Welcome to the latest Openware Crypto Digest. Let’s review some of the most significant developments within the crypto world of the last week.
This digest will focus on the latest developments in Bitcoin and the overall adoption of cryptocurrencies.
- Bitcoin Achieved a New All-Time High Value of $69,044 but Declined Afterwards.
- Discord Wanted to Integrate Ethereum to Its Network Alongside NFTS but Dropped Their Plans After Backlash.
- Nearly half of American Millennials Are Comfortable with Investing in Cryptocurrencies.
- Sotheby’s Announced That They Would Accept Live Ethereum Bids for Banksy Auctions.
Bitcoin Achieved a New All-Time High of $69,044 but Declined Afterwards
On November 10, Bitcoin rallied to a new all-time high value of $69,044. This marked tremendous growth for the token. Additionally, BlockFi filed paperwork with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, to launch a physically-backed Bitcoin exchange-traded fund.
This filing stated that BlockFi will serve as a custodian and that the ETF’s investment objective is to essentially reflect Bitcoin's underlying performance. Furthermore, this filing noted that the trust would not purchase or sell BTC directly. However, it could direct the custodian to sell BTC to pay for specific expenses.
That said, right after BTC achieved its new all-time high value, it dipped in value after news that China Evergrande Group failed to pay some of its international investors interest payments on bonds. This raised a lot of concerns about the potential default of the company. At the time of writing, Bitcoin is valued at $65,927.
As the price of Bitcoin climbs, so does the rate at which investors are pulling their funds off cryptocurrency exchanges. All of this is based on an analysis conducted by Glassnode.
12.9% of the circulating Bitcoin supply, estimated at $163 billion, is sitting on exchanges, according to the report, a trend that started in August.
Additionally, this report revealed that the daily net withdrawals from exchanges reached an average of 5,000 BTC, implying that the record-high prices didn’t prompt many people to sell. The majority of investors are HODLing their Bitcoin.
The long-awaited Taproot upgrade to Bitcoin activated at block 709.532, at 5:15 UTC (00:15 EST) on Sunday, November 14. This opened the door for many developers to integrate new features to improve the network’s privacy, scalability, and security.
Discord Wanted to Integrate Ethereum and NFTs but Dropped Their Plans After Community Backlash
Discord is an application that initially and primarily focused on gaming, but over time gained a high level of popularity and became used in a lot of different industries.
It recently saw a surge in popularity within the NFT industry after it announced that it would be looking forward to implementing Ethereum support through the utilization of Metamask and WalletConnect.
Discord’s CEO, Jason Citron, teased the community with a tweet that included a screenshot of the Discord application with the Ethereum logo and the wallet connection relays.
However, while this feature was in the “pre-release” mode, the tune changed after Citron was bombarded with thousands of comments calling on him to drop this update.
According to the CEO, this backlash moved the update from “pre-release” mode to a “no-release” mode.
This indicates that, even though Discord is a community-used application within the crypto community, specifically surrounding NFT projects with the goals of building communities, we can still see that some Discord users are not fond of crypto as a whole.
A Reddit petition post in the r/discordapp community, “Discord developers: Please do not support NFTs”, ended up receiving 7,100 upvotes.
Uniswap’s founder Hayden Adams said on Twitter that the reaction Citron was getting was “pretty surreal” and an indication of how early Web 3.0 actually is.
Adams also advised those “against” NFTs to examine where they are getting their information, and that NFTs (non-fungible tokens) are a disruptive new technology that brings organizational power to individuals and bypasses corporations.
Nearly half of American Millennials Are Comfortable with Investing in Cryptocurrencies.
According to a Bankrate survey, 49% of millennials in America are comfortable with investing in cryptocurrencies. This is in comparison to 37% of Generation X and 22% of baby boomers.
Out of the 49% of millennials, 15% answered that they are “Very Comfortable” with investing in crypto, while the other 34% picked “Somewhat Comfortable.”
This study was conducted for Bankrate through a phone interview by SSRS, where 1,008 adults were interviewed from May 25 to May 30, 2021.
Sotheby’s Announced That They Would Accept Live Ethereum Bids for Banksy Auctions
Auction house Sotheby’s announced that they would sell a pair of Banksy pieces where the bids will be taken in ETH. The sale of Banksy’s “Trolley Hunters” and ” Love Is in The Air “ is set to happen on November 18.
That said, Sotheby’s claims that this is the first time an auction house will accept cryptocurrency in real-time as a standard currency for payment in an auction of physical works of art.
The winning bidders have the opportunity to pay in Ether (ETH), Bitcoin (BTC) as well as USD Coin (USDC), despite the fact that the prices will only be announced in ETH.
This real-world utilization of Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies is a showcase at an increased level of trust in crypto.
Thank You for Reading
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