Over 5 million Ether (ETH) has been sent to the ETH 2.0 deposit contract, surpassing the Ethereum community’s expectations by nearly 1,000% from its previous threshold.
According to data from Dune Analytics, there are now 27,132 “unique” depositors, and a total of 5,223,042 ETH — around US$14 billion at press time. This surpassed the original 524,000 ETH threshold by 996.22%.
Data from Dune Analytics
Community Optimism for a PoS Shift
The locked up amount shows optimism for shifting Ethereum to ETH 2.0 — a significant upgrade that not only lowers fees and increments scalability, but also implements Proof of Stake, a consensus algorithm where validators are responsible for transaction confirmation instead of miners.
Speaking at the StartmeupHK virtual festival, Ethereum’s co-founder Vitalik Buterin said Proof of Stake will shrink cryptocurrencies’ carbon footprint in the long run, besides providing other benefits to the blockchain.
“Proof-of-stake is a solution to the environmental issues of Bitcoin, which needs far less resources to maintain.”
Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum co-founder
Those who want to stake can do so by depositing 32 ETH. By now there are 152,000 validators processing blocks on ETH 2.0, with a 99% success rate for blocks and 1% missed blocks.
Decentralized Finance (DeFi) space on Ethereum has been gaining traction since the past year, despite some projects having left the network amid expensive fees and slow transactions.
Nonetheless, the total value of digital assets locked on the Ethereum-based DeFi protocol increased by four percent this month, according to market data from CryptoRank.
$66 Billion Was Locked in Ethereum Protocol in May
Since this month, about $66.35 billion USD worth of cryptocurrencies has been locked on Ethereum DeFi space. An all-time high of over $88 billion USD was recorded on May 12 before the market began to plummet.
This record today represents about a four percent increase compared to the $63.70 billion USD TVL recorded last month. Compared to the past months since May 2020, this is the lowest TVL percentage increase in the Ethereum DeFi space, which can be attributed to the recent massive correction of the market. Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and some other major altcoins dropped significantly in value, which affected the market capitalization of cryptos globally, including DeFi.
Meanwhile, on the year-over-year (YoY) chart, the total value locked in Ethereum-based DeFi protocols is up by over 7,104 percent, as per analysis by CryptoRank.
Total value locked across the spectrum of smart contracts, protocols and #DApps built on @Ethereum increased by 4% in May: $63.7B —> 66.35B. A new ATH in TVL of $88.8B was registered on May 12.
— CryptoRank Platform (@CryptoRank_io) May 28, 2021
Gross TVL on Binance Smart Chain
Binance Smart Chain is possibly the main competitor of Ethereum for DeFi projects. As of 28 May, the total gross value locked in protocols on the Binance Smart Chain was $16.6 billion USD, according to data from The Block. PureSwap was rated as the largest protocol with over $23.69 million USD.
Value Locked by DeFi Projects on BSC [source: The Block]
GameStop – an American video game, consumer electronics, and gaming merchandise retailer, has announced that they plan to build an NFT platform on Ethereum and introducing a new token called $GME.
What GameStock’s GME Token Could Potentially Do
GameStock’s NFT platform will use the GME token – built on Ethereum’s ERC721 standard protocol. An animated image on the GameStock webpage states: “Power to the players. Power to the creators. Power to the collectors.“.
The news of the GME token comes as the company moves from being essentially, just a brick-and-mortar store to cryptocurrency, digital collectables and e-commerce.
GameStop is Hiring
On their website they declare “We are building a team!” as they look to develop this new NFT platform and tokenomics.
“We welcome exceptional engineers (solidity, react, python), designers, gamers, marketers, and community leaders. If you want to join our team, send your profile or something you’ve built to: [email protected].”
GameStop Stock Price
It’s not just in crypto that can go bananas. Earlier this year we saw the GameStop stock almost 100x, from $4 a share to $347 on January 27, 2021. After a coordinated pump from Reddit-ers the price fell as quickly as it rose, but is now slowly and steadily climbing upwards.
Robinhood Suspend $GME Trading
Robinhood is in hot water again after suspending the ability for retail investors to trade $GME, while still allowing hedge funds to continue trading; stating that their reasons for doing so was that the price volatility posed a risk for buyers and that they were “protecting customers”. Isn’t the name “Robinhood” supposed to stand for Taking from the rich and giving to the poor? Their actions prove that they were actually protecting the rich from getting poor. Their move to stop people from buying stock, while still allowing sellers to sell; was solely in the best interests of the company’s large investors- who held short positions.
Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev interview on CNN over GameStop freeze
The SEC has given a statement on the matter, saying the commission will continue working to “protect investors, to maintain fair, orderly, and efficient markets, and to facilitate capital formation.” The matter is under scrutiny from congress, with a tweet from Ocasio-Cortez saying:
This is unacceptable.
We now need to know more about @RobinhoodApp’s decision to block retail investors from purchasing stock while hedge funds are freely able to trade the stock as they see fit.
As a member of the Financial Services Cmte, I’d support a hearing if necessary. https://t.co/4Qyrolgzyt
Ethereum is gradually outperforming Bitcoin in several metrics that point towards its complete “Flippening” of Bitcoin as the largest blockchain network.
Recent data from Messari, a cryptocurrency data insights and analytics platform, showed that Ethereum has surpassed Bitcoin in daily spot trading volume.
Ethereum Posts Over $20 Billion Volume
As Messari Researcher Ryan Watkins shared on Wednesday, Ethereum spot trading volume surpassed Bitcoin since the past month. Presently, Ethereum sees over $20 billion USD in trading volume, while Bitcoin sees less than the amount.
ETH volumes have been exploding recently and have surpassed BTC volumes for the past month.
This record checks off one of the “Flippening” metrics that Ethereum is expected to fill before it completely outperforms Bitcoin as the largest blockchain network, as per Blockchain Center.
Following the Flippening data, Ethereum has already surpassed Bitcoin in transaction count, transaction volume, and total transaction volume. However, it has a lower market capitalization, active address, node count, and Google Search Interest compared to Bitcoin.
Ethereum Flippening [BlockchainCenter.net]
At the time of writing, the Flippening index reads that Ethereum is about 43.9 percent closer to overtaking Bitcoin completely. Judging by the number, the chances of Ethereum completely Flippening Bitcoin seem still relatively low, probably because the market capitalization of both coins is considered the major factor. Bitcoin has a market cap of $725 billion USD, while Ether sees $317.8 billion USD at the same time.
Most Altcoins Still Correlate With Bitcoin
Regardless of the Flippening metrics, Bitcoin still leads the cryptocurrency market. A separate data analysis from Messari also indicated that many major altcoins – including Ethereum, Binance Coin, Ripple and Litecoin – have a correlation of about 60-80 percent with the market value of Bitcoin.
Founder of Ethereum (ETH) Vitalik Buterin said the idea of scaling Doge is “fundamentally flawed,” as Elon Musk plans to.
CEO of Tesla Elon Musk said that Dogecoin (DOGE) could scale its block production by 900%. This sparked a long and heated Twitter thread between Doge defenders and detractors, including other prominent personalities in the crypto space like Michael Saylor and Anthony Pompliano.
Ideally, Doge speeds up block time 10X, increases block size 10X & drops fee 100X. Then it wins hands down.
However, Buterin wasn’t so convinced. In an article published on his personal blog, Buterin addressed the limits and subtle technical issues of scaling a blockchain, adding the risk of centralization—which would change a blockchain’s original concept.
Vitalik Responds to Elon
In summary, Buterin said there are two ways to try scaling a blockchain: by simply adjusting its parameters or implementing fundamental technical changes. While the first one is the most attractive for developers, he outlines as follows why the approach is “fundamentally flawed”.
Computers can’t provide 100% of their CPU power because it would leave them unusable for other applications while it’s running a blockchain node.
Computers need a safe margin to prevent DoS (Denial-of-Service) attack.
Computers need spare capacity for other tasks like processing transactions in the mempool.
Buterin added the importance of users being able to freely run nodes to make the ecosystem truly decentralised:
For a blockchain to be decentralised, it’s crucially important for regular users to be able to run a node, and to have a culture where running nodes is a common activity.
However, technical changes can greatly improve a blockchain over time, and that’s what Buterin is currently working with Ethereum developers. He added that sharding the Ethereum network (that is, “decoupling the data contained on a blockchain from the data that a single node needs to process and store”) could increase throughput to 1 million TPS (transactions per second) without risking network security.
The current bottleneck for Ethereum is storage size. Statelessness and state expiry can fix this and allow an increase of perhaps up to ~3x – but not more, as we want running a node to become easier than it is today
Elon Musk didn’t take too much time to reply the same way Buterin did. His only response to Buterin was “He fears the Doge,” with a poster of a Shiba Inu trying to bite a dollar bill underwater, with a caption saying, “You’ll never use the dollar again”.
Following the market crash on Wednesday, the founder of the TRON network, Justin Sun, announced he bought a sizable amount of Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) in the dip. The total purchases he disclosed were worth over $285 million USD, and he plans to HODL them.
TRON CEO Stockpiles Bitcoin and Ethereum
Justin shared on Twitter that he purchased a total of 4145 BTC during the market dip on Wednesday. He bought the coins at an average price of $36,868 USD per BTC, spending a total of $152.8 million USD on Bitcoin. He also spent as much as $135.8 million USD for 54,153 ETH, at an average price of $2,509 USD.
I have bought 4145 #Bitcoin with $152,818,183 at average price $36,868.
The cryptocurrency market got extremely volatile yesterday, with lots of buying and panic selling to the extent that major exchanges suffered system downtime and technical issues at some point. Although many cryptocurrencies significantly dropped in value leading to massive liquidations and more panic selling, some people like the founder of TRON seized the opportunity to buy major coins in the dip.
Tron Users Unhappy
Meanwhile, some people in the TRON community didn’t welcome the idea that Justin bought Bitcoin. They said he should have invested in the Tron (TRX) instead.
If I don’t see any price improvement on trx in the next couple of months Justin selling all my tron coins and buying BTC..It’s really annoying that you didn’t use that money to help trx coin during the dump but you decided to use it for BTC. If you can’t save yours why should we!
The cryptocurrency market is gradually regaining its shape, as some coins are recouping from the loss on Wednesday.
Bitcoin was trading at over $40,000 USD, with a market capitalization of over $730 billion USD, during the time of writing. The entire crypto market is worth over $1.7 trillion USD.
Following on from my article about 5 Crypto Coins That Could Have a Great 2021, I’ve had a lot of questions lately about what cryptos I like at the moment. So here is the shortlist, and the reasons why I like them.
Disclaimer: Before you continue reading, please note that I am not a financial advisor, nor do not recommend you buy any of these cryptos mentioned below. I also change my positions constantly and may or may not be holding these coins. This is just a list of those coins which I like at the moment and providing some commentary for educational purposes only to help people learn about these exciting projects.For the latest coin prices see the cryptos page.
BTC is the first cryptocurrency and the godfather driving the market. Over the years, I’ve learned that it is foolish not to have some BTC in the portfolio, because it tends to act independently to the other cryptocurrencies. What percentage of BTC of the total portfolio is totally up to you, something around 50% is not unusual to see.
With its inelastic supply and growing demand, it’s hard not to see continued upside as it averages around 200% per year over the past 10 years. We’re also seeing lots of institutional money flowing into BTC as big companies add BTC to their balance sheets as a “hedge” and “store of value”.
I would also say that there is also speculation that BTC may eventually replace the US Dollar and become unit of account for the worldwide economy. Could we be comparing the price of goods in Satoshi’s in future years to come?
While Bitcoin is seen as a “store of value”, Ethereum is powering the new crypto economy. Bitcoin currently has scaling and environmental issues while Ethereum is quickly evolving to address those issues.
As a computer programmer myself, as soon as I heard “Ethereum is programmable money”, my eyes opened wide and I saw the potential of cryptocurrencies for the future of the economy.
Ethereum has some very promising use cases especially with Decentralised Finance (DeFi), Non-fungible Tokens (NFTs), and Decentralised Exchanges (DEXs).
Compared to Bitcoin’s 200% average return per year, Ethereum has averaged 400% per year so far and is on target to outperform BTC once again this year.
Binance has evolved into a worldwide cryptocurrency exchange juggernaut since it started in 2017. At the moment, it is the easiest and best place to do your crypto trading. Before it came along, other platforms were terrible and hard to use with high fees.
They are also starting to expand their services into other markets such as DeFi with Binance Smart Chain, crypto loans, and crypto debit cards coming to Australia later this year.
It’s crazy to think that BNB was only $2 back in 2018 and now it is over $600. I can only see upside for Binance as their ecosystem expands rapidly as they buy up big companies such as CoinMarketCap and are set to Acquire 20-30 Crypto Startups Yearly.
Chilliz launched in 2020 to power the new sports fan token economy. These tokens act like a royalty program for fans and also can provide other benefits such as voting, connecting fans directly with clubs and players.
Since launching, CHZ has already increased over 7,000% in price and I can only see more upside for the project. My research into this coin revealed that there are currently no major competitors in the space. Their business model also looks quite clever, as they list new tokens (like in the case of UFC) on pre-sale, then the coin is actually added once the partnership is officially approved.
As clubs see the potential to raise funds through this new revenue stream, they will launch their tokens and form partnerships with Chilliz and Socios as a way to not only raise funds but engage with their fans. We’ve already seen big football clubs join such as Manchester City, Barcelona, Juventus and other sports such as UFC and Formula 1.
Chainlink is a project that connects real-world data with blockchain data. As a computer programmer, I can see the power of this technology and the need for timely, accurate, and trusted data.
Moving forward I can see a huge demand to sync the real world and the virtual world. This could be something simple like a weather forecast, or more complicated like tokenized partial ownership of real estate.
Together with this and its exceptionally regarded oracles that manage the security and integrity of the network it can only be a very strong “middleman” for the further advancements of blockchain and decentralized finance.
Basic Attention Token is a decentralized platform built on Ethereum. It rewards you for your attention, if you see an ad, you get paid in BAT through the Brave Browser.
The utility of rewarding people for their attention is quite a powerful concept, especially if you are shown the ads your interested in.
The project is currently advancing by developing a DEX (decentralized exchange) which should add tremendous value to the project’s already 3 million monthly users.
Theta is one of the leading projects that is providing decentraliszed bandwidth through peer-to-peer networking. Other features of Theta include Decentralised Video Streaming, Staking, Theta TFUEL, Guardian Nodes, CDNs, Voting, and more.
As more adoption comes to cryptocurrencies and blockchain, one would assume we will need more bandwidth to support scaling worldwide. Theta software was also included in the new Samsung Galaxy S20 smartphones to assist with video streaming and rewarding watchers with TFUEL tokens.
The hypothesis is that as crypto usage grows, then Theta adoption should grow with it.
Cardano is a decentralized blockchain platform, similar to Ethereum. It’s already a proof-of-stake platform which is more environmentally friendly and has implemented further unique scaling technology.
The QTUM project is a decentralized platform and blockchain similar to Ethereum. Its purpose is not to compete with Bitcoin and Ethereum, but to bridge the gap between them helping scale transactions at low cost.
The project is heavily committed to DeFi and supporting DeFi projects offering $1 million dollars in rewards to developers who build applications using the Qtum blockchain.
Personally, I think Decentralised Finance (DeFi) is going to be a huge disrupt to how we currently do finance worldwide. Frameworks like Ethereum and Qtum, which support DeFi projects can only have an upside in the future as they contribute to the rise of DeFi.
Ripple (XRP) is a cryptocurrency platform and blockchain similar to Ethereum. The project is attempting to become the facilitator for global payments between financial institutions.
XRP has had both good and bad press over the years. Initially, the sentiment was very bullish due to the rumors that banks may use it for liquidity and large global transactions. However, since then, it has been involved in lawsuits lessening its appeal.
Recently they announced plans for Ripple To Go Public After Lawsuit Settlement which has shed some light that there may be some potential for a comeback in sentiment. After running crypto news for the past few years I’ve seen that the 2 most popular coins in Australia are DOGE and XRP.
Dogecoin (DOGE) started as a joke when a developer cloned Bitcoin’s code and stuck a dog meme as the logo, back in 2013. Since then it has gained tremendous popularity and it seems you can’t go a single day without seeing that cheeky dog face.
I generally don’t invest in “jokecoins”, also referred to as “shitcoins” that have little to no utility. However, DOGE is an exception, due to its strong social appeal. Its “meme value” is so high within the crypto community and this provides free marketing for the coin.
Back in 2017, I underestimated the power of social media when DOGE was only $0.00023, and this year it almost reached $1 earlier this year – that’s over 400,000% gain in just 3-4 years.
As the crypto market grows and more people join in the frenzy, DOGE could be the one they buy as a speculation. However, I think it will only end badly for those people buying DOGE at all-time high prices, when the market turns, the shitcoins could drop to nothing, only the quality projects will survive long term.
Conclusions
It’s crazy how back in 2016 the prices were so low compared to now. I wonder if we will be shocked again in another 4-5 years from now…
If you’re interested in buying any of these coins then head over to one of our trusted Partners: CoinJar, Swyftx, or Binance to get started. You can compare the exchanges here.
One of the world’s largest collector car auction company, Mecum Auctions, has announced that it now accepts payments in Bitcoin and other major digital currencies from bidders during online auction events.
You Can Bid on Collector Cars With Cryptocurrency
Per the announcement, the company will accept bids in about ten cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin (BTC), Dogecoin (DOGE), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Ethereum (ETH), and stablecoins such as USD Coin (USDC), Binance USD, and others.
This is made possible following Mecum Auctions’ partnership with one of the industry-leading crypto payment processors, BitPay. The development today will enable bidders to experience the “convenience of an end-to-end digital experience”, according to Mecum.
Mecum Auctions will now accept cryptocurrency for payment via @BitPay, the world’s largest provider of #Bitcoin & #cryptocurrency payment services!
Additionally, the company believes its crypto payment service will enable them to attract new customers and sales, as it opens doors to new massive crypto marketplace.
We recognize the growing acceptance of cryptocurrency for commerce and are confident that by accepting crypto for collector cars, it will widen our scope of influence and introduce the Mecum Experience to an entirely new audience.
Sam Murtaugh, Chief Operating Officer at Mecum Auctions [source]
Aussies Can Buy Cars With Bitcoin
Mecum is not the first company to accept Bitcoin payments for purchasing cars. Only a few weeks ago, Crypto News Australia reported that CarBuyers.com.au is allowing Australians to buy and sell their vehicles using Bitcoin.
Tesla also previously allowed people Bitcoin payments for its products. Not until May 12, when the founder Elon Musk tweeted that the company will no longer accept payments in Bitcoin due to environmental concerns. The announcement preceded the massive drop in the price of the cryptocurrency, as people began to panic-sell their coins.
While tumbling in price, Bitcoin (BTC) has taken the vast majority of cryptocurrencies with it. Outside of Solana, AAVE and a few others weathering the storm, everything looks in the red.
The chart may be looking quite grim now – after a rough week that sent the price of 1 BTC plummeting from $59,434 USD to $43,974 USD (at the time of writing). Although Bitcoin price fall doesn’t seem to have come to a halt yet, this is not the first time it happens to BTC and in the past it has always recovered, eventually.
Routine Blow-Offs Of Around 30%
Below is a table showing that drastic drops in value are recurrent events.
Date
BTC price % drop
January 2017
35%
March 2017
33%
May 2017
32%
July 2017
40%
September 2017
41%
November 2017
30%
December 2017
21%
December 2017
23%
December 2018
84%
January 2021
31%
February 2021
26%
May 2021
32%
A drop in value almost as big as the current one took place as recently as January – and the market promptly pushed the price to a new all-time high not long after.
Of course, cryptocurrency trading remains high-risk, high-reward – and panic selling may not be the best move, as we see big corporations continue buying the dip.
Vitalik Buterin has donated at least US$ 60 million worth of Ethereum (ETH), after dumping massive amounts of three dog-theme coins: SHIBA, AKITA, and DOGELON.
SHIBA Developers Gifted Vitalik The Coins
The SHIBA developers, who are also behind the other dog-theme tokens (AKITA and ELON), had a rather unusual distribution strategy. Presumably, they sent large amounts of SHIB, AKITA, and ELON to Vitalik’s public address. Their idea was to present Buterin as a SHIBA supporter and that a self-made Billionaire like him wouldn’t need them. It seems to have worked as the SHIBA coin soared over 700%.
Shiba Inu’s website stated that the tokens sent were “burned,” so everyone had to buy them on the open market. Despite their plans, it seems Vitalik had a better idea.
Only a few hours later, he sold the tokens in Uniswap in exchange for ETH, selling 660 billion SHIB, 140 billion AKITA, and 43 billion ELON, totalling 15,719 ETH, around US$ 63 million.
Vitalik Sent the Funds to Charity
Vitalik sent the funds in batches to various non-profit organisations, donating the dog-themed tokens and even some of the ETH he made in the sale.
India’s Crypto Covid Relief Fund received 500 ETH and 50 trillion SHIB tokens. The Methuselah Foundation, a non-profit organisation that focuses on making people live longer, received 1,000 ETH and 430 billion ELON tokens, worth US$ 215,000.
(Transparency Update)
We thank @VitalikButerin for his donation of 50,693,552,078,053 SHIBA to @CryptoRelief_ . We plan to do a thoughtful liquidation to ensure we meet our COVID relief goals.
We have decided to convert the donation slowly over a period of time.
(1/x)
— India's Crypto Covid Relief Fund 🇮🇳 (@CryptoRelief_) May 12, 2021
The largest batch was sent to Givewell, an American assessment organization, which received 13,292 ETH, around US$ 50 million.
After the move, the three dog-theme coins suffered harsh price drops —around 30% for each— and Vitalik got praised by the crypto community, who called him a role model for everyone in the crypto space.
