An advertisement of Bitcoin, one of the cryptocurrencies, is displayed on a building in Hong Kong, on Nov. 18, 2021. U.S. tech stocks just had their worst month in over a decade, and the volatile cryptocurrency market has been tracking that downward trend with popular digital currencies like bitcoin and ethereum plunging by some 50% from 2021 peak valuations.
U.S. tech stocks just had their worst month in over a decade, and the volatile cryptocurrency market has been tracking that downward trend with popular digital currencies like bitcoin and ethereum plunging by some 50% from 2021 peak valuations.
Ethereum is happening : CryptoCurrency
Per The Post, cryptocurrencies, whose movements have paralleled the Nasdaq in recent months, continued to slide. After a temporary Fed-induced boost last week carried it above $40,000, Bitcoin was trading down more than 5% Monday at $32,760. Ethereum, another popular cryptocurrency, was also down more than 6% at $2,386.
"From a macro perspective as well, inflation did come in higher, and hence caused a sell off across all markets, but ethereum and altcoins did sell off harder, given they're along the more risky part of the crypto spectrum," Ayyar said.
But any "change in the macro environment in terms of inflation of interest rate surprises, is definitely cause for concern," he said, adding that if bitcoin falls below $18,000, the cryptocurrency could test levels as low as $14,000.
Bitcoin, the leading cryptocurrency, plunged more than 4% over the past 24 hours to below the key $45,000 level, holding above $44,000. A rally more than a week ago carried the biggest digital asset above the $45,000 mark for the first time since January, a level it had managed to defend, recently going as high as $48,000.
There are a couple of things to look at in short-term trading. One is that liquidations are accelerating as investors with leveraged bets that crypto prices would rise are liquidated from those positions. According to coinglass.com, $1.14 billion in crypto positions have been liquidated in the last 24 hours and $416 million of that batch came in just the last four hours. This is happening across the industry, but Ethereum is being hit hardest with $113 million in liquidations in the last four hours.
As this is happening, gas fees are soaring, especially on the Ethereum blockchain. Gas is the price you pay validators to complete transactions, and the price of gas goes up when the blockchain is congested.
The challenge with the situation right now is that we don't know when the selling will stop. When leverage and panic selling collide, the market can plunge quickly, especially in the cryptocurrency market which trades 24 hours per day.
The Merge, as it's been referred to, is said to reduce 99.9 per cent of the energy used by Ethereum's previous proof-of-work system, according to the foundation that backs the cryptocurrency. The amount of energy used by Ethereum before Thursday's update has been compared to powering a "medium-sized" country.
CCRI estimated that Ethereum used 23 million megawatt hours (MWh) of electricity per year pre-Merge. Now, it's estimated the cryptocurrency will use 2,600 MWh per year, comparable to the amount consumed by roughly 100 Canadian households.
It's a great question because Ethereum in the cryptocurrency world is actually one of the few major currencies that were still on proof-of-work. Once Ethereum transitions away from proof-of-work, the only major cryptocurrency that remains relying on that energy intensive process of mining will actually be Bitcoin.
Bitcoin is compared with digital gold because it was the very first cryptocurrency and is the biggest, with a market cap exceeding $375 billion, while its limited supply (the maximum number of bitcoins that can be mined is 21 million) may ensure that it retains value. Ethereum is compared with digital silver because it is the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap and, like the precious metal, has a wide variety of applications.
As of Aug. 30, 2022, Bitcoin had a market cap of $376.5 billion, accounting for about 39.6% of the total cryptocurrency market, which was valued at just over $954.3 billion. Ethereum, with a market cap of $818.8 billion, had a market share of 18.8%.
Ether and bitcoin are alike in many ways. Each digital currency is traded on online exchanges and stored in cryptocurrency wallets. Both are decentralized, meaning they are not issued or regulated by a central bank or other authority, and both use blockchain technology.
Ethereum, which was launched by Canadian computer programmer Vitalik Buterin in 2015, is a blockchain (or a digital ledger) used when cryptocurrency investors buy ether. It's one of the world's most used blockchains, second only to the bitcoin network. There are more than 71 million crypto wallets on the ethereum blockchain today, according to the Ethereum Foundation, a group of developers who now oversee the blockchain.
Think of the Merge as the next generation, or 2.0 version, of ethereum. After nearly two years thinking about and testing a new way of conducting transactions, ethereum developers say it's finally ready for prime time. Put simply, the Merge aims to reduce the number of people and computers it takes to add another data block to the ethereum network.
The Merge is happening now because ethereum is mature enough to handle financial payments, store non-fungible tokens, trade crypto and host smart contracts, said blockchain expert Merav Ozair. But streamlining the process to add data to the blockchain could make those and other transactions much faster, according to developers.
In a blockchain network, transactions aren't verified by a bank, credit card company or other third party. Rather, it relies on a network of computers competing to solve complex problems in exchange for tokens. It takes thousands of computers to verify transactions on the ethereum blockchain, a process known as "proof of work."
The Merge replaces the proof-of-work system with an alternative method called "proof of stake." In that system, cryptocurrency owners known as "validators" put up a share of their coins in exchange for the right to be randomly chosen to verify transactions and record them on a new block. Because proof of stake involves fewer people using their computers to verify transactions, fewer terawatt-hours are burned.
Quite possibly. Since December 2020, ethereum developers have been running essentially two different versions of the blockchain at the same time. The Beacon version was used so they could test the proof-of-stake system, while the Mainnet version carried on with business as usual using proof of work. But having both versions running gave hackers twice as many entry points to potentially attack ethereum.
Moving to a proof-of-stake system will likely create haves and have-nots among the validators and everyone else who uses ethereum, said Bryan Daugherty, the global public policy director for BSV Blockchain Association.
The Merge is a major upgrade of an extremely complex system. It could go wrong. Ethereum could run slowly for a while or even halt completely. There could be other unforeseen errors or issues. Chances of any of this happening are small, given all of the testing that went into this event, but they are not zero.
With cryptocurrency being an extremely dynamic space, it's hard even for Ethereum's leaders to predict the network's long-term future. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, however, recently gave an outline of the five stages of Ethereum development, starting with The Merge.
The ETH coin price dropped sharply in the first half of 2022 despite the approach of The Merge, as cryptocurrency markets turned bearish, especially following the collapse of the terraUSD stablecoin (UST) and its accompanying LUNA token in May.
Gov Capital had an ethereum price prediction for 2023 that suggested the coin could achieve $2,347.14 by the end of the year, before climbing to just under $4.868.52 by the end of 2024 and a little below $7,231.32 by the end of 2025.
As such, analysts and algorithm-based forecasters can and do get their predictions wrong. If you are considering investing in cryptocurrency tokens, we recommend you conduct your own research. Look at the latest market trends, news, technical and fundamental analysis, and analyst opinions before making any investment or trading decisions.
In volatile cryptocurrency markets, it is important to do your own research on a coin or token to determine if it is a good fit for your investment portfolio. Whether ETH is a suitable investment for you depends on your risk tolerance and how much you intend to invest, among other factors.
A major event the crypto industry has long been awaiting finally happened: Ethereum's "Merge," which proponents say could boost crypto prices in the long run and significantly change the future of cryptocurrency.
The proof-of-work model, which is what the Bitcoin network uses, requires far more energy than the proof-of-stake model. The negative impact on the environment of crypto transactions has been top of mind for many cryptocurrency critics and advocates alike, and Ethereum's shift to the less-energy-intensive proof-of-stake is viewed as a significant advance.
There is a lot at stake for this new event," Eliézer Ndinga, director of research at 21Shares, which provides cryptocurrency exchange-traded products, told Money in August ahead of the Merge. He described the Merge as "a huge step forward, especially for the retail investors more conscious about global warming and climate change" who want to invest in more environmentally-friendly assets.
ETH has been outperforming bitcoin largely due to news about the upcoming merge," Ben Weiss, CEO of cryptocurrency ATM company CoinFlip, told Money via email in August ahead of the Merge. "If it goes smoothly, the merge will be an incredible technical feat."
There is a lot of buzz around "The Merge" for the Ethereum blockchain, and it is finally here. But what is The Merge, and why is it important? The Ethereum Foundation describes it as "the most significant upgrade in the history of Ethereum." This is hardly hyperbole. This much-discussed and widely publicized event, which is happening sometime this week (most likely sometime on Sept. 15), represents a fundamental shift in the way the Ethereum blockchain works and is one of the most significant events in the history of blockchain technology. This post will address what The Merge is, why it is so important and what will likely happen next. 2ff7e9595c
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