Bitcoin Is Up Today: Sustainable?

Cryptocurrencies – including bitcoin – traded in green in the late hours of August 14 2022. The global cryptocurrency cap stood at $1.18 trillion, which implies a 0.73% increase over yesterday. The total cryptocurrency market volume over the last 24 hours reached $56.85 billion, down 13.01%.

The total volume in DeFi stood at $5.09 billion , which is 8.96% of the total crypto market 24-hour volume. The volume of all stable coins is now $52.02 billion, which is 91.50% of the total crypto market 24-hour volume.

Bitcoin Prices And The Global Crypto News

The price of Bitcoin is currently $24,085, with a dominance of 39.88%. This was a 0.29% decrease over the day, according to data from CoinMarketCap.

In the global news, Dutch authorities on Friday said they had arrested a 29-year-old man. The man is believed to be a developer for the crypto mixing service Tornado Cash. Tornado cash which the united States put on its sanctions list this week, Reuters reported.

The US sanctions announced on monday followed allegations that Tornado Cash was helping conceal billions in Capital flow. This includes that for North Korean hackers. By mixing cryptocurrencies, the online service makes it possible to conceal the origin-destination of digital payments, increasing their anonymity.

Tornado cash is one of the largest crypto blenders, the US Treasury has identified as problematic. In India. Crypto lending platform Vauld has come out with a statement. One that disagrees with the Enforcement Directorate perspective on its KYC and AML procedures. And subsequent freeze on its bank assets.

“It is unfortunate that despite extending our cooperation, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) has proceeded to pass a freezing order, pursuant to which crypto assets in the pool wallets of the company have ordered to been frozen to the extent of approximately $25.3 million. The freezing order is specific to that one customer that availed our services for a brief period of time, whose account we subsequently deactivated. We respectfully disagree with the freezing order,” Vauld said in the statement.

Bitcoin’s Nemesis – Ethereum’s Merge

The ED conducted searches at various premises of Yellow Tune Technologies at Bangalore, and the assets frozen belongs to Flipvolt Cryptocurrency exchange, which runs Vauld. This came exactly a week after WazirX’s bank assets worth  $0.28 crore were halted in a similar case.

Furthermore, Ethereum (ETH) has slipped by 5% in the last 24 hours, and is currently trading at around $1,900, according to data from CoinMarketCap.

The latest price action comes just 48 hours after Ethereum, the industry’s second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, topped $2,000 for the first time since May.

ETH managed to stay close to that mark over the weekend, hitting $2,022 on Sunday, before today’s sharp price decline.

Despite a significant drop over the last 24 hours, Ethereum is still up over 7% in the past week, making it the best-performing coin of the week among the ten largest cryptocurrencies over that time span.

One month left to the Merge

Ethereum gained traction over the past few weeks in anticipation of the Merge event that will see the network move from its current energy-intensive proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism to proof-of-stake (PoS).

Finally, last week, the network’s third testnet, Goerli, successfully shifted to PoS, prompting a 14% surge in the token’s price. It also meant that the final dress rehearsal before the Ethereum’s network shift from PoW is now complete, and the Merge is entering the final stretch of preparatory work.