Bitcoin traded above $42,000 this week; Vitalik Buterin proposed reviving the ‘crypto-punk’ ethos in Ethereum; Changpeng Zhao’s net worth rose by $25 billion in 2023; and other events of the week.
Bitcoin Holds Above $42,000
This week, the first cryptocurrency traded in a range of $42,000 to $44,000.
At the time of writing, digital gold was hovering around $42,500.
Most top-10 assets by market cap finished the week in the red. Avalanche led the declines, down 16.5%, followed by Solana at 8.2%.
The total cryptocurrency market capitalization stands at $1.74 trillion. Bitcoin’s dominance index is 51.4%.
Vitalik Buterin proposed reviving the ‘crypto-punk’ ethos in Ethereum
Ethereum’s blockchain must rekindle the ‘crypto-punk’ revolution, conceived for the network at its inception. Buterin, the co-founder of the second-largest cryptocurrency, stated.
According to him, Ethereum was originally conceived as a ‘public, decentralized, shared hard drive’ that could use peer-to-peer messaging and file storage. However, this vision began to fade in 2017 with a shift toward the protocol’s ‘financialization’.
Decentralization, open participation, resistance to censorship and trustworthy neutrality are among the ideals of the ‘crypto-punk’ that Buterin wants to see in Ethereum’s future.
He noted that rollups, zero-knowledge proofs, account abstraction and second-generation privacy solutions have become more widespread and can support some of these values.
Within the crypto ecosystem, it is possible to create things that do not align with these goals, Buterin acknowledged, alluding to certain projects.
For example, creating a highly centralized layer protected by multisignatures with no plans to change, or an NFT ecosystem in which tokens are stored on a centralized website, rather than on a decentralized data platform such as IPFS.
Resisting this pressure is difficult, but if we do not, we risk losing the crypto ecosystem’s unique value and recreating a clone of the existing Web 2.0 ecosystem with added inefficiency and friction, the developer emphasized.
Buterin also said he was impressed by some developments aimed at addressing the industry’s biggest problems. Thus, DEXs have provided improved protection tools after hacks of centralized exchanges, and Cowswap, Flashbots Protect and MEV Blocker helped curb ‘sandwich attacks’ on Ethereum users.
Changpeng Zhao’s fortune in 2023 rose by $25 billion
The estimated net worth of the founder and former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao rose to $37.2 billion, Bloomberg notes.
The figure is far from the $96.6 billion peak recorded in January 2022, and did not hold the June level just above $50 billion.
However since January Zhao’s fortune rose by nearly $25 billion. He topped the list of crypto billionaires whose net worth increased over the year. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, their capital rebound markedly:
- CEO Coinbase Brian Armstrong — up $5.8 billion, to $7.2 billion;
- Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam — up $1.8 billion, to $2.5 billion;
- founder of Digital Currency Group Barry Silbert — up $1.5 billion, to $2 billion;
- Gemini founders Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss — up $1.4 billion, to $2.7 billion.
What to talk about with friends?
- Trader earned $5.7 million on 30 Solana tokens.
- Solana trader turned $60 into $2 million on a single meme token.
- Russians called cryptocurrencies a poor gift for the New Year.
- GameFi tokens collapsed by 86% in value.
Opinion: Ethereum could flip Bitcoin in 2024
In 2024 Ethereum could surpass Bitcoin in price growth, according to Andrei Dragos, head of research at ETC Group.
The fundamentals will be driven by technological advances and Ether’s position as the leading smart-contracts platform. The expert also noted that in 2023 the second-largest cryptocurrency lagged behind digital gold in price growth.
ETH lagged BTC over the last 12 months. However, Ether could surpass Bitcoin in the next 12 months, Dragoš said.
The report also notes that the rise in Ethereum’s price will be aided by the deflationary burn mechanism, implemented in August 2021 via EIP-1559 as part of the London hard fork. The reduction in supply, coupled with attractive staking yields, could lead to the so-called flippening — Ethereum overtaking Bitcoin by market capitalization.
Dragoš added that since Ethereum’s appearance in 2015, it has consistently outpaced Bitcoin in price growth. The exception was 2023.
Analyst says the launch of a spot Bitcoin ETF threatens BTC
The launch of a spot Bitcoin ETF contradicts the idea of non-custodial storage and could pose fundamental problems for the asset, said Trezor analyst Josef Tetek.
The main downside would be that a large portion of Bitcoin would be stored on centralized platforms, from which governments could confiscate them. The expert compared this event to the 1930s confiscation of gold in the United States.
In principle, spot Bitcoin ETFs move people further away from self-custody and potentially create systemic risk, since funds appear safer than exchanges, Tetek said.
Tetek wondered whether the market truly needs an ETF if ordinary purchases of digital gold pose similar risks to trades on traditional platforms.
Also on ForkLog:
- Bitcoin miners’ revenue from fees increased by 400% year over year.
- The most expensive NFTs in 2023: trends and the state of the industry.
- The volume of assets blocked in Blast exceeded $1 billion.
- Chinese authorities warned against using USDT.
CoinGecko names the main crypto-industry trends in 2023
The most popular directions in the digital-asset market in 2023 were artificial intelligence, GameFi, and meme tokens — accounting for a third of total community interest, CoinGecko said in its study.
Next come the Solana ecosystem (7.2%), BRC-20 tokens (7.1%) and real-world assets (6.5%). The 15 main trends (out of 139) accounted for 72.3% of total crypto interest.
What else to read?
This week we explained what regenerative finance is and which ReFi projects to watch in 2024.
In the traditional digest we collected the main cybersecurity news of the week.
The DeFi sector continues to attract heightened attention from crypto investors. ForkLog has gathered the most important events and news of recent weeks in its digest.