All eyes were on Ethereum (ETH) in the past 24 hours, as the high-stakes Shanghai hard fork, which has finally allowed the tens of thousands of ETH stakers to access and potentially sell their coins, went live.
Unlike the years of delays that blighted Ethereum’s last major upgrade ‘The Merge’, Changhai went off without a hitch, dead on the expected time stamp of 10.27pm UTC.
As covered by Proactive in decent days, some market participants feared an instant run on ETH as newly liberated stakers to either take profits or capitulate their losses.
For the moment at least, those fears have yet to be vindicated, with ETH/USDT remaining largely unphased since the protocol upgrade.
In fact, the pair added around 1.5% to close at US$1,917 yesterday, while sticking to that price point in this morning’s Asia trading hours.
But the fabled 2k psychological barrier remains out of touch for the time being.
Bitcoin’s inflation dip
Bitcoin had a brief negative reaction to yesterday’s US mixed inflation readout, which showed the annual rate slowing for a ninth consecutive period to 5% against market forecasts of 5.2% but core inflation ticking slightly higher.
In the hours proceeding the call, BTC/USDT fell to an intraday low of US$29,640 from a high of US$30,500, but the dip below the prized 30k line did not last long, with the pair closing the day around one percent lower at US$29,890 before ticking creeping above 30k once again this morning.
On the futures front, shorts took a winning streak with US$19.3mln in long liquidations against US$12.4mln in short liquidations for the Wednesday trading session.
At the time of writing, bitcoin was changing hands at US$30,100, with US$30,500 as the next obvious bullish target.
Bitcoin (BTC) keeps head above 30k – Source: currency.com
Further bitcoin price growth will be contingent on the level of sustained profit-taking, which has ramped up since the world’s largest cryptocurrency smashed the 30k price barrier earlier this week.
Week on week, bitcoin is 7.5% higher against ether’s 1.8%.
Solana (SOL) steers higher
Solana blockchain’s SOL coin, which is the 10th largest cryptocurrency by market capitalisation, has been boosted by the recent launch of the Solana-powered Saga smartphone.
SOL is now over 16% higher week on week with a market cap of US$9.4bn, by far the best performer among the top-20 altcoin set.
It’s a much-needed boost for the alternative after being particularly crippled in the 2022 crypto winter due to numerous network outages and high-value hacks.
Elsewhere in the blue-chip altcoin space, Binance’s BNB token, Ripple (XRP), Cardano (ADA) and Polkadot (DOT) are all in the green week on week, while meme coin competitors Dogecoin (DOGE) and Shiba Inu (SHIB) are at the bottom of the pile with 0.7% and 1.7% in losses respectively.
Global crypto market cap added 0.6% to US$1.23tn overnight, while total value locked in the decentralised finance (DeFi) space added 3.5% to US$53bn.
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