The price of the first cryptocurrency consolidated above $42,000, Vitalik Buterin proposed reviving “cypherpunk” in Ethereum, Changpeng Zhao’s fortune grew by $25 billion in 2023, and other events of the past week.
Bitcoin consolidated above $42,000
This week, the first cryptocurrency was trading in the range of $42,000 to $44,000.
At the time of writing, digital gold is worth $42,500.
BTC/USDT hourly chart of the Binance exchange.Data:
TradingView.
Most of the top 10 digital assets by capitalization ended the week in the red zone.Avalanche (-16.5%) and Solana (-8.2%) lost the most.
Data:
CoinGecko.
The total capitalization of the cryptocurrency market is $1.74 trillion.Bitcoin dominance index – 51.4%.
Vitalik Buterin proposed reviving “cypherpunk” in Ethereum
The Ethereum blockchain needs to revive the “cypherpunk” revolution that was envisioned for the network in its early days.This was stated by the co-founder of the second largest cryptocurrency by capitalization, Vitalik Buterin.
According to him, Ethereum was originally intended to be a “public decentralized shared hard drive” that could use peer-to-peer messaging and file storage.However, this vision began to fade in 2017 with the turn towards the “financialization” of the protocol.
Decentralization, open participation, resistance to censorship, and trustworthy neutrality are among the “cypherpunk” ideals Buterin wants to see in the future of Ethereum.
He emphasized that rollups, zero-knowledge proofs, account abstraction, and second-generation privacy solutions have become more common and may support some of these values.
“It is quite possible to create things within the crypto ecosystem that do not meet these goals,” Buterin admitted, hinting at some projects.
For example, creating a highly centralized layer protected by multisigs with no plans to change, or an NFT ecosystem where tokens are stored on a centralized website rather than a decentralized data platform such as IPFS.
“Resisting this pressure is difficult, but if we don’t, we risk losing the unique value of the crypto ecosystem and recreating a clone of the existing Web 2.0 ecosystem with additional inefficiencies and inconveniences,” the developer emphasized.
Buterin also said he was impressed by some of the developments created to solve the industry’s biggest problems.
Thus, DEX provided improved tools for protection after hacking of centralized exchanges, and Cowswap, Flashbots Protect and MEV Blocker helped limit “sandwich attacks” on Ethereum users.
Changpeng Zhao’s fortune increased by $25 billion in 2023
The estimated personal capital of the founder and ex-head of Binance Changpeng Zhao (CZ) increased to $37.2 billion amid the recovery of the cryptocurrency market, Bloomberg noted.
The figure is far from the maximum of $96.6 billion recorded in January 2022, and also did not stay at the June mark just above $50 billion.
However, since January, CZ’s net worth has grown by almost $25 billion.
He topped the list of crypto billionaires whose estimated net assets increased over the year.According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, their capital has been seriously restored:
– Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong – by $5.8 billion, to $7.2 billion;
– exchange co-founder Fred Ehrsam – by $1.8 billion, to $2.5 billion;
– DCG founder Barry Silbert – by $1.5 billion, to $2 billion;
– Gemini founders Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss – by $1.4 billion, to $2.7 billion.
What to discuss with friends?
Opinion: Ethereum can “flip” Bitcoin in 2024
In 2024, Ethereum may surpass Bitcoin in terms of price growth, says Andre Dragos, head of research at ETC Group.
The fundamental foundation will be technological advances and Ethereum’s unwavering position as the leading smart contract platform.The expert also noted that throughout 2023, the second cryptocurrency by capitalization lagged behind digital gold in terms of price growth.
“ETH has underperformed BTC over the past 12 months.However, Ether may surpass Bitcoin in the next 12 months,” Dragos emphasized.
The report also states that Ethereum price growth will be driven by the “deflationary burn mechanism” introduced in August 2021 through the implementation of EIP-1559 as part of the London hard fork.
Read more: Arequipa: They kill a Venezuelan barber and uncover drug sales mafia and “drop by drop” loans
A decrease in the supply of coins, combined with attractive staking yields, can lead to the so-called flipping – the superiority of Ether over Bitcoin in terms of market capitalization.
Dragos added that since its inception in 2015, Ethereum has consistently outperformed Bitcoin in terms of growth.The exception is 2023.
Analyst calls launch of spot ETF a threat to Bitcoin
Launching a spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund goes against the idea of non-custodial custody and could lead to fundamental problems for the asset.
This was stated by Trezor analyst Josef Tetek.
The main negative consequence will be that a large volume of the first cryptocurrency will be stored on centralized platforms, from where governments can seize them.The expert compared this event to the confiscation of gold in the
United States in the 1930s.
“In principle, spot Bitcoin ETFs move people further away from self-custody and potentially create systemic risk because the funds are ostensibly safer than exchanges,” he said.
Tetek questioned whether the market really needs an exchange-traded fund if simply buying digital gold poses the same degree of threat as trading on traditional platforms.
Also on ForkLog:
CoinGecko named the main trends in the crypto industry in 2023
The most popular areas of the digital asset market at the end of 2023 were artificial intelligence, GameFi and meme tokens – they account for a third of the total interest of the community.This is stated in the CoinGecko study.
Popularity of crypto market directions in 2023, based on network traffic.Data: CoinGecko.
Next come the Solana ecosystem (7.2%), BRC-20 tokens (7.1%) and “real
world” assets (6.5%).
The 15 main trends (out of 139) accounted for 72.3% of the total interest in cryptocurrencies.Read more: Fake news! The Thailand Stock Exchange launches investments in Bitcoin trading with a budget of 1,000 baht, a profit of 500 baht per day.
What else to read?
This week we talked about what regenerative finance is and what ReFi projects to watch in 2024.
The traditional digest collected the main events of the week in the field of cybersecurity.
The decentralized finance sector continues to attract increased attention from cryptocurrency investors.ForkLog has collected the most important events and
news of recent weeks in a digest.
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2023-12-31 14:52:18
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