Coin Stats

02/02/2021

Ethereum’s ether cryptocurrency came within a hair’s breadth of a new record high on Tuesday, amid expectations that the recent GameStop trading saga would accelerate the adoption of cryptocurrencies and decentralized finance (DeFi).

The second-largest cryptocurrency by market value climbed to $1,457 during the European hours, less than $3 below the lifetime high of $1,459.93 reached last month.

Crypto analysts believe the restrictive actions could bring more users into the DeFi space, which is dominated by Ethereum’s blockchain.

Ether also has a store-of-value appeal, and a growing number of institutions have taken positions in the cryptocurrency, Coinbase’s recently released 2020 annual review said.

While ether is eyeing a new lifetime high, bitcoin is down at least $7,000 from its record price of $41,962 reached on Jan. 8. Bitcoin is up nearly 20% this year, while ether has added more than 25%.

“Buy ethereum to secure the fledging decentralized financial system and potentially make a lot of money, but also to tell your bank to pull off,” Selkis noted in Thursday’s daily market brief...

30/01/2021

Dogecoin, the popular meme cryptocurrency, hit a new all-time high on Jan. 28 following a meteoric 1,100% gain. Here’s a breakdown of every time dogecoin has shot for the moon.

Dogecoin is a cryptocurrency that was created by Australian entrepreneur Jackson Palmer and software engineer Billy Markus back in 2013. It was meant to be a mockery of the new alternative coins, or “altcoins,” that were flooding the space at the time. The infamous Shibu Inu “doge” the project is centered around was taken from a viral internet meme that was particularly popular with early crypto adopters.

1. 2017 crypto boom
Dogecoin’s first major pump started around March 10, 2017, as a significant rise in retail investment started to pour into the crypto market for the first time, lifting all alternative coins, or altcoins.

2. Bitcoin breaks $19,783, lifts dogecoin
By November of 2017, significant buying momentum had returned to the crypto market, with huge trading volumes driving bitcoin (BTC, -6.29%) to a height of $19,783. The global crypto market capitalization reached a staggering $830 billion and sent smaller-cap projects like dogecoin parabolic.

3. Crypto markets rebound
On April 14, 2018, just before the entire market entered “crypto winter” and crashed to former lows, a vast majority of crypto projects staged a brief recovery. In three days, dogecoin rose 103% from $0.0020 to $0.0041. For comparison, bitcoin only managed to secure a 40% rise within the same month.
By this time, dogecoin’s market capitalization had been cut by more than half from its all-time high down to $573 million.

4. Ethereum/Dogecoin bridge test
The first major dogecoin rally that was largely uncorrelated to the rest of the crypto market was in September 2018 when a system test of the Dogecoin/Ethereum bridge was completed.
The bridge was supposed to be a new update that would allow interoperability between the two blockchains. The announcement reignited community support for the project and dogecoin’s price rose 173% in 48 hours.

5. WallStreetBets mania, Elon Musk tweet
On Jan. 11, 2021, the traditional financial markets were heavily disrupted by a subreddit group called the WallStreetBets (aka WSB). These amateur stock traders decided to unite against traditional financial institutions and pump a number of stocks that major hedge funds were betting on falling in value.

On Jan. 28, the WSB stock market mania spilled across to dogecoin and catalyzed the biggest crypto rally of the year so far. In less than two days, dogecoin skyrocketed to a new all-time high of $0.087 on the Binance exchange – representing a 1,100% gain. The rally was fueled in part by a number of tweets, including one from Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and avid dogecoin fan.

29/01/2021

Dogecoin (DOGE) surged more than 800% Thursday to about $0.082 per coin, giving the meme-based cryptocurrency a market value of about $7 billion and apparently prompting a congratulatory tweet from DOGE lover Elon Musk.

DOGE, which was started as a joke in 2013, is now the 10th most valuable cryptocurrency by market value, just behind Bitcoin Cash and ahead of BNB.

The price of DOGE rose to an all-time high of $0.082 per Messari, before settling down to $0.073, up 822% over the last 24 hours and bringing the year-to-date gains to about the same amount. Over $12 million worth of DOGE traded in the past 24 hours.

Why the token has soared is unclear but it's likely largely caused by attention from public Reddit trading collective Wall Street Bets along with a TikTok post about the "dogecoin army" by niche celebrity Carole Baskin from Netflix's "Tiger King."

Regardless of why DOGE is barking so loudly today, it certainly captured the imagination of the crypto pack and beyond. According to data provider The Tie, DOGE set a new record for the most tweets on a cryptocurrency over a 24-hour period, besting the previous marks set by leading cryptocurrency bitcoin on Jan. 2, 2021, and Dec. 22, 2017.

Erratic price action is not unusual for any cryptocurrency, let alone dogecoin. Last month, a few tweets from Tesla CEO Elon Musk sent the token flying. Today, Musk tweeted a picture of dog posing on the cover of a magazine, a likely nod to DOGE's surge.

28/01/2021

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION ABOUT BITCOIN...

1.What Is Bitcoin?
The first mention of a product called bitcoin was in August 2008 when two programmers using the names Satoshi Nakamoto and Martti Malmi registered a new domain, bitcoin.org. In October of the same year, Nakamoto released a document, called a white paper, entitled “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.” In the preceding months, Nakamoto and a group of volunteer researchers had proposed different versions of the concept in forums and email threads. It was in 2008 that it all came together.
This paper laid out principles of Bitcoin, an electronic payment system that would eliminate the need for any central authority while ensuring secure, verifiable transactions. In short, the document described a new form of currency, one that allowed for trustless payments on the web – that is, they require a minimal amount or even no trust between parties.

In other words, the system allowed two users who didn’t know or trust each other to exchange money in the same way they could pass cash back and forth. The system also allowed users to confirm messages, transactions and data using a tool called public key encryption, eliminating any need to disclose their identities to transaction partners or third parties.
In January 2009, the first bitcoin currency transaction occurred between two computers owned by Nakamoto and the late Hal Finney, a developer and an early cryptocurrency enthusiast.

27/01/2021

Eth 2.0 is looking at its first hard fork this year.
The Ethereum Foundation-backed research team is currently organizing schematics for a mid-2021 backward-incompatible change to the Beacon Chain, according to a Jan. 14 developer’s call.

This hard fork is really not a hard fork in the traditional sense, Teku client project manager Ben Edgington pointed out. Rather, it’s a warmup before sharding and a merge of the Eth 1.x and Beacon Chain.

“The word ‘fork’ is heavily overloaded in blockchain usage. In fact, there shouldn’t even be a fork when this upgrade is done, in the sense of the network ending up with multiple competing chains,” he wrote in his Eth 2.0 blog post on Jan. 15.

Breakdown of Eth 2.0 user deposits-
One other useful metric for evaluating ongoing network health and decentralization is the breakdown of user deposits on Eth 2.0. According to a tool still in beta testing by blockchain explorer Etherscan, roughly 50% of all ETH deposits are made by cryptocurrency exchanges and staking pools.

26/01/2021

26/01/2021

Bitcoin’s price rose on Monday after a brutal sell-off that saw the virtual currency briefly dip below $30,000. Meanwhile, ether — the world’s second-biggest cryptocurrency — hit a fresh record high.

Ether, the digital token of the Ethereum blockchain, notched a new all-time high of $1,476 early Monday morning. The cryptocurrency climbed 6.2% to a price of $1,415 at about 9:15 a.m. ET.

Altcoins, or alternative cryptocurrencies, have been known to rally in times of strength for bitcoin. Ether’s latest price movement was attributed to increased use of Ethereum — its underlying network that is undergoing a major upgrade — and interest from institutional investors in crypto.

“Ethereum’s current rise cold shoulders the sceptics, many of whom were quick to denounce crypto when bitcoin recently fell from its $40,000 high,” said Simon Peters, cryptoasset analyst at online investment platform eToro.

“With a whole range of logistical improvements to the Ethereum network in the works, increased institutional inflows, and more and more developers building on the platform, the future is bright for Ethereum. I believe that a price of $2,500 by the end of the year is very feasible. As with all crypto, however, there will be bumps along the way.”

Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency by market value, has had a wild start to 2021. After quadrupling last year, bitcoin’s price briefly topped $40,000 for the first time on Jan. 7. It’s down 17% from its all-time high, but still up over 17% since the start of the year.

25/01/2021

During the second half of 2020, we saw a growing interest in cryptocurrencies from institutional investors and big capital. However, all the attention of the whales, as well as all the attention of the public, was fixed on Bitcoin (BTC). Today, we will look at why Ether (ETH) is a more attractive asset and why this cryptocurrency should become the “first cryptocurrency” for every investor.

Let's start with the numbers: ETH’s growth since its March 2020 low after the coronavirus-induced market crash has been 1,200%, whereas BTC has only grown around 700%. ETH’s growth since its March 2020 low after the coronavirus-induced market crash has been 1,200%, whereas BTC has only grown around 700%. Of course, against the backdrop of record highs for Bitcoin, whose price reached $ 40,000, the rise of Ether to $1,400 does not seem so impressive.

There are very strong reasons to believe that Ether will continue to rise in price in 2021 and bring more profit to investors than the “most famous cryptocurrency,” Bitcoin.

Demand among developers-
Ethereum is the number-one platform for building blockchain projects and launching decentralized applications. The chart below displays the number of unique ERC-20 tokens traded during the first years since the launch of the Ethereum network. And despite the fact that the rate of expansion of the market for blockchain startups has slowed down since the initial coin offering bubble burst in 2018, their total number is still growing.

Growing transaction volume-
During 2020, more than $1 trillion worth of transactions were recorded on the Ethereum blockchain. These figures exceed the transaction volume of payments giants like PayPal, which is used by over 350 million users and has with average volumes that do not generally exceed $200 billion per quarter.

Development of the DeFi sector-
Despite Bitcoin's leadership in the cryptocurrency market, Ethereum remains the leader of the young decentralized finance industry. Highly popular in the summer of 2020, DeFi lending and staking projects continue to grow, attracting new investments.

22/01/2021

Ether recently broke above $1,400 for the first time in two years. Here are three events that could push the price even higher.

Ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, set a new all-time high of $1,439.33. This is the first time the digital asset has been over the $1,400 level since Jan. 13, 2018. Ethereum’s YTD gains now total 66.15% – over 6x higher than the leading cryptocurrency and outstripping both Polkadot (DOT) and Chainlink (LINK). Despite experiencing a temporary correction, it is still one of the strongest performers among the top 10 assets.

While there were no obvious fundamental catalysts to spur the rise to a new all-time high, ether had been close to breaking the key level for over two weeks after climbing to $1,350 on Jan. 10. The exponentially growing market for decentralized finance, known as DeFi – which now holds over $24 billion worth of crypto assets in its protocols – was also a likely contributor to the bullish momentum behind the asset. Now, with Ethereum heading closer towards uncharted territory, all eyes will be on the second-largest cryptocurrency hitting its next major milestone, the psychological $2,000 mark. This fabled level is more than a 50% gain away from the current price (at press time), but there are 3 major events scheduled to go live in 2021 that could help make this possible.

1. CME Ethereum Futures
The world’s largest derivatives platform, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), publicly announced on Dec. 16 its plans to launch Ethereum futures by Feb. 8, provided it receives regulatory approval from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). Derivatives are essentially trading contracts that allow investors to bet on the future price of an underlying asset without having to actually own it.
This new cash-settled financial product – which means any profits made will be paid out in US dollars as opposed to ether – comes three years after the exchange launched bitcoin futures, which is now the world’s most traded bitcoin futures product and accounts for over 20% of all open contracts.

2. Ether Burning and Predictable Fees
Any action carried out on Ethereum-based decentralized applications (dapps) or protocols are treated as transactions, which require a fee attached to them to encourage miners to process them. Right now, transaction fees are determined via an auction-style system where users who attach the highest fees to their transactions get them processed the quickest by miners. This system causes a number of issues, namely unpredictable and often extremely high fees during periods of heavy congestion. Network congestion arises whenever there’s a spike in trading activity. For example, if ethereum’s price changes sharply and thousands of traders suddenly want to enter or exit the market around the same time.

3. Ethereum 2.0 Phase 1 Rollout
Ethereum is in the process of transitioning from a Proof-of-Work blockchain to one that operates using a Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism, with the goal of becoming a faster, more efficient, and more scalable platform. There are four separate phases to the Ethereum 2.0 upgrade – Phase 0, Phase 1, Phase 1.5 and Phase 2 – each laying the technical foundation for the next until the final phase is completed.

21/01/2021

Amid another price downturn Thursday, bitcoin options traders appear to be becoming less bullish on the immediate prospects for the cryptocurrency.

The one-week put-call skew, which measures the spread between prices of short-term puts and calls, has risen to a five-week high of 14%. The skew had bottomed out near an extremely bullish -33% just a week ago

Bitcoin is facing the pull of gravity at press time, trading down 6.4% at $32,940. Price had fallen as low as $32,200 a short time ago, the lowest since Jan. 11.

The losses could be attributed to regulatory concerns triggered by the U.S. Treasury Secretary Nominee Janet Yellen’s recent comments that the the use of cryptocurrencies in illicit financing needs to be curtailed.

“We probably have put in the top for bitcoin (BTC, -10.2%) for the next year or so. We are likely to see a full retracement back to the $20,000 level,” Guggenheim Global CIO Scott Minerd said on CNBC on Wednesday.

Bitcoin has dived out of a narrowing price range with the move toward $32,000. The range breakdown is backed by a below-50 bearish reading on the 14-day relative strength index (RSI). As such, the psychological support of $30,000 stands exposed.
Should the sell-off gather pace, put options will likely see stronger buying pressure.

20/01/2021

What is the intrinsic value of ether?

This is a question I’ve been wrestling with this past week as the ether (ETH, -7.64%)price set a new all-time high of $1,439.33, according to CoinDesk’s price index.

Similar to how many view the current bitcoin (BTC, -5.81%) price bull run as being credibly different from previous cycles for reasons to do with greater institutional involvement and mainstream interest, among other reasons, I get the sense that the valuation of ether by investors is being looked at this time around in a different light.

The primary reason for why I believe ether’s valuation has shifted in fundamental ways this market cycle compared to previous ones is because this December Ethereum officially launched its parallel staking network, Ethereum 2.0.

The daily average income of Ethereum 2.0 validators in terms of ETH has been on the slight decline since last week. According to BeaconScan, average income has dropped over the month of January from 0.008063 ETH/day to 0.007768 ETH/day. In dollar terms, however, income has been on the rise given bullish price trends pushing the value of ETH up 66.03% year-to-date.

Because of the continued growth of new users on Eth 2.0, a greater percentage of total ether supply is getting locked away and becoming unusable on the original Ethereum blockchain. Roughly 2.4% of all ETH in circulation is now immovable from Eth 2.0. Some Ethereum investors believe this percentage will grow to be as high as 30% in the future.

19/01/2021

JPMorgan analysts see bitcoin’s price tag of $40,000 as a key battleground that bullish traders need to retake in order for the cryptocurrency’s meteoric rise to continue.

According to a report by Bloomberg on Monday, unless bitcoin‘s price can break out above $40,000 the cryptocurrency could see further downside.
Greater input from the multi-billion dollar bitcoin trust owned by digital asset manager Grayscale Investments is needed to sustain prices above that key level, according to JPMorgan’s strategists and Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou, its global market strategy head. The analysis also took into account demand for bitcoin futures.

The bearish outlook would likely be triggered by a bevy of traders exiting the market on a potential change in the short-term trend and a lack of further institutional flows, according to the report.

“The flow into the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust would likely need to sustain its $100 million per day pace over the coming days and weeks for such a breakout to occur,” strategists said in a note to investors on Friday referring to a price breach above $40,000.

Grayscale announced on Saturday it had raised its largest single-day raise in the firm’s existence, adding above $700 million to its family of products including bitcoin.

How long the digital asset manager can sustain those levels remains unclear but analysts at JPMorgan said bitcoin is in a similar position to November 2020 when bitcoin was climbing to a new record high but failed to pass $20,000.

Traders “could propagate the past week’s correction,” JPMorgan analysts also said referring to the sharp over-20% drop in bitcoin’s value on Jan. 10, before a partial recovery prompted by opportunists.

If bitcoin fails to retake $40,000, “momentum signals will naturally decay from here up till the end of March,” the analysts said in the report.

At press time, bitcoin was trading at $37,250, up 2% over 24 hours.

18/01/2021

Stephen Harper, an economist and the former prime minister of Canada, said bitcoin could potentially see use as a reserve currency, but isn’t going to supplant the U.S. dollar’s international role.

In an interview with Cambridge House’s Jay Martin on Sunday, Harper acknowledged that the dollar had been on a downtrend, but said there were few viable international alternatives, even when looking at the euro and the yuan.

“Unless the U.S. becomes a catastrophe, it’s hard to see what the alternative is to the U.S. dollar as the world’s major reserve currency. Other than you know gold, bitcoin, … a whole basket of things, right?” said Harper. “I think you’ll see that the number of things that people use as reserves will expand, but the U.S. dollar will still be the bulk of it.”

Harper stressed he is not an expert when it comes to digital currencies, but said it is hard to see how they operate as a store of value – something “pretty critical” for a currency.

The former prime minister explained that every currency has three purposes: as a medium of exchange, a unit of account and a store of value. He said, a digital currency is certainly a medium of exchange and can be a unit of account, but it is difficult to see how bitcoin can act as a store of value.

That’s because “I, as an investor, have no idea what this investment represents,” he said.

Harper also addressed the trend for central banks to be considering the launch of their own digital currencies.
“Ultimately, if you have a digital currency and the purpose of the central bank is to control inflation and create a stable currency and price stability, then digital currency is just kind of an evolution of the marketplace,” he said. “But if it is part of a series of what I think are wild experiments as to the role of central banking, then that worries me a lot.”

15/01/2021

Bitcoin passing $40,000 was seen by many as inevitable, and reaching this level is just the continuation of a trend of smart money continuing to buy even as traders with less conviction shake out during sell-offs,” Guy Hirsch, managing director for the U.S. at multi-asset brokerage eToro, told CoinDesk. The last time bitcoin was over $40,000 in the spot markets was Sunday, Jan. 10, prior to a precipitous fall opening the week.

Bitcoin passing $40,000 was seen by many as inevitable, and reaching this level is just the continuation of a trend of smart money continuing to buy even as traders with less conviction shake out during sell-offs,” Guy Hirsch, managing director for U.S. at multi-asset brokerage eToro, told CoinDesk. The last time bitcoin was over $40,000 in the spot markets was Sunday, Jan. 10, prior to a precipitous fall opening the week.

People need to understand that bitcoin is a hyper-asset with a built-in steam engine that is explosive up and down,” noted over-the-counter crypto trader Henrik Kugelberg. “With all the money printing and the sad developing spread of COVID-19 throughout the world, widespread agonizing economic hardship and a few more factors spell advantage to bitcoin.

Ether volume bonanza so far in 2021
Ether (ETH), the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, was up Thursday, trading around $1,210 and climbing 8.5% in 24 hours as of 21:00 UTC (4:00 p.m. ET).

In 2020, ether volumes on the eight major CoinDesk 20 spot exchanges averaged $231 million per day. In 2021 so far, those volumes are up almost twelvefold, averaging $2.7 billion per day.

14/01/2021

According to the Beacon Chain analytics platform, there are currently 60,189 active validators on the network with a further 16,156 waiting in the queue. BeaconScan is reporting similar figures which means the network, which was launched on Dec 1, is more secure than ever.
according to the Beacon Chain analytics platform, there are currently 60,189 active validators on the network with a further 16,156 waiting in the queue. BeaconScan is reporting similar figures which means the network, which was launched on Dec 1, is more secure than ever.

ETH Killers Can’t Keep Up-

Stark compared the number of validators on ETH 2.0 with the so-called ‘Ethereum killers’ using data from Coin98 Analytics. Of the ten rival chains analyzed, Avalanche was the next highest with a reported 716 validators.

The amount of ETH currently staked in the deposit contract for ETH 2.0 is 2.46 million according to the Launchpad dashboard. At today’s prices, this equates to $2.7 billion or 2.16% of the entire supply. The supply fraction does not sound like much, but it should be noted that this ETH cannot be sold and has been effectively locked away for at least a year.
It will only re-enter circulation when Phase 1.5 of the Serenity upgrade merges the ETH 1.0 chain with ETH 2.0. Currently, stakers are earning a 10% annual yield on ETH, which itself has increased in value by 83% since Beacon Chain was launched.
For a blockchain that isn’t actually doing anything yet, ETH 2.0 is already way ahead of its rivals.

Ethereum Price Outlook-
Ethereum prices have rebounded slightly over the past 24 hours and currently trading for $1,120.

ETH prices are mirroring Bitcoin’s movements again as crypto markets attempt to revisit last week’s highs. Unless ETH can break its previous peak of $1,350 on Jan. 10, it might form a ‘lower high,’ potentially indicating that the correction could become extended.

13/01/2021

Bitcoin’s price had an up-and-down day, going as high as $36,605 at around 08:00 UTC (3 a.m. ET), falling to $32,528 at around 14:30 UTC (9 a.m. ET) and then going back up to $34,278 as of press time.

Monday’s bitcoin spot volumes were the highest ever seen since CoinDesk 20 data on eight major spot exchanges began being recorded. An astounding $13.3 billion in volume was traded Monday, the highest since Dec. 22, 2017, when volumes hit $9.7 billion.

“There will likely be a battle to bring this past that $36,000-$36,600 range,” said Efficient Frontier’s Andrew Tu.

Volume will likely play a factor in that battle given the blockbuster spot exchange activity at the week’s open. However, that was due to large amounts of selling, which caused the world’s oldest cryptocurrency to dump 20% within 24 hours.

“Bitcoin is a volatile asset,” said TradeStation’s Russell. “You cannot expect anything to double in a few weeks and not pull back.”

Ether (ETH), the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, was up Tuesday, trading around $1,085 and climbing 6% in 24 hours as of 21:00 UTC (4:00 p.m. ET).

On Monday, the amount of premium traded on Deribit’s ether options market heavily favored calls, which give owners the right, but not not the obligation, to buy an asset at a particular price. Ether’s all-time spot price high sits at $1,448, according to CoinDesk 20 data.

While the ether options market heavily favors strikes below the $800 spot ETH price point, 68% of call premiums paid Monday are apparently from traders looking to hedge out any risk of another parabolic rise in ether, according to data aggregator Genesis Volatility’s Tuesday investor note.

“Option traders are willing to pay up much more for ETH upside option exposure than they are for downside exposure,” Genesis wrote. “This activity indicates traders see an asymmetry in price action volatility, also known as ‘crash up risk’ and FOMO sentiment.”