One week in review:
Sept. 12–18 We've selected the hottest materials of the past week for you to stay up to date with the latest crypto news: | | #1. Fake news: Litecoin price surges 35% following Walmart adoption hoax | | | While real news made the price of ADA drop, fake news made the price of Litecoin (LTC) pump this week. | | | Numerous publications reported on Monday that Walmart planned to have a "pay with Litecoin option" for its e-commerce websites starting on Oct. 1 as part of a partnership with the Litecoin Foundation. Following the spread of the fake report, the price of LTC surged 35% before sharply falling within hours. | | | A spokesperson from Walmart confirmed that the news was fake within an hour, while the Litecoin Foundation's director of marketing, Jay Milla, also told Cointelegraph that the announcement did not come from Litcecoin's side of things. | | | "The Litecoin Foundation has yet to enter into a partnership with Walmart," said Milla. | | #2. Cardano launches smart contracts after successful hard fork | | | After years of anticipation, Charles Hoskinson's brainchild, Cardano, finally launched its smart contract functionality via the Alonzo hard fork on Monday. You'd think the result of this would be some bullish price action for ADA but, alas, its price dropped 10% following the rollout. | | | While Cardano was keen to celebrate the milestone, it also emphasized in a blog post that it is still in the "early days" of the project, adding that now is when "the mission truly begins." | | | The team also urged its community to not be overzealous in boarding the hype train just yet, and to be patient with the smart contract functionality in its formative stages: | | | "There are high expectations resting on this upgrade. Some unreasonably so. Cardano watchers may be expecting a sophisticated ecosystem of consumer-ready DApps available immediately after the upgrade. Expectations need to be managed here." | | #3. Coinbase increases junk-bond offering to $2B after investors swarm | | | After seeing enormous demand for its $1.5 billion junk-bond offering that was announced on Monday, Coinbase reportedly increased the size of the sale to $2 billion. | | | According to a report from The Economic Times, there were at least $7 billion worth of orders that were placed in competition for seven- and 10-year bonds offering interest rates of 3.375% and 3.625%, respectively. | | | Coinbase stated on Monday that the raised funds put towards "continued investments in product developments" and "potential investments in or acquisitions of other companies, products, or technologies" in the future. | | | The funds might also come in handy when the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) comes knocking on the door with a lawsuit, if the USD coin lending program is actually launched. | | #4. Prediction of the week. New Bitcoin price model suggests BTC won't go below $39K again | | | William Clemente, an analyst, came up with a new metric for Bitcoin price boundary forecasts, posting the tool on Twitter this week. Called the "Illiquid Supply Floor," the chart merges PlanB's stock-to-flow metric and on-chain Bitcoin supply data from Glassnode. The result? A chart showing Bitcoin's current price against the backdrop of possible upper and lower price range boundaries. | | | Bitcoin rallied this week in the price category, showing recovery after the asset took a sizable dive down to the $43,000 range during the week of Sept. 7. | | | According to Clemente's chart, the $39,000 price range could be the current bottom limit for Bitcoin's price should it drop once again, given "a price floor based on Bitcoin's real-time scarcity" — Clemente's description of the lower limit on the chart. | | #5. FUD of the week. Solana and Arbitrum knocked offline, while Ethereum evades attack | | | The recent Solana-rama was temporarily brought to a halt this week after the supposed "ETH killer" suffered a denial-of-service disruption for around 45 minutes. | | | Twitter account Solana Status explained that a large increase in transaction load to 400,000 per second overwhelmed the network, creating the denial-of-service and causing the network to start forking. The incident appears to have slightly damped enthusiasm in SOL, as the price is down 26% over the past seven days. | | | Ethereum layer-two rollup network Arbitrum One also reported its sequencer had gone offline for roughly 45 minutes this week, while Ethereum was also the subject of an unsuccessful node attack from an unknown identity. | | #6. FUD of the week. OpenSea exec used the platform's influence to pump his own NFTs | | | Earlier this week, OpenSea head of product Nathan Chastain was named and shamed after he was outed for hyping NFTs he purchased and then featuring them on the homepage of the popular marketplace. | | | While being bullish on NFTs is nothing new, getting caught for tokenized insider trading is — and Nathan Chastain is estimated to have earned at least 18.875 Ether (ETH), $65,700 at time of writing, from his antics. | | | OpenSea officially confirmed the accusations on Wednesday, noting that it was "incredibly disappointing," and emphasized that the behaviour did not represent the firm's values as a team. Chastain then proceeded to hand in his resignation the following day with his tail between his legs. | | | Feel free to explore the most important news with Hodler's Digest: | | | |
