Is Cardano really exciting?

Good morning! Welcome to The Daily Moon. South Korea is left red-faced. The government’s YouTube account was hacked to broadcast a clip featuring Elon Musk pumping crypto. It took over an hour to regain control, by which time the damage was already done.

The markets showed mixed signals. Bitcoin was below $19,800 levels while Ethereum rose marginally to ~$1,580 ahead of the Merge start date. Nasdaq was shut for Labour Day. Back home, Sensex and Nifty rose on gains in banking stocks.

ADA Is In Full Force

Cardano has some good news for positivity-starved crypto investors. The token price raced ~4%. A major upgrade planned on the blockchain has aided the bull run. And now it’s overtaken Ripple’s XRP to become the seventh largest crypto by market cap.

What caused the surge? Cardano saw a spurt in network activity, with a 30% rise in trading volumes. This coincided with the Vasil hard fork announcement. The hard fork will be done on September 22.

FYI Vasil is an upgrade designed to increase Cardano's scaling capabilities and reduce transaction costs. A hard fork will cause a change to the software to validate and produce new blocks.

Source: Essential Cardano

Whales circle in Cardano, dubbed the "Ethereum Killer", aims to provide services at cheaper fees and faster speed than Ethereum. ADA’s social volume also saw a spike in the past 30 days in anticipation of the hard fork date release. This caught the interest of Cardano whales who have started to accumulate the crypto.

When the hard fork concludes, decentralised applications or dApps on Cardano will also see speed improvements.

More gains aheadSoftware upgrades in the past have led to price rallies for Cardano. Experts predict Cardano to reach $2.93 by the end of 2023.

Bitcoin’s Summer Of Woes

The most traded cryptocurrency has just had a summer of lows. It started in June at ~$31,800 and ended 33% lower by the end of August. Sure, all crypto is volatile, but Bitcoin’s future price depends on a host of factors, including the Ethereum Merge. Allow us to explain:

1. Like CoinDesk points out, historical indicators point to the fact that Bitcoin prices decreased in September 2020 and 2021. But this year, all eyes are on the Merge.

2. Whichever way it goes, Ethereum’s move to a proof-of-stake model will have repercussions for Bitcoin. It may drive prices up, down, or somewhere in between.

3. Vitalik Buterin also said he’s worried about Bitcoin’s ability to compete in the long term if it continues its proof-of-work model.

The Merge is now less than ten days away. Bitcoin is still trading at ~$19,000. It touched $18,800 levels once in July. This promises to be an action-packed month.

LG Connects To Crypto

Banks, stock brokers, technology companies, and now electronics makers. The crypto-list has gotten longer. South Korean electronics major LG will launch a crypto wallet, called Wallypto, and enable users to buy digital assets through their TV sets.

What does the TV do?LG will partner with the Hedera hashgraph to offer NFT trading on the television sets. Hedera is based on distributed ledger technology like blockchain, but uses less energy.

Simultaneously, Wallypto is being tested by select developers. It is expected to be compatible with the NFT platform as well as LG’s Internet of Things application ThinQ. In addition, it will also support Hedera’s tokens and verify crypto transactions.

Not the only oneIn January 2022, Samsung announced the launch of three TV models with NFT trading services. LG is the second brand to join the club. After Hedera’s HTS token, LG may also expand Wallypto to support other crypto tokens.

Greener pastures for Polygon

Polygon’s native token MATIC pipped DAI to become the 12th largest cryptocurrency in the world. It rose over 10% in the last week, according to data from Coinmarketcap.

Interesting. But why?Because of all the love it saw over the week from some industry bigwigs:

1. Polygon is one of the three blockchains Meta supports for cross-posting NFTs.

2. The stock and crypto investing app Robinhood added support for MATIC, allowing users to make deposits and withdrawals on the Polygon network.

3. The biggest NFT marketplace, OpenSea, also added support for MATIC.

What now?The outlook on MATIC is generally positive, and these integrations do bear good news for Polygon.

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Who are we? There is a lot happening in our world. Everything has layers, and each layer has to be carefully peeled so you, the reader, know how the world of money is changing every day. That’s our promise. Help you unpeel the onions, which are the public markets in the US, India, and crypto, so that you know just a little more.