“Absolute Madness:” Bitcoin, Ethereum and Crypto Head into Wild Week Amid Luna and Solana Price Swings – CryptoCodex

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Casino season 🎰

Cryptocurrency prices are skyrocketing this morning and the market is rising as expected ethereum merge upgrade enters its final part. The bitcoin The price is up nearly 3% since this time yesterday, while ethereum has fallen slightly after making big gains over the past week.

Ethereum Rival solana leads crypto top ten higher, up 8%, while Ripples XRPXRP
has dipped. Further down the lists, Lunathe revived backing coin of the collapsed terra blockchain network, has started to crash back after a huge rally in the past week that prompted one researcher to declare “degen casino season is back.” Coindesk have more.

Good to know: Jack Dorsey’s former boss is building a decentralized TwitterTWTR

Vitalik’s surprise performance 🎉

Spotted: Ahead of a week that is set to be “absolute madness” according to an ethereum-affiliated group on Twitter, ethereum co-founder and the project’s spiritual leader Vitalik Buterin found time to make a surprise appearance at the Kyiv Tech Summit.

Lost opportunities: Long before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Buterin met with Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss ethereum and the opportunities created by blockchain and decentralization.

Supplied: “I have followed Ukraine closely since the war started,” Russian-born Buterin said during the closing panel of the summit, it was reported by Coindesk. “I wanted to come and see for myself [and] also let Ukraine know that many people in the blockchain, ethereum, crypto world really care about you and many people support you.”

Planned: Buterin’s introduction to the crypto-heavy event comes as ethereum is heading for its much-hyped and long-awaited transition from using energy-intensive proof-of-work (PoW) as its hashing algorithm to the more energy-efficient proof-of-stake (PoS). The event will take place at some point this week, probably early Thursday morning.

The merger explained: Ethereum’s so-called merger will see the existing execution layer of ethereum, its mainnet, combined with its new proof-of-stake consensus layer, the beacon chain – eliminating the need for energy-intensive mining to secure the network and issue new ether. “Imagine ethereum as a spaceship not quite ready for interstellar travel,” explains the Ethereum Foundation. “With the beacon chain, the community has built a new engine and a hardened hull. After considerable testing, it’s almost time to replace the new engine with the old intermediate flight.”

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SBF 🤝 The Mooch

🛍️ Sam Bankman-Fried, the billionaire head of crypto exchange FTX, has continued his shopping spree by buying 30% of the alternative investment fund SkyBridge Capital – created by a former aide to US President Donald Trump, Anthony Scaramucci – for an undisclosed amount.

🗣️ “We saw there was an opportunity to work more closely together in ways that could complement both of our businesses,” Bankman-Fried said in a statement in which Scaramucci called Bankman-Fried a “visionary.” “We look forward to working closely with SkyBridge on their crypto investment activity and also working with them on promising non-crypto related investments.”

🛟 Bankman-Fried, commonly known as SBF, has thrown several lifelines to crypto companies this year as crypto prices crashed last week inking a deal with Gamestop that will see the video game retailer and now NFT marketplace carry FTX gift cards.

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The week ahead 🗓️

👀 Watch out for these cryptocurrency and crypto-adjacent events this week.

💶 Today starts the European Central Bank’s (ECB) seventh annual flagship research conference. Crypto is not on the agenda, but it will probably come up.

🇳🇴 Today starts the Norwegian trial against the crypto-Twitter personality Hodlonaut, who is being sued by the Australian computer scientist Craig Wright. Wright has long claimed to be the pseudonymous creator of bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto. The trial, which is expected to last a week, seeks to decide whether allegations by Hodlonaut that Wright is a fraud and a fraud are protected by freedom of speech in Norway.

🐦 Tomorrow, Twitter shareholders will vote on Elon Musk’s $44 billion acquisition of the company, as former Twitter security chief turned whistleblower Peiter “Mudge” Zatko testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee. The prevalence of bots, especially those promoting crypto scams, on the platform is one of the main problems.

– US senators press Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg to fight crypto fraud

📊 Also tomorrow, US consumer price inflation (CPI) data for August is out and is expected to show cooling headline price pressures that could influence the Federal Reserve’s next interest rate decision later this month.

– The US dollar is decimating the world’s currencies

⚡ On Thursday, ethereum’s long-awaited fusion upgrade will take effect, making the network a more energy-efficient proof-of-stake system.

The Merge: a blockchain revolution or just more hype?

🎤 Later on Thursday, there will be two high-profile regulator appearances. US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Gary Gensler will appear before the State Banking Committee and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Chairman Rostin Behnam will speak to the Senate Agriculture Committee hearing on crypto.

– The SEC’s chief enforcement officer warned that crypto crimes cannot be ignored

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