Crypto Flipsider News – Bitcoin Breakout Rally; No Vasil Delay; Celo Outage; Ankr Network 2.0; Gamers Want Crypto

© Reuters. Crypto Flipsider News – Bitcoin Breakout Rally; No Vasil Delay; Celo Outage; Ankr Network 2.0; Gamers Want Crypto

Read in the Digest:

• Bitcoin tipped for rally after consolidation, mining costs drop to 10-month lows.

• Celo Network restarted after 24 hours – Celsius discovers $1.2 billion deficit.

• Cardano developer debunks report of delay to Vasil hark fork upgrade.

• Ankr unveils 2.0 network upgrade to improve Web 3.0 decentralization.

• Despite backlash, 34% of gamers vote to use crypto in the metaverse.

Bitcoin Tipped for Rally After Consolidation – Mining Costs Drop to 10-Month Lows

Reacting to the June Consumer Price Index (CPI) report, Bitcoin experienced a huge downswing to below $19k, followed by a quick rally that saw the leading crypto asset reclaim $20k. The price of Bitcoin has since consolidated between $20,000 and $21,000.

Bitcoin’s (BTC) reaction to the inflation report. Source: CoinMarketCap

The quick rejection at the $19k level and subsequent consolidation suggest that Bitcoin could be primed for an uptrend. Bitcoin is now gradually rising just above the $20,000 resistance level, gaining 5.2% to set an interday high of $20,980.

The 24 hour price chart for Bitcoin (BTC). Source: CoinMarketCap

With Bitcoin seeking to end its 2022 freefall, the average cost of mining a single BTC has fallen to a 10-month low. JPMorgan (NYSE:JPM) reports that the cost of mining 1 BTC is now $13,000, down from the $24,000 seen at the beginning of June.

Data from Bitinfocharts shows that $13,000 is the lowest cost Bitcoin mining has been since September 2021. The drop in mining costs coincides with a drop in the mining difficulty of the network, which lowered from 31.25T in May, to 29.15T at the time of writing.

Flipsider:

• The recent drop caused highly convicted crypto holders with “diamond hands” to cave to the pressure of selling their BTC and avoid capitulation.

Why You Should Care

The low cost of mining Bitcoin could help to reduce the falling profitability trend faced by BTC miners, thereby lowering power demands on the network.

Celo Network Restarted After 24 Hours – Celsius Discovers $1.2 Billion Deficit

On Thursday, July 14th, Celo experienced its first network outage since the launch of its mainnet on April 22nd, 2020. The on-and-off outage lasted 24 hours, leading to multiple counts of stop-start activity on the blockchain.

On Friday, July 15th, Celo announced that the network was fully back online after a version 1.5.8 upgrade to its validator nodes. The Celo team announced that the outage didn’t affect customer funds, and assured users that they were conducting a “thorough and expedited technical analysis” to get to the bottom of the issue.

In a July 14th Chapter 11 bankruptcy claim, embattled crypto lender Celsius Network revealed that it had identified a roughly $1.2 billion hole in its balance sheet, and the majority of the cryptocurrency lender’s liabilities owed to its users.

The document, submitted by CEO Alex Mashinsky, alleges that before its $690 million Series B funding round in late 2021, the company already had a hole in its balance sheet. Moreover, Celsius users were reportedly culpable for more than $4.7 billion of the $5.5 billion total liabilities.

Flipsider:

• Despite the hole in the balance sheet, the CEO of Celsius, in the bankruptcy filing, wrote that he believes that the company can be restructured and won’t be blocked by every regulator around the globe.

Cardano Developer Debunks Report of Delay to Vasil Hark Fork Upgrade

On July 3rd, Input Output Global (IOG) carried out the much-anticipated ‘Vasil’ hard fork on the Cardano testnet, and scheduled the mainnet upgrade for the end of July. However, there have since been reports that the Vasil upgrade to the mainnet may be delayed.

Reacting to the report of bugs discovered in the testnet launch, Twitter (NYSE:TWTR) user “$sugiggs” stated: “Looking at the issues, Vasil might not be ready on mainnet at the end of July. Another 2-4 weeks delay, I guess.”

However, Matthias “KtorZ” Benkort, technical director of open-source development at the Cardano Foundation, has debunked the possibility of a delay to the launch of the Vasil upgrade. He further assured the community that the mainnet hard fork would be on time.

According to Ktorz, the bugs spotted by “$sugiggs” only affected the ‘cardano-cli.’ He further explained that Vasil’s node, ledger, network, and consensus all “appear to be somewhat stable so far.”

Flipsider:

• Despite the buzz surrounding Cardano, the price of its ecosystem token, ADA, has remained low, proving unable to break above the $0.5 level, and even faces the risk of falling to as low as $0.31.

Why You Should Care

The Vasil hark fork is Cardano’s most anticipated event, as the upgrade looks to implement new improvements that will facilitate higher throughput and dApp scalability.

Ankr Unveils 2.0 Network’s Upgrade to Improve Web 3.0 Decentralization

Ankr, one of the biggest providers of remote procedure call (RPC (NYSE:RES)) endpoints, has unveiled the biggest upgrade in its history, Ankr Network 2.0. RPC endpoints are infrastructures that are critical for Web 3.0 dApps that connect to blockchains.

In the Ankr 2.0 whitepaper, the Web 3.0 infrastructure provider explains that the upgrade was designed with the goal of making Web 3.0 more decentralized. Ankr Network 2.0 will allow independent node operators to connect developers and dApps to blockchains.

While Ankr Network 2.0 will reward independent node operators, the move will increase the number of nodes, and the degree of decentralization in Web 3.0 networks. It also adds three new API services that reduce the time developers need to spend searching for block addresses and events.

Ankr Network 2.0 will introduce the staking of network token ANKR on full nodes for the first time as a means to secure the network and generate income. ANKR stakers will also have voting power in the new Issue DAO Governance Tool.

Flipsider:

• Two weeks ago, a team of coders hacked Ankr’s RPC public domains to run phishing scams.

Why You Should Care

The launch lines up with Ankr’s goal of making Web 3.0 cheaper, easier, and more accessible.

Despite Backlash, 34% of Gamers Vote to Use Crypto in the Metaverse

Since the advent of play-to-earn games and the metaverse, “pure gamers” have remained hostile to the nascent sector. However, a Globant survey of 1,000 adult PC, console, and/or mobile gamers in the U.S. found that gamers are warming up to the idea of crypto gaming.

According to the survey, 34% of respondents indicated an interest in conducting crypto transactions in the metaverse. However, 45% were uninterested, while a further 20% were undecided.

Nearly 40% of respondents stated that they would like a mix Of both “playing” and “earning” in metaverse games, while only 11% said that they were interested in earning. Even so, a majority of 49% still indicated that they were only interested in playing.

Just over half (52%) of the gamers believe the metaverse will change the video game industry, and a plurality (41%) stated that the metaverse would positively impact the sector. Of those surveyed, 25% disagreed with the notion that the metaverse was good for gaming.

Flipsider:

• Video game developer Mark Venturelli recently launched an attack on NFTs, claiming that the introduction of speculative economic activity via NFTs would ruin the gaming experience for players.

Why You Should Care

The Globant survey suggests there is a growing consensus among gamers that the metaverse could be the future of the video game industry.

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