This Week in Coins: Bitcoin and Ethereum Untouched, Musk Makes Dogecoin Noise
This week in coins. Illustration by Mitchell Preffer for Decrypt.
It was a relatively quiet news week in the cryptoverse, reflected by the fact that hardly any of the top cryptocurrencies by market cap have moved dramatically over the past seven days.
Market leader Bitcoin (BTC), which has a market capitalization of well over half a trillion dollars, entered the weekend down a marginal 1.4% from seven days ago. It is currently trading at $28,030 according to CoinGecko.
Ethereum (ETH) went in the opposite direction, starting Saturday up 2.4% from a week ago, trading hands at $1,869 at the time of writing. The modest bump is thanks to anticipation of next week’s “Shapella” network upgrade, a portmanteau of “Shanghai” and “Capella”, two steps that will unlock the withdrawal of ETH staked on the network at the execution layer and the consensus layer respectively.
In very basic terms, the execution layer executes and records Ethereum’s transactions in real time, while the consensus layer is where those transactions are validated. Each validator has staked 32 ETH to activate their software and is rewarded with ETH for validating transactions. The validated information is then shared across the entire network.
The biggest coin success story this week came from meme coin Dogecoin (DOGE), which pumped at the start of the week, then popped, and is heading into the weekend, up 8.8% over the past seven days .
The coin’s rally started after Elon Musk presented a proposal for a United States judge on Friday to dismiss one $258 billion lawsuit accusing him of allegedly running a racketeering scheme to support the cryptocurrency.
On Monday, DOGE balloon 20% in less than an hour after Musk changed the iconic blue bird logo on social media to an image of Doge, the adorable Shiba Inu behind the iconic meme that inspired the coin, but the rally fizzled out on Thursday, as the coin posted an intraday loss of over 8%.
Adoption news
Despite stagnant prices, three big crypto adoption stories made the headlines this week.
On Tuesday, Ralph Lauren announced the opening of a new luxury concept store in Miami’s Design District; it will be the fashion house’s first store to accept payments with cryptocurrency. Items can be purchased with Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Polygon (MATIC), Dogecoin (DOGE), and other cryptocurrencies via a partnership with crypto payment service provider BitPay.
On the same day, Latin America’s largest investment bank, Brazil-based BTG Pactual, announced the launch of its own stablecoin, pegged to the US dollar. BTG Dol tokenwhich runs on Polygon. BTG Pactual said in a statement that this stablecoin will provide investors with a “simple, efficient and secure” way to deposit their equity in dollars. Customers can start investing with as little as 100 real ($20).
And on Wednesday, PostFinance, the Swiss bank wholly owned by the Swiss government, announced it will offer its customers a variety regulated crypto services delivered through Sygnum’s B2B banking platform, including the ability to buy, sell and store Bitcoin and Ethereum.
All positive signs for crypto adoption, even if they didn’t spark a rally.
