While the crypto world’s attention is transfixed by the decline in bitcoin price, Ethereum’s native token, ether, is quietly undergoing its own price spiral. According to analytics firm Glassnode, ether balances at exchanges are at their lowest level since 2016. The firm says that only 14.85% of all ether was held in wallets at… Read More Notes 5/26: Ether Supply Problems
When it was launched, the vision for Ethereum was simple. It was to be a smart contract platform with low fees that settled transactions occurring on other applications. That simple vision has transformed into a corporate juggernaut today. Investors and stakeholders use the venue to boost staking rewards and prices for worthless tokens. Examples include… Read More Ethereum’s Latest Bad Idea: Restaking
Lido’s stETH token has a liquidity problem. Lido uses the token to ensure liquidity for staked ether locked at validators. Thus, stETH acts as an ether substitute in transactions on decentralized finance (DeFi) even as the actual token resides inside a staking smart contract. The promise here is that stETH price will mirror that of… Read More Notes 5/24: Lido’s stETH Liquidity Problem
Bitcoin price rallied past the $27,000 mark yesterday morning but is back in the $26,000 range today. As of this writing, the cryptocurrency is changing hands at $26,923, down 1.2% from a day earlier. Amid regulatory crackdowns and investor defections in the United States, there is a sliver of positive news from Asia. CoinDesk reports… Read More Notes 5/19: Bitcoin Price Is Stagnant, Ether Use Cases Dwindle While its Staking Rewards Multiply
Bitcoin price is rebounding after last week’s lows. The cryptocurrency fell below $26,000 over the weekend but has recovered sharply. As of this writing, it is changing hands at $27,428.55, up 1.2% from a day earlier. The cryptocurrency’s price action has defied rational explanations in the past and this time is no exception. Choose Your… Read More Notes 5/15: Bitcoin Price Rebounds, Ethereum Staking Reaches Record Levels, and the Magic of Lido
Bitcoin price rose yesterday after the release of positive consumer price inflation (CPI) data and sparked hopes that it was making another bid for the $30,000 mark. But the slight increase in its price turned out to be false narrative. A familiar one of declining prices took over shortly afterwards. As of this writing, the… Read More Notes 5/12: Bitcoin Price, Ethereum Staking, and Withdrawing Ether from Lido
The average price to commit a transaction on Ethereum shot up amid hysteria for a meme coin last week. It remains high, as of this writing. According to data from online publication The Block, the average transaction price on the world’s second biggest blockchain is $15.63, up from $9.52 a week earlier. The total number… Read More Notes 5/7: Minting Profits from Ethereum’s Problems, Bitcoin Price
In the chill of depressed prices and volatility for cryptocurrency tokens, transaction fees for at the world’s two biggest blockchains, Bitcoin and Ethereum, are red hot. Average fees on bitcoin’s blockchain climbed to $7.25 last week per transaction on the back of frenzied demand for Ordinals – bitcoin’s version of non-fungible tokens (NFTs). A similar… Read More Notes 5/6: As Bitcoin and Ethereum Transaction Fees Spike, Validator and Miner Profits Multiply
In traditional finance markets, May is typically a month to sell and go away. Translated, this means that traders exit markets and prices drop. Before its trading volumes metastasized, crypto was an uncorrelated asset. It bucked conventional trading wisdom and rose in May for some years and fell in line during the others. With their… Read More Notes 5/2: Bitcoin Price in May, Ether’s Fantastic Yields
One of the few success stories of the debilitating crypto winter this year has been a surge in prices and valuations of tokens for staking platforms. Even as prices for top cryptocurrencies crashed, those for staking platforms have zipped higher on the back of enthusiasm for Ethereum’s Shapella upgrade. The upgrade, which enables investors to… Read More The Future of Liquid Staking Derivative (LSD) Tokens
Ethereum’s move from Proof of Work (PoW) to a Proof of Stake (PoS) consensus system has slashed its energy usage. It has also boosted profits for stakeholders and validators in its network. A major source of those profits is a controversial algorithmic practice called Miner Extractable Value (MEV). MEV bots employ questionable and illegal tactics… Read More Are MEVs Necessary?
Bitcoin prices are headed to $100,000 next year, according to Standard Chartered Bank. According to the firm’s analyst Geoff Kendrick, the recent collapse of banking institutions like Silicon Valley Bank has solidified the case for bitcoin as a “decentralized, trustless, and scarce digital asset.” He predicted that the cryptocurrency will reach $100,000 by the end… Read More Notes 4/25: Bitcoin Price on Course for $100,000, Institutional Investors Flood Ether Post-Merge
The first batch of profit-taking from Ethereum’s native token ether’s staking program has ended. Prices for the second largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization rose, briefly pushing past the $2100 mark, after Ethereum’s Shapella upgrade. The upgrade, which enabled withdrawals of staked ether, is the final step in the blockchain’s move to a Proof of Stake… Read More Notes 4/23: Ether Prices and Rewards
After the successful completion of Ethereum’s Shapella upgrade, the percentage of total ether staked on its network has declined to 14.5% from 15.6% earlier. The number of active validators on Ethereum’s blockchain has fallen slightly, by 0.1%, to 562,168, as of this writing, from yesterday. This means that an insignificant percentage of validators have fully… Read More Notes 4/13: Ethereum Unstaking, Ether Prices, and CZ Profile
Bitcoin price made short work of touching $30,000, sweeping past the mark in less than 24 hours from yesterday. As of this writing, it is changing hands at $30,237, up more than 6.2% from its price a day earlier. Traders are predicting a further increase into the mid-to-high 30’s for the cryptocurrency. Per usual, it… Read More Notes 4/11: Bitcoin and Ether Prices
Excitement for the Shanghai Upgrade, the next stage in Ethereum’s move to proof of stake, is reaching fever pitch. Staking platform Lido, the biggest player in the space, announced Saturday that it had recorded its highest daily inflow of staked tokens of 150,000 ether worth approximately $240 million. TRON founder Justin Sun, who also doubles… Read More Notes 3/1: Lido’s Decentralization, Ether Prices
Along with bitcoin price, prices for Ethereum’s ether also jumped last week. Depending on your data source, the world’s second biggest cryptocurrency’s price posted weekly gains of anywhere between 13% (at Messari) to 20% (at Coinmarketcap and CoinGecko). Underlying that price increase was a corresponding surge in market valuations for tokens at liquid staking derivatives… Read More Staking Ether: A Risky Trade
Ethereum’s Merge – a transition from the Proof of Work consensus mechanism to Proof of Stake – was finalized at 6:59 AM this morning. The Merge has been in the making for many years and was implemented by nine teams and more than 100 developers spread out across the globe. As has been repeated many… Read More Notes 9/15: The Merge, Ether As Wall Street Asset, and Payments Industry Regulation
When Bitcoin was launched, it had ambitions to become a peer-to-peer payment system powered by electronic cash. It is yet to fulfill that promise. Ethereum, another monetary system underpinned by blockchain, has much grander ambitions. Released six years after Bitcoin’s, Ethereum’s whitepaper outlines a raft of ambitious applications – a platform for financial derivatives to… Read More Notes 9/14: Ethereum’s Merge
Crypto markets were awash in a sea of red after the release of unexpected figures for the Consumer Price Inflation (CPI) index. Bitcoin was down by almost 6% from its price 24 hours ago and trading at $20,964.21. Ethereum tumbled by 9% and is changing hands at $1,583.35. The overall market capitalization of cryptocurrency markets… Read More Notes 9/13: Bitcoin Falls On Weak CPI Data, ETHW Sputters to Life, and the Max Pain of Mining Crypto
Ethereum’s transition from Proof of Work (PoW) to Proof of Stake (PoS), more popularly known as The Merge, continues to dominate crypto narrative. The price for Ethereum’s ether, which had been on a tear in recent weeks, fell this morning. Like most things crypto, it is difficult to pinpoint an exact reason. While Bitcoin’s price… Read More Notes 9/12: Ether Prices and Staking