This Week in Coins: Bitcoin and Ethereum Rebound, LUNA Moons

For the first time in many weeks in the middle of a chilly crypto winter, Bitcoin and Ethereum had a great week.

After falls below $19,000 at the start of the week, Bitcoin then enjoyed a steady 7.3% recovery over the past seven days and is trading at $21,236 at the time of writing, according to CoinMarketCap.

Ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, rallied harder just days before Ethereum Proof of Stake Merger Event. It gained 10.9% during the week and is currently worth $1,726.

Several so-called “Ethereum killers,” aka tier-1 blockchains with high functionality smart contracts, also enjoyed notable rallies: Cardano (ADA) rose 9.4% to 51 cents, Solana (SOL) grew 11.4% to trade at $35, Avalanche ( avax) rose 8% to $20.35, and the NEAR protocol rose 13% to $4.71.

Cosmos (ATOM) rose 30% to $15.96. Cosmos is structurally different from Ethereum in that it is a network of many smaller blockchains, but also offers smart contracts with high functionality.

But undoubtedly the biggest movement among the top seventy cryptocurrencies this week was… LUNA, which is up 212% on the week. Yes, that Luna — the ecosystem that collapsed spectacularly in May and basically went to zero. But LUNA is a new coin from the rebooted blockchain, while the original LUNA is now rebranded Luna Classic (LUNC), which also rose 80% this week. Was it a dead cat bounce, or is Terra coming back?

Crypto winter

Despite the market rally, crypto businesses are still feeling the effects of the ongoing crypto winter.

On Monday, the owner of the Brazilian Mercado Bitcoin exchange, 2TM Group, announced a second round of layoffs, and cut 15% of the current workforce. Back in June, the company released 12% of the 750 employees, or about 90 workers, cite “changes in the global economic landscape.”

On the same day, Poolin, a Beijing-based mining pool that accounts for 10% of the Bitcoin network’s hashrate (aka computing power per second), announced that it was freezing ETH and BTC balance payouts due to “liquidity problems”.

Also on Monday, the probate court dealing with insolvent cryptobroker Voyager Digital adopted a proposal for return $270 million to affected customers. ONE court filing the next day confirmed that Voyager will auction its remaining assets next week. Various entities have submitted proposals and a hearing will be held on September 29 to approve the results. The 22 potentially interested parties have not been identified, but Sam Bankman-Fried’s stock exchange FTX has previously made a public offer. This was rejected as a “low-ball” bid by Voyager’s lawyers.

Wednesday, a US bankruptcy court archiving revealed that state officials in Vermont have requested broader powers to investigate Celsius, alleging that the insolvent cryptocurrency exchange had artificially inflated the price of the CEL token at the expense of retail investors over the past three years.

“By increasing its net position in CEL by hundreds of millions of dollars, Celsius inflated and supported the market price of CEL, thereby artificially inflating the company’s CEL holdings on its balance sheet and financial statements,” Vermont Assistant Attorney General Ethan McLaughlin said.

Dispatches from Washington and Westminster

SEC Chairman Gary Gensler said Thursday at an industry conference that he would support a move by Congress to give the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) the power to “oversee and regulate crypto non-security tokens and related intermediaries.”

Gensler added that should Congress give the CFTC primary control over crypto, his own federal agency should not be overlooked. He has previously said that Bitcoin is a commodity, not a security, and thus will not fall under SEC jurisdiction. He has resisted giving his view on Ethereumand many in crypto fear that he will find a way to bring ETH under SEC control.

The same day, the White House indicated that US lawmakers and regulators may soon crash on crypto mining due to the large carbon footprint.

In a new report, mandated by President Biden verdict in March, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy so crypto miners must reduce greenhouse gas emissions, with help from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Department of Energy (DOE), and other federal agencies.

Should the industry not green up, “the administration should explore executive action, and Congress may consider legislation, to limit or eliminate the use of high-energy-intensive consensus mechanisms for mining cryptoassets,” the report said.

Across the Atlantic in London, the British Parliament had its first crypto debate on Wednesday. Britain wants to “become the chosen country for those who want to create, innovate and build in the crypto space,” according to Richard Fuller, the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Fuller also stated that “as crypto technologies grow in importance,” the new government formed by Liz Truss is “looking for ways to achieve global competitive advantage for the UK.” That sounds…promising?