The total cryptocurrency market found itself once again below the $1 trillion mark after losing over $30 billion in the past seven days. However, on the bright side, BTC managed to sustain itself above $20K, while the Ethereum ecosystem also received some good news.
Starting with Bitcoin, the cryptocurrency is down around 3.7% in the past week and is currently sitting slightly below $21,000. This time last week it was trading close to $22,000, but failed to hold there and had lost over $3,000 of its value on Wednesday when the bears managed to lower the price at $19,000 and even below very briefly.
This is when the bulls took control and have since recovered around 10%, pushing the price to where it currently sits at around $20,800. That said, Bitcoin’s dominance – the metric that gauges its share relative to that of the entire market – is down 1% in the past week, meaning that altcoins fared better in comparison. Ethereum, although down 1.2%, is up over 8% in the past 24 hours alone after another successful shadow fork took place, bringing the network a step closer to Ethereum 2.0.
The merger, as it is commonly called (because Ethereum will merge to a proof-of-stake consensus algorithm), is set to happen in September this year. This was hinted by the devs, but the schedule for the week was described as “soft” as changes may be coming.
Elsewhere, troubled cryptocurrency lender Celsius Network became the latest one of the world’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy procedure. This happened weeks after it froze the accounts of its users, essentially locking them out of their funds.
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The rest of the cryptocurrency market is mostly in the red, although declines vary. Dogecoin is down 10.8%, but Polygon, on the other hand, is the most obvious outlier as it shot up 23% over the week on news of its partnership with Disney.
It remains particularly interesting to see how the market will shape up in the coming weeks and whether or not the bears have another major leg down in them.
Market data
Market cap: $976 billion | 24h volume: 114 billion dollars | BTC dominance: 40.8%
BTC: $20,654 (-3.7%) | ETH: $1,227(-1/2%) | ADA: $0.43 (-8.3%)
This Week’s Crypto Headlines You Can’t Miss
Twitter Sues Elon Musk for Pulling Out of $44 Billion Bitcoin’sal. Twitter has taken legal actions against the world’s richest man – Elon Musk. The reason is that Musk terminated the deal to purchase the social media giant a few days ago, and the company is now trying to force him into closing the acquisition deal.
Ethereum jumps 8% as Latecryptocurrency GoeKazakhstan ForkReum’s 9th shadow fork went live in the early hours of July 15. It also marked one of the last testing steps before the merger into a consensus Proof-of-Stake algorithm and the long-awaited Ethereum 2.0.
Arthur Hayes Expects the US to Start Printing Again, Bullish for Bitcoin. The co-founder of BitMEX, Arthur Hayes, thinks that the US Federal Reserve may soon start printing money again if the dollar continues strengthening against international currencies. He also thinks this is bullish for Bitcoin.
JP Morgan: Bitcoin’s 50% drop in production costs could further hurt its price. Multinational investment bank JP Morgan claims that the cost of producing one BTC has gone from $24,000 to $13,000 in a single month. The bank’s analysts also believe that this could have a negative impact on the price of the cryptocurrency.
Kazakhstan’s New Law Imposes Higher Tax Rates on Crypto Miners. Kazakhstan – one of the countries where Bitcoin mining has come to prominance – imposed new rates for taxing cryptocurrency miners. They would now have to pay increased rates tied to the electricity consumed by them.
Adoption: Saudi crypto investors doubled in 6 months (survey). According to a recent KuCoin survey, the interest and adoption of cryptocurrencies in Saudi Arabia is growing. The report found that 76% of crypto investors there had less than a year of trading experience.
