Major cryptocurrencies exhibited a steady trend over the weekend, with alternate coins such as shiba inu (SHIB) reflecting a subdued price movement, a defining characteristic of the market after bearing witness to a massive liquidation event. Bitcoin, showing stable dynamics at around $26,000, along with ether, unchanged from Sunday at approximately $1,670, construed a calm scenario. This reassurance, given by LMAX Digital, that a presumed continued hold by Bitcoin above the $25,000 mark on a weekly close basis, ignites the promise of renewed demand and an anticipated positive swing in the days to follow. The impact could resonate across the crypto space encompassing ether and other cryptocurrencies.
Despite the seemingly calm waters, there were shades of turbulence like the slump of the meme coin, SHIB, trailing by 2%, making a cumulative loss of over 21% during the week. The reason being the unsuccessful initiation of its Ethereum layer 2 network, Shibarium, which caused a halt in the transactions only hours after going live, trapping around $1.7 million worth of tokens in a bridge due to a coding anomaly.
In another eyebrow-raising move, Ethereum co-founder, Vitalik Buterin, transferred an approximate $1 million worth of cryptocurrency in the form of 600 ether to the Coinbase crypto exchange. This step came amidst a market downturn, resulting in a 10% shrink over the week for ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization.
The deeper impacts of this turbulent crypto environment were not contained within user transactions but seemed to be causing a strategic shift for bitcoin miners. This was alluded to by the banking behemoth – JPMorgan in a recent research report. According to this, miners are penetrating new business areas, like offering high-performance computing services to the Artificial Intelligence segment to reduce crypto-reliance. This diversification pivot has been partly funded through selling off coins in recent quarters. Hive Blockchain Technologies and Riot Blockchain, stepping into a new identity as Hive Digital Technologies and Riot Platforms, respectively, gave a nod to this newly found trend.
The ether call-put skews graph, which tallies the cost of calls in relation to puts, shows a lean towards negativity. This implies a bias for puts, i.e., derivative contracts that offer protection against price drops. After witnessing an 8% drop in prices the previous week, the crypto market embarks on a journey whose course seems mired with challenges and expectancy.
Source: Coindesk
