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Intel Ships Blockscale ASIC Chips To Selected Bitcoin Mining Companies

It’s official, Intel is part of the bitcoin mining business. The gargantuan technology company announced its “ultra-low-voltage energy-efficient” ASIC chip barely six months ago, and it’s already here. Under normal circumstances, infrastructural support from a multinational company like Intel would be tremendous for the bitcoin market. How will it react in the middle of all this chaos? Will it react at all? The news didn’t immediately do much, but the long-term effect remains to be seen.

Raja Koduri, Intel’s Architecture, Graphics and Software (IAGS) division’s senior vice president, recently tweeted: 

“Intel AXG Custom Compute team is now shipping the Blockscale ASIC! First product will always be unforgettable, congratulations team. Excited to see how Argo, Griid and Hive improvise around Blockscale and our open design.”

Notably absent from the list is BLOCK, Jack Dorsey’s company. Does that mean something or is BLOCK just fourth on the list? Three months ago, Bitcoinist quoted Raja Koduri emphatically saying:

“Our blockchain accelerator will ship later this year. We are engaged directly with customers that share our sustainability goals. Argo Blockchain, BLOCK (formerly known as Square) and GRIID Infrastructure are among our first customers for this upcoming product.”

The Bitcoin Miners React To Intel’s Announcement

Green mining company Hive was the first to react, they tweeted “HIVE is proud to have partnered with Intel, and we can’t wait to put the new ASICs to good use mining BTC!” A few months ago, the company was much more eloquent in a press release NewsBTC quoted. “These miners are expected to be delivered over a period of one year starting in the second half of calendar 2022, the effect of which, if they are all installed, would be an expected increase of up to 95% in our aggregate Bitcoin mining hashrate from 1.9 Exahash per second.”

For their part, Argo also went the simple route and tweeted. “Thanks, Raja Koduri and Intel. We’re excited to be innovating with these new ASIC chips in our custom immersion mining rigs. Our thanks to ePIC Blockchain for joining us on the ride.” That new player, ePIC Blockchain Technologies produces self-proclaimed “North American Designed ASIC RIGs.” So, innovation and customization are on the way.

Last but not least, let’s remember Raja Koduri’s words when Intel’s bitcoin mining experiment started: 

“Today, we at Intel are declaring our intent to contribute to the development of blockchain technologies, with a roadmap of energy-efficient accelerators. Intel will engage and promote an open and secure blockchain ecosystem and will help advance this technology in a responsible and sustainable way.”  

Remember that statement as we pass to the next section.

BTC price chart for 07/04/2022 on Bitfinex | Source: BTC/USD on TradingView.com
Mainstream Media Mocks Intel

In the eyes of mainstream media, bitcoin or anything related to it can’t do anything right. And this bear-market-of-sorts we’re into gives them the perfect ammunition to attack the technology and the billion-dollar market around it. Luckily, bitcoin doesn’t care. In the first mainstream article about Intel shipping its Blockscale ASIC chips ahead of time, The Register starts with valuable information:

“Blockscale is shipping a couple days ahead of Intel’s previously stated release window for the third quarter, which begins Friday. Even if it’s a tiny head start, it is nonetheless an achievement for a corporation that is becoming notoriously under-schedule across multiple products, including the Sapphire Rapids server chips and the discrete Arc GPUs.”

Only to then, start dunking on bitcoiners and Intel alike. They start with this:

“Experts and company officials are warning that the world of blockchain-fueled digital currencies is entering a crypto winter, a period where the value of virtual coins plunge and remain low. This last happened between early 2018 and mid-2020.”

And then, they dedicate 1000 words to the market’s condition instead of discussing Intel’s SEG energy-efficient intentions. Or the perfectly executed roll-out strategy that the company exhibited these last few months. Or the fact that bitcoin is humanity’s only hope.

Featured Image: Blockscale promotional image from this tweet | Charts by TradingView

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Active Ethereum Addresses Touch 2020 Levels, Will Price Follow?

Ethereum active addresses have continued to decline. This follows the market crash where the price of Ethereum had dropped to below $1,000 before staging another recovery. This decline has shown various implications for the digital asset and also points towards how investors could be feeling towards the digital asset.

Activity Falls To 2020 Lows

Data from the Block shows that the active addresses on the Ethereum network on a seven-day basis are down. These active addresses had hit a new all-time high back in June 2021 when the bull market had been in full bloom. The rise in active addresses was attributed to new investors moving into the digital asset due to the immense success it had seen so far at that point.

Related Reading | New Bitcoin Record Paints Incredibly Bearish Picture As BTC Struggles At $19,000

However, as the price of the digital asset had begun to suffer, active addresses had gone down with it. This came to a head in the middle of June 2022 when the crypto market had experienced arguably the worst market crash in its more than a decade of existence. Ethereum had quickly declined from around $1,800 where it had been trending and touched a low below $900.

Following this, there had been an uptick in the active addresses as investors scrambled to move their funds to avoid further losses. However, as sell-offs have died down, the number of active addresses has also taken a nosedive.

ETH active addresses decline | Source: The Block

Last week, it hit a new two-year low with 403.38k active addresses on Ethereum on a rolling 7-day basis. This had been in line with the number of new addresses on the network on the same rolling basis which had also fallen to December 2020 lows.

Ethereum In Response

With the new week just starting, the implications of the decline in active addresses are still yet to be seen. However, it does show what investors may be doing in regards to their holdings. One of these could show that there is now fatigue in the sell-offs that have rocked the market in recent times. As such, most investors are not moving their coins around in order to dump them.

If following historical movements, this could also mean that there is a recovery coming for the digital asset. Given that the last that the number of active addresses was this low, right before the 2021 bull run, a halt in sell-offs could definitely see the cryptocurrency retrace upward.

Related Reading | Leading Crypto Exchanges See Negative Funding Rates, Have The Bears Taken Over?

However, if a recovery is on the charts, it will be a hard-fought battle given the resistance that is building just above $1,200. If ETH is able to break this resistance, it will put it right above its 20-day moving average, providing the momentum needed to test $1,500 once more.

Featured image from Admiral Markets, chart from TradingView.com

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Cardano Vasil Hard Fork On The Horizon, Will ADA’s Price React To The Upside?

Cardano follows the general sentiment in the market and records a slight recovery during today’s trading session. If Bitcoin and larger cryptocurrencies managed to extend the bullish momentum, ADA seems poised to benefit.

Related Reading | Bitcoin Long-Term Holder Capitulation Approaching Bottom Zone, But Not Quite There Yet

At the time of writing, ADA’s price trades at $0.45 with a 2% profit in the last 24 hours. Over the last 7 days, Cardano remains in the red with a 6% loss.

ADA’s price trends to the downside on the 4-hour chart. Source: ADAUSDT Tradingview

The company behind Cardano’s development Input-Output Global (IOG) successfully forked the network’s testnet. An “important” step in the upcoming deployment of the Vasil upgrade on the mainnet.

The company called on to stakepool operators, exchange platforms, and other actors to “commence their final testing and integration processes”. One month from now, Cardano will launch Vasil on its mainnet and will complete one of its most important milestones for 2022.

According to IOG, Vasil will provide Cardano with “significant performance and capability upgrades”. The network will be able to increase its performance and throughput by providing developers with a “better experience”.

In addition, the network will become more interoperable and with new functionalities, such as an Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) that will facilitate the task of migrating an ERC20 token to Cardano. This could open the door for new decentralized applications (dApps) and protocols to be launched on the network. IOG said:

The Vasil upgrade is the most ambitious program of work we’ve undertaken. And the whole community is involved. Our prime concern is ensuring we manage this upgrade in a way that is safe and secure.

Still, it might take some time before these dApps grow while developers launch tools and allow users to interact with them. However, the long-term bullish potential is expanding at a face pace. On this topic, developer Sebastian Guillemot said:

One challenge with this is although they will now be supported at the protocol level, it will take some time for the tooling around these to be built. Notably, it will require some large change in how wallets handle tokens.

Cardano Founders On Their 2022 Priority

As the network advances to the Vasil upgrade, Charles Hoskinson, CEO at IOG, spoke about the work happening behind the scenes. 2022 has been a year dedicated to adoption, improvement scalability, and expanding the dApp ecosystem.

In that sense, Hoskinson spoke about the importance of the recent network updates including the Alonzo Hard Fork. The results are already tangible, according to the inventor of Cardano, and will continue with Vasil:

the work we’ve put in is showing – we’ve got a rapidly growing dApp and vibrant NFT ecosystem, with currently over 1,000 projects building on Cardano (…). It’s always difficult to define one key moment but the Vasil hard fork is pretty significant.

Once these improvements fall into place, IOG will turn its eye to governance. As Hoskinson said, they will still work on updating the network, but “each year has a theme”.

Related Reading | Mounting Support For Bitcoin At $19,000 As Market Ushers In A New Week

Ultimately, Hoskinson said, the network will achieve its potential by providing real-world value and use cases to the users. This goes hand in hand with having a “clear” roadmap despite the criticism about delays from certain users:

We have always pursued a defined, clearly-staged roadmap to deliver on Cardano’s capability and fulfil its long-term potential.

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Bitcoin Long-Term Holder Capitulation Approaching Bottom Zone, But Not Quite There Yet

On-chain data shows Bitcoin long-term holder capitulation has deepened recently, but has not entered into the historical bottom zone yet.

Bitcoin Long-Term Holder SOPR Continues To Observe Deep Values Below ‘1’

As explained by an analyst in a CryptoQuant post, BTC long-term holders have been realizing losses in recent weeks.

The “spent output profit ratio” (or SOPR in short) is an indicator that tells us whether Bitcoin investors are currently selling at a profit or at a loss.

The metric works by checking the on-chain history of each coin being sold to see what price it was last moved at. If this last selling value of any coin was less than the current BTC price, then that coin has now been sold at a profit.

Related Reading | Can This Bitcoin Ratio Have Hints For A Bottom?

On the other hand, the previous price being more than the one right now would imply the coin has realized some loss.

When the SOPR is greater than one, it means the overall Bitcoin market is harvesting some profits at the moment. On the contrary, a value less than that implies loss realization is going on among BTC investors right now.

“Long-term holder” group includes all BTC investors that held their coins for at least 155 days before selling or moving them. The below chart shows the trend in the 14-day MA SOPR specifically for these LTHs:

The value of the metric seems to have been going down recently | Source: CryptoQuant

As you can see in the above graph, the quant has marked all the relevant points of trend for the 14-day MA Bitcoin long-term holder SOPR.

It seems like the major bottoms in the history of the crypto were formed whenever the indicator’s value sank to a value of around 0.48 (denoted by the green line in the chart).

Related Reading | $15k Possible Bottom For Bitcoin? “Delta Cap” Says So

This kind of value occurs when LTHs go into deep capitulation. Since this is the BTC cohort least likely to sell at any point, large loss realization from them can signal that the bear bottom is coming near.

Currently, the indicator is also below 1, but it still has a value of about 0.62, a bit higher than the historical bottom zone. This would suggest that while Bitcoin may be heading towards a bottom, it’s not quite there yet.

BTC Price

At the time of writing, Bitcoin’s price floats around $19.4k, down 9% in the past week. The below chart shows the trend in the value of the crypto over the last five days.

Looks like the price of the coin has been moving sideways over the last few days | Source: BTCUSD on TradingView
Featured image from Brent Jones on Unsplash.com, charts from TradingView.com, CryptoQuant.com

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Mounting Support For Bitcoin At $19,000 As Market Ushers In A New Week

Bitcoin has come out of the weekend with less than favorable performance but it has not been all bad for the digital asset either. After falling below $20,000, it trended low towards the end of last week. However, the cryptocurrency has been able to hold the $19,000 level despite efforts from the bears to pull it down. This has been due to a number of factors but most importantly is the support that has been forming at this level.

Support At $19,000

After struggling to hold above $19,000 for most of last week, the digital asset had subsequently found its footing above $19,000. This price point is important for bitcoin given that it was where its previous cycle peak had occurred. Although it had actually broken below this point multiple times this year already. However, with the recovery above 19,000 once, the bulls look to have found their spot and the support at this level has been growing.

Related Reading | Leading Crypto Exchanges See Negative Funding Rates, Have The Bears Taken Over?

It is propelled forward by bitcoin investors who are taking this as a cue to buy the digital asset for cheap. Mostly, whales have been the most active during this time even amid the extremely low investor sentiment. These whales who are purchasing their tokens on spot continue to fill their bags.

Data shows that these wallets that hold more than 1,000 BTC on their balances have added 140,000 BTC per month, which has brought their total holdings to 8.69 million BTC. This means that these bitcoin whales now hold 45.6% of the total circulating supply.

BTC continues recovery trend | Source: BTCUSD on TradingView.com

The whales are not the only ones buying up bitcoin. Smaller holders with less than 1 BTC have also ramped up their activities by buying at these prices. They have added to their balances at a rate of 36,750 BTC per month, bringing their total holdings to 1.12 million BTC, or 0.2% of the circulating supply.

Will Bitcoin Continue To Hold?

As of the early hours of Monday, bitcoin had begun another recovery trend that has put the price above $19,300. Although not a significant recovery by any stretch, it has put the digital asset on a green start to the new week.

Related Reading | New Bitcoin Record Paints Incredibly Bearish Picture As BTC Struggles At $19,000

Nevertheless, the digital asset continues to trade below important technical levels such as the 50-day movie average. Due to this, the chances of bitcoin holding the recovery trend through the rest of the week remain slim as there is not enough demand to offset the coins being dumped by the sellers.

This means that while the price will likely recover above $19,500, there may be another downtrend before the day is over. This will put the mounting support at the $19,000 level to the test. But if bitcoin can continue to hold and the market sees a significant spike in demand, the next major resistance awaits the cryptocurrency at $20,500.

Featured image from FortuneBuilders, chart from TradingView.com

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Ethereum Gas Fees Falls To Record Low, Price Consolidates Around $1,000

After reaching a level last seen in November 2020, the average Ethereum gas fee is now below $1.

Ethereum Gas Fees Falls

The Ethereum network experienced transaction fees as low as 69 cents on Saturday, which has not happened in the previous 19 months. The following day, gas prices reached $1.57 or 0.0015 ETH, which is equivalent to December 2020’s numbers. Transaction costs on the network today ranged from 20 cents to merely 20 cents, with 20 cents being the highest.

Gas prices in the Ethereum ecosystem ranged from $0.01 to $0.10 from July 2016 to May 2017. Users are now assessed a substantial cost; in May 2021, average transaction fees reached $69 per transaction. The highest gas price ever observed was $196.683 in May 2022.

Notably, the Ethereum blockchain has struggled to become widely used, much to the chagrin of users, due to the high cost of gas or network fees, payments necessary to complete a transaction on a blockchain. NFT holders are seen profiting from the decline as the numbers dwindle.

Source: Bitinfo charts

DappRadar reports that 50,466 people have traded their assets in OpenSea, up 10.14 percent from the previous day. At the time of writing, the largest NFT market’s trading volume increased by 34.18 percent to $15.92 million.

All of the top 20 collections, led by Ethereum Name Service, DopeApeClub, God Hates NFTees, Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), and Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC), were transacted within Ethereum, according to data from DappRadar.

Related reading | TA: Ethereum Close Below $1K Could Spark Larger Degree Downtrend

Price Slumps Further

The analysis of the price of ethereum is bearish due to consolidation near $1,050 and rejection of further recovery. As a result, ETH/USD is prepared to decline even further and surpass the $1,000 local support. After that is finished, the prior swing low at $900 should be challenged the following week.

The decline approached the $1040–$1000 area that serves as a close support and was accompanied by a sharp increase in demand pressure. The numerous smaller price rejection candles at this point represent attempts by sellers to break through this support that were unsuccessful.

Therefore, the renewed positive momentum could encourage buyers to again attack the overhead barrier of $1260, providing ETH holders with a chance for a recovery.

ETH/USD consolidates above $1k. Source: TradingView

At the start of the week, a significant new swing bottom was established in the price movement of ethereum. After falling by more than 21%, the price of ETH/USD hit a new low at $1,000.

From then, a swift upward reaction continued to the $1,115 level, where Friday’s rejection of further recovery was observed. Following sideways consolidation, lower local highs and lows were set.

Since then, the $1,050 level has functioned as the main trading range, with this morning’s denial of further gains. As a result, ETH/USD is prepared to drop even more and try to surpass the current low of $1,000.

If the traders continue to be persuaded by the sellers to break through the bottom support, the next decline could drive the price of ETH down by 12.56% to $880.

Related reading | Ethereum (ETH) Bends Toward $1,000 As Doubt Fills Crypto Markets

Featured image UnSplash, chart from TradingView.com

 

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Market Update: Bitcoin And Ethereum Struggles To Recover, AR And NMR Soars Significantly

Despite the market condition, top currencies, Bitcoin and Ethereum, struggle to regain their values. On the other hand, some altcoins, AR, and NMR are showing a significant gain charm over 14-days.

Since the Fed Reserve decided to raise interest rates and the May inflation report, Bitcoin has been floating in a small zone between $19,000 and $20,000. Thus, it is difficult for it to recover any significant upward pace.

Related Reading | Solana (SOL) Stuck Below $33 In Past Days As Bearish Pressure Still Intact

Bitcoin, the most valuable cryptocurrency, has dropped more than 70% in value since peaking at $67,000 in November 2021.

However, according to CoinGecko data, BTC is now trading at $19,500 and has experienced losses of 7.8% and 5.4% during the last 7 and 14 days, respectively.

Senior market analyst at the foreign exchange trading firm Oanda, Edward Moya, claims that Bitcoin is under pressure and finding it difficult to hold onto the $20,000 level.

BTC is currently trading above the $19,500 level on the hourly chart | Source: BTC/USD price char from Tradingview.com

Ethereum had a successful year in 2021, reaching an all-time high price of $4850 in November. But since last month, the price of Ethereum, which had a great November like bitcoin, has been floating between $1,100 and $1,000.

Meanwhile, it made an effort and struggled to recoup its value, but the price of Ethereum couldn’t rise beyond $1,100. CoinGecko data shows ETH is currently trading at $1,073.58, and in the past 7 and 14 days, ETH has lost 10.6% and 0.6% of its value, respectively.

Significant Growth in AR and NMR

Arweave (AR), one of the top 100 crypto assets by performance and market capitalization, is booming, while two of the most popular currencies are faltering. Per the statistics from CoinGecko, AR has reached $11 and increased by 10% in one day, 15% in seven days, and 32% in fourteen.

A decentralized storage network, Arweave aims to provide a platform for the long-term archival of data. The Arweave network pays “miners” to keep the network’s data permanently stored using its native coin, named AR.

Similarly, Numeraire (NMR) is also leading in week gainers. It displays a noteworthy increase of 122% over a week. NMR is currently trading at $19.37, per the statistics of Coinmarketcap.

Additionally, during the previous 14 days, Numeraire has outperformed the rest of the cryptocurrency market and made massive gains, increasing by about 16% over the past day. As a result, trade volumes have exploded, according to CoinGecko.

Related Reading | Litecoin (LTC) Drops Below $50 After Consistent Bearish Squeeze

Since its peak in May last year, NMR has dropped by 79%. It is, however, showing an uptrend at the moment, which may help it rise over these prior lows.

Moreover, some other coins are showing positive vibes, including TerraUSD with a gain of 17% during the last 24 hours, RUNE showing a 13% gain in the previous 24 hours, Celsius with 15% in the same period, and CEEK with 15%.

Featured image from Pixabay, and chart from Tradingview

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Bitcoin Ready For Fireworks? Long Positions See Uptick This 4th Of July

Bitcoin seems to be forming a new range around its current levels as the cryptocurrency moves between the $18,600 and $21,000 area. BTC’s price has seen some recovery during today’s trading session and might experience some volatility due to the U.S. Independence Day, July 4th.

Related Reading | Solana (SOL) Stuck Below $33 In Past Days As Bearish Pressure Still Intact

At the time of writing, Bitcoin trades at $19,500 with a 4% profit in the last 24 hours.

BTC trends to the downside on the 4-hour chart. Source: BTCUSD Tradingview

Data from analyst Ali Martinez indicates an increase in Bitcoin holdings from addresses with 100 to 10,000 BTC. These whales have been adding over 30,000 BTC to their holdings.

In addition, Martinez records over 40,000 BTC leaving crypto exchange platforms. The less Bitcoin supply there is available on these venues, the less it can be sold on the market.

These market dynamics translated into this weekend’s price action. In addition, Material Indicators records an increase in buying pressure from investors with a large bid (purple in the chart below) which coincides with short-term whale accumulation.

These whales have been the “most influential” over the BTC’s price action and could be hinting at more gains. Material Indicators also recorded bullish momentum on the weekend’s price action.

In fact, every investor class except retail and massive whales with over $1 million in bid orders seems to be buying into BTC’s price action, as seen in the chart below.

Bitcoin whales (purple) buying into BTC’s price action. Source: Material Indicators

Additional data provided by Santiment records a huge uptick in the number of long positions across exchange platforms. This coincides with the U.S. holiday, but it’s not necessarily good news for these operators:

In the early hours of 4th of July 2022 in the US, there has been a massive uptick in #longs on exchanges in the previous hour. Trader optimism often correlates with holidays, which means there needs to be a greater degree of cautiousness of whales punishing the overly eager.

What Is Causing Pain Across The Bitcoin Market

There are some indicators of possible bullish price action in the short term, but the uptick in long positions merits cautions. The macro-economic outlook seems less optimistic and could spell more pain for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

Trading desk QCP Capital claims its bullish outlook is “waning” on the back of the U.S. Federal Reserve’s (Fed) intentions of slowing down inflation in the country. The financial institution has been increasing interest rates for that purpose wreaking havoc across global markets.

Initially, some experts believed the Fed was going to attempt to conduct a “soft landing”, and bring down inflation without harming the economy. This possibility might have been ruled out as the Fed finds itself between a rock and a hard place. QCP wrote:

Fed Governor Williams stated the “need to get real rates above zero”. This means that the Fed is likely to ignore recession risks and will keep raising rates aggressively to reach their target of 3.5%-4% by year-end.

Related Reading | TA: Bitcoin Remains In Downtrend, What Could Spark Sharp Upside

On top of the above, the financial institutions have been reducing liquidity off global markets while shrinking their balance sheet. This only signals more downside for the crypto market.