On Tuesday, the inventor of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin, said that the Ethereum merge is projected to take place "around" September 13 to September 15 and that this date is now on schedule. This is the day at which the proof-of-work consensus technique that requires a lot of energy will be abandoned by the second biggest cryptocurrency in the world.
The market shifts
The merging is only the most recent improvement to the Ethereum blockchain, which is being done in the interest of establishing a trustworthy decentralized environment for the future of money. The transition to proof of stake delivers several advantages, one of which is the alleviation of worries around energy use.
Block transactions are validated using proof of stake by validators who have bet a certain amount of their tokens on the outcome of the transaction. The greater the number of tokens that a person has linked to the blockchain, the greater the likelihood that they will be randomly selected to serve as a network validator.
In contrast to this, proof of work is an energy-intensive technique that depends on computers to solve mathematical formulas to mine tokens. This rate of energy consumption is a key critique of proof of work, which will remain the basis of Bitcoin mining when Ethereum abandons the procedure. Despite this criticism, proof of work remains the foundation of Bitcoin mining.
Apart from the problem with energy, and on top of the recent meltdowns of crypto lenders, the cryptocurrency sector as a whole is facing a multitude of macroeconomic issues. These concerns range from political tensions to high inflation rates to hawkish national monetary policies. These large-scale variables are generally regarded as the spark that ignited the latest bear market.
Price pressures are seen lately
In November of 2021, the price of a bitcoin hit an all-time high, which was $69,000. Since then, the price of Bitcoin along with the rest of the market has suffered as a result of the challenging economic circumstances. The short-term price forecast for the most popular cryptocurrency is still unclear as Bitcoin's price continues to fluctuate and encounters some resistance near $20,000.
It is not apparent what type of event or change may assist Bitcoin is making a comeback. As the volatility of leading cryptocurrencies continues to worry mainstream investors, they may become more critical of the fundamentals of Bitcoin. Furthermore, the network upgrades that Ethereum is planning to implement to position its ecosystem as the currency of the future could place even more pressure on Bitcoin's usability.
Vitalik Buterin voiced his worries about Bitcoin's proof-of-work issuance model during an interview that took place one week ago with the journalist Noah Smith on the topic of security, governance, and consensus mechanism models. Buterin is concerned not just about the amount of energy that is being used in the present, but also about how the continuous issue of a proof-of-work token may impact future validation.
Following China's crackdown on cryptocurrency mining, which resulted in a large reduction in the proportion of renewable energy sources that power the network, the study was strengthened. Alex de Vries, a researcher and skeptic of cryptocurrencies, observed that "Bitcoin became dirtier following the Chinese mining crackdown in 2021."
Is the event being hyped unnecessarily?
However, not everyone is persuaded that this will result in Ethereum being the dominant cryptocurrency. The majority of the current narrative has been driven by the fact that analysts such as Glen Goodman from eToro have pointed out how the price of Ethereum has outperformed the price of Bitcoin in recent weeks. In the end, it is unclear what the future of Bitcoin will be like following the integration. There are several issues at play, including regulation, worries about energy use, and competitiveness. Inventors are apprehensive of the possible economic dangers at a time when their greatest rival is ready to claim a major technological advantage.
Coincheck, a major Japanese cryptocurrency exchange, stated on Friday that it aims to list on Nasdaq on July 2, 2023, through a merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) Thunder Bridge Capital Partners IV.
Coincheck stated that its ambitions to pursue a public stock offering in the United States via Nasdaq would provide the company with access to the country's lucrative capital markets.
Coincheck, a Japanese cryptocurrency exchange, has confirmed plans to pursue a public stock offering in the United States via Nasdaq, giving the company access to the country's lucrative capital markets.
Coincheck Business Update
Coincheck provided an update on its business. Initially, it expanded its dominance in Japan by slowly accumulating customers despite the weak crypto asset market.
The exchange subsequently stated that its NFT business revenue for the quarter was $160 million due to NFT market headwinds.
Coincheck also wanted to establish and expand its digital economic world with an eye on Web3, collaborating with appealing producers and artists to create revenue prospects such as sales of exclusive NFTs, tenant fees for land in the metaverse, and growing the Coincheck NFT user base.
Coincheck promotes firms related to crypto assets and NFTs that are spearheading the adoption of Web3 in addition to Coincheck Labs, the blockchain, and the Web3 ecosystem.
The exchange also identified several significant growth prospects that can be explored organically and accelerated through M&A or collaborations.
Coincheck and Hunder Bridge Capital Partners are Merging.
According to the exchange, the move will allow it to expand its crypto asset company by acquiring access to US capital markets, gaining exposure to global investors, and recruiting personnel to accomplish its growth goal. Monex Group, Coincheck's primary owner, declared in a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing.
In March of this year, Coincheck declared its intention to go public. Its merger with Thunder Bridge Capital was valued at $1.25 billion at the time.
SPACs were the hottest way for crypto firms to go public in 2020 and 2021, but the craze has died down this year due to an overall market slowdown and new Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) restrictions.
Since June of this year, the SEC has been more careful about the general SPAC process, particularly crypto-related agreements, to improve investor safety.
Since July of last year, Circle Internet Financial, the backer of the "stablecoin" USD Coin, has been attempting to go public with a SPAC called Concord Acquisition (CND).
Coincheck controls 27% of Japan's Cryptocurrency market.
Coincheck has 1.75 million confirmed accounts, accounting for 27% of Japan's crypto trading market share, according to financial statistics. However, the company observed a drop in trade volume as a result of the cryptocurrency bear market. Quarter over quarter, total operational revenues fell by approximately half.
Several crypto-related companies have expressed an interest in going public via SPAC agreements. PrimeBlock, a Bitcoin (BTC) mining startup, announced in April that it would go public via a $1.25 billion SPAC. W3BCloud, a blockchain cloud infrastructure provider, announced a comparable price tag for its SPAC merger in August. eToro, a stock and cryptocurrency exchange, had planned a $10 billion merger before canceling the agreement over the summer.
Conclusion
A crypto/SPAC merger is also in the works between eToro Group, an Israeli online brokerage, and FinTech Acquisition Corp. Therefore, V (FTCV), a SPAC backed by veteran financier Betsy Cohen. The merger was called off in early July after the companies were unable to complete the transaction by the June 30 deadline. One of the reasons the deal failed was a failure to obtain SEC permission.
As part of Elon Musk's $44 billion acquisition of Twitter (TWTR), Binance, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world by trading volume, announced it had invested $500 million. This modest but significant action sparked rumors that the social media company might one day run on blockchain technology.
Musk Successfully Takes Over Twitter.
Musk completed his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter late on Thursday, gleefully tweeting, "The bird is liberated," and promptly removing several top executives from their positions. After months of public and legal battles over the sale, this finally happened. Early sources state that the new owner has already drastically lowered Twitter's c-suit. Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, and top attorney Vijaya Gadde, who played a key role in the decision to block former President Donald Trump's account on the social media network in January 2021, are reportedly among the departing staff. Although it might only be a temporary post, Musk will take over as CEO, according to a source who talked with Bloomberg.
As per the reports, his next step would be to reinstate Twitter users who have received lifetime bans from the platform, including Trump.
Before finalizing the acquisition, Musk indicated that securing the "future of civilization" was his main driving force in buying Twitter.
Instead of dividing into "far right-wing and far left-wing echo chambers," Musk says the objective is to maintain a "common digital town square," where individuals of diverse viewpoints may discuss on their points of view without resorting to violence.
Other objectives include combating Twitter spam bots, which might be done by putting blockchain-based solutions in place.
Bot spam is particularly common in the cryptocurrency world, where con artists frequently use false identities to entice investors by impersonating influencers and other well-known people, including Elon Musk.
Binance Founder Expressed His Excitement about Working Together with Musk
Binance revealed on Friday that it has invested in Twitter's acquisition by billionaire internet entrepreneur Elon Musk as an equity investor (TWTR).
The founder of Binance, Changpeng Zhao, expressed his excitement in an email, "We're thrilled to be able to support Elon in realizing a new vision for Twitter. We want to help social media and Web3 work together to increase the use and adoption of blockchain and cryptocurrency." A team from Binance is reportedly being formed to think of ways that blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies can help Twitter.
In a tweet, Zhao claimed that Binance had sent $500 million as part of the transaction two days prior. CoinDesk's request for comment from Twitter did not immediately receive a response.
A few Twitter executives were reportedly taken to the door as Musk closed the transaction on Oct. 27. The new owner of the social media platform then purportedly cleaned house. In May 2022, according to a statement made by Binance, it will invest alongside 18 other investors in Twitter, including major cryptocurrency investment firms Sequoia Capital Fund, Fidelity Management, and Research Company.
The founder of Binance said on October 28 that the company had placed money on the table as Musk completed his acquisition of Twitter. To check that the business had wired the monies earlier in the week, CZ used the newly acquired platform.
Conclusion
Zhao clarified that he was not personally involved in the transaction and quipped that he thought the transfer had been made using traditional banking methods rather than a blockchain or cryptocurrency transaction in response to a user on the Twitter thread who wrote "CZ" now owns part of Twitter: "We are small potatoes, just a tiny bit." Zhao responded to other comments, clarifying that he was not personally involved in the transaction.
The top cryptocurrency exchange Binance has identified two suspects who are allegedly responsible for the hack of $265,000 from decentralized exchange (DEX) protocol KyberSwap earlier this week.
Changpeng Zhao (CZ), the CEO of Binance, exposed this information on Twitter recently. The company has shared the info with KyberSwap along with the appropriate law enforcement agencies.
The Attack :
KyberSwap has faced a cyber attack
on September 1. The DEX protocol faced an unhealthy security breach which allowed hackers to steal assets. It was worth thousands of dollars to users.
According to the project, the bad actors shared malicious code on the protocol’s Google Tag Manager (GTM). It has prompted false approval that allowed them to transact assets in their wallets.
The platform also shared that the hackers smartly launched the bad script. It was targeted to whale wallets on Ethereum and Polygon. Further KyberSwap added that exploited users would be fully compensated.
The hack came to know and immediately stopped within two hours of its launch. The protocol offered that the bad actors would be rewarded with a 15% bug donation if they returned the stolen assets.
Binance As Crypto 'Big Brother :
Hardly two days after the theft, the Binance investigation team announced that they had been able to track and identify two scammers who are suspected or may be responsible for the hack. The company also noted that they had appointed government authorities in the incident for further investigation.
Similar to KyberSwap, Binance has assisted with several hacked protocols to identify the bad actors along with recovering some stolen assets.
As the biggest crypto exchange by trading volume, the proactive and unselfish efforts of Binance to help investors from other ecosystems weren’t neglected.
As one of the users stated, “Binance is now playing as a big brother in the crypto space. Binance has gone beyond securing its platform to keep the entire crypto ecosystem safe.”
CZ stated that Binance has never been lawfully integrated in China and has never fixed business in a manner compatible with the Chinese organization, Cointelegraph.
Notably, the company succeeded to recover nearly $450,000 stolen from the Defi platform Curve Finance last month. It was reported that the recovered funds were 83% of the total assets exploited from the protocol. The platform stated that the hackers transferred the assets to the exchange through different techniques. They expected to bypass the firm’s security team.
Since the platform, Binance, continues to make an effort to make the global crypto industry safer for investors and users, some user groups of the crypto community think that the company is now acting as a “big brother” role in the whole crypto market.
According to Changpeng ‘CZ’ Zhao, CEO of Binance, the theft of information had been noted to the Kyber team. Since both sides are eager to catch the hackers, Binance has also begun to work with law enforcement as of the recent information.
Conclusion :
Notably, there have been so many exploits and theft in the crypto market over the past couple of months. Since the market fell and started a crypto winter, bad actors took it as their opportunity. Platforms like Solana, Cardano, etc. have suffered from several exploits. The theft is mainly happening through smartly executed ideas. Phishing scams and fake airdrops are mentionable. Users' wallets are drained through luring through free tokens. In multiple cases, hacking links are also used as the weapon of scams. Nowadays, Twitter scams are also very famous in the crypto market. Where fake posts and links are circulated through the social media platform. Users are trapped in that kind of scam believing it is real.
Bitcoin is the world's first decentralized cryptocurrency, a sort of digital asset that records, signs, and sends transactions across the Bitcoin blockchain without the oversight of a central authority. The BTC network was established in January 2009 by an anonymous computer programmer or group of programmers under the alias "Satoshi Nakamoto." The network is a peer-to-peer electronic payment system that employs bitcoin as a cryptocurrency to transmit value via the internet or as a store of value like gold and silver.
The newsletter's publishing date will stay unchanged, and the content will continue to focus on technical and fundamental analysis of cryptocurrencies from a macro perspective to spot important movements in investor mood and market structure.
Is it time to go long?
Bitcoin's (BTC tickers down $20,737) price has risen this week, reaching $21,000 on Oct. 26. This prompted a few traders to declare that the bottom had been reached or that BTC was entering the next phase of some technical structure such as Wyckoff, a range break, or some form of support resistance flip.
Before we get all positive and open 10x longs, let's go back to a previous analysis to see if anything has changed in Bitcoin's market structure and whether the recent burst of bullish momentum is indicative of a larger trend change.
When the last update was released on September 30, Bitcoin was trading at about $19,600, remaining within the range of the previous 136 days of price action. I discovered bullish divergences on the weekly relative strength index (RSI) and moving average confluence divergence at the time (MACD). There were also a few potential "bottoming" signs from other on-chain indicators that were at multi-year lows.
The Bollinger Bands are Quite Tight.
The Bollinger Bands on the daily period remain constrained, and this week's leap to $21,000 was the expected expansion or increase in volatility. After breaking out from the upper arm, the price has retraced to test the mid-line/mid-band (20MA) as support, as is customary.
Despite the severity of the rise, Bitcoin's price remains capped below. For the past two weeks, Bitcoin's "record-low volatility" has been the talk of the town, and when utilizing the Bollinger Bands, GMMA, and BVOL, the tighter price range does hint at expansion, but in which direction is unknown.
Bitcoin has been trading in the $18,600-$24,500 area for 36 days, and the price remains towards the middle of that range according to technical analysis. The rise to $21,000 did not result in a substantial daily higher high or break out of the present range, which is effectively a lateral chop.
For the time being, the price is above the 20-day moving average, but it has yet to cross over the 50-day moving average, and the majority of the Oct. 26 gain has been retraced back to the low $20,000 area.
In The Future
Multiple data points appear to indicate that Bitcoin's price is undervalued and in the process of forming a bottom, but none indicates that the market bottom has been reached.
Several Bitcoin mining companies have openly acknowledged the need to restructure debt, and the possibility of missed debt payments, and some have even hinted at impending bankruptcy this week and in previous months.
Since June, most publicly traded miners have been selling the majority of their mined BTC, and recent stories about Compute North and Core Scientific suggest that Bitcoin's price is still vulnerable owing to solvency difficulties among industrial miners.
Conclusion
According to Glassnode data, the aggregate size of miner balances is roughly 78,400 BTC and is "held by miners we have labeled (accounting for 96% of current hash rate).” According to Glassnode, in the event of "income stress," miners may be obliged to liquidate tranches of these reserves in the open market, and the effect on Bitcoin's price might be the next spark of a sell-off to new yearly lows.
