Ethereum Weekly - Edition 34
Welcome to the latest edition of Ethereum Weekly!
Ethereum (ETH) celebrates its eighth birthday this week after its launch in July 2015, specifically on July 30, 2015, at 10:26 a.m. EST but who really wants to know down to the second? Unfortunately, Ether hasn't started out its celebratory week blowing out green candles as it instead closed out last week with a small red candle. What do we see in the forecast for Ether's big birthday week?
As expected, the Federal Reserve raised interest rates by another 25-basis points. Usually, this is not great for news for financial assets but Ether rose sharply after the last two rate hikes so let's hope for another repeat performance. The Fed has now brought interest rates to their highest levels in 22 years and we still aren't sure if they are done tackling inflation yet. That is the 11th time they have raised rates in the last 12 meetings and official comments stated that the agency “remains highly attentive to inflation risks,” meaning more hikes could follow.
“At the margins, stronger growth could lead over time to higher inflation and that would require an appropriate response for monetary policy,” Fed Chairman Jerome Powell stated. We all know what he means by the term "appropriate response" when he says it, more rate hikes. Reading between the lines, I think the Fed is quite worried about the tight labor market in the US and the impact it will have on prices. Also, keep an eye on any growth in wages which would also be another inflationary sign. It should be noted that the markets shrugged off the comments with the NASDAQ down slightly, the S&P flat, and the Dow increasing for the 13th straight day which is something it hasn't done since 1987.
Overall Ether is down about 13% from its yearly high in April of $2,140 when the Shapella upgrade was all the rage. With future upgrades in the works which should limit network congestion and help lower fees which stood around $20/transaction in mid-July, Ether does have solid long-term upside still. Since April, the amount of staked ETH has skyrocketed while the amount of Ether on centralized exchanges has hit five-year lows just above 11 million coins demonstrating supply issues for this now deflationary asset. Transaction volume on the Ethereum network appears to be climbing, another positive sign that a retest of $2K could be in play.
The next upgrade, dubbed "Dencun" and scheduled for release at the end of the year and will introduce a new way of processing transactions on the network. If you believe the developers, the network will be able to process 100,000 transactions per second after the upgrade which is a massive jump. I would expect a nice price gain at the time of this upgrade, just like we saw back in April.
Shorter term, Ether pictures is much more murky with a number of analyst calling for ETH to fall much further by the time the next upgrade rolls out. Then again, you can find an equal number of analysts to expect Ether to rise in the second half of 2023. We have to wait and see what happens with government regulations and SEC crackdowns in the US, along with crypto developments throughout the world. Ether seems to have found a pretty solid support level at $1,850 with a lot of ETH (over five million coins) being purchased right around that price point and investors offering support there to stay in profit.
Crypto investors seem to be fixated much more on Bitcoin these days so I expect Ether to follow the lead of BTC over the next few months. If you're bullish on Bitcoin, you should have a relatively sunny outlook for Ether but if you are bearish on the largest crypto you may want to sit back and watch how things develop. Ether can still break away from Bitcoin given its huge advantage in both the DeFi and NFT spaces, so changes in either of those markets could drive the price of ETH.
The Crypto Fear and Greed below sits at 52 in the "Neutral" range up two points from where it was at last week. I hope everyone who reads this has a great weekend and happy early birthday to Ethereum!
Ten Must-Read Ethereum and Altcoin Articles This Week
- CME Group: Ethereum To Outperform Bitcoin After Halving? (Bitcoinist)
- Ethereum Exchange Outflow Volume Hits 6-Month Low: A Bullish Signal? (Watcher Guru)
- Ethereum's account abstraction explained (Crypto News)
- AI DAOs Could Boost Ethereum Transactions Exponentially: Arthur Hayes (CoachPotato)
- Ethereum brushes against range lows, prices to drop further? (AMBCrypto)
- Staying optimistic about Ethereum's optimistic rollups (BlockWorks)
- Fidelity Backs Ethereum: Wall Street’s Biggest Players Bet On Crypto’s Number 2 (NewsBTC)
- Ethereum: Buy the Dip? (Motley Fool)
- Airdrop farming propelling growth in Ethereum layer-2 activity (Blockworks)
- Why Ethereum Ditching Mining Isn't Better for the Environment (CoinDesk)
Ethereum Price Statistics (as of 7/26/2023, daily close)
- Ethereum Price = $1,861
- Last Week = $1,892
- Weekly High = $1,904
- Weekly Low = $1,842
- Market Cap = $226,288,020,858
- Market Cap Dominance =18.38%
- Trading Volume = $5,385,506,969
- All-Time High = $4,878.26 on November 10, 2021
Up-to-the-Minute Ethereum Price Statistics
statistics provided by CoinGecko
Ethereum Fun Fact of the Week
Ethereum has developed its domain naming system, ENS (Ethereum Name Service). Like conventional DNS, ENS enables users to register and maintain easily readable domain names for their Ethereum addresses. This streamlines the procedure of sending and receiving funds, making it more user-friendly and accessible.
Ethereum Tweet of the Week
Ethereum Staking Statistics
- Validators = 693,781
- Block Time = 12.13 seconds
- Staking Ratio = 18.23%
- Inflation = -0.15%
- Total Supply = 122,373,866
statistics provided by StakingRewards
Crypto Fear & Greed Index
index provided by Alternative
What is Ethereum?
Ethereum (ETH) is a digital cryptocurrency that is known for being a blockchain technology that operates decentralized apps (dapps) such as decentralized finance (DeFi), non-fungible tokens (NFTs), stablecoins, lending, and more. First proposed by Vitalik Buterin who published a whitepaper in 2013 and went live as a network in July 2015, Ethereum claims it is not controlled by a centralized authority but that can be questioned. Ethereum went through the "merge" in 2022 moving from a proof-of-work to a proof-of-stake mechanism becoming much more environmentally friendly.
For more on Ethereum, please read the Top Things You Should Know About Ethereum (ETH) on Publish0x written by MuyAsk
For more on the Ethereum Whitepaper, please read the I Finally Read the Ethereum Whitepaper on Publish0x written by CryptoMasterMiner
Find Ethereum on Ethereum.org, Reddit, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook
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