripple vs. SEC case late last month. The financial institution offered a summary of the case, including the background, and the ramifications of a victory for either party.

If the SEC prevails, IG believes this “could severely limit the ability of crypto companies to grow.” However, the article also offered some tentative hope if the reverse becomes the outcome. “A positive outcome for Ripple could see XRP soar, but with the case in the air, this is far from guaranteed.”

Competition from China for ChatGPT

Following its release by OpenAI in Nov. 2022, artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot service ChatGPT has surged in popularity this year. With its formidable language-processing capabilities, competing tech firms have been galvanized to push forward with similar solutions of their own.

For example, China’s largest search engine company, Baidu, announced plans to introduce a similar AI chatbot service in March. The company plans to integrate the yet-to-be-named solution into its main search services, providing users with conversation-style results, like ChatGPT. Baidu shares realized their largest gain in four weeks, some 5.8%, in the wake of the announcement.

Additionally, Alphabet subsidiary, Google, has come out saying it is testing a range of artificial intelligence (AI) powered chatbot services. One such project under its cloud unit, dubbed “Atlas,” is thought to be a “code red” effort in reaction to ChatGPT. Developers anticipate these AI projects will influence the launch of a public product.

Too Late to Start Mining at Home? Maybe not…

Although rising Bitcoin prices are improving the prospects of cryptocurrency miners, those looking to start should seek out another coin. Mining Bitcoin from home is no longer profitable due to the significantly increased difficulty level. It also requires specialized mining hardware, known as ASICs, which are much more powerful than a typical home computer.

However, other profitable cryptocurrencies to mine from home include Dogecoin and Ethereum Classic. Other alternatives include privacy coin Monero, and Ravencoin, which was shortlisted by Nasdaq. Those looking to start mining require a computer with a powerful graphics card (GPU) and a good quality power supply unit (PSU).

Tether Market Dominance Reaches New High

Total stablecoin market capitalization declined consecutively for 10 months, as of Jan., to $137 billion, according to CryptoCompare. This changed the proportion among the top three stablecoins, which dominate roughly 92% of the market.

For example, leading stablecoin Tether managed to raise its market dominance to 49.18%, its highest level since Nov. 2021. For second-place USD Coin from Circle this figure amounted to 31.05% However, Paxos’ Binance USD saw its supply shrink by roughly $2 billion over the past month, bringing its share to 11.52%.

Bitcoin and Ethereum Usage Up

In spite of the dismal past year for cryptocurrencies, with cratering prices and persistent collapses, adoption actually expanded. A recent CoinGecko report found that adoption of Bitcoin and Ethereum over the past year continued to expand.

According to the report, the number of addresses holding at least $1,000 of either crypto asset increased by 27% in 2022. The number of addresses with this much Bitcoin rose to 4.2 million by the end of the year, up from 3.4 million the prior January. Meanwhile, addresses with $1,000 in Ethereum also rose from 1.41 million to 1.73 million.

This Week in NFT Sales

The number of non-fungible token sales rose over the week to 13,800, before sinking back below 12,000 coming into Feb. At press time, there was an error on NonFungible’s site that projected sales multiple orders of magnitude higher than any prior. The website attributed these sales to Axie Infinity, its top collection for the week. However, the Axie token is actually 5% down in the past seven days, according to BeInCrypto data.

Crypto Coin News

The top gaining cryptocurrency of the past week was dYdX, which rose over 40% in value. This was followed by Mina (MINA), Optimism (OP) and Loopring (LRC), which all saw gains of roughly 30%. Finally, Convex Finance (CVX) rose more than 20%.

The biggest losers meanwhile, only lost rather marginal amounts last week. Apecoin led the pack with a 7.75% drop, followed by a 5% fall for Aptos (APT), eCash (XEC) and Lido DAO (LDO). Quant (QNT) rounded out the list with a roughly 3% depreciation.

Gala on the Slide

Senior analyst Valdrin Tahiri sounds the alarm over Gala (GALA) price, which is showing weaknesses, such as a bearish divergence on the daily RSI. Plus the price movement from the last few weeks seems overextended now.