Crypto-currency prices drop, recovery continues to slow

RIYADH: Bitcoin, the leading crypto-currency, traded lower on Tuesday, falling 3.22 per cent to $48,497.55 at 6:31pm Riyadh time, Arab News reported.

Ether, the second most-traded crypto-currency, traded at $3,241.55, down by 3.21 per cent, according to data from Coindesk.

Meanwhile, sales of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have jumped to new heights, in another sign of how well the market has interacted. Visa announced that it has paid $150,000 for CryptoPunk NFTs, a type of blockchain token, to add to its historic collection of commercial artifacts. The company also noted that “NFTs represent a new chapter for digital commerce.”

CryptoPunks sold more than $86 million and sales so far in August amounted to $332 million, while the average price of CryptoPunk for the month was $199,069, more than double the average of last month, according to CryptoSlam data.

Virginia-based MicroStrategy has announced that it has added 3,907 new bitcoins to its massive original crypto-currency holdings. Its bitcoin holdings totaled 108,992, according to a tweet from CEO Michael Saylor.

According to a filing released on Tuesday by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the company has spent about $177 million on its recent bitcoin purchases, with an average price of about $45,294 per coin.

While MicroStrategy’s share price, which some investors use as a proxy for the price of bitcoin, has fallen from its March highs of $1,273 to $718, CoinDesk reported

Data tracked by Glassnode shows that crypto-currency exchanges received 16,606.80 BTC on Monday, the highest daily net inflow in over a month. Over the past week, more than 29,000 BTC were transferred to exchanges.

“It’s not a trend we want to continue,” William Clementi, lead insights analyst at Blockware Solutions, said in a tweet.

Blockstream has received $210 million in a Series B funding round that values the bitcoin technology firm at $3.2 billion.

The round was joined by British investment management firm Baillie Gifford and iFinex, the parent company of crypto exchange Bitfinex and issuer of the Tether stablecoin, Blockstream reported on Tuesday.

Blockstream also said it has acquired the intellectual property and key employees of the Israeli bitcoin mining hardware maker Spondoolies on undisclosed terms, CoinDesk reported.