The protagonist last week was Ethereum, which was able to renew its all-time high of 2018 and found itself in “uncharted price territory”. Biden gave hope that U.S. cryptocurrency regulation would get off the ground, while the Russian crypto exchange LiveCoin shut down with a bang. Read about these and other events
in our weekly review.
Cardano doubled in value and became a Twitter starSince the beginning of January, Cardano (ADA) has been confidently in the green zone and, apparently, is not going to leave the cozy place shortly. Over the past 3 weeks, the price of assert has risen more than 200%, with daily trading volume soaring to $3 billion. As a result, ADA ranked 6th in terms of market capitalization, overtaking Bitcoin Cash.
Achievements of ADA coincided with a record surge in social media activity. This week has passed under the sign of Cardano on Twitter: monitoring of entries on the network has shown an all-time high number of mentions of the token. What were Twitter users discussing? The most common triggers are the words “pool,” “stake,” “stake pools”, and this is no coincidence.
After the launch of Shelley and the transition to the Goguen era, adherents of Cardano enthusiastically await the deployment of smart contracts, which will allow the network to reach a new level of functionality. Even more “X-day” awaits Charles Hoskinson (the Cardano founder), who confidently stated that “Cardano will become one of the leaders in the DeFi space.”
Certainly, the upcoming network update has improved market sentiment around ADA. This week the token has risen in price to $0.358. Considering the decline in the supply of ADS amid lively staking, analysts are regarding a scenario for the token price to rise to $0.40 in the short-term.
Grayscale CEO named the 6 key trends for the crypto market in 2021Michael Sonnenshine, the new Grayscale Investments CEO, is convinced that 2021 will be marked by large-scale investment in digital currencies. He spoke about this at the CFC online conference in St. Moritz.
According to Sonnenshein, institutional capital will be the same powerful driver to push the crypto market into the next bull cycle. Investors will continue to actively diversify portfolios with Bitcoin and other digital assets, betting on the long-term play. Also, the following trends will be visible in 2021:
Increasing confidence in investing in digital assets
Grow interested from clients of financial advisors
Scaling up the volume of cryptocurrency mining in North America
Broad launch of stablecoins
Digitalization of national currency units
Development of crypto regulations
This week, Grayscale’s appetite for buying Bitcoin has played out very much: on January 19, the company acquired BTC 18 times more than it was mined in a 24-hours. Over the past 7 days, Grayscale has added to its “piggy bank” Bitcoin worth about $ 1 billion. In general, the total value of all cryptocurrency assets of the company is estimated at $ 28.1 billion.
Ripple hopes for the Biden administration loyalty to cryptocurrencyJoe Biden’s rise to power could change the “rules of the game in favor of the cryptocurrency” and give an impetus to the development of the crypto industry in the United States. This forecast was announced by the leadership of Ripple.
Given the protracted proceedings with the SEC, Ripple’s announcement of an urgent change in policy towards cryptocurrency looks natural and predictable. The issue of developing a clear regulatory framework for the cryptocurrency market in the United States has been repeatedly raised but the matter did not go beyond discussions.
American crypto enthusiasts can still breathe out calmly because positive news has already arrived from the White House. On January 22, Joe Biden postponed for 60 days’ consideration of the document on the regulation of cryptocurrency wallets, which was submitted by the Financial Crime Enforcement Network (FinCEN) and provided for the imposition of serious restrictions on transactions.
Ethereum has updated its all-time highOn January 19, the price of Ethereum for the first time since 2018 exceeded the all-time high of $1,424 and found itself in “uncharted territory” just above $1,430. The next day, the asset rolled back 7%, which, according to analysts, was due to overheating in the futures market.
Technical indicators continue to signal Ethereum’s readiness to continue the rally. Ethereum’s next parabolic leap may be driven by increased interest in DeFi. Over the past month, users have contributed about $20 billion to DeFi lending protocols, and this trend is only accelerating.
Ethereum continues to make a big splash, with data showing that Ethereum’s transaction volume last week exceeded Bitcoin’s transaction volume by 28%. Over the past 12 months, the number of daily active Ether addresses has doubled to reach 550,000. If you look at the statistics of current searches on Google, Ethereum is at the top. A similar heightened interest in Ethereum was seen during the 2017 bull market.
Analyst Michael van de Poppe believes that a new all-time high is just the beginning of a long journey of Ethereum. He is looking at a short-term scenario for the price of ETH to rise to $1,800.
Whales own over 81% supply of LINKAccording to Glassnode, the centralization of Chainlink (LINK) distribution has reached an all-time high: over 81% of tokens are in the 125 largest wallets (1% of all token holders). Whales are consistently showing high activity towards LINK, continuing to buy tokens even at record high price levels.
LINK’s turnover has increased by over 50 million units in the past few months. A new influx of tokens entered the market as a result of the sale of personal savings from the Chainlink team. This move further widened the gap between whales and small token holders.
LINK prices soared 46% this week. The asset can be congratulated on a new achievement – at the time of writing the review on market capitalization, the token surpassed Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash and took 7th place in the rating with an indicator of $9 billion.
Game over: LiveCoin exchange closedOn January 16, the Russian exchange LiveCoin announced the termination of work due to the alleged attack by hackers and irreparable damage that was caused later. LiveCoin representatives promised their clients to “return the remaining funds”. To receive compensation, you must send an application with your login and date of registration on the exchange by March 17, 2021.
According to users, “something strange on LiveCoin started happening at the end of December.” A few hours before the hack on the exchange, the price of Bitcoin rose to $320,000, Ethereum went up to $24,000, while the withdrawal of funds from the exchange was not available. According to LiveCoin, it was hackers who changed the value of assets to abnormally high values.
In a statement, the exchange also asked customers not to join chat groups called “LiveCoin,” as the exchange has nothing to do with them. “Do not under any pretext send money to fake exchange employees for getting your funds back,” LiveCoin said.
The presence of several serious Livecoin fack ups in the past adds fuel to the fire, as a result of which clients of the exchange suffered significant losses.
