Bitcoin Has Now Surpassed $24,000 For The First Time In August

Bitcoin and Ether had a positive weekend of trading, with BTC breaking the $24,000 mark on Monday, up 5% today. Ether followed suit, trading up 5.7% over the last 24 hours, at $1,774.

Data from data.bitcoinity.org shows that the last time BTC climbed above $24,000, volume levels were around 570 million; today, they are at 310 million.

“This means BTC’s price movement can be attributed mostly to the market participants or market makers who are setting most of the trading channel based on liquidation wash outs,” said Laurent Kssis, head of Europe at Hashdex.

Will This Bitcoin Uptrend Last?

In the short term the $22,000-$23,000 price level will be key to watch, according to Kssis. “A break above that level could see Bitcoin moving higher though it could run out of breath and slip back.”

Altcoins also showed strength overnight, with Avalanche’s AVAX taking the lead, up 14%. Graph (GRT), token of an indexing protocol for networks like Ethereum, was up 20% overnight. Now, it has a market cap of over $1 billion.

In the news, cryptocurrency-focused financial services firm Galaxy Digital (GLXY.TO) reported a second-quarter net loss of $554.7 million, more than triple the amount it reported for the same period last year.

On Friday, crypto-lender Voyager Digital said it plans to “restore access” to cash deposits on Aug. 11, the company’s first step in returning up to $270 million in fiat currency to its customers.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin spoke to reporters during an exclusive event at ETHSeoul over the weekend. He played down the impact of any hard forks on Ethereum after the network’s Merge. He went on to say “I don’t expect Ethereum to really be significantly harmed by another fork.” 

The Binance And WazriX Feud

Finally, WazirX founder Nischal Shetty told CoinDesk that Binance has restarted off-chain transfers. The world’s largest crypto exchange by volume had removed off-chain transfers to WazirX. This happened following a disagreement on social media between Shetty and Binance founder Changpeng Zhao. The feud was regarding the ownership of the platform.

SEOUL, South Korea — Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin played down the impact of any hard forks on Ethereum. He did this after after the network’s Merge event in September.

“I don’t expect Ethereum to really be significantly harmed by another fork.”

Buterin

The Switch To Proof-of-stake For Bitcoin Mining And Others

The blockchain plans to switch to a proof-of-stake (PoS) mechanism, through an event known as The Merge. This will happen next month in a move developers say will make it cheaper, faster and environmentally friendly.

However, the change from a proof-of-work (PoW) system will end an income stream for Ethereum miners. Miners who are get reward in ether tokens for their efforts. Miners produced over $620 million worth of ether in July alone, data show. Tron founder Justin Sun has emerged as one prominent investors supporting a hard fork to keep the money flowing.

Buterin said supporters of the PoW consensus design shifted to Ethereum Classic when that network started in 2016 because it was known at the time that Ethereum would eventually shift to proof-of-stake while Ethereum Classic would not.

“I think Ethereum Classic already has a superior community and a superior product for people kind of with those pro-proof-of-work values and preferences,” he said. “Pretty much everyone” in the Ethereum ecosystem is supportive of the move to proof-of-stake validation and “quite united.”