Last week, we saw how Ethereum prices have been pushed lower due to negative sentiment around Chinese regulations and concerns over a new Covid-19 variant. This week, we’ll take a look at the sudden crypto price surge we’ve seen in recent days.

Sentiment Flips as Amazon Looks Set to Adopt Crypto

Ethereum has shot up to $2,423 following rumors that Amazon may be gearing up to adopt crypto, among other factors. The rumor came after Amazon posted a job vacancy for a digital currency and blockchain product lead on its website. The job description asks candidates:

“Do you want to innovate on behalf of customers within the payments and financial systems of one of the largest e-commerce companies in the world?”

City AM claims that an inside source has informed the outlet that Amazon intends to accept BTC as payment by the end of 2021

Elon Musk may have yet again played a role in price action last week by tweeting “dogecoin is money,” and this may have stirred up renewed interest in a stagnant market. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey also commented that Bitcoin would be a major part of Twitter’s business strategy in the future, saying “There are three trends relevant to Twitter and you, our shareholders: AI, decentralization and the Internet finally having access to a global native currency in bitcoin.”

Bitcoin has risen from around $30,000 to above $38,000 in the last two days. Ethereum price is now locked between the 50-day simple moving average and the 200-day SMA.

Reddit Moves Further Into Blockchain

Reddit’s Ethereum-based community points system is being scaled with Arbitrum, another example of real-life adoption of blockchain technology. Community points allow Reddit users to own a piece of their most frequented communities, and can then be spent on premium features or used as a measure of reputation and trust.

The points system launched throughout the whole site, one of the most popular websites in the world. Arbitrum was chosen after winning a scaling bake off between other scaling and L2 solutions, beating Polygon and Solana among others.

An announcement on the Ethereum subreddit stated that software engineers are needed to help scale decentralized technology on Reddit, with no prior crypto experience required.

DeFi Recovers Above Monthly Low

The DeFI market today reflects the price action seen in Ethereum and Bitcoin, with total value of locked assets rising above a monthly low of $54 billion back to the $60 billion range.

It’s worth bearing in mind that DeFi TVL this time last year was only around $2 billion. Breaking $1 billion was seen as a major milestone, and the market has only heated up since then with market-wide adoption of DeFi products.

Today, Aave is the dominant protocol with $11.66 billion in TVL, followed by InstaDapp with $8.37 billion. InstaDapp is a relatively new arrival to the top #5 protocols, recently soaring past Curve Finance, Compound, and Maker. InstaDapp aims to simplify how users interact with other DeFi protocols.

Events Roundup

The Mallorca Blockchain Days conference takes place on July 28, bringing together advocates, writers, and developers for discussion on emerging blockchain technologies. The 3-day event takes place in Mallorca, Spain.
A webinar called Cryptocurrency Taxation: Nuts, Bolts and Tax Law also launches on July 28, focusing on the opaque nature of crypto tax and how to navigate liabilities.