1. Market Wrap: Bitcoin Briefly Above $56K, Ether Follows BTC’s Rally
There are still several psychological barriers for bitcoin to break, even as it passed a key milestone of $1 trillion in market capitalization.
Bitcoin broke briefly above a key resistance level at $56,000 on Friday, while ether’s slowly catching up to bitcoin’s gains.
Bitcoin (BTC) trading around $55,512.76 as of 22:00 UTC (5 p.m. ET). Gaining 6.60% over the previous 24 hours.
Bitcoin’s 24-hour range: $50,821.47-$56,283.55
BTC trades above its 10-hour and 50-hour averages on the hourly chart, a bullish signal for market technicians.
2. Bitcoin Brokerage River Financial Raises $17M: SEC Filings
River Financial’s equity sale comes as the high-end brokerage embarks on a major hiring push.
High-end bitcoin brokerage River Financial raised $17.3 million in a recent equity sale, according to documents filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Thursday.
Form D filings reveal two-year-old River aims to raise nearly $500,000 in additional funding for a total of nearly $17.8 million. The firm reported 34 backers in its latest filing but none of them were known at press time.
It was not immediately clear if the $17 million figure includes funds from the $5.7 million seed round River completed last July with backing from Castle Island Ventures, Slow Ventures and a slew of other VCs. Partners at those firms did not respond to multiple CoinDesk inquiries.
CEO Alexander Leishman acknowledged in a brief phone interview Thursday the brokerage was considering pursuing additional funding. He confirmed in a Friday follow-up that River’s counsel had submitted documents to the SEC but declined to elaborate on the round.
3. Ethereum Core Developers Eye Mid-April for ‘Berlin’ Hard Fork
The hard fork will facilitate live swapping Ethereum from a proof-of-work to a proof-of-stake blockchain.
Ethereum developers have scheduled the Berlin hard fork for April 14 at block height 12,244,000, according to the Ethereum All Core Developers meeting Friday.
The hardfork includes various optimizations for contracts including gas efficiencies, updates to how code is read by the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) and other changes to protect against denial-of-service (DDOS) attacks.
The Berlin hard fork was originally scheduled for June or July 2020, but was pushed back mainly due to centralization concerns around the Geth client on which most Ethereum nodes run. Moreover, developers working on the current base layer blockchain, often called Eth 1.x, have expressed strain from maintaining the client.
4. Nyan Cat NFT Sells for 300 ETH, Opening Door to the ‘Meme Economy’
“I’ve basically opened the door to a whole new meme economy in the crypto world,” Nyan Cat’s creator said.
An age-old question of how to monetize memes appears to have found an answer. This afternoon, the storied internet sensation, Nyan Cat, sold for 300.00 ETH (about $590,000) in an online auction. It wasn’t the .gif file that was sold, which is still reproducible and found everywhere online, but a cryptographic hash of the psychedelic image on the Ethereum blockchain.
Chris Torres, who created the meme 10 years ago, confirmed the sale and his role in it over email. This was his first experiment with nonfungible tokens (NFTs), a type of digital asset that has taken the crypto scene by storm recently. NFTs, like Bitcoin, are provably scarce and uniquely identifiable. They’ve found application in the world of digital art, as well as more earth-bound industries.
“I am still relatively new to crypto in general, but I see its full potential,” Torres said. The sale took place on the crypto art platform Foundation, which launched just two weeks ago. The auction was open for 24 hours, with bids starting at 3 ETH.
In recent weeks, a number of historical NFTs have sold for hundreds of ETH, like one Crypto Punk variant priced at over $1 million. The NFT-based art market, which has surged with the crypto markets, is now worth over $100 million, with success seen by crypto-native and traditional artists alike.
5. Ideamarket Is a Literal Marketplace for Ideas (and Online Reputation)
The goal is to relieve social media platforms of the task of making judgments on behalf of the public.
With Facebook cutting news from its platform for Australians and most Americans having lost trust in media, the search for reliable information has sent many down the halls of Reddit, YouTube and other social media platforms.
Credibility is hard to find. But one Los Angeles-based startup is providing what it argues are objective rankings of information distributors. Built on Ethereum, Ideamarket launched this week and lets users put their money behind social media accounts they deem important.
In essence, it’s a manifestation of the generally amorphous “marketplace of ideas.”
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In the future, ZBG will continue to expand its global market and provide stable, safe and fast blockchain project listing, diversified crypto assets and blockchain derivatives investment services to more blockchain enthusiasts around the world.
ZBG Official English (Telegram): https://t.me/ZBG_Exchange
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Twitter：https://twitter.com/ZBG_Exchange
ZBG, World’s top 10 crypto currency exchange.
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ZBG Team
February 20, 2021
