Crypto

• Last Wednesday, on March 13th, Ethereum launched its biggest upgrade in the past 18 months, marking a significant milestone since the Ethereum Merge on September 15, 2022.
• Dubbed Dencun or Cancun-Deneb, this upgrade introduced the eagerly awaited Proto-Danksharding feature, aimed at dramatically enhancing the scalability of Ethereum’s Layer 2, also known as rollups, and slashing the costs associated with rollup transactions, while making them less volatile.
• Proto-Danksharding brought to the table so-called ‘blobs’.

• Recently, we have voiced our concerns about the excessive use of leverage in the crypto market.
• Just last week, traders were facing annual rates of up to 150% to maintain long positions in Bitcoin on the perpetual market.
• By the end of the week, it became evident that this approach was unsustainable, leading to a significant market correction and extensive liquidations in the futures market.

• It has been exactly eighteen months since Ethereum made the big switch from Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake, an event widely known as the Merge.
• In simple terms, after the Merge, the responsibility for verifying transactions and proposing new blocks on the Ethereum network shifted from miners to holders, provided they choose to become stakers.
• To maintain the blockchain as stakers, holders lock up their Ether in the network.

• There has been a renewed wave of optimism towards web3 in light of recent events, including the approval of the long-awaited spot Bitcoin ETF; and the surge in market activity in the early months of 2024.
• On the regulatory front, we have seen the conclusion of several high-profile court cases and lawsuits, including some of the charges involving Ripple and Binance.
• Beyond the results of the rulings (which many argue are in favour/support of web3), the resolution of these cases in itself has provided greater clarity and stability to the ecosystem.

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• This week is off to a great start.
• Bitcoin surged past $70,000, and Ethereum exceeded $4,000 today, marking a new all-time high for Bitcoin and Ethereum’s first breach of this level in over two years.
• At the office, there is a running joke that the crypto bull run has made me overly confident, leading my colleagues to secretly hope for a downturn.

• The cryptocurrency market is probably the most speculative, largely because it has not had enough time for price discovery, lacks consistent and measurable metrics, and has seen minimal institutional involvement.
• The crypto market is unique for its overwhelming number of retail investors compared to institutional ones, a rarity in most other markets where institutions lead the way.
• This dynamic has led to significant volatility, primarily driven by the emotional reactions of retail investors, more so than in any other market.

• Last week was notably positive for the cryptocurrency market, particularly for Bitcoin and Ethereum, which both experienced impressive gains.
• Bitcoin’s price has surged to $65,000, marking an increase of over 25%, while Ethereum has increased to $3,510, up by approximately 15%.
• This puts Bitcoin close to its highest ever price, just below $69,000.

• The domain bitcoin.org was registered on August 18th, 2008.
• Just over two months later, on October 31st, an individual or group using the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto unveiled the Bitcoin whitepaper.
• This was soon followed by the mining of the first Bitcoin block, known as the genesis block, on January 9th, 2009.

• Ethereum has surged past the 3,000 ETH/USD mark, now trading at 3,050 ETH/USD.
• This increase is mainly driven by the intensifying anticipation over the potential launch of an Ethereum spot ETF, along with Ethereum’s recent breakout from a months-long period of underperformance compared to Bitcoin.
• Over the last week, Ethereum has seen an 8% increase relative to Bitcoin, with the latter seeing less net inflow into exchange-traded products than the week prior.

• In the short to medium term, Ethereum is mainly depending on what is known as off-chain scaling to significantly expand its blockchain’s capacity beyond its current limit of roughly 15 transactions per second.
• This strategy sets Ethereum apart from other blockchains like Solana, which primarily concentrate on scaling directly on the blockchain itself, also known as on-chain scaling.
• Ethereum’s method involves using something called Layer 2s, or rollups.