Google has invested $1.5 billion in 4 blockchain companies since September 2021.
Coinbase will suspend operations with Ethereum during the “Merger” of the network – these and other important news of the cryptocurrency market in our review.
Google’s parent company, Alphabet, has invested more in blockchain projects than other public companies, investing $1.5 billion between September 2021 and June 2022. According to an updated Blockdata report, Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOGL) has distributed investments among four blockchain companies, including custodial platform Fireblocks, gaming company Dapper Labs, infrastructure tool Voltage, and venture capital company Digital Currency Group.
Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase announced in a blog post that new deposits and withdrawals in ETH and ERC-20 tokens will be temporarily suspended on the platform during the Ethereum “Merge” (blockchain upgrade). Transactions that started before the suspension will also be delayed for a while. The “merger” is tentatively scheduled for September 15th. Coinbase Prime and Coinbase Exchange customers may experience delays when withdrawing funds, so the exchange encourages customers to withdraw funds in advance if necessary.
The capitalization of the stablecoin USD Coin (USDC) decreased by $1 billion in 10 days after Circle, the issuer of this coin, blocked Tornado Cash addresses. Now the market value of this cryptocurrency is $53.4 billion compared to $54.4 billion on August 8, according to Coingecko.
In seven months of 2022, hackers stole $1.9 billion in cryptocurrency as a result of hacking online platforms and blockchain projects. The value is up 60% year-on-year, according to analytics firm Chainalysis. Experts noted that in general, the proceeds of criminals have decreased this year due to the decline in the crypto market. Since the beginning of 2022, the price of bitcoin has almost halved, and fraudulent projects have begun to bring 65% less compared to last year.
There is a possibility that bitcoin could start to decline sharply in price, to $10-12 thousand, according to Norhstar & Badcharts technical analysts Kevin Wadsworth and Patrick Karim. In an interview with Kitco News, they explained their assumption with a technical analysis of the price chart of the first cryptocurrency. “According to the chart, the price of bitcoin is in an inverted arc opposite to the Cup pattern. There are a number of technical analysis methods that increase the probability to 70-80% that the price of bitcoin will make new lows around $ 10-12,000, and there are about 20-30% that it will start to grow,” Wadsworth said.
