Bitcoin Price: US$ 60,256.15 (-4.63%)
Ethereum Price: US$ 3,352.73 (-1.99%)
Bitcoin’s hash price has plummeted to near its lowest level ever, recording a 52% drop to $0.0459 per terahash second on June 24. This has triggered “survival games” for miners, although most mining machines remain profitable. Concurrently, the price of Bitcoin has fallen by 6.8% over the last week to $60,590, a downturn influenced by news of Mt. Gox’s plans to sell $8.6 billion worth of Bitcoin and outflows from US Bitcoin exchange-traded funds. Amid these developments, Alex Lab, a Bitcoin layer-2 developer, has been grappling with a $4 million exploit suspected to be linked to the notorious North Korean hacking consortium, Lazarus Group. Despite a 10% slump in the price of the Bitcoin Layer-2 protocol’s native ALEX token over the last week and the exploit, the team has assured users that the smart contracts of the Alex Protocol were never compromised. Adding to the industry’s woes, the Crypto Fear and Greed Index, a measure of market sentiment for Bitcoin and the broader cryptocurrency industry, has dropped to its lowest score in nearly 18 months. This drop in sentiment has been fuelled by outflows from spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds, news that Mt. Gox could be preparing to sell $8.5 billion worth of Bitcoin, and Germany’s decision to start selling some of its Bitcoin reserves.
MT. Gox platform is set to begin repaying its defunct users in Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash starting July 2024. This repayment, which involves more than $9.4 billion worth of Bitcoin owed to approximately 127,000 creditors, was initiated with the transfer of 141,686 BTC worth $9.62 billion into a new wallet in May, marking the first onchain movement of funds from the collapsed exchange in over five years. Despite potential delays from the current deadline set in September 2023, repayments are expected to start soon, and analysts suggest that Mt. Gox’s scheduled repayment of $8.5 billion worth of Bitcoin to creditors next month may not cause as much disruption for the price of Bitcoin as expected, with estimates suggesting around half of the total Bitcoin could hit the market beginning in July. Meanwhile, the U.S. state of Louisiana has amended its legislation to ban the use of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) and set rules for miners and node operators, with the revised law becoming effective in August 2024. The legislation also enforces tight controls over foreign-owned digital asset mining companies and provides a definition for node operators, clarifying their role in a network. However, the prospects of a digital dollar in the United States are becoming increasingly uncertain, with states like Louisiana taking legislative action to restrict or ban the use of CBDCs and presidential contenders expressing differing views on the matter. According to the Cointelegraph Research database, at least 110 countries are actively exploring or developing a CBDC, with 39 having progressed to more advanced stages such as piloting or launching CBDC initiatives.
Stablecoin giant Tether announced it will stop minting USDT tokens on the Eos and Algorand blockchains starting June 24, though it will continue to redeem USDT on these blockchains for the next 12 months. This decision aligns with Tether’s strategy to allocate resources to more secure and efficient blockchain networks, while the total USDT supply on Eos and Algorand represents less than 0.1% of the circulating USDT. Bitcoin and Ether transaction fees have declined to their lowest levels in several months amid a sharp market downturn; as of June 23, the average Bitcoin transaction fee dropped to $1.93, and Ether gas fees fell to around 4.5 gwei, largely due to reduced network activity and a shift to Ethereum’s layer-2 networks following the Dencun upgrade.
Source: https://cointelegraph.com
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