Ethereum Classic stays warm

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Ethereum Classic, now the 27th-largest digital asset, remains on a steep upward trek with a push toward $50, and having gained 85% in seven days.

ETC shot up another 9% last night. The looming finalization of Ethereum fully transforming into a network with a Proof-of-Stake consensus layer ushers in a fundamental shift in which incentivized stakers run the show in terms of securing the network. Which means no more ETH mining. "These operations will need to use their hardware to mine a different crypto," NewsBTC explained. "Ethereum Classic seems like the most logical option."

ETC remains 71% off its all-time high reached in early May 2021.

Bitcoin and Ethereum each lost 2% over 24 hours. The altcoin rally lost steam. And then there is Cashio Dollar (CASH) which lost pretty much everything.

An algorithmic stablecoin running on Solana, CASH, ravaged by an exploit, was wiped clean (The Block).

According to DeFi Llama, the Cashio Dollar protocol's total value locked (TVL) fell from $28.9 million to $569,000 while the price of CASH, the dollar-pegged stablecoin, per CoinGecko, plunged to practically zero.

Bitcoin was $43,000 last night. It's hovering at $42,000 as of this morning at 8 a.m. (EST).

An important chart candle support target ($42.5K) was notched along the way, analysts say.

Analyst Matthew Hyland tweeted about an observable breakthrough for a BTC indicator (RSI) that for five months had been down-trending, suggesting the tide could be turning (Cointelegraph).

Crypto lender Nexo has formed a venture capital arm flush with $150 million to be invested in Web 3.0, decentralized finance (DeFi), non-fungible tokens (NFTs), the metaverse, gaming, payments, trading infrastructure and compliance services, the firm said, per CoinDesk.

It could be there is some other aspect of crypto at which Nexo’s VC operation is looking, although we’re not sure what that might be.

Yuga Labs, the company behind Bored Apes (BAYC), meanwhile, has raised $450 million to build a gaming metaverse called “Otherside.”

But the talk of crypto right now is Terra's supposed plan to eventually purchase $3 billion worth of BTC to backstop, alongside Terra's LUNA, the TerraUSD stablecoin. On-chain bloodhounds are said to be on the scent of $125 million in Tether (USDT), seemingly tied to Terra, seemingly on the move (Cointelegraph).

Indigenous Australians want to learn from the past to shape the future. A group representing a coalition of First Nations (Yupungathi, Meriam, Darumbal, Biri Gubi, Gadigal and Yuin) is setting up a First Nations Cultural Embassy in the metaverse (Cointelegraph).

This past November, the island nation of Barbados launched an embassy in the metaverse.

Play-to-earn gaming and immersive metaverse experiences present a new paradigm of digital living, said Professor Vanessa Lee-Ah mat, whose expertise is in Australian indigenous cultural issues.

“There is no playbook for empowering indigenous communities,” Lee-Ah mat said, emphasizing new technological opportunities to right wrongs.

Indigenous culture, rooted in ancestral identity and kinship with nature, could help steer the metaverse in a direction that does not repeat past mistakes, she said.