Crypto newsletter: Ether price hit 2 week high ahead of London hard fork

• The Bitcoin network’s mining difficulty has decreased 28%
• Social media giants launch ETH-based NFTs
• Ether hits 2-week high in anticipation of London hard fork in July

It has been another week when we haven’t seen notable price changes across major cryptocurrencies with Ethereum being the only exception.  Price of the second-largest cryptocurrency broke above $2,300 over the weekend ahead of major protocol upgrades which are fueling investors’ appetite for ETH. Meanwhile Bitcoin trades sideways between $36,500 and $32,000 which has contributed to relative calmness elsewhere in the crypto market. Bitcoin's dominance decreased to 44.9%. The capitalization of all digital assets in circulation rose to 1.39 trillion, while an average daily trading volume is registered at $65.62 billion.

Bitcoin network undergoes largest mining difficulty drop ever

The mining difficulty of the Bitcoin network has dropped by nearly 28% recently which is the biggest decrease ever recorded as the network adjusts to the massive drop in hash rate following China’s recent crackdown on cryptocurrency mining.

The mining difficulty of Bitcoin measures the computational power needed to validate BTC transactions. The network adjusts the difficulty level every two weeks to reflect the amount of competition between miners. The recent plunge in difficulty suggests that there is less competition.

Bitcoin has seen its biggest-ever mining difficulty decrease this weekend. Source: The Block

Lower hash rate led to a slower rate of block production. Source: The Block

Given the latest drop, mining is now significantly more economically attractive to many current and potential participants. As such, in the coming days more miners may well begin operating, increasing the hash rate and thus perhaps mitigating the need to decrease difficulty much further.

BITCOIN has been trading in a local sideways move recently. Cryptocurrency again failed to break above the resistance at $36.500, and continued range trading looks to be the base case scenario. Should declines continue, investors should focus on the $32,000 handle, where the previous price reactions can be found. Soure: xStation5

Ether price hits 2-week high as London hard fork approaches

Ether was one of the best performing crypto assets last week as investors remain cautiously optimistic about the upcoming London hard fork which is expected to have a positive impact on Ether’s value thanks to several proposal upgrades, including the transition to the eco-friendly proof-of-stake consensus and a new “scarcity” feature that will reduce the number of tokens in circulation.

Meanwhile Twitter and Reddit both auctioned three ‘CryptoSnoos,’ NFTs built on the Ethereum blockchain on OpenSea for 105, 175, and 115 ETH, respectively.  Meanwhile Twitter followed Reddit’s lead and created eight NFTs for sale via ‘The 140 Collection’ on Rarible. This indicates that despite recent sell-off on the cryptocurrency market, the adoption of Ethereum-based applications is still rising. Unlike Bitcoin, which can only be used as a store of value or speculative currency, the ETH blockchain accrues fundamental value and continues to improve.

Meanwhile the supply on exchanges confirms that Ethereum price remains bullish from a long-term perspective. Since April, this metric has dropped from 23.0 million to 20.8 million ETH which suggests that traders are withdrawing their cryptocurrencies from exchange to cold wallets as they expect that price will move higher in the near future.

The supply on exchanges decreased 6% over the past three months. Source: Santiment

ETHEREUM price jumped to $2,385 on Sunday, its highest reading since June 18, however buyers failed to uphold momentum and price pulled back below 200 SMA (red line) and is currently approaching the lower limit of the wedge formation. Should break lower occur, then downward move may  accelerate towards support at $2025.00. Source: xStation5