As bears circle crypto and traditional markets, Ethereum has faced the brunt of it.
Ethereum is currently trading hands at $1,770, down roughly 3.4% over the past 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap. The bearish trend is the latest in what has been a rather red week for the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization.
Over the past seven days, Ethereum shed more than 16% of its value, tumbling from $2,077 on Monday to as low as $1,731 in the early hours on Friday. It has since recovered some, however, and currently stands at around $1,770, down 3.5% on the day.
This drastic price shift also led to over $157.26 million in Ethereum liquidations, according to data pulled from coinglass. More than 75% of these liquidations were long positions from bullish crypto traders.
The impetus for the asset’s recent price action is multi-pronged.
Perhaps most notable, however, was a recent hang-up related to Ethereum’s incoming merge event slated for August.
More Videos
0 seconds of 38 minutes, 57 secondsVolume 90%
Press shift question mark to access a list of keyboard shortcuts
ConsenSys CEO Joe Lubin talked about Ethereum 2.0 timing and impact, the power of DAOs, and gave his honest take on NFTs, Solana, Polygon, and Biden's crypto executive order in an extensive fireside chat with Decrypt's Dan Roberts at Camp Ethereal 2022 in Wyoming.
The merge will see the current proof-of-workproof-of-work (PoW) version of Ethereum merge with its proof-of-stake (PoS) counterpart. This counterpart is technically called the Beacon Chain and has been in operation since December 2020.
On Wednesday, however, the Beacon Chain, a sort of ghost version of Ethereum running in parallel to the current Ethereum, experienced a block reorganization event. Such an event means that for a brief moment the Beacon Chain had been forked, and blocks of transactions were being processed on yet another parallel version of the Beacon Chain.
The Ethereum beacon chain experienced a 7-block deep reorg ~2.5h ago. This shows that the current attestation strategy of nodes should be reconsidered to hopefully result in a more stable chain! (proposals already exist) pic.twitter.com/BkQrKuUlw1
— Martin Köppelmann 🇺🇦 (@koeppelmann) May 25, 2022
Since then, the network has begun producing blocks uninterrupted, according to block explorer BeaconScan. A post-mortem is expected soon, according to Core Ethereum developer Preston Van Loon.
Disclaimer
The views and opinions expressed by the author are for informational purposes only and do not constitute financial, investment, or other advice.
Daily Debrief Newsletter
Start every day with the top news stories right now, plus original features, a podcast, videos and more.
Bitcoin briefly surged past $94,000 early Tuesday morning at around 4am ET, triggering a massive unwinding of short positions that accelerated its upward momentum.
At time of publication, Bitcoin's price has retreated slightly to $93,681, up 5.7% on the day, according to data from CoinGecko.
The price action decimated bearish bets, with roughly $300 million in Bitcoin shorts liquidated in the past 24 hours, per data from Coinglass. Total crypto market liquidations reached approximately $650 mil...
Bitcoin traded above $93,500 Tuesday evening in New York, notching a fresh monthly high as easing trade war fears and shifting U.S. monetary signals stoked investor demand for risk assets.
The rally came as market participants reassessed the trajectory of the U.S.–China trade dispute following conciliatory remarks from U.S. officials, as well as reports that President Donald Trump had softened his stance on firing Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.
The combination helped lift sentiment across...
Is Bitcoin decoupling from risk assets like equities and morphing into a “safe haven” like gold?
The largest cryptocurrency by market value is behaving differently these days, but it may still be too early to tell whether the new trend will hold, several analysts say.
The price of Bitcoin was recently trading near $93,000 on Tuesday, an almost 7% jump over the past day, according to crypto data provider CoinGecko. The asset’s price swelled after U.S. Treasury Secretary Bessent said that Washing...