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Trading volume for the No. 1 cryptocurrency by market cap is approaching its highest level in more than two months. Ethereum’s price has quadrupled year-to-date, while Bitcoin has risen 58%. Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Mike McGlone believes Ethereum could eventually take the top spot among digital assets. Bitcoin prices rose on Friday, returning above $46,000 after falling to $43,800 the previous day. At the time of writing, the largest cryptocurrency by market value is trading near its highest level in more than two months, with year-to-date gains reaching 60% following its recent rebound from lows around $29,000 in June.
A key threshold is the price’s 200-day moving average, currently around $45,000.
“The 200-day moving average is of vital importance to day traders,” Matt Blom, head of trading at digital asset firm Eqonex, wrote in his daily newsletter. “Assuming Bitcoin falls further to $40,900, it would indicate that the market is forming a new trading range, with $41,000 and $46,000 being key price levels.”
Latest prices of cryptocurrencies:
Bitcoin (BTC): $46,847, +4.83%
Ether (ETH): $3,224.2, +5.66%.
Traditional Market:
S&P 500: 4468.1, +0.2%
Gold: $1,778.3, +1.46%
The 10-year Treasury yield closed at 1.294%, compared with 1.369% on Thursday.
Short-term prediction In an interview this week, Blom said the $50,000 price level could be harder to break than when the cryptocurrency surged to an all-time high near $65,000 earlier this year.
Blom predicts that this is partly because some long-term Bitcoin investors who missed out on profits during the early 2021 rally may choose to cash in profits once the key psychological resistance level of $50,000 is reached. Such a sell-off could "limit upside for a few weeks," Blom said.
“Once we get to $50,000, I think the rhythm is going to get disrupted,” Blom said. “People are going to sell some coins. I don’t care how much of a HODLer you are.” In cryptocurrency trading jargon, a HODLer is an investor who buys coins with a plan to hold them for the long term.
Cardano announces specific date for Alonzo upgrade
Cardano (ADA) has surged past $2 for the first time in nearly three months as the blockchain’s lead developer announced a September activation date for the planned “Alonzo” upgrade — a move that will introduce smart contract functionality and address what critics have pointed out as one of the network’s most glaring flaws.
Smart contract functionality will allow Cardano to incorporate more applications, including so-called decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms that allow automated cryptocurrency lending and trading. This improvement could put the network in a better position to challenge Ethereum, currently the leader in blockchains with smart contract functionality.
ADA prices hit $2.08 at 9:05 UTC on Friday, the highest price since mid-May, when ADA's all-time high was $2.31. It has risen 16% in the past 24 hours. The recent price rebound has pushed Cardano's market value to about $65 billion, competing with Binance Coin (BNB) and Tether (USDT) for the third place in market value among all cryptocurrencies, second only to Bitcoin, which ranks first, and Ethereum, which ranks second.
ETH destruction is in progress, and the price is hot
ETH traders are paying close attention to data from the Ethereum blockchain following its most recent upgrade — the so-called London Hard Fork — and how the update could reduce the cryptocurrency’s supply growth.
Under Ethereum Improvement Proposal 1559 — a component of the London upgrade, often referred to as EIP 1559 — base fees paid for transactions on the blockchain are “burned,” meaning they offset a portion of the 2 ETH created as a miner reward for each block of data.
According to the Watch the Burn website, as of press time, approximately 38,261 ETH has been destroyed under EIP 1559. This amount represents more than $120 million and reduces the estimated net issuance of new ether by 35%.
The big question is whether institutional investors, which are quietly entering the digital asset market, will begin to view ether as an inflation-proof asset, similar to how many Bitcoin bulls view the cryptocurrency.
While Bitcoin has gained 16% in August, Ether has outperformed Bitcoin with a 26% gain. Year-to-date, Ether’s price has quadrupled, while Bitcoin has risen 58%.
“We expect that with the recent uptick in market activity, fees flowing through the platform will also increase, and therefore should continue to see further inflationary or even deflationary effects on Ether’s circulating supply, leading to positive price performance,” investment research firm FundStrat wrote this week.
Notably, Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Mike McGlone, who won huge praise last year for (eventually) accurately predicting that Bitcoin would hit $50,000, suggested in a report this week that Ether could eventually challenge the large cryptocurrencies for the top spot in market cap rankings, taking the top spot among digital assets.
Crypto industry insiders often refer to this imaginary change in the rankings as a “flip.”
“There seems to be nothing stopping Ether from ‘flipping’ to the top of the market cap charts, even if on its current trajectory it will take years rather than months,” McGlone wrote. “Ethereum appears to be on a lasting path to becoming the go-to platform for the cryptocurrency ecosystem and decentralized finance, similar to Amazon and e-commerce.” The latest summary of the Poly Network hacking incident According to CoinDesk's Muyao Shen, the drama surrounding the largest hacking attack in the history of decentralized finance (DeFi) seems to be coming to an end, as the attacker returned most of the stolen funds to the multi-signature wallet established by Poly Network, but $33 million worth of USDT was frozen by Tether.
“What cryptocurrency investors and regulators should be concerned about here is that this was not a hack in the traditional sense, where someone gained access to the network through unauthorized means,” David Janczewski, co-founder and CEO of cryptocurrency security firm Coincover, wrote in an email.
“This appears to be a vulnerability where a user ran public code to exploit an undiscovered security issue,” Janczewski wrote. “This type of vulnerability will certainly not be the last, as funds deposited into smart contracts like this are always exposed to risks related to the way these smart contracts are coded.”
Altcoin List
Polygon Merges with Hermez Network: Polygon, a second-layer platform on the Ethereum blockchain, is merging with Rollup platform Hermez Network in a deal for 250 million MATIC. Based on the price of MATIC at the time of the deal on August 4, the acquisition is valued at approximately $250 million. Hermez will be absorbed into the Polygon ecosystem under the name Polygon Hermez, and it will become part of the Polygon product family, including the Polygon SDK and Polygon Avail. The entire Hermez project — its employees, technology, and native HEZ tokens (which holders will be able to redeem at a rate of 3.5 MATIC:1 HEZ) — will be incorporated into Polygon’s platform. The Polygon-Hermez merger is the first full merger of one blockchain network with another.
Kaszek Makes First DeFi Investment: Kaszek, a leading Latin American venture capital fund, has made its first decentralized finance (DeFi) investment, leading a $3 million round in Exactly, a startup that is building an open-source, non-custodial credit protocol on the Ethereum platform. “We see a massive emerging opportunity in DeFi that will change the financial landscape in unimaginable ways in the coming years,” said Hernan Kazah, co-founder and managing partner of Kaszek, in a statement, adding that the investment is part of two funds recently raised totaling $1 billion. (CoinDesk) |
