● Ethereum 2.0 Rapidly Approaching
● Bitcoin Levels out as Ethereum Surges To $600
● A look at Traditional Markets in the Wake of Vaccine Hopes coming to Fruition
As always, thank you for reading this edition of Overbit News, where we cover the biggest stories in both cryptocurrency and traditional markets. While we usually start out with talking about the leader in this space, Bitcoin, we’d like to kick off by looking at the number two in the space: Ethereum.
Despite being billed as a second-tier cryptocurrency sometimes, ETHUSD has actually outperformed BTC/USD since 2020 March, posting gains of around 520% vs 340% respectively. At the time of writing, Ethereum sits at $603, which is higher than it’s been since 2018 June.
The path to this point wasn’t always smooth sailing, however, as investors & traders saw a retrace of nearly 35% for Ethereum back in late August. During this time, Bitcoin continued to rally upwards towards $19,000. It wasn’t until early November that ETHUSD finally started to catch up, where it shot up nearly 70% in just a few weeks.
It seems clear that Ethereum has two significant catalysts driving the demand this time around: the exponential rise of DeFi products and protocols, as well as the impending ETH 2.0 upgrade. The upcoming Ethereum 2.0, promises a more “scalable solution” for the future of smart contracts and the global cryptocurrency ecosystem. To “initiate” the soft-launch of Ethereum 2.0, the smart contract threshold is 524,288 ETH, and currently, there is approximately 75% deposited 385,440 ($231 million), according to an article by CoinDesk.com.
If the contract receives the pre-required amount in time, then the Ethereum Foundation will have a use December 1st, as a soft launch date for the new Ethereum network. Viktor Bunin, a protocol specialist at blockchain infrastructure service provider Bison Trails told CoinDesk. “Eth 2.0 is a vision. It is a drive to improve Ethereum to scale support for the entire planet. Even if this launch is not successful for some reason, you can be sure that the community will learn from it and try, and try, again.”
Traditional market observers have become quite familiar with Bitcoin after it’s meteoric rise, but many investors are now wondering “What is Ethereum?” after this considerable runup. During our market research, we sometimes think “What is the best cryptocurrency to invest in?”. Well at this moment, Ethereum looks to be planting a bull flag (the signal for a large price movement upwards). Given these strong fundamentals and technicals, Ethereum is definitely a strong contender.
Wrapping up this week’s edition of Overbit News, let’s zoom out from Bitcoin and the future, into traditional markets. Here, we see stocks rise up to last week’s record on Monday, and indices of commodity prices closed at its highest since March.
This upwards momentum is caused by more vaccine news, giving investors hope that economic activity could resume globally at a faster clip than many feared. One of the more prominent Vaccine Makers, AstraZeneca, said its COVID-19 vaccine is cheaper to make, more comfortable to distribute and faster to scale-up than its rivals and could be as much as 90% effective. Assets from emerging markets reacted strongly to the news, as it allayed concerns over the distribution logistics of a vaccine for developing countries.
A market snapshot, shows the US Dollar Index Rising 0.22%, and the Euro down 0.13% to $1.1838, and Japanese Yen weakened 0.65% against the USD, trading at 104.57 per dollar, and lastly the British Pound Sterling last traded at $1.3321, up 0.29% on the day.
Diving into precious metals, Gold slid to its lowest point in months as continued economic recovery leads investors to switch their view away from Safe Haven assets. This had led Gold to drop almost 2.0% to $1,835 an ounce, and it’s “little brother”, Silver falling nearly 2.5% to $23.56 an ounce.
All in all, it appears that investors are starting to regain confidence in the risky “traditional markets” and are hedging out of safe-havens like Gold and Silver, which leads us to a paradox as Bitcoin, billed as a safe-haven asset, continues to rise. These are new trends and uncharted territory, but rest assured, as Overbit.com is here to provide the most essential news in the Global markets today.