The world's largest wholesale and retail chain Walmart Inc. has filed an application with the USPTO (US Patent and Trademark Office) for registration of its own virtual currency and NFT tokens.

At the end of December 2021, the US company informed the USPTO about its plans to register a trademark for cryptocurrency, a service for trading digital assets based on blockchain technology and e-commerce software.

In addition, the corporation informed the regulator about the possibility of developing an online platform for trading virtual assets based on NFT technology.

Despite Walmart's grandiose plans, the announcement of which appeared in the largest US media the day before, during preliminary trading on Tuesday, the company's securities are losing value. During the last month, the capitalization level of the wholesale and retail trade network increased by more than 4% to $402 billion.

At the same time, news about existing alternative coins attract participants of the cryptocurrency market no less than reports about potential ones. So, during the trading session on Monday, the value of the Cardano digital coin instantly soared by 10%, above the $1.56 mark. Over the past week, the virtual asset has increased in price by 38% and at the time of writing is in fifth place in the top 10 cryptocurrencies by capitalization. In addition, over the past day, Cardano has surpassed BTC's main competitor - Ethereum - in terms of the volume of transactions made with the coin.

Analysts call the launch of the first decentralized cryptocurrency exchange in the Cardano network SundaeSwap announced next Thursday the main reason for the spectacular jump of altcoin.

By the way, the current rise of altcoin to high-profile peaks is far from the first "minute of glory" of the cryptocurrency. So, in September 2021, the digital coin updated the historical high, soaring in price above $3. Then the record of the virtual asset was associated with the Alonzo hard fork and the appearance of the smart contract creation function in the blockchain.

However, within a few months after the update was released, the cost of Cardano decreased threefold and returned to semi-annual low levels around $1.06.

Amid the loud news about the success of Cardano, the creator of the Ethereum digital coin Vitalik Buterin arranged a survey on his Twitter account to determine a competitor for his brainchild. The majority of votes were cast by users of the social network for the Cardano cryptocurrency.