Right now, the amount of liquid Bitcoin is similar to what it was during the 2017 bull run. But the amount held in illiquid wallets is much higher, currently representing 77% of the 14.8 million Bitcoin mined that isn’t categorized as lost, meaning it hasn’t moved from its current address in five years or longer. That leaves a pool of just 3.4 million Bitcoin readily available to buyers as demand increases.

North American exchanges were losing Bitcoin on net in the early part of the 2017 bull run, and became a net receiver as price began to peak. This time around though, North American exchanges have been in the green throughout, with inflows ramping up to higher levels than at any point in the 2017 run in the last few months.

Similarly, we also see much higher net inflows to exchanges allowing crypto-to-fiat (C2F) trades compared to 2017. C2F exchanges are playing a bigger role in this surge than in 2017, when crypto-to-crypto (C2C) exchanges, used mostly by traders swapping many different types of cryptocurrency, drove more of the market. This, combined with the accumulation of Bitcoin by investor wallets that tend to hold for long periods of time, suggests that first-time Bitcoin buyers and buyers looking to unload fiat currency for Bitcoin as a hedge against worrisome macroeconomic trends are responsible for much of the current demand.

This is good news for cryptocurrency
While we can’t know if prices will continue to rise, the current Bitcoin surge portends good things for cryptocurrency — not just because prices are rising, but because of why they’re rising. A comparison of this bull run to that of 2017 suggests that investors have become savvier and more strategic, buying Bitcoin to fulfill a specific use case rather than to speculate on the new hot asset. If Bitcoin can continue to be an effective hedge against macroeconomic trends, we believe more and more institutional investors will put money into the asset, leading to even more mainstream adoption.

Thanks for the reminder.
I have sold my Ethereum back those days. It was $1k+ also. I forgot the exact figure.
Then I bought it back at $230-260. Now, I am in profits once again. Lucky. 

Bitcoin though is something I won't sell just yet. I believe there is much more we could experience than this.
Chainlink. Ahh, I never had the guts to buy that. Could have been profitable too.

I bet most people are still on the shit coins if Bitcoin didn't reach this price right now but who knows? Bitcoin has the tendency to reach above level of price than what we expected I guess every halving we'll experience this kind of bullish price compared to most altcoins. Ethereum is always the second best choice if there's a Bitcoin bull run because it sure does follow the trend that's why investing on it is recommended.

US Bitcoin Holders Worry About Chinese Control of the Mining Network
China has consolidated more than half of the world’s Bitcoin mining operations. What threats could the situation create?

China’s leadership in the Bitcoin mining industry will be challenged
China has a lot of advantages in the Bitcoin mining industry, though it won’t last forever, as more countries are entering the space.

I just was curious if anyone would be upset if someone tried to make a market for Bitcoin and Bitcoin Testnet exchange market for fun.

It's really hard to get a bunch of testnet coins for testing stuff, it'd be nice to be able to buy 20 fast...  The current testnet coin faucets aren't great and it's really hard to find a pool in order to just rent a rig and mine.

I was just thinking about the idea for a FBTC's....  I kinda like the idea as long as there are lots of notices and such.  Reorgs seem to be the biggest obvious concern off the top of my head.

I imagine it would be a dust market, but fuck, it'd be nice to be able to get 100 testnet coins fast.

As the price of Bitcoin continues to balloon, we look back at how the cryptocurrency is viewed and whether that definition needs to be re-assessed.

Bitcoin as a currency?
Bitcoin can be used to buy a whole load of things. From holidays, artwork, food, cars, property and more.

One of Bitcoin’s earliest proofs-of-concept came when Laszlo Hanyecc agreed to pay 10,000 Bitcoin in exchange for two Papa John's pizzas...But the trend appears to be that Bitcoin is moving away from it’s role as a currency. Bitcoin’s trading volume has been declining since 2018

On top of that, the number of Bitcoin addresses holding more than 0.1 coins, (currently about $1,188) is at an all-time high, and the number of addresses holding more than 100 coins (currently $1,188 million) has reached a six-month high, according to Glassnode.

Lastly, but not leastly, for a currency to be viable, it needs to have low volatility. If a currency moves a lot then it makes it difficult to value goods and services appropriately. ..Most major currencies have an annual volatility rate of between 0.5% and 1% every 30-60 days.  At the time of writing, it’s down to 2.25% over the last 60 days. But it’s still a long way from the US Dollar in terms of stability.

Bitcoin as an investment?
On the Bitcoin believers side, you have companies like MicroStrategy and Square, who have been betting big on Bitcoin as an investment. Their thinking for Bitcoin’s potential as an asset is two-fold. The first is about its position as a money supply that’s beyond the quantitative easing currently employed by some of the world’s largest economies.  The second is in its ability to be an on-ramp for huge swathes of the world not currently reached by financial services.

When currencies go into freefall, governments tend to restrict citizens' access to foreign currency to prevent further devaluation. On top of that, banks see getting involved in banking citizens of these volatile currencies as too risky, keeping them out of those markets. Bitcoin however, has so such issues. Anyone with an internet connection and a USB stick can invest, making it a perfect investment vehicle for a third of the world's population-and as such a great investment to buy into now for when that happens.

The global pot of cash currently sat in pension funds, around $3.6 trillion, wouldn’t invest or speculate on the performance of a currency. 
The reason? It’s an asset with zero yield: i.e. the holding of the asset doesn’t produce additional profits beyond the rise and fall of the underlying asset.

Bitcoin as a commodity?
Commodities, as a reminder, are a basic good that is interchangeable with other goods of the same type. In recent years, more financial products have been added to the commodity list, one of which is Bitcoin. Commodities traditionally have higher price volatility than assets like property, or money supplies like currency, making them a fertile environment for speculators trying to predict the rise and fall of an asset and betting accordingly.

Bitcoin as a commodity seems to work on two different investment horizons. Short term, daily volatility, and longer-term speculation. Sidenote: AAX provides bi-weekly Intelligence Reports that analyzes the price of Bitcoin using technical indicators for those keen to jump into day trading.
Long-term, Bitcoin's Stock to Flow model highlights that the cryptocurrency is likely to continue to grow steadily over the longterm.

Here ya go.  https://github.com/decred/atomicswap

Decred-compatible cross-chain atomic swapping
This repository contains utilities to manually perform cross-chain atomic swaps between various supported pairs of cryptocurrencies. At the moment, support exists for the following coins and wallets:

Bitcoin (Bitcoin Core)
Bitcoin Cash (Bitcoin ABC, Bitcoin Unlimited, Bitcoin XT)
Decred (dcrwallet)
Litecoin (Litecoin Core)
Monacoin (Monacoin Core)
Particl (Particl Core)
Qtum (Qtum Core)
Vertcoin (Vertcoin Core)
Viacoin (Viacoin Core)
Zcoin (Zcoin Core)
..
These tools do not operate solely on-chain. A side-channel is required between each party performing the swap in order to exchange additional data. This side-channel could be as simple as a text chat and copying data. Until a more streamlined implementation of the side channel exists, such as the Lightning Network, these tools suffice as a proof-of-concept for cross-chain atomic swaps and a way for early adopters to try out the technology.
...
Theory
A cross-chain swap is a trade between two users of different cryptocurrencies. For example, one party may send Decred to a second party's Decred address, while the second party would send Bitcoin to the first party's Bitcoin address. However, as the blockchains are unrelated and transactions can not be reversed, this provides no protection against one of the parties never honoring their end of the trade. One common solution to this problem is to introduce a mutually-trusted third party for escrow. An atomic cross-chain swap solves this problem without the need for a third party.

Atomic swaps involve each party paying into a contract transaction, one contract for each blockchain. The contracts contain an output that is spendable by either party, but the rules required for redemption are different for each party involved.

The image below provides a visual of the steps each party performs and the transfer of data between each party.

What did you mean? I can give you specific-year plots for better visualization.

Is it what you suppose to have?

Thanks for the link. The article has little information, except a few additional information that what happened around the days big difficulty changes (not all history, only in 2020).

...Biggest change in difficult was probably around 10 july 2010 when bitcoin was announced on slashdot... resulting in the slashdot effect, a jump in difficulty of 300%.

Here you go with my new thread. If you feel my threads are boring, please ignore me or this thread. No need to be serious, I am data-freak. If you read it, I thank you for your attention and your time.  

Bitcoin's mining difficulty, a measure of the competitiveness for winning block rewards, has just posted the largest percentage drop since October 2011.
...
The difficulty drop is a result of the decline of the average total computing power racing on the network in the last two weeks as many Chinese miner operators have unplugged their machines to migrate to fossil fuel power stations from hydropower plants.

The decline of bitcoin's mining competitiveness will push up bitcoin miner's daily revenue per terahash second of computing power in the coming days, which is already reaching its highest point since the block reward halving in May.

Right now BTC is facing major resistance at $14K. Next week is going to really crucial. If BTC able to close above 14K by 7NOV then I don't see any resistance till 17K. But this time I don't think BTC is going to achieve 20K level that easy. Last time, BTC jumped from 14K to 20K in just 1 week. Even it is not healthy for any trading asset to move that fast. This is the reason, BTC crashed so badly touching 20K mark. Slow and steady move encourage investors to invest and give confidence to HODL. Hope to see BTC at new high soon.

The bitcoin price surge over $14,000 per bitcoin comes shortly after a number of huge bitcoin transactions—worth more than $100 million—and follows the expiry of $750 million worth of bitcoin options contracts on Friday.

Meanwhile, the bitcoin and cryptocurrency market has been rocked by $100 million worth of bitcoin being removed from two exchanges in the last few hours, the San Francisco-based Coinbase and the Luxembourg-based Bitstamp. A Twitter bot set up to track big bitcoin and crypto transactions, made by so-called "whales," recorded the three separate transactions.

“For most of the pandemic, bitcoin remained correlated with equities," Andrew Ballinger, an associate at digital asset manager Wave Financial

Bitcoin, which climbed to highs of $14,000 per bitcoin on Bitstamp before falling back to trade around $13,900, has found support over the last couple of months by a raft of bullish bitcoin news and increasing belief among some investors that bitcoin will serve as a hedge against a tidal wave of inflation they see on the horizon. This has led to bitcoin decoupling from the stock market over the last week or so.

In June, the one-month bitcoin-S&P 500 correlation reached an all time high of 66.2%, according to data from Skew Analytics. Since June, this one-month bitcoin to S&P 500 correlation remained well into double-digits, for the most part hovering around the 40%-50% range, until the double-digit positive correlation broke this month.

"I wouldn’t be fully honest if I said I didn’t believe a major downturn in equities would have no effect on the still nascent digital asset economy, but I think this return to single digit and potentially negative correlation is a step in the right direction for those who believe in bitcoin’s store of value thesis," Ballinger added.

"With continued uncertainty surrounding the economic recovery, investors may turn to digital currencies over equities, and test the ‘digital gold’ thesis of bitcoin further."

A payment system for people who like to spend bitcoins (ie, no-one) and value the uncensorability (ie, no-one using PayPal

Think about it. If you think that the value of a bitcoin is going to the moon (and will be worth $1 million each within five years, as this former Goldman Sachs GS -0.2% hedge fund person has just predicted) then why would you waste even a tiny fraction of a bitcoin buying a pizza or a Pez dispenser? No, the people who will use their PayPal wallets to exchange bank dollars for a claim on PayPal’s bitcoins are simply investing.
...
Here in Forbes Billy Bambrough called this a “nasty catch”, noting that PayPal wouldn't let users transfer their cryptocurrency into or out of their PayPal wallets, nor would the users have control of the private keys that allow holders to move their digital assets. Note, therefore, that neither the consumer nor the merchant ever has any actual bitcoins in their possession. If consumers choose to pay a merchant using claims on bitcoins from their wallet, then PayPal gives the merchant dollars anyway.
...
First of all, PayPal’s move is to be admired purely in marketing terms. The announcement boosted their stock price and garnered gazillions of column inches, links and commentary such as this.
...
Secondly, the technologies of cryptocurrency (shared ledgers, cryptographic proofs and so on) are going to be the foundations of a longer term shift to the trading of digital bearer instruments that are exchanged without clearing or settlement networks so building up institutional expertise is valuable.
...
Thirdly, and much more importantly though, I suspect that PayPal are making two much more strategic and long-term plays around the wallet and its contents. ...Turning PayPal from being a repository of balances to fund payments into a financial hub managing a number of different assets for a broad range of consumers must be attractive to them.
...
I don't think PayPal's experiment with Bitcoin is really much about Bitcoin at all. I think this is a measured and intelligent step towards the transactional environments of the future where private digital assets compete with public digital fiat across a payments landscape that is utterly different to that of today.

Bitcoin price will 'bolt higher' if Biden wins, rise slower with Trump — Max Keiser
Max Keiser, Wall Street veteran and host of The Keiser Report, shares his thoughts on Bitcoin price breaking $13,000 and the U.S. election in an exclusive interview with Cointelegraph Markets.

Cointelegraph Markets: Paul Tudor Jones. Did his investment into Bitcoin spark a new bull cycle?

Max Keiser: First, we need to go back to the Genesis Block and understand that everything that has happened and will ever happen with Bitcoin came into existence at that instant and the world and our species were forever changed. Understand too, that Bitcoin is shaping our world around its protocol in ways that most don’t understand but all are powerless to stop. Within this context, it was clear on Jan. 3, 2009, the genius of the protocol would catch up to the likes of Paul Tudor Jones and warp his mind.

As he said this past week, after studying Bitcoin he’s become more bullish and it's the first time in his career he’s ever encountered an asset he’s buying to hedge against the carnage of runaway inflation that is "pro-humanity." He understands the paradox of the protocol. He understands like Michael Saylor does now (after rejecting Bitcoin for years) that Bitcoin is in control.

The changes to humanity are set in motion and it’s unstoppable. Because Bitcoin rearranges people’s minds and reorders their consciousness, these changes are permanent. 
Were you surprised at the news that PayPal is entering the Bitcoin and crypto space?

Max Keiser: No. PayPal, like all companies, came to the realization faster than others that Bitcoin is an existential threat to their business and to ignore it would mean going out of business.

Do you think it is a reasonable trade-off that it will maintain control over users' money just as Libra would?

Max Keiser: PayPal’s attempt to restrain Bitcoin won’t work because the competition at $SQ and elsewhere will force them to go Full Bitcoin or die. This is true with Libra as well. It’s true of CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currencies), and it’s true of countries like Venezuela who abandoned their Petro and are now moving to a Full Bitcoin position. In China, the situation is different.

The Chinese will resist going Full Bitcoin the longest and this is their Achilles Heel.
At the moment, with China establishing a V-shaped recovery in their uniquely post-covid economy (the only G20 country to achieve this), they are cocky and blind to what will happen if the U.S. and others go Full Bitcoin. It’s similar to the 1980s-1990s when Japan was set to take over the global economy but failed to embrace the Internet fast enough and the US quickly reasserted global dominance again. China thinks they hold all the cards, but without going Full Bitcoin they leave themselves vulnerable to countries that do.

Does news about BTC payment acceptance bolster price? Or is Bitcoin’s value mainly rising because it’s being increasingly perceived as a store of value?

Max Keiser: The role of payments (i.e. medium of exchange) comes after Bitcoin establishes itself as a SOV; a point Roger Ver, Craig Wright, and Calvin Ayre never understood and why their projects BCH and BSV are increasingly becoming worthless compared to BTC (they completely misread the BTC White Paper). At the moment, BTC is still establishing itself as a SOV.

I’ve said many times that I think the transition that includes the MOE use case probably comes after BTC starts to push Gold out of the SOV picture around $100,000 per BTC. By the way, a warning to Gold Bugs bashing BTC. Look what happened to Peter Schiff. By not letting BTC change his thinking he sabotaged himself and appears to be in real trouble. This fate awaits all who mess with Bitcoin.

In June, you said that Peter Schiff would buy Bitcoin at $50,000. Is the price still the same?

Max Keiser: Yes. I predict that the combination of his business failing plus his legal fees will force him to finally succumb to reality and he’ll come to Bitcoin with his tail between his legs begging forgiveness and the timing will be around BTC $50,000.

Gold bugs say that gold will win regardless of who wins the US election. Who do you think is best for Bitcoin: Biden or Trump? How do you expect Bitcoin will react to the election results next month?

Max Keiser: A Biden win means a win for corruption and the Deep State so I would expect Bitcoin’s price to bolt higher as people panic-buy unconfiscatable Bitcoin before Biden’s socialist, jackbooted thugs start confiscating everything in a replay of 1938 Kristallnacht.

With Trump, The U.S. has a chance at a more orderly tradition to Bitcoin so the price would move up more slowly.
Michael Saylor said that he bought Bitcoin to protect cash reserves from "melting" like an ice cube. Do you think Google, Amazon, etc. will make similar realizations?

Max Keiser: Yes. The inflation genie is out of the bottle and cash is trash. But the important thing here is that Michael Saylor went against the prevailing wisdom of buying back his own stock, a move that takes advantage of a reckless, money printing Fed and instead essentially goes to war with the Fed by embracing Bitcoin — an asset hardcoded to destroy the Fed.

As the Genesis Block made clear with "Chancellor on brink of a second bailout," Bitcoin was designed as a central bank killer. Michael Saylor figured that out and understands that he needs to be on the right side of history or get blown out. Every company in the world will face the same decision. Do they support central banks or do they want to survive and thrive in a post-central bank world.

Do you believe another “Bloody Thursday” can happen for the markets and Bitcoin again?

Max Keiser: Volatility is the price we pay for unconfiscatable, uncensorable Hard Money, so I welcome it.

You were one of the first people to report on Bitcoin. But who has had the most influence on you as far as getting into bitcoin goes?

Max Keiser: I have a patented technology for creating digitally scarce money (us pat. 5950176) secured in 1996 so I’d say it was my work at that time creating digital money for my startup the Hollywood Stock Exchange that put me on the Bitcoin path.

Is understanding Bitcoin an ever-evolving process? You frequently talk of Bitcoin as a new type of increasingly self-aware entity of sorts. Can you speak a bit more about this?

Max Keiser: Bitcoin came into existence as a spontaneous life form that grew out of our global, collective consciousness as a defense mechanism to fight predatory central banks. Jamie Dimon is a parasite, like a tapeworm, and our species had no defense. So with God’s help, we collectively willed Bitcoin into existence to fight fiat money, fractional reserve banking and Keynesian debt-money propaganda.

Which company or person has done the most for Bitcoin in recent years in terms of adoption?

Max Keiser: The biggest driver of adoption has been financial terrorists on Wall St and central banks. The more they print, the more people flee to individual sovereignty and Bitcoin.

What's your view on the popular stock-to-flow model (created by planB), and what do you say to those who don't believe its price hypotheses such as $288,000 this halving cycle?

Max Keiser: S2f is an analytical tool that some people, like myself, like. It’s like technical analysis and chart reading. Some people like TA and swear by it. Some don’t. There is no proof that TA has any forecasting ability greater than coin-flipping. Same for S2f, but each has its fans for various reasons.

These tools are helpful to organize your thoughts and to imagine price points, trends, etc. Individuals like different analytical tools for different reasons.

Ultimately the only thing that matters is that Bitcoin has no top because fiat money has no bottom.
What do you think is causing the hash rate vs. price lag, which you recently said implies a $35-50K BTC value?

Max Keiser: The price lag vs. hash rate is due in part to the existence of shitcoins that muddy the waters. As BTC dominance climbs, this distracting noise will die off and we’ll see price catch up to hash rate.

What do you think about the future of DeFi?

Max Keiser: DeFi is mostly just repackaged ICO scams. Avoid.

Do you plan to have Saifedean Ammous on the Keiser Report or Orange Pill Podcast? What do you think about his idea of “fiat life” (food, art, etc.) versus life on a Bitcoin standard?

Max Keiser: Saifedean and “The Bitcoin Standard” took the industry up to a higher base-camp on our quest to conquer the Mt. Everest of money. Yes. He’ll be back on KR and OPP for sure.

...
BTC is up 10% over the past 24 hours, while ETH is up 8%,  BCH is up 9%, and LTC is up more than 15% today.

While Ethereum has rallied alongside Bitcoin, ETH has failed to maintain its strength relative to Bitcoin since rallying into the low-mid $400s amid the decentralized finance boom in August. Ether is currently testing resistance at $400.

In response to the news from PayPal, Alex Mashinsky, CEO of crypto lending platform Celsius, said:

“This is definitely a bullish sign for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Crypto is all about trust, and PayPal has a very high level of trust with its users [...] If the UI/UX of the service is done right, we will see millions of new users join each month.”

I wouldn't listen to a single word this author says about bitcoin.

Here he is in 2019 calling bitcoin "fundamentally flawed" - https://www.fool.com/investing/2019/06/25/3-reasons-bitcoin-is-fundamentally-flawed-as-an-in.aspx
Here he is in 2018 calling bitcoin "a gigantic failure" - https://www.fool.com/investing/2018/02/14/is-bitcoin-destined-to-be-a-gigantic-failure.aspx
Here he is in 2017 calling bitcoin "a fraud" - https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/09/18/bitcoin-is-a-fraud-according-to-the-ceo-of-the-lar.aspx
...
Here he is as far back as 2013 calling bitcoin a "fictitious token" - https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/04/13/this-is-the-real-danger-of-the-irrational-exuberan.aspx

There are 295 articles authored by him on fool.com which mention bitcoin. For someone who writes so much about it, it's incredible that he is so consistently and fundamentally wrong about it. He's been parroting off the same arguments as in this article over and over for 7 years.

---

I did get a chuckle out of the first two paragraphs though. Paragraph 1 - It isn't really scarce! Paragraph 2 - It's too scarce to be useful!

According to Bloomberg's October 2020 Crypto Outlook report, Bitcoin is likely to do well if stock market volatility persists.

In brief
- A Bloomberg report said that Bitcoin is on track to reach $100,000 by 2025.
- Volatile stock performances are driving greater interest in the cryptocurrency.
- However, institutional investors still want greater regulatory clarity and increased market cap, another analyst told Decrypt.

The report notes that the price of Bitcoin, which surged over a four-year period from about $1,000 in 2013 to $10,000 in 2017, could reach the $100,000 mark by 2025. That means Bitcoin could reach its 2019 high of $14,000 as early as this year. "Or," it says, "the new technology could fail, but our demand indicators are positive."

I'm pretty sure this early miner is Satoshi Nakamoto, because I'm not sure if any other early miners had that much Bitcoin.
Luckily this guy just moved it, without selling it. We don't need to know the purpose of moving that much Bitcoin, the important
thing is he doesn't sell it. So the market is safe for a while, maybe he is waiting for Bitcoin to return to the price of $ 19,000 to sell it.
Because the current price is still very low to sell Bitcoin.

Yet another cache of 50 Bitcoin that was mined in 2010 has woken up after a 10-year-long slumber.

Another batch of 50 Bitcoin (BTC)—that has been lying dormant since 2010 and is worth around $570,000 today—was moved today, according to Blockchain.com.
Perhaps the recent "dusting attack" spooked the old-school wallet's owner?
The block explorer’s data shows that these 50 coins were first transferred to the address on November 9, 2010, as a coinbase transaction. This means the Bitcoin was a block reward received by a miner.

Bitcoin is one of the strong cryptocurrency and it is the most stable digital coin nowadays. Also, bitcoin is one of the promising investment in digital world. Since, peoples economy nowadays are unstable due to the pandemic situation in the world. Peoples are looking for new source of income to improve their economy. Do you think bitcoin is the best investment choice nowadays to earn money?

In brief
Fidelity’s Bitcoin Investment Thesis research shows that Bitcoin has extremely low correlation with other assets like stocks or gold.
The report recommends allocating 5% of a multi-asset portfolio to Bitcoin.
Fidelity has been a consistent supporter of Bitcoin and other digital assets.

What’s more, its report, part two of the firm’s Bitcoin Investment Thesis, suggests investors keep 5% of their holdings in Bitcoin as exposure to alternative investments. It’s another sign that institutions are warming up to digital gold and are taking note of its ability to provide uncorrelated returns in spite of external conditions.
https://wp.decrypt.co/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/bitcoin-correlations-over-time.png  (cool image but I am not sure why it isn't showing right now...shouldn't this display for non newbies?)
Fidelity research found Bitcoin as an investment vehicle had a correlation of just .11 to other assets on a rolling 30-day average between January 2015 and September 2020. Correlation measurements range from 1 to -1, based on whether an asset price moves in step with a fully correlated asset, or exactly opposite for a fully uncorrelated asset.

The .11 score means that Bitcoin prices move neither up nor down compared over 30 days with any asset class, including those such as gold or the broader US stock market, which are often compared beside BTC. Fidelity found that, over time, Bitcoin prices move with very little regard to what other assets are doing, even if movements are sometimes correlated in the short-term.

The client teams will use the testnet results to make “final preparations for a mainnet launch,” says Ethereum researcher Danny Ryan.

In brief
The Zinken testnet launch today was a success.
The testnet aims to try out genesis for the Ethereum 2.0 blockchain.
Zinken follows an unsuccessful trial of the Spadina testnet.
...
Zinken is the last scheduled “dress rehearsal” for testing Eth2 genesis—the creation of the first block in the new chain—before the proof-of-stake network can go live. It follows a previous testnet, Spadina, which failed to launch as planned on September 29 due to low user participation and minor client errors.
...
Scalability is essential if the Ethereum network is to survive long-term. It’s already contending with congestion, which has been exacerbated by decentralized finance applications’ boom in popularity.
...
Though the Zinken testnet will keep running for a few days, it’s already fulfilled its purpose, said Ryan: “Genesis went well, which is the main thing we were looking for.”

Now it's time to test out the real thing.