Bitcoin at 3-week high ahead of ETH upgrade, CPI numbers

moneycontrol.com:

The world’s largest digital currency by market capitalisation, bitcoin (BTC), has zoomed past the $22,000 mark, a staggering gain of nearly 15 percent in a week, even as the crypto community awaits Ethereum’s move to proof of stake (PoS) consensus and inflation data in the United States.

PoS is a cryptocurrency device to arrive at a consensus for creating new blocks in a blockchain.

BTC is currently trading at $22,600 in Asian trading hours, up by about 2 percent over the past day and at a three-week high.

Trading volumes for BTC have increased by more than 20 percent despite the strained rally over the last day.

The majority of the trades have taken place on prominent centralised exchanges like Binance, FTX Exchange and Coinbase.

The second largest digital currency Ethereum (ETH), meanwhile, is trading down about 1 percent over the past day at $1732, ahead of ‘The Merge’.

ETH is, however, up around 7 percent in the last week.

According to Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin, ‘The Merge’ of Ethereum is anticipated around September 13 to September 15, concluding its shift from energy-guzzling proof of work to PoS consensus.

Total market cap of cryptos over $1 trillion

According to data from Coinmarketcap, the total market capitalisation of cryptocurrencies is largely flat at $1.07 trillion.

Other major cryptocurrencies like Solana, Cosmos, Avalanche and Polkadot are trading up 20, 27, 12 and 5 percent over the last week, respectively.

Crypto bounce should be heavily discounted: Tagus Capital

“The strong bounce in crypto last week happened with risk-on in global markets, so we should heavily discount it,” Bloomberg quoted Tagus Capital’s Ilan Solot as saying in a note.

“US CPI is due on Tuesday, so expect correlations to remain elevated