Though it briefly popped above $50,000 on Sunday, the price of bitcoin retreated at the start of the week.The largest cryptocurrency by market value is trading at around $47,358 as of Monday afternoon, according to Coin Metrics.Other top cryptocurrencies are also down, including ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency.Ether is currently trading at around $3,813.Along with price movement, here are five important things that happened in the cryptocurrency space this past week.On Wednesday, crypto industry executives testified before the House Financial Services Committee.
The hearing was called by committee leader Rep.
Maxine Waters, D-Calif., in an effort to understand crypto assets better and discuss potential regulation.”Because of their nascent stage of development and unique underlying technology, digital assets trade in markets that are fundamentally different from traditional financial markets,” Alesia Haas, Coinbase chief financial officer, said in her testimony.”As a result, existing regulatory regimes often do not accommodate this new technology.” The discussion was overall positive, rather than contentious, the issuer of the USDC stablecoin Circle chief executive officer Jeremy Allaire said after the hearing .
Also on Wednesday, Kickstarter announced plans to create a decentralized version of its crowdfunding platform.”We’re supporting the development of an open source protocol that will essentially create a decentralized version of Kickstarter’s core functionality,” the company wrote in a blog post .”This will live on a public blockchain, and be available for collaborators, independent contributors, and even Kickstarter competitors, from all over the world to build upon, connect to, or use.” The new protocol does not yet have a name, but Kickstarter plans to move its site onto the protocol in 2022, Bloomberg reported .Arrow Glacier, an upgrade to the Ethereum network , activated on Thursday.The upgrade pushed back the so-called ” difficulty bomb ,” which could potentially slow or freeze mining on Ethereum, back to June 2022.
By that time, developers hope to have transitioned Ethereum from a proof of work model for mining to a proof of stake model.Developers plan to introduce the “bomb” to motivate the transition to proof of stake, since it will make proof of work mining significantly more difficult.Delaying the “bomb” gave developers more time to work on Ethereum 2.0, or Eth2, before the shift.To learn more about Eth2, read here .The ConstitutionDAO announced in November that it would shut down after being outbid for a rare copy of the U.S.Constitution during a Sotheby’s auction.
But, the DAO’s token, called PEOPLE, continues to surge.PEOPLE hit an all-time high of 17 cents on Sunday, according to Coin Gecko.It’s up over 152% in the last seven days.
As of Monday morning, 90% of the total bitcoin supply of 21 million has been mined, according to data from Blockchain.com .But, the remainder is not expected to be mined until February 2140.Until then, miners can continue to earn bitcoins.Bitcoin operates on a proof of work model, which means that miners must compete to solve complex math problems to validate transactions.It’s not an easy process — reaching the 90% milestone took 12 years.Sign up now: Get smarter about your money and career with our weekly newsletter Don’t miss: Elon Musk says dogecoin is better to buy things with than bitcoin The situation in Ukraine is a ‘pretty big’ test for Biden, says think tank What is a SPAC? How the global chip shortage could dampen Christmas We’re past the worst of the supply chain pains, logistics firm GXO says A rare look inside Chinese smartphone giant, Huawei’s headquarters REITs plunge as demand for office space slows Mubadala CEO Khaldoon Al Mubarak discusses the global chip shortage and semiconductor investments Stock futures rise after S&P 500 notches fresh record close Avoid ‘bubble assets’ tech and cryptocurrencies – but have exposure to almost everything else, recommends market bull Rich Bernstein Investor Rich Bernstein: ‘Cryptos are the biggest financial bubble ever in history’ Watch CNBC’s full interview with Goldman Sachs’ Kostin Investors will be more selective in IPO investing, says Phil Drury Investors shouldn’t expect to make any money in Didi’s IPO: Expert WSJ’s Joanna Stern on whether wearable tech can detect Covid-19 symptoms Oura Ring CEO on growth of wearables during the pandemic Breaking down the costs of Biogen’s billion-dollar Alzheimer’s drug.
