CBX Weekly Newsletter // 6 May 2020
- Bitcoin looks for higher gains (Just days before the halving)
- Bitcoin mining difficulty almost at ATH
- Stablecoins Push Ethereum’s Transaction Count
Bitcoin looks for higher gains (Just days before the halving)
Bitcoin is one of the best-performing financial assets this year beating gold and equities. Even After losing over half its value over fears amid the Covid-19 the oldest cryptocurrency has recovered entirely and looks for further gains anticipating the halving event which is expected in less than a week.
Bitcoin has tried to break $9K three times already, but every time it tries Bulls cannot manage to close above that level. But even if they don’t succeed in the short term, long term investors expect that the price increase due to the halving reducing the supply of Bitcoins that are minted every day.
Even if Bitcoin continues to climb up in price, Alt-coins are not mirroring BTC’s performance, looking at the dominance chart is clear that most alternatives cryptocurrencies even if they are higher in price against the US Dollar, they are losing value against Bitcoin.
Taking a look at ETH which is the second most important cryptocurrency we can see a sharp decline after failing to break resistance many times before finally giving up. This means that the spotlight is on BTC rather than the cryptocurrency market.
Bitcoin mining difficulty almost at ATH
Bitcoin mining difficulty has once again neared an all-time high in the network’s last adjustment.
Bitcoin is the world’s largest blockchain network by market capitalization just adjusted its mining difficulty to 16.10 trillion yesterday.
Yesterday’s adjustment is also the final rate change before bitcoin’s halving in less than a week from now.
Following the halving, which will reduce newly mined bitcoin in a day from 1,800 to 900 units, it is expected that the computing power connected to the Bitcoin network will subsequently drop.
Bitcoin’s mining difficulty is designed to adjust itself every 2016 blocks, or about two weeks, based on the competition in each adjustment cycle.
The computing power growth over the last week follows bitcoin’s price jump from $7,500 to around $9,000 in two days starting on April 29. The price rebound proved to be a savior for older mining rigs.
Stablecoins Push Ethereum’s Transaction Count
Ethereum’s network is experiencing its busiest days in 10 months amid increased issuance of stablecoins and the runup to Ethereum 2.0, according to coindesk.com.
The seven-day moving average of the total number of confirmed transactions on Ethereum’s blockchain rose to 845,400 on April 30 to hit the highest level since July 2019, according to the data source Coin Metrics. As of Sunday, the average was 837,100.
The transaction count had declined to 12-month lows in February. Since then, however, it has surged by 72%.
“The recent Cambrian explosion of stablecoin issuance has been a considerable driver of on-chain activity,” said Lucas Nuzzi, network data product manager at Coin Metrics, a provider of crypto financial data.
Tether (USDT), trueUSD (TUSD), Gemini dollar (GUSD), Paxos Standard (PAX), USD coin (USDC), Huobi’s HUSD, and MakerDAO’s DAI are some of the best-known stablecoins. These major stablecoins are based on Ethereum’s blockchain.
The market capitalization of major stablecoins has risen from $3.5 billion to over $7 billion over the last two months, according to Coin Metrics.
The recent sharp rise in the number of addresses holding more than or equal to 32 ETH, an amount a holder is required to maintain as a balance to become a validator on 2.0.
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