Tesla CEO Elon Musk has liked an open letter penned by Dogecoin creator Billy Markus, who tweets under the handle Shibetoshi Nakamoto, to the Dogecoiners.
Markus extols such qualities as “kindness, empathy, fund, and creative” as well as “silliness and absurdity,” which he believe give the community its true value:
If the community embodies these things, that’s True Value.
The letter—which was published almost half a year ago—might not hold true today given that many members of the Dogecoin community have succumbed to greed and tribalism following the meme coin’s meteoric rise in the second quarter of 2021.
I wrote this open letter with these words now 143 days ago. How’s the Dogecoin community feel we are doing? pic.twitter.com/g6WFo6HFEH
— Shibetoshi Nakamoto (@BillyM2k) July 2, 2021
Hence, Shibetoshi decided to repost his message one more time to check how the community he helped to engender is doing today. Earlier today, Musk also managed to briefly push the Dogecoin price by 3 percent with a provocative meme.Source

The price of Ripple (XRP) is in a downtrend after rejecting the high at $0.73. The recent uptrend to the high at $0.73 allows the bulls to rally above the previous low at $0.65. However, the uptrend has ended.
Ripple (XRP) Price Long-Term Forecast: Bearish
It is unlikely that Ripple will regain the previous highs of $0.96 and $1.10. If the bears break the previous low at $0.65 to the downside, selling pressure will resume.
The market will first drop to $0.59 and later to $0.31. Meanwhile, Ripple has fallen to support above $0.65. The bears are likely to break the support and later break the next support at $0.51. There are signs that selling pressure will extend to the low at $0.31. Ripple is now trading at $0.6470 at the time of writing. Ripple (XRP) Indicator Analysis
The market has fallen to the 40 level on the Relative Strength Index for period 14. Ripple is still in the bearish trend zone and is capable of falling lower. The 21-day and the 50-day SMA are sloping downward, indicating the downtrend. The 21-day SMA crosses above the 50-day SMA, which is a bearish signal. XRP is below the 60% area of the daily stochastic. The market is in a bearish momentum.Source

The launch of the energy efficient Ethereum 2.0 network will popularize the proof-of-stake consensus mechanism and make staking yields a more attractive source of income for both institutional and retail investors according to a new JPMorgan report. The authors estimate that holders of staked coins on PoS blockchains are currently generating some $9 billion in revenue annually from their staked holdings. When Ethereum completes its transition from proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS) next year, the analysts expect payouts will more-than-double to $20 billion. They project staking yields across the blockchain industry to double again to $40 billion by 2025.The two senior analysts also compared the financial incentives with staked cryptocurrencie to cash, cash equivalents, and fixed income instruments like U.S. Treasury bondsSource

The flagship cryptocurrency traded at the $32,000 level earlier today, however, by now the price has decreased to the $30,000 zone,
losing almost 7 percent.
On Friday, Bitcoin was exchanging hands at $35,000 per coin. 8316_0 The impact of the Chinese crackdown on cryptocurrency miners and crypto traders on the Bitcoin price continues along with that of the low BTC hashrate that has lost over 50 percent from its ATH of 171 EH/s.
The ATH was reached on May 13 and by June 24 the BTC hashrate dropped to 83.4 EH/s – the low last seen after the Bitcoin halving in May last year.Source

British auction house Christie’s will accept bitcoin and ether for a painting worth an estimated $6 million. The digital wallet used to pay for the painting must be held at one of the approved custodians, such as Coinbase, Fidelity, Gemini, or Paxos.Paying for Paintings With Bitcoin at Christie’s
Christie’s, one of the largest auction houses in the world, will accept cryptocurrency for a painting by Keith Haring at its “20th/21st century” sale in London next week.
Katharine Arnold, co-head of post-war and contemporary art for Christie’s in Europe, told Reuters that the painting “is probably the very first example that we see of an artist celebrating the computer.” She elaborated: “It was 1984 that Apple Macintosh was first launched. So it’s really a piece of history.” Arnold added: So the potential for paying in cryptocurrency for the full hammer price and buyer’s premium was something that felt like this was a perfect marriage.The painting has an estimated value of 3.9 million pounds – 4.5 million pounds ($5.42 million – $6.25 million).
Two cryptocurrencies will be accepted. “Payment in ether or bitcoin must be made via a digital wallet transfer of that currency to Christie’s,” the auction house’s website describes, noting that partial payments from multiple digital wallets will not be allowed.However, the digital wallet used must be held with one of the following custodians: Coinbase Custody Trust, Coinbase, Fidelity Digital Assets Services, Gemini Trust Company, Gemini Europe Ltd., Gemini Europe Services Ltd., Paxos Trust Company, Digivault Ltd., Ziglu Ltd., or Archax Ltd.Source

Bitcoin managed to revisit the $35,000 level at 5:07 p.m. UTC on the Bitstamp exchange. BTC Earlier today, the cryptocurrency dipped to $32,314, but bulls now appear to be in the driver’s seat once again. Venture capital giant Andreessen Horowitz announcing its $2.2 billion cryptocurrency fund might have helped to prop up the market. According to Fundstrat’s Tom Lee, this is “positive news” for Bitcoin and the whole cryptocurrency ecosystem. Ether is failing to catch up Despite Ethereum's London hardfork going live on the Ropsten testnet earlier today, Ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency, is being outperformed by Bitcoin. The ETH/BTC pair is down 0.71 percent today. Ethereum has lost almost 26 percent of its value against Bitcoin in just over two weeks.Source

After an incredible start in 2021, Ether peaked at $4,380 on May 12 but has dropped 55% since then. Unlike the leading cryptocurrency, the Ethereum network faces competition from projects that do not depend on proof-of-work, hence not facing the bottleneck issues that caused transaction fees to skyrocket. Whenever markets disappoint traders with a negative surprise, traders quickly seek external explanations for their failure to interpret signals. But, in reality, a clear indication that China was concerned about the crypto mining energy consumption came out on April 30, six weeks ahead of the initial price crash.On May 6, recently confirmed U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission chair Gary Gensler punted to congress on providing more regulatory oversight to the crypto space. However, in defense of excessively optimistic investors, similar promises have circulated for over four years.
Regardless of the many reasons behind the recent negative market performance, traders like to blame someone for their mistakes, and what better scapegoat than derivatives markets? Cointelegraph was the first news outlet to analyze the $2.5 billion Bitcoin futures expiry, potentially giving bears a $450 million lead if the price fails to hold $32,000 on June 25. On June 12, Cointelegraph said that Ether's $1.5B monthly options expiry would be a make-or-break moment, as 73% of the neutral-to-bullish options would be worthless below $2,200.Source

Customers of financial institutions, such as banks and credit unions, will be able to buy, sell, and hold Bitcoin directly via their accounts because of a recent partnership between Stone Ridge subsidiary NYDIG and global payments technology provider Fiserv, according to a Jun. 23 press release.California's First Foundation is already working on rolling out such a functionality. The two companies also have a plan to implement programs that would pay customers rewards in the largest cryptocurrency. NYDIG CEO Robert Gutmann claims that the partnership represents "a leap forward" in bringing Bitcoin to financial institutions "of all sizes": Our partnership with Fiserv represents a leap forward in bringing integrated bitcoin transactions to institutions of all sizes, positioning them to meet growing demand and interest from their customers.” As reported by no link shorteningday, NYDIG also partnered with Fidelity National Information Services (FIS) last month to allow hundreds of small U.S. banks to hold and trade Bitcoin.Source