Bitcoin’s price fell below $21,000, the potential ETHW fork hit a new low, the EOS community launched the Antelope blockchain project, and other events from the week just gone.
Bitcoin price dips below the $21,000 mark
On Friday, August 19, Bitcoin fell through the $22,000 level. By the next day, quotes were below $21,000.
Over the weekend, digital gold showed some recovery, but the price never managed to return to its initial levels.
Over the last seven days, Bitcoin has fallen 12.2%, according to CoinGecko. Its market capitalization at the time of writing stands at $410 billion.
Among the top-10 cryptocurrencies by CoinGecko, Ethereum (-18.3%), Cardano (-18%) and Solana (-22.6%) fell even more over the week.
The total market capitalization stands at $1.07 trillion.
Founder of Capriole Investments, Charles Edwards, based on data from the indicator known as the \”Difficulty Ribbon\”, concluded that the period of Bitcoin miner capitulation has passed. In his words, it is \”an excellent buying signal\”.
\u201eHistorically, Bitcoin miner capitulations have marked the major price lows and served as excellent buy signals,\u201c noted the analyst.
ETHW: The potential fork updates price low amid weak community support
During the market pullback, the potential PoW-fork Ethereum — ETHW — fell through the $50 level. This amounts to around 3% of the price of the base asset of the main network (at the time of writing — $1,617).
According to CoinMarketCap, ETHW’s all-time high was reached on August 8 — $139.6.
Earlier in the week, the developers behind the potential fork published code that included removing EIP-1559 with coin distribution to miners. Soon, the community found a significant flaw in it.
\u201ePeople found a bug that would revert all blocks to the state prior to the London hard fork. In the morning, the team released a patch for this vulnerability,\u201c wrote journalist Colin Wu.
Twitter user zhijie noted that the bug would have prevented blocks released after the above hard fork from being added to the chain.
Supporters of the \”alternative Ethereum\” thanked developer Aleksei Akunov for solving the problem.
The Ethermine mining pool, the largest on the Ethereum network, stated that it will not support any of the PoW forks.
\u201eSeven years of research and development into Ethereum mining phase will end on 15 September 2022. After that date, it will not be possible to mine Ether using GPUs or ASIC miners,\u201c reads the statement.
After the merge, the platform will move to withdrawal-only mode. All Stratum servers of the Ethereum pool will be shut down.
Ethermine will invite miners to join mining one of the other cryptocurrencies:
- Ethereum Classic (ETC);
- Ravencoin (RVN);
- Ergo (ERGO);
- Beam (BEAM).
To motivate miners, the service will waive fees in the pools of these coins during September.
Messari researchers raise concerns about centralisation of Ethereum and Solana nodes
Three major cloud providers host 69% of Ethereum nodes, out of 65% located in data centres, while for Solana, of 95% of nodes, 72% are hosted by the same infrastructure players as for the second-biggest cryptocurrency.
In Ethereum, the lead among these three goes to Amazon Web Services (50%). Hetzner and OVH account for 15% and 4% respectively. In Solana, AWS accounts for only 4%, but Hetzner and OVH account for 42% and 26%.
Ethernodes provides a more detailed picture of other cloud providers in the network of the second-largest cryptocurrency. In particular, Alibaba (3.9%) and Oracle (4.1%) are only marginally behind OVH (4.2%). Also notable are Google (3.5%), Digital Ocean (2%), netcup (1.9%) and Contabo (1.8%).
In value terms, for Solana on Amazon Web Services, Hetzner and OVH account for 15%, 20% and 8% of the total staked value.
Messari analysts note that the RPC layer remains the main candidate for censorship. To date, the development of decentralised alternatives such as Anker and Pocket has not decisively changed the situation; moreover, due to governance peculiarities, they have not solved the problem of a single point of failure.
Fifth-largest global auditor confirms Tether reserves
The auditing firm BDO Italia issued a conclusion confirming the sufficiency of Tether Holdings’ reserves to fully back the USDT stablecoin.
Experts analysed the issuer’s assets and liabilities as of June 30, 2022.
Liabilities on the reporting date were $66.2 billion, assets $66.4 billion. The latter comprised:
- $28.8 billion — US Treasury bills;
- $8.5 billion — commercial paper;
- $6.8 billion — money market funds;
- $5.4 billion — cash.
The company announced a move to publish audit conclusions more frequently — they will now be issued monthly rather than quarterly.
EOS community launches Antelope blockchain project
EOS Network Foundation (ENF), Telos, Wax and UX Network united resources into the Antelope blockchain coalition with a common codebase.
The Antelope protocol is a fork of an early EOS version with a number of new features. The initial Leap v3.1 release includes:
- subject-based billing;
- automatic transaction replay;
- ability to value resources per transaction without including it in a block;
- reduced storage requirements by trimming block logs and delivery.
For the new network, developer toolkits are also provided:
- CDT — for deploying smart contracts on Antelope blockchains;
- DUNE — for node management, smart contract authoring, test running and other common tasks.
ENF noted that in mid-2021 the EOS network was ceased to be supported by Block.one, the company that launched it. The organisation has taken steps to keep the project alive.
What to discuss with friends?
- The Golden Bored Ape token sold for $1.5 million.
- The director of \”Bet on Bitcoin\” will shoot a film about Satoshi Nakamoto.
- Media: Celsius lost \”millions of dollars\” due to CEO interference in trading.
- The Vanik case hearing in the US will take place on September 27.
TRM Labs and Kraken head criticise sanctions against Tornado Cash
TRM Labs analysts noted that sanctions against the Tornado Cash mixer create compliance challenges, especially in the case of \”dust attacks\”.
The firm emphasised that sanctions against the mixer create uncertainty in compliance terms. This is the first time that OFAC sanctioned a set of smart contracts rather than plain wallets. With the latter, as a rule, transactions are easy to trace; with smart contracts this will be more difficult.
\u201eThe complexity lies in the fact that essentially anyone who funds Tornado Cash interacts with the service’s smart contracts. Theoretically, they could send funds to Tornado Cash and then move them to an address belonging to a random, unsuspecting person,\u201c the firm explained.
Kraken CEO Jesse Powell stated that adding Tornado Cash to the sanctions list could violate the U.S. Constitution and is more of a knee-jerk reaction to the Terra collapse.
He described removing the project code from Github as \”unnecessary\”.
\u201eCitizens have a right to financial privacy. Let\’s see if this stands up in court. […] Authorities want to control the presence of digital currency through such potentially unconstitutional actions. It worries me a little,\u201c he said.
WhitePay rolls out cryptocurrency payments in Ukrainian electronics stores
WhitePay, part of the WhiteBIT ecosystem, has introduced cryptocurrency payments for goods in Ukraine\’s largest electronics chains, including Techno Yozhak and Stylus.
More than 130 types of cryptocurrencies are accepted for payments. The list will expand over time.
Customers can pay via the online acquiring form in e-commerce sites or at offline points of sale via dedicated POS terminals.
Israel reveals crypto-enabled money-laundering scheme
The Tax Authority and police in Israel arrested three suspects in the organisation of an international fraud scheme that launders millions of euros using cryptocurrencies.
The authorities said the group of local residents systematically obtained funds from crimes committed abroad. The assets were subsequently converted into cryptocurrencies on various digital platforms.
The fraud targeted the French treasury.
Authorities did not provide further details about the alleged crimes.
Besides the arrest of three principal suspects, several others were detained for questioning.
The investigation spanned several months and was conducted in cooperation with Europol and the French police.
EU to create a single crypto regulator
The EU authorities will create a new regulatory body AMLA, tasked with direct oversight of crypto businesses. This is set out in the EU\’s Sixth Anti-Money Laundering Directive (AMLD6).
The European Parliament will consider AMLD6 after the August recess. Once it approves its version of the bill, the three institutions will enter the trilogue for final agreement on its provisions.
PayPal adds Bitcoin support in mobile app
PayPal has added the ability to buy, sell and transfer cryptocurrencies via its mobile app.
The service supports Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash. The minimum transaction amount is $1.
Users can make both internal and external transfers, and pay for purchases in digital currencies at millions of online stores that accept PayPal.
What else to read?
In educational cards they cover the \u201cvampire attack\u201d, various Bitcoin address formats, L2 solutions, the Ripple project and XRP token and the second-largest market-cap stablecoin USDC.
We\’ve gathered the main developments in the field of artificial intelligence, and notable venture deals in recent weeks.
Read ForkLog\’s bitcoin news in our Telegram — crypto news, quotes and analysis.