Ethereum Takes Most Popular Crypto Spot As Merge Approaches, Tornado Cash Follows
The recent tumultuous events in the cryptocurrency industry have resulted in increased interest in some of the related tokens, notably Ethereum (ETH) and Tornado Cash (TORN).
As it happens, over the past 24 hours, Ethereum has emerged as the leader of the crypto trend chart, gaining 0.11% in 24 hours and 2.57% over the week, while TORN assumed second place despite losing 16, 74% on the day and 32.03% for seven days, according to CoinMarketCap data on August 10.
The increased buzz around Ethereum is linked to the rapid approach of the network’s Merge upgrade, which will mark the transition from the Proof-of-Work (PoW) to the Proof-of-Stake (PoS) algorithm. This has also taken into account that ETH futures trading volume has reached a 3-month high.
The internet is buzzing with Tornado Cash chatter
As for Tornado Cash’s token TORN, it has found itself in the middle of a scandal involving the crypto-mixing service in the attacks on Ethereum bridges (including Harmony’s Horizon bridge) by the North Korean state-backed Lazarus Group.
As it stands, Tornado Cash has been used to launder “virtual currency worth more than $7 billion since its creation in 2019,” including the assets stolen by the Lazarus Group, according to the US Treasury Department press release that sanctioned the mixing service 8 .August.
That said, the situation that led to this result could get more out of hand as blockchain experts have predicted that the North Korean crypto-hacking problem is bound to worsen.
It’s also worth mentioning that Tornado Cash was used to move $80 million in digital assets stolen from Ethereum-based stablecoin protocol Beanstalk Farms in a flash loan from mid-April, as reported by Finbold.
LUNC, Flow and Bitcoin are getting more attention
Terra Classic (LUNC) is in third place, garnering interest after Terraform Labs co-founder and CEO Do Kwon broke the three weeks of silence with a chirping where he explains what decentralized networks need to succeed.
Meanwhile, Flow (FLOW), which was in the lead the day before thanks to Meta (NASDAQ: META ) announcing the expansion of its Instagram feature for digital collectibles to support non-fungible tokens (NFT) minted on the Flow blockchain, has now dropped to fourth place.
Finally, Bitcoin (BTC) has climbed to fifth place, as the major cryptocurrency registries renewed interest after a 2014 video resurfaced of former Google CEO Erich Schmidt hailing it as a “remarkable cryptographic achievement.”
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