Bitcoin and Ethereum prices remain healthy as the global cryptocurrency market cap holds above the $1 trillion level. After starting this week at $24k and bottoming out at $22.4k, BTCUSD again recovered above the $23k level. While Bitcoin’s trading volume is dropping significantly, down 31% in the past 24 hours, it will likely continue trading sideways throughout the weekend and make its next move on Monday. Ethereum is also stagnating after a short bull run to the $1,700 level, holding current support and showing bullish signs despite a 19% decrease in the 24-hour trading volume. Let’s look at any relevant crypto news this weekend and see what the market has in store next week.
Crypto Market News
A significant Bitcoin mining company, Core Scientific (NASDAQ: CORZ), announced in a press release published on August 5th that it deployed an additional 14k ASIC servers in July, signaling the continuous expansion of its mining operation.
However, the company also revealed that it has sold off more Bitcoins in July than it had mined, selling 1,975 BTC at the average price of $22k while mining 1,221 coins. This means 754 coins have been sold off for roughly $16.5 million in July.
The company claimed that the capital generated from selling the Bitcoin was used to pay for a past order of 100k Bitmain ASICS from 2021, along with various expenses as part of their everyday operations. While selling millions worth of cryptocurrency could be interpreted as a bearish sign, the fact that the company continues to expand operations despite an eight-month-long bear market remains a positive sign.
Moreover, Core Scientific’s stock continues to show substantial upside, rising by over 16% in the past week and up over 80% in the past month alone, signaling Bitcoin mining remains a viable venture even after all these years.
In other not-so-positive news, the Solana Slope wallet hack revealed that the company embarrassingly sent the private key of thousands of wallets in plaintext to a centralized server, which seems to have been compromised, causing a multi-million dollar loss. The good news is that Solana’s cryptography and blockchain weren’t affected, which is why the cryptocurrency market overall didn’t see much effect from the hack.
Over $4M was drained from Solana wallets over the past 2 days. We’ve been working directly with @solana and @slope_finance to investigate.
Here’s what we found. pic.twitter.com/Ny1gwuJfIb
— OtterSec (@osec_io) August 4, 2022
On the other hand, if Solana’s blockchain were somehow compromised, the consequences would’ve been devastating for Solana investors and the whole crypto market. Another Terra Luna or Celsius even was narrowly avoided.
When it comes to Ethereum, the market remains excited about the upcoming blockchain merge and the transition from a proof-of-work to a proof-of-stake consensus model come September. The “merge trade” continues to fuel ETHUSD markets, providing substantial bullish momentum to the digital asset. As a result, Ethereum outperformed Bitcoin by 50% in the past month, and talks of ETH overtaking BTC in terms of market cap are beginning to circulate among crypto traders.
While we’re still a ways away from ETH’s market cap overtaking BTC if the second-largest digital asset continues to outperform Bitcoin week after week, “The Flippening” could happen as early as this year.
Bitcoin is trading at $23.2k, while Ethereum is at $1,713. The global cryptocurrency market cap is at $1.1 trillion, up 1% in the past 24 hours.
Disclosure: This is not trading or investment advice. Always do your research before buying any cryptocurrency or investing in any projects.
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