BTC and ETH start November on a high note

Don’t like November for the icy wind and overcast sky? We are sure that many people would agree with you, but not the titans of the digital market, because for Ethereum and Bitcoin, the third month of autumn began more than just well. As always, let’s read about the most interesting events of the past week.

On November 4, ETH developers finally launched the long-awaited ETH 2.0 smart contract, stating that they are ready to switch to the new Ethereum protocol soon. Now anyone who wants to participate in staking can become a validator of the new contract. To do this, they need to block 32 ETH by sending them to a specific deposit address.

To launch the new protocol, the project needs to attract 16,384 validators, who must block a total of 524,288 ETH (about $210 million). This amount will likely be collected by December 1, 2020, but the developers stressed that the funds must be received no later than a week before the expected date, otherwise the launch will be postponed again. Within 12 hours after the news was published, users blocked more than 14,000 ETH (more than $6 million), and the coin itself has significantly strengthened, breaking through the psychological barrier of $400, and at the time of writing, it is firmly fixed above this level.

Meanwhile, Bitcoin is breaking all records — it has been above the $10,000 mark for more than 100 days. Previously, a similar record, however of 62 days, was seen in December 2017-January 2018, and then in September of this year (63 days). Moreover, the coin retook three-year highs at $14,700 last week and ahead of the weekend soared towards $16,000 (!) and continues to move north.

Thanks to its confident bullish trend, BTC has attracted the attention of major investors such as MicroStrategy, Square, and PayPal. Remarkably, players are attracted not so much by the fact that the asset has been trading above the $10,000 level for a long time, but by analysts’ forecasts of a further strong rally of Bitcoin.