Ethereum Stats

Ethereum Price: $308.31
Ethereum Price (BTC): 0.026112 BTC
Market Cap: $32.93B
ETH Network Dominance*: 77.81%
7 Day Candle**: $295.67 / $311.88 / $271.20 / $308.31

️ Nick’s Market Summary

Ethereum continued to take chunks out of Bitcoin last week with significant developments that further signalled an eventual “flippening” between the two market caps.

WBTC (“Wrapped Bitcoin”), the ticker for Bitcoin which has been “ported” to Ethereum as an ERC-20 token, enables Ethereum functionality for Bitcoin holders without the need to trade BTC for ETH. Instead, users lock their BTC at a specific Bitcoin address and receive a 1:1 match of WBTC on Ethereum. WBTC opens up the Ethereum ecosystem to Bitcoin holders, allowing them to – for example – lend their Bitcoin and earn interest using a decentralized finance (DeFi) application on Ethereum. WBTC is best described simply as Ethereum-enabled Bitcoin.

It turns out that WBTC is quite popular. Last week exchanges minted 215 WBTC (~$2.5 million), increasing the total amount of BTC locked on Ethereum to 540 WBTC (~$6.4 million) since its launch on January 30th 2019.

Comparisons have been drawn between WBTC and Bitcoin’s very own Lightning Network which has so far locked 940 BTC into their payment channels. Without going into detail about the pros and cons of the two, the total BTC locked in Ethereum (WBTC) is fast approaching the total BTC locked in Lightning. This metric is an important one as it indicates the Bitcoin user demand for payments (Bitcoin lightning network) and decentralized finance (Ethereum). It’s no surprise that holders of a deflationary asset are more likely to opt for saving/investing rather than spending, hence the rapid growth in WBTC. I expect we’ll see the total amount of WBTC increase beyond the total BTC locked in Lightning before the year is out. You can follow these metrics at 1ml.com (lightning) and WBTC.network.

This trend is being seen elsewhere too. Tether (USDT), the largest stablecoin by market cap and volume, has historically been associated with the Omni layer which sits on top of the Bitcoin blockchain. Recently however, Tether has been issuing more and more USDT on the Ethereum blockchain as opposed to Bitcoin’s Omni layer. Last week, Binance (the world’s largest exchange) announced a wholesale shift of their USDT deposit and withdrawal addresses from Bitcoin to Ethereum. This was followed hours later by Poloniex who stated that they had added ERC-20 USDT support. The ratio between USDT (BTC) and USDT (ETH) now stands at 2.4:1 – down from 50:1 just a year go.

Bitcoin is slowly being swallowed by Ethereum and for good reason – Bitcoin has more value when it’s on Ethereum. To read more on the subject, I recommend taking a look at “Bringing Bitcoin to Ethereum” published last week by David Hoffman.

– Nick, Owner EthereumPrice.org

Libra: Will The Trojan Horse Ever Leave The Starting Block?

Libra, the Trojan horse which could provide billions of people with easy access to Bitcoin and Ethereum, is facing some legal hurdles following a recent call by a group of US watchdogs to impose a moratorium on the new cryptocurrency.

The letter described concerns with Facebook’s track record, as well as the potential for Libra to act as a new global currency system and threatening the US Dollar. The letter refers to previous privacy issues where millions of data records were compromised.

The House Financial Services Committee has scheduled a hearing to examine Libra on July 17, a day after the Senate Banking Committee will hold a hearing.

The important implication of this is that if Libra is considered a threat, then so too is Ethereum (but without the same immediacy of a platform which can instantly launch to 2 billion citizens). Any prevention of Libra’s progress could imply that there may be future efforts to limit Ethereum – particularly its stablecoins which operate in a similar way to Libra. Fortunately, Ethereum is not backed by a handful of corporations and is censorship resistant, but those with an interest in crypto would be well-advised to keep an eye on how this case unfolds.

eToro Adding Ethereum Tokens

The eToro cryptocurrency wallet is adding support for 120 ERC-20 standard tokens and has officially announced the first 5.

First to be included were Maker (MKR), Basic Attention Token (BAT), OmiseGO (OMG), along with 2 eToro stablecoins being eToro EuroX (EURX) and eToro US Dollar X (USDX). The platform announced that the others will follow in the near future.

Doron Rosenblum, managing director of eToroX, said that by adding 120 ERC-20 tokens to their wallet it further solidifies their belief that in the future all investable assets will be tokenized (and on Ethereum, apparently). Access seems to be the biggest barrier to mass adoption and by introducing these tokens to their wallet it will help bring about easier access in a simple and transparent fashion.

ERC-20 is a technical standard that sets rules for tokens launched on Ethereum or related blockchains.

* calculated as: (ETH Market Cap / Ethereum Network Market Cap)
** open / high / low / close