This Week in Coins: Bitcoin Still Stuck in Rut, Polygon and Litecoin Surge

The prices of crypto market leaders Bitcoin and Ethereum usually move together. But some weeks are an exception, and this was just such a week.

Bitcoin, the world’s No. 1 cryptocurrency with a market cap of $380 billion, fell another 2% in the past week and is trading at around $19,860 on CoinMarketCap at the time of writing on Saturday morning.

Ethereum, the No. 2 crypto asset with a market cap of $190 billion, gained a modest 3.5% in the past week and is currently trading at $1,556.

New data this week from Ethereum Name Service (ENS) tells a more bullish story. ENS was launched five years ago by members of the Ethereum Foundation to enable people to register memorable domains for their crypto wallets, rather than being limited to the unwieldy string of random numbers and letters that typically represent a blockchain address.

ENS reported its third highest revenue month over August, with 2.17 million .ENS domain names created on the service. A fortnight ago, the service reported that the number of registrations for .ENS domain names had doubled during the previous three months.

This dramatic increase in ENS activity is likely in anticipation of Ethereum’s major network overhaul coming this month. The Ethereum is merging will transition the network from the energy-intensive proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism to the 99.95% greener proof of effort (PoS) algorithm.

The biggest loser among the top thirty cryptocurrencies was Avalanche. AVAX fell 10% during the week; it’s worth under $20 this saturday.

Two cryptocurrencies in the top 20 enjoyed big rallies, and one of them may come as a surprise to many: Litecoin (LTC) rallied 15% in the past week to over $60, while Polygon‘s MATIC rose 11% and is currently trading at around $0.90. Polygon’s blistering rally came in the middle of the adoption news from trading app Robinhood and social media giant Meta.

The other leading cryptocurrencies barely moved this week.

Regulators target crypto risk

On Monday, the chief executive of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), the country’s central bank and financial watchdog, Ravi Menon, said so at a Green Shoots fintech seminar that the regulator will start adding hoops to jump through for retail investors looking to get into crypto. The proposals include tests for customer suitability and limiting access to credit facilities.

Menon said the measures are to protect consumers, elaborating that while Singapore welcomes fintech innovation, investors appear to be irrationally ignorant on the risks of cryptocurrency trading,” but an outright ban “is unlikely to work.” MAS is also looking to bring in international regulatory reviews and collaborate on harm-reduction measures.

Paraguayan leaders also talked about regulation on Monday. President Mario Abdo Benítez vetoed a bill that would have regulated various crypto activities in the country, including mining. According to Executive decreethe primary reason for the veto was that the energy costs would allegedly outweigh the employment benefits.

In the US, Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi – chairman of the Economic and Consumer Policy Subcommittee, part of the House, which makes up Congress along with the Senate –sent letter to five of the largest crypto exchanges in the United States on Tuesday, asking for “information and documents” about how they work to “fight cryptocurrency related fraud.”

Krishnamoorthi also sent four federal agencies — the US Department of the Treasury, The Security and Exchange Commission, Commodity Futures Trading Commissionand Federal Trade Commission– to solicit proposals for guidelines and opinions on whether cryptocurrencies should be defined as “commodities, securities or both.”

Meta and Ticketmaster embrace NFTs

Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta rolled out new NFT features for the properties that day, including the ability to cross-post NFTs in the app for select US users.

Meta currently supports Ethereum, Polygonand Flow NFTs on both Facebook and Instagram. It also supports a number of crypto walletsincluding MetaMaskRainbow, Trust Wallet, Coinbase walletand Dapper, all of which can be connected to verify and share NFTs.

On Wednesday, ticketing titan Ticketmaster announced that it will use Dapper Labs’ Flow blockchain to mint NFT tickets for certain events. Over the past six months, Dapper Labs and Ticketmaster have been quietly piloting an NFT program where Ticketmaster issued NFT tickets reminding attendees of specific eventslike this year’s Super Bowl LVI.

More than five million Flow NFTs were minted during the pilot, according to Dapper.

Cryptolenders are trying to cope with liquidity crises

Singapore-based crypto lender Hodlnaut was granted legal direction to organize and restructure by the country’s highest court on Tuesday. The company archived for court proceedings on 13 August with an application for temporary protection against legal claims. Only five days before it had frozen customer withdrawals to “stabilize liquidity” during the industry’s ongoing liquidity crisis.

On Thursday, bankrupt crypto lender Celsius said in a court filing that it seeks to return some of the customer’s funds. The company is currently offering to release nearly $50 million in crypto belonging to customers who were part of the “custodian” program — accounts that stored crypto but did not generate returns.

If Celsius’ proposal is approved, the returned funds would only cover a fraction of the lender’s obligations: custodial accounts amount to $210.02 million in crypto, according to the filing. However, customers expecting returns who invested crypto in Celsius’ popular “earn” program account for $4.3 billion in assets; there was no word on when they will get the money back.

Bitcoin mining difficulty is increasing

Bitcoin is getting harder to mine. According to data from BTC.com, Bitcoin’s mining difficulty jumped 9.26% in the past two weeks. As the difficulty increases, miners may face slimmer profits, as more computing power (and energy) is required to mine while the value of Bitcoin has remained stagnant.

Scott Norris, co-founder of private Bitcoin miner LSJ Ops, told Decrypt that “difficulty shrinking is cause for concern,” because it would mean more miners dropping the network — making it less efficient.

Norris added: “An increase in difficulty is an indicator of a strong and growing network, that’s actually a good thing,” he said, adding that “sectors like gas and water are championing cheap energy costs and opening up a new generation long-term mining. to emerge.”