The global crypto market cap is $1.70T 4.63%▲ with a 24hr market volume of 170.17B -27.81%▼. Bitcoin's dominance is currently 60.15% -0.45%▼. 🚀 CURRENT PRICES BY MARKET CAP | # | Name | Price | 24h % | | 1 | Bitcoin BTC | $53,940 | 4.16% ▲ | | 2 | Ethereum ETH | $1,665 | 3.66% ▲ | | 3 | Cardano ADA | $1.22 | 7.68% ▲ | | 4 | Binance Coin BNB | $ 250.66 | 7.31% ▲ | | 5 | Polkadot DOT | $32.52 | 7.88% ▲ | * Prices as of 2:30 p.m. ET.
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 Cardano announced smart contract capabilities could be live as soon as April. The announcement, revealed at the "Cardano360" virtual conference, marks the first opportunity for publicly written smart contracts to be deployed on Cardano. More: - The anticipated hard fork, dubbed the Alonzo upgrade, will provide a testnet for smart contract development and testing.
- Unfortunately, developers will have to wait a bit longer for a full release. The mainnet launch of Cardano network smart contracts is expected to launch in August.
- Cardano is one of the first crypto projects to utilize a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus algorithm and is currently the third-largest cryptocurrency in market cap.
- With the inclusion of smart contracts, Cardano will gain significant functionality by giving users the ability to develop dapps and expand on Cardano’s DeFi ecosystem.
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 Microsoft’s Decentralized Identity (DID) Network, Microsoft ION Network, is now live. Built on top of the Bitcoin blockchain, Microsoft ION is a second-layer protocol designed to provide a secure alternative to usernames and passwords. More: - A representative of the project suggested that the experience of using Microsoft ION would be similar to that of Google’s two-factor authentication (2FA) tool, Google Authenticator.
- ION is just one of many projects Microsoft has been developing, funding, and building upon in the blockchain space.
- Overall, it seems that Microsoft is far more pro-blockchain than it was when Bill Gates called bitcoin a “greater fool” investment and said he would short it if he could. Luckily for Bill, he wasn’t aware that CBOE offered bitcoin futures, because bitcoin has rallied 477.524% since his CNBC statement.
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 A message from RUDDERSTACK Data management is complex. RudderStack makes it simple. RudderStack helps you fully leverage your customer data by collecting and moving it between all of your applications, tools, and data warehouses. We take the things that make customer data hard - like event collection, routing, integrating, real-time user identification, and building your customer data lake - and make them easy. - Event Stream - real-time event streaming and identity resolution.
Inject one snippet of code to capture event data, then deliver events to every tool. - Cloud Extract - cloud-to-warehouse ELT.
Integrate data from cloud tools, databases, and data lakes to expand the types of analysis you can do. - Warehouse Actions - reverse-ETL streaming.
Send enriched data from your warehouse directly to the event stream of the tools your teams use. Start building smarter customer data pipelines today with RudderStack. Learn more
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 The Australian Government is offering $6M in grants for blockchain development. Applications are open until April 29 for two grants of up to $3M each. More: - The first grant of up to $3M will fund projects targeting supply chain tracking in the minerals industry.
- The second $3M grant is intended to fund tax tracking blockchain projects in the food and beverage sector.
- Project objectives include: reducing compliance costs for businesses, bolstering blockchain literacy in Australia, and supporting the inclusion of blockchain in broader policy work.
- Australia has been at the forefront of governmental encouragement in advancing blockchain technology, releasing a five-year roadmap in February to boost blockchain development in the country.
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▲ TOP GAINERS | # | Name | Price | 24h % | | 1 | Filecoin FIL | $115.71 | 28.96% ▲ | | 2 | TRON TRX | $0.0642 | 16.88% ▲ | | 3 | Terra LUNA | $18.81 | 15.43% ▲ | | 4 | XRP XRP | $0.5544 | 10.30% ▲ | | 5 | VeChain VET | $0.0871 | 9.29% ▲ | | 6 | Polkadot DOT | $32.51 | 7.86% ▲ | | 7 | Cardano ADA | $1.22 | 7.66% ▲ | | 8 | Aave AAVE | $356.28 | 7.31% ▲ | | 9 | Binance Coin BNB | $250.71 | 7.30% ▲ | | 10 | Klaytn KLAY | $3.00 | 6.51% ▲ | ▼ TOP LOSERS - Market category has no losers today 🚀 * Limited to cryptocurrencies with a market cap > $4B. Prices as of 2:30 p.m. ET.
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- Kentucky recently signed two legislative bills offering tax breaks and other financial incentives for cryptocurrency miners.
- An NFT minted by The New York Times, depicting an NYT article titled “Buy This Column on the Blockchain!” raised $560,000 for the Neediest Cases Fund on Foundation's marketplace.
- SushiSwap launched margin trading app "Kashi" as part of its BentoBox product suite.
- The second-largest art museum in the world, Russia’s Hermitage Museum, is setting up to host an NFT art exhibition as part of its “Hermitage 20/21” project.
- 100+ companies including those backed by Google Ventures, Andreessen, Founders Fund, Kleiner and Bloomberg have hired software engineers from this company.*
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 |  | Griffin McShane is a J.D. candidate currently living in Portland, Maine. He is a graduate of Providence College, where he studied both computer science and business. Griffin aspires one day to go to the moon and bring some of his altcoins along for the ride. |   | | Editor | Charlotte Hayes-Clemens is an editor and writer based in Vancouver. She has dabbled in both the fiction and non-fiction world, having worked at HarperCollins Publishers and more recently as a writing coach for new and self-published authors. Proper semi-colon usage is her hill to die on. | |
RudderStack is the open source, warehouse-first solution to connect your entire customer data stack. | |
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