What happened in crypto the past 2 weeks? Bitcoin is going up again for now, but will it stay there? Donald and Kamala are battling, but crypto is not mentioned a lot. Crypto is up, for now. Some airdrops are happening in the next few days, check the article. What else? Read below:
- Bitcoin: Some people are thinking that Bitcoin will reach 110K by 2025. I say, bring it on! The so-called experts complained that Bitcoin's four-year cycle is dead, as BTC dipped to 50K. Arthur Hayes closed his BTC short position for a 3% profit. Bernstein is trying to manipulate the market, I think, predicting a 47% BTC crash if Kamala wins, down to $30-40K. I would love to buy some half Bitcoin with 20K! Some strange movements on Bitcoin, take a look at the Producer Price Index for example. Michael Saylor just bought $1.1B worth of BTC at $60.408 each. And everybody was waiting for the FED rate. Then. BTC decided to jump more than 6%, all the way up to $63K, after the Fed slashed rates by 50 basis points, bringing the target range to 4.75-5.00%, but we do not know if this is a bull trap yet. Over $154M in short positions were wiped out. The latest numbers show an 8.07% surge and a dominance rise of 2.1%. The more accurate predictions look for a $85K value for the end of the year. The BTC Network's active addresses went down to the lowest level in three years. Bitcoin mining difficulty hits new high.
- Ethereum: Talking about unintended consequences, the Dencun upgrade, meant to slash layer-2 fees, did the job, but now the revenue has decreased by 99%, from $35M in daily fees in May, to $566K at the end of August. VanEck is also seeing ETH to $22K. Wouldn't that be nice? ETH/BTC ratio dropped below 0.03, a 53% drop since September 2022. People are worried. A 17% drop in Dapp activity did not help either. Venmo and PayPal are integrated with Ethereum Name Service (ENS).
- Altcoins and stablecoins: WalletConnect rebranded as ReoWN, and it is starting a fancy $185M airdrop on September 24. Polkadot made their own Twitter-like platform, Grill, where you are paid in crypto tips for publishing. Polymarket is going mainstream lately, as Bloomberg Terminal is using it too. Helium (HNT) surged 18%, reaching 100.000 subscribers. Catizen airdrop started on 20.09.24, with Hamster next, on 26.09.24. Are you in? Some traders seem to think the memecoins will return on top soon enough. Sonic blockchain got a record 720-millisecond transaction finality on its testnet. Friend.tech imploded overnight, leaving investors shocked and its creator $44M richer. Ether.fi unveiled a Visacrypto-native credit card on the L2 Scroll network, with four tiers (Pepe, Wojak, Chad, Whale), allowing you to borrow against your crypto collateral, with up to 8% cashback. And a fun fact, DOGS airdrop on ton had 42M users checking the airdrop, I got a whole $32 on it too. Hamster Kombat is next, on the 26th of this month. Catizen also airdropped its tokens, and I had another $28 to add to my pile. TON got $30M in funding from Bitget and Foresight Ventures. XRP ETF is coming as Grayscale launched its first US-based XRP trust leading to an 8% surge in price. We had a new Grayscale SUI Trust, getting SUI all the way to $1.03, a 13% boost. Ronin Waypoint is the universal account and keyless wallet for the Ronin ecosystem, enabling you to log in without seed phrases or extensions and make in-game transactions across supported games. Bitgo and Circle will launch new stablecoins, such as USDS. Revolut seems to want to launch its own too. ZKSync introduced on-chain governance. Polygon migrated MATIC token to POL.
- NFTs and blockchain games: A genius trader bought a rare Ape-themed Cryptopunk worth $1.5M, with only 10 ETH ($23.000), using a smart contract to buy fractionalized NFTs, but he wanted millions of fractions. After introducing a Mini App Store, Telegram CEO praised Hamster Kombat as the fastest-growing game, with 100M monthly users in just 73 days and 4-5M new users daily. Rumour has it that a minimum of **$1000 airdrop is incoming on September 26** for this silly Hamster Kombat. We are talking about what they call the largest airdrop in history, with 300M active players, and no venture capital or early investment, check the article about it on the Coinmarket website. What a number! On Splinterlands, the seventh round of Conflicts airdrop finished, and the last Legendary summoner is coming. The NFT sales experienced a further decline in August, 76% less than the March peak. Solana is building its second web3-focused crypto phone.
- Good news: The UK government has introduced a bill in Parliament aiming to clarify the legal status of digital assets, NFTs and more. Digital assets will be subject to personal property rights. We got talks about a 10-year rally in crypto, according to van der Poppe. Kucoin has a brilliant referral program if you are good at this stuff. The UK's Financial Conduct Authority announced that 90% of the crypto firms seeking registration in 2023 did not make the cut, mostly due to inadequate defences against money laundering and fraud. Only 4 out of 35 passed the FCA's rigorous standards (Binance's payments partner, BNXA, a PayPal U.K. unit and Komainu, a crypto custody joint venture of Nomura). Tether bought a 9.8% stake in Adecoagro, a Latin Agricultural powerhouse, for $100M. TADA teamed with TON Foundation to launch a Telegram mini-app that lets you book taxi rides and pay with crypto. Elon Musk and the Salvadoran president had a tech summit, just the two of them. Qatar Financial Centre unveiled a new digital asset framework.
- Bad news: Brazil's Supreme Court suspended the X platform, I mean Twitter, as you know it. Seoul Metropolitan Police is checking Telegram, as a breeding ground for digital sex crimes. Ton dipped 8.5%, all the way to $4.79. Nvidia stock lost 9.5% of its value losing $279B in market cap, and NK hackers are not targeting DEFI and ETF experts, using impersonation tactics and fake job offers. Uniswap settled the CFTC case and got a $175K penalty. Crypto scams had Americans losing $5.6B in 2023. Indodax, the biggest Indonesian crypto exchange, was just hacked losing $22M, hinting at Lazarus Group, with a similarity to WazirX heist from July. 47 crypto exchanges disappeared overnight, accused of being an "underground economy" for cybercriminals. They did not shut them off, they seized everything. The SEC challenged the FTX bankruptcy plan over stablecoin distributions. The CEO of Alameda Research legal team seeks leniency after her guilty plea. Canada's Central Bank paused its digital version of Canadian Dollar, focusing instead on payment systems.
- Joke of the week: Talking about crazy things, apparently Donald Trump made 19% of the US voters test crypto. His family is getting close to crypto projects, as it is working to weaponize stablecoins in defence of the mighty dollar. Donald got shots fired at him. Again. Elon Musk hinted at a potential role in a future Trump administration, with a desk with a D.O.G.E. placard standing for the Department of Government Efficiency. Kamala Harris is silent on digital assets, trying to not upset the voters. After the Harris-Trump debate, Donald's odds dropped 3%, placing them on 50/50 right now. And 73% of the American crypto owners say that a candidate's stance on digital assets will change their vote. The SEC seems to hire Left supporters, as Gary Gensler is playing favourites and avoiding the Right supporters. And now we have Republicans, Democrats, SEC and everybody's else cat talking about crypto regulations, more or less civilised. Keep in mind, the US Democratic platform excluded crypto from the funding for 2024.
All the best,
George
Why not...
...have fun and win rewards on my favourite blockchain games (Splinterlands- Hearthstone-like card game) (Mobox - GamiFI NFT platform) (Upland - real-life virtual land) (Holozing - Pokemon-like game)and (Rising Star - Music creators game)
....get ETH while writing on the Publish0x blog, using the Presearch search engine to maximize your income with PRE tokens. Use Torum instead of Twitter. I am also writing for crypto on Grill and Hive.