May 12, 2023

Cardano’s scaling tool Hydra Head has gone live on the blockchain’s mainnet in the latest DeFi-focused upgrade to the network. Each Hydra Head works as a “mini ledger” shared among a small group of participants, thereby helping to speed up transactions significantly. The hope is that developers will be able to use the tools to add specialized DeFi protocols on top of Cardano, giving the network utility comparable to that of the likes of Ethereum. Cardano’s native token ADA has seen a slight uptick following the upgrade, currently ahead 1.45% in the last 24 hours, outperforming the broader crypto market, which has fallen 3.16%, according to the CoinDesk Market Index. 

The Milady NFT collection spiked as much as 60% following an acknowledgement from Elon Musk, which drew parallels with the Twitter owner’s past praise for dogecoin. Miladys feature cartoon profile pic-like images with wide-eyed childlike faces, one of which Musk tweeted overlaid with the words, “There is no meme, I love you.” Following the tweet, the collection trended among the most in-demand NFTs on marketplace OpenSea, with prices as high as $13,700 worth of ether at the peak and trading volumes of over $22 million in the last 24 hours. The comparisons with dogecoin should prompt caution among traders however. While Musk’s supposed endorsement of DOGE in the past has triggered jumps in the memecoin’s price, they have often proved short-lived. 

Crypto miner Hive Blockchain is planning to sell up to $100 million in common shares through an at-the-market sale in order to fund the goal of doubling its computing power. Hive is aiming to increase its hashrate from 3 exahash/second (EH/s) to 6 EH/s, part of which it says it can achieve by the end of Q2 with machines already purchased. No further details have been offered on the timeline of the sale, for which Canadian investment firms Canaccord Genuity and Stifel are to act as agents. Following the turbulence of 2022, of which several miners did not live to tell the tale, firms are now taking advantage of a modest rebound in crypto prices so far this year to set new growth and operational targets. 

Bitcoin fell to a two-month low of $26,150 during Asian trading hours today, now taking its decline since May 6 to 12%.

The CoinDesk Bitcoin Trend Indicator (BTI), which measures the directional momentum in bitcoin’s price, flipped to neutral from bullish for the first time in three weeks on Thursday. The BTI has largely shown a bullish signal since mid-January, the exceptions being a brief downward indication in mid-March and a neutral reading on April 24.

"There seems to be 'paper thin' liquidity right now, even across majors such as BTC,” Matthew Dibb, chief investment office at Astronaut Capital, said. “While we can't point at a direct reason for the weakness, any medium to large offers are driving the market down.”

With low liquidity on major exchanges such as Binance, it is difficult for traders to execute large orders without influencing the price.