ETH has miles to go

Good morning! Welcome to The Daily Moon. Do Kwon hasn’t fled Singapore. Seemingly. The Terra founder tweeted that he has “nothing” to hide. But won’t reveal his current location. Apparently, you need to be friends with him to know that.

The markets were in the red zone. Bitcoin fell to $18,700 levels while Ethereum was down to ~$1,310. Nasdaq fell in early trade. Back home, Sensex and Nifty made small gains.

Merge’s Made An Impression, But…

Ethereum’s move to proof-of-stake didn’t go unnoticed. Institutions and retail investors bought more Ether in the wake of Merge’s success. But a large-scale shift is some time away.

Is the excitement on?Well, that’s cooled off. Ethereum is down to $1,300 levels. In the futures market, where traders bet on the future prices of crypto, Bitcoin beat Ethereum.

But there was interest from institutions in the spot market. Between September 12-16, there was a 56% jump in Ethereum purchases by corporate investors. Merge may have been the reason.

What comes next?The Merge is complete and Ethereum now works on a staking model. Those who deposit 32 Ether and above are eligible to become block validators. The issue here is that it will take at least six months for staked Ether to be open for withdrawals.

For now, there’s some disappointment because there have not been any immediate speed benefits. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin had said that the blockchain could process up to 100,000 transactions per second. But that will happen only when the network completes all the upgrades. That’s Surge, Verge, Purge, and Splurge; which could take almost three years.

Centralised or not?One concern is that most of the PoS blocks are built on an entity called Flashbots. So if this entity crashes, the network is at risk.

Meanwhile…The Ethereum PoW token is still in a free fall. It fell ~30% to reach $5.5 levels. RIP.

ADA’s Hard Fork Is Here

Now that the Merge is finally done, the next big event in the world of crypto is fast approaching. Cardano’s Vasil hard fork will happen on Thursday. This software upgrade could speed up the network and fix security gaps.

The date is setWhile the hard fork is scheduled for Thursday, some changes will kick in only next week. But the news is good enough for Cardano’s price rise. The market expects the token to inch closer to $1 levels after the hard fork is completed.

FYI Hard fork means to split a blockchain to make it more scalable. Vasil will help create more decentralised apps (dApps) on Cardano.

Why it mattersCardano (ADA) is the more eco-friendly and less expensive rival to Ethereum. This upgrade will help the blockchain adapt quickly to changes. Delays in block additions will also be reduced once this upgrade goes through. Net-net, dApps benefit.

Fun fact: The Vasil hard fork is named after Vasil Dabov, a Bulgarian mathematician who passed away in December. He was an active member of the Cardano community.

Crypto Hits Crash Course

It wasn’t a happy weekend for the crypto world. The total crypto market cap fell below $1 trillion, again. It’s true that market cap doesn’t quite work in crypto markets like stocks, for example, but the $1 trillion mark is like a psychological peak.

Why did it fall?The big reason is, of course, macroeconomic factors. The recent US inflation data showed that price increases are yet to cool off. Then there is the Fed’s upcoming rate hike, expected to be the biggest in 40 years. The Merge also contributed to the market fall. Less than a week into it, the market is already calling the Merge a “buy the rumour, sell the news” event.

Bright spots ahead?Popular trader Clark compared the current bearish trends to that of the '70s. He expects the market to turn bullish towards the end of the year. We can't wait.

SHIB’s Taking Another Shot

Shiba Inu wants to become a little more relevant. The meme crypto has launched concept art that will be woven into its Shib metaverse. We feel Shiba Inu is hunting for a use case and is throwing things to see what sticks.

FYI Concept art is a rough glimpse of what the surroundings in a specific metaverse will look like.

What will it do?There will be a metaverse not just for the Shib Army, but also for luxury tourists. That means more concept art releases and more NFTs. Their hope is that this will help push up token prices.

But even the whales have given up. They sold over 1 trillion Shiba Inu tokens last week. We wonder if Elon still holds some.

And that’s it for today. If this email was forwarded to you, please consider subscribing. It’s free. We’ll never show you an ad or charge you for this. We swear.

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.