The cryptocurrency market was having an uneventful week amid this summer slump — until Friday, when the world’s top cryptocurrency fell 4% in 24 hours. The drop in prices was sparked by Federal Reserve Chairman Jay Powell’s remarks in Jackson Hole that the Fed would continue to raise interest rates as long as needed to fight inflation. The comments also spooked stocks, not just crypto. To kick off the weekend, all of the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization are net losers over the past seven days, except for Cardano (ADA), which expects a hard fork to come next month. Bitcoin (BTC) lost 5% last week, Ethereum (ETH) 6%, Solana (SOL) 10%, Dogecoin (DOGE) 8%. Ethereum supporters still have high hopes that the upcoming merge event will pump ETH. But this week, the number of weekly ETH deposits sent for staking on the Beacon Chain hit an all-time low, according to data from Dune Analytics. The Beacon Chain is an Ethereum ledger that coordinates the network of Ethereum stakers. It has been running alongside Ethereum’s mainnet since its launch in 2020. When Ethereum completes its upcoming major network overhaul next month, called the “merge,” the mainnet will merge with the Beacon Chain for full proof-of-stake ( PoS) Ethereum Network. Once Ethereum switches to a proof-of-stake consensus protocol, the network promises to be faster, cheaper, more scalable, and 99% greener.
The biggest crypto news of the week
The general inactivity in the markets this week was reflected in the news cycle. it’s been a pretty slow news week in terms of cryptocurrency adoption or regulation. Australia’s Treasury said in a statement on Monday that it has a comprehensive plan to create a crypto regulatory framework based on market research that it claims will be better than “anywhere else in the world.” Australia will begin “token mapping” work this year, which it says will “help determine how crypto assets and related services should be regulated.” Once the preliminaries are complete, the Treasury says it will have a “timetable for changes to legislation and regulations”. The Australian Treasury also said it would “soon” publish a public consultation document on token mapping. On Tuesday, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong confessed CNBC that the company is still feeling the effects of Crypto Winter. Coinbase laid off 18% of its staff earlier this year and will cut costs in an effort to plan out a bear market that will last 12-18 months or more. “We’re currently investing so much in subscription and service revenue,” Armstrong said, because “I’d like to get to a place where more than 50 percent of our revenue is subscription and service.” According to Armstrong, 18% of Coinbase’s current revenue comes from subscriptions and services. Coinbase currently offers Coinbase Cloud, a suite of blockchain product development services, and Coinbase One, a service that offers higher-level customer support and other benefits. Meanwhile, US investors waiting for an SEC-approved Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) will have to wait a little longer after the SEC again delayed its decision on VanEck’s Bitcoin ETF application for another 45-day period. That means the agency has until Oct. 11 to “approve or reject or initiate proceedings to decide whether to reject the proposed rule change.” Finally, we got an update on Ethereum’s merge date — and it’s potentially even earlier than previously expected. According to a Wednesday blog post from the Ethereum Foundation, the network overhaul will now be fully completed between September 10th and 20th. Ethereum core developers on Twitter were even more specific: on or near September 15th. After eight years of waiting, this is really just around the corner.
