crypto blog
Ethereum ready for The Merge as last shadow fork completes successfully
Ethereum (ETH) developers confirmed the successful completion of the prerequisites — shadow forks — required for the highly anticipated blockchain upgrade, The Merge. Shadow forks help developers stress test synchronization assumptions to ensure network safety during permanent upgrades. In light of The Merge, Ethereum developers implemented the first shadow fork on Apr. 11, 2022. Nearly six months in, Ethereum research and engineering company Nethermind confirmed that the transition in Mainnet-Shadowfork-13 — the last shadow fork — was successful, signaling the readiness of the network for migrating to a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism. Transition in Mainnet-Shadowfork-13 (the last shadowfork before The Merge) was successful for all Nethermind nodes!#TheMerge #Ethereum #Neth...
MicroStrategy to reinvest $500M stock sales into Bitcoin: SEC filing
MicroStrategy, the largest institutional Bitcoin (BTC) buyer, entered an agreement with two agents — Cowen and Company and BTIG — to sell its aggregated class A common stock worth $500,000,000, reveals Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing. MicroStrategy, co-founded by Bitcoin bull Michael Saylor, amassed approximately 129,699 BTC over several years at an aggregate purchase price of $3.977 billion. Despite market uncertainties, the business analytics software firm continues to pursue its goal of acquiring more BTC by selling company stocks. The filing confirmed: “We intend to use the net proceeds from the sale of any class A common stock offered under this prospectus for general corporate purposes, including the acquisition of bitcoin, unless otherwise indicated in the applicable...
BTC price nears $21.7K as whales boost Bitcoin ‘almost perfectly’
Bitcoin (BTC) sought to overturn August resistance on Sep. 10 as whale buy-levels dictated BTC price action. BTC/USD 1-day candle chart (Bitstamp). Source: TradingView Whales provide short-term price ceiling Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC/USD hitting new multi-week highs of $21,671 on Bitstamp. The pair capitalized on a short squeeze which began early on Sep. 9, taking it around 10% higher after plumbing the lowest levels since the end of June. Analyzing the events, on-chain monitoring resource Whalemap noted that clusters of buy-ins by whales had effectively allowed Bitcoin to put in a floor. $19,000 had been a high-volume zone of interest for buyers previously, and this thus remained unviolated during the visit to two-month lows. As Cointelegraph reported,...
DApp activity rises 3.7% in August for the first time since May: Finance Redefined
Welcome to Finance Redefined, your weekly dose of essential decentralized finance (DeFi) insights — a newsletter crafted to bring you significant developments over the last week. Decentralized applications, or DApps, finally showed a glimmer of recovery in August as the daily average of unique active wallets rose by 3.7% compared to May. With just under a week left for the Merge, SEBA Bank has opened Ethereum staking services for institutions. On the other side, layer-2 scalability solutions are hopeful of seeing a significant cut in their carbon emissions post Merge. This past week, two DeFi protocols became victims of coordinated flash loan attacks. On Wednesday, Avalanche-based lending protocol Nereus Finance became the victim of a crafty hack that saw a user net $371,000 worth of USD C...
3 reasons why Bitcoin traders should be bullish on BTC
Bitcoin (BTC) has been in a rut, and BTC’s price is likely to stay in its current downtrend. But like I mentioned last week, when nobody is talking about Bitcoin, that’s usually the best time to be buying Bitcoin. In the last week, the price took another tumble, dropping below $19,000 on Sept. 6 and currently, BTC bulls are struggling to flip $19,000–$20,000 back to support. Just this week, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell reiterated the Fed’s dedication to doing literally whatever it takes to combat inflation “until the job is done,” and market analysts have increased their interest rate hike predictions from 0.50 basis points to 0.75. Basically, interest rate hikes and quantitative tightening are meant to crush consumer demand, which in turn, eventually leads to a decrease in...
Dubai grants regulatory approval for Blockchain.com office: Report
Blockchain wallet and cryptocurrency exchange platform Blockchain.com has reportedly secured regulatory approval from Dubai’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority, or VARA. According to a Friday report from Reuters, VARA signed an agreement which will allow Blockchain.com to open an office in Dubai. The crypto firm currently operates several offices in North America, Europe, South America, and Singapore. Great work by the team here – Dubai ✅✅https://t.co/8nQm8w8y3g — Peter Smith (@OneMorePeter) September 9, 2022 Since Dubai’s prime minister and ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum announced the establishment of the crypto regulator and an accompanying law in March, VARA has granted approval for Crypto.com, OKX and FTX subsidiaries to offer crypto-related services ...
Quentin Tarantino settles Miramax lawsuit over Pulp Fiction NFTs
Miramax sued the director in November last year after the base-layer blockchain provider Secret Network announced the auction of “uncut screenplay scenes” from the 1994 film as NFTs. The film studio claimed to own all rights to “Pulp Fiction,” except for those reserved for Tarantino, which excluded nonfungible tokens. The company was developing its own NFT strategy at the time. In a statement, the studio’s attorney Bart Williams wrote: “This one-off effort devalues the NFT rights to “Pulp Fiction,” which Miramax intends to maximize through a strategic, comprehensive approach.” On the auction’s original press release, Secret Network claimed that Tarantino owned “exclusive rights to publish his Pulp Fiction screenplay and the original, ha...
Will Bitcoin’s rally sustain? DXY, SPX, GC and WTI could have the answer
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said in a question and answer session hosted by the Cato Institute on Sept. 8 that the central bank will continue to hike rates until inflation is under control. However, these comments did not rattle the markets as much as most would have anticipated, indicating that traders might have already factored in a 75 basis point rate hike in the Fed’s next meeting on Sept. 20–21. Bitcoin has been strongly correlated with the S&P 500 and inversely correlated with the United States dollar index (DXY) for the past several weeks. With the DXY cooling off after hitting a two-decade high, risky assets have been attempting a recovery. Crypto market data daily view. Source: Coin360 U.S. equities markets are attempting to snap a three-week losing streak while Bi...
CleanSpark acquires mining facility in Georgia for $33 million
Crypto mining firm CleanSpark announced an agreement on Friday to acquire Mawson’s Bitcoin mining facility in Sandersville, Georgia for $33 million. The deal is anticipated to increase CleanSpark’s hash rate by 1.4 exahashes per second (EH/s) in the next few months, and to 7.0 EH/s by the end of next year. As part of the agreement, 6,468 last-generation mining ASICs will be purchased for $9.5 million, or $17 per terahash. “These machines, already operating at the acquired site, will add over 558 petahashes per second (PH/s) of computing power immediately upon closing,” the company explains. For the facility and miners, CleanSpark will pay up to $42.5 million, including up to $11 million in CleanSpark stocks and $4.5 million in earn-out commitments. The site in Georg...
SBF and the Mooch tie the knot as FTX Ventures takes 30% stake of SkyBridge Capital
FTX Ventures, an arm of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX crypto exchange, will acquire a 30% stake in alternative asset manager SkyBridge Capital, the firms announced Sept. 9. The terms of the deal were not disclosed, but SkyBridge will use $40 million of the proceeds to purchase cryptocurrencies to hold as a long-term investment, according to a statement. SkyBridge founder and managing partner Anthony Scaramucci said about the deal on Twitter, “There’s a small universe of outside investors SkyBridge would ever consider partnering with, and @SBF_FTX is one of them.” He added separately, “This won’t significantly impact our day-to-day business and doesn’t change our strategy. […] We will remain a diversified asset firm, while investing heavily in blockchain.” SkyBridge managed about $2.5...
3 Bitcoin price metrics suggest Sept. 9’s 10% pump marked the final cycle bottom
The correlation between Bitcoin (BTC) and stock markets has been unusually high since mid-March, meaning the two asset classes have presented near-identical directional movement. This data might explain why the 10% rally above $21,000 is being dismissed by most traders, especially considering S&P 500 futures gained 4% in two days. However, Bitcoin trading activity and the derivatives market strongly support the recent gains. Curiously, the current Bitcoin rally happened a day after the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy released a report investigating the energy usage associated with digital assets. The study recommended enforcing energy reliability and efficiency standards. It also suggested federal agencies provide technical assistance and initiate a collaborative pr...
Japanese gov’t issues NFTs to reward local authorities’ work
The Japanese government has become one of the first to issue nonfungible tokens (NFTs) as a form of supplementary rewards to recognize the work of local authorities who have excelled at using digital technology to solve local challenges. The awards were handed out by the cabinet secretariat, a government agency that is headed by the nation’s chief cabinet secretary Hirokazu Matsuno during the “Summer Digi Denkoshien 2022” ceremony. The event was also attended by the country’s prime minister Fumio Kishida, reported Coinpost. Seven mayors received recognition for their cities’ ideas centered on the digital economy. Among them was the mayor of Sakata, Yamagata Prefecture, whose administration suggested using electric vehicles for local deliveries. An NFT prize was also given to Ma...
