What is Ethereum and why business giants are moving around it. The launch of its value and the bursting of the bubble. Upgrading efforts, technical difficulties and what the technical analysis shows.

Will the catalyst that will pull bitcoin upwards be the official announcement of PayPal , which neither confirmed nor denied that it intends to provide cryptocurrency purchasing and security services?

Not at all unlikely. How do we get the news before the news comes out? Where we need to keep in mind this time is not bitcoin. It is Ethereum .

But before we talk about focusing there, let's say a few words about Ethereum, which was not created to be another digital currency, but to offer the ability to build decentralized applications on its network. It is an open source platform , ie open source, with its own programming language, which includes the Ether cryptocurrency. It can be used to create decentralized applications and allows users to use so-called smart contracts .

These perspectives excite developers. But investors find something else exciting: the prospect of profits. Whoever put $ 800 in Ethereum in January 2016, when it was trading close to a dollar, two years later its investment would be worth $ 1,000,000 . Each went on to sell for $ 1,300, at the height of the bubble, to land a year later at $ 100. No, you didn't read that wrong. You put in 800 humble dollars and in two years you became a millionaire.

The question, of course, is whether this crazy course can be repeated. If there are conditions for gossip that will trigger expectations. Realistic or exaggerated. That's what we're going to explore today, with the beginning of history beginning several years ago, in 2002. It was then that PayPal was acquired for $ 1.5 billion. An amount that made a lot of sense then and highlighted the business acumen of Elon Musk, one of the founding members of the company, becoming its CEO.
But our issue here is not who sold but who the buyer was: eBay . The famous e-commerce company, which is currently valued at $ 35 billion.We keep this fact and go to the next one, in the near future 2018. Who decided to join the business alliance of Ethereum (Enterprise Ethereum Alliance)? EBay!

Coincidence; Maybe. To look a little deeper. A year later, in 2019, PayPal funded the hitherto unknown TRM with $ 4.2 million . A blockchain-oriented company values ​​digital values, which aims to help banking institutions fight money laundering, detect fraud and generally comply with laws and regulations.

TRM has created the first platform designed specifically for this purpose. It automatically detects suspicious activities, such as money laundering and market manipulation. More than 20,000 people have verified their Ethereum address on the TRM platform. One of the tools he uses is TrueUSD, a stablecoin with $ 145 coverage and capitalization. What else does TrueUSD have? It is "built" on Ethereum.

Speaking of stablecoin, the largest of all, with a capitalization of 9.2 billion, Tether, published a tweet the day before yesterday , in which it states that it is abandoning Tron for the sake of Ethereum!

Ethereum is upgraded to meet expectations

Didn't they gather as much for Ethereum? To look at it a little more carefully. Taking a look at the latest news, we find that the number of transactions on the Ethereum network has skyrocketed. It turns out that the average transaction fees cost for the second time in the last three months more than bitcoin! Apparently, this is due in part to increased interaction with stablecoins on its network, as well as to the activities of popular dapps such as Uniswap and Kyber Network.

Decentralized finance (DeFi) is the hottest part of the space, already having countless applications. What is beautiful? That most DeFi are based on Ethereum. Any success will lead to an increase in demand, even excessive. We've seen it again with ICOs in 2017, where most of it was made on the Ethereum platform. Ethereum may not have a ceiling on currency production like bitcoin, but its limited supply will drive the price upwards if demand increases.

A key point in his career is his upcoming upgrade to Ethereum 2.0 , which is expected to take place this summer and promises to address current issues. It will reduce costs and speed up network transactions. However, it will take more than a year to complete the transition as a number of practical and technical problems need to be addressed. And of course we don't know if he will succeed in the end.

With Ethereum 2.0, structural changes are made, with the most basic for the average user being the ability to receive passive income for the validation of transactions. It will be converted to Proof-of-stake (PoS), as opposed to proof-of-work (PoW), the consensus model used by bitcoin. The advantage of PoS is that it enhances decentralization as it does not require much computing power. So less investment and less energy waste.

Staking in Ethereum 2.0 will be quite simple. There will be a minimum limit of 32 ETH required for participation. You do not need a specialized machine, as it can be run on a simple laptop. However, validators are required to be connected to the Internet, resulting in minor penalties.

Beyond the obvious advantage of passive income, there is one downside. Users commit their cryptocurrencies for a specified period of time. If there is a sudden drop in price, they will not be able to sell immediately in order to mitigate the losses. In addition, the reward is in the currency itself. If you receive e.g. 6% a year and its price has dropped 7% or more, then you have lost. You have not won.

To return to the now, as we see in the 4-hour chart of Ethereum, its price is at an extremely critical point . Any break-up of the pink trend line, where it has been in the last quarter, will lead to adventures. On the other hand, any break-up of the blue line will confirm its upward dynamics.

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