Riding The Wave News Summary 78
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Breaking: Historic day for crypto as Ethereum Merge to proof-of-stake occurs
Elon Musk, Cathie Wood sound 'deflation' alarm — Is Bitcoin at risk of falling below $14K?
Yuga Labs Hires Chief Gaming Officer to Further Web3 Gaming Push
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Institutions Are Still 'Wait-And-See' With Ethereum
The Merge has finally happened, and while bitcoin remains the preferred cryptocurrency of institutions (and one nation-state, El Salvador), Ethereum’s new consensus mechanism – and the scalability that is supposed to go with it – may attract some interest away from its bigger, older brother as the biting cold of the crypto winter continues.
Still, institutions may be hesitant to jump all in on ether just yet. One reason is regulatory uncertainty.
There is at least one futures exchange, of course, that might be a good proxy for Wall Street’s interest and that’s the CME. The ratio of volumes between the two cryptocurrencies is way different:
The CME’s ratio of ether to bitcoin futures is decidedly all over the place, but it’s evident that dollar volumes for ether contracts on the CME have yet to surpass that of bitcoin futures contracts.
In the spot market, though, exchanges themselves can get a sense of the players interested in a currency.
“In terms of the volume increase in ETH this week, it was actually led by institutions, and that’s a significant part of our exchange business,” said Bitstamp USA CEO Bobby Zagotta on CoinDesk TV’s “First Mover” program Friday. There was “about 56% increase in volume from institutions versus, I think, [a] 35% increase in volume from retail users.”
A lot of that, Zagotta said, could be attributed to investors “selling the news” with the success of the Merge.
Sigel, who has a five-year price target on ether of $8,000, noted four times as much ETH was staked on the Ethereum network in the six hours after the Merge than in the entire history of the Beacon Chain prior.
“It seems pretty clear that those who are in the markets are now making the decision to commit and lock up that liquidity,” he said. “That’s probably a trend that will continue over time, so the early results are, I think, pretty encouraging notwithstanding the price action.”
I’m not surprised that institutions haven’t jumped ship, often, they dont buy the rumor and sell the news. Due to the larger number of decision makers involved and processes that need to be completed before buying or selling, they tend to buy and hold long term. As for staking increasing post-merge, there are more steps left within Ethereums technical roadmap, so now that this largest hurdle has been overcome, it’s not surprising people are more confident and locking more ETH in.
Breaking: Historic day for crypto as Ethereum Merge to proof-of-stake occurs
The Ethereum Merge has officially taken place, marking the full transition of the network to proof-of-stake (PoS).
Speaking to Cointelegraph, StarkWare president and co-founder Eli Ben-Sasson said that “the immediate importance of the Merge is the dramatic effect on energy consumption.”
Ben-Sasson said it also marks “the first step in a process that will lead to exceedingly widespread adoption of Ethereum,” stating:
With the Merge complete, the “Surge,” “Verge,” “Purge” and “Splurge” are the final stages left on the Ethereum technical roadmap.
The Surge will increase scalability for rollups through sharding; the Verge will achieve statelessness through Verkle trees; the Purge will eliminate historical data and technical debt; and the Splurge will involve a number of small miscellaneous upgrades.
One of the biggest transitions in the history of blockchain didn’t go without opposition. ETHW Core, a group representing proof-of-work miners, announced that it will conduct a hard fork within 24 hours after the Merge.
I dont think that energy usage is what is holding ETH back, or at least I have never personally thought of that when buying or selling crypto. People are more concerned about its volatility and whether their money will grow in value.
Elon Musk, Cathie Wood sound 'deflation' alarm — Is Bitcoin at risk of falling below $14K?
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