The chief technology officer at Ripple, David Schwartz, extended his congratulations to the ethereum community in a tweet on December 2 on the launch of the long-awaited Ethereum 2.0 Beacon Chain.

The December 1 launch concludes “phase 0” of ethereum’s transition to a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism.

Schwartz compared the launch of ETH 2.0 to wine fine which takes a long time before people can enjoy it. Indeed, Tuesday’s launch is a culmination of many years of research and development. Earlier this year, many deemed that ETH 2.0 would never launch due to the countless delays much to many investors’ frustration. As of Tuesday, however, the haters were silenced.

The Ripple CTO noted that the launch of the Beacon Chain marks an important milestone for ethereum.

A supposed bitcoin maximalist going by the moniker Meshinom attempted to downplay ethereum’s network upgrade, citing that the pioneer cryptocurrency was created beautifully from the get-go and doesn’t require upgrades like the second-biggest blockchain by market cap, ethereum.

Notably, ETH 2.0 has been under development since the launch of the proof-of-work (PoW) network back in 2015. It is an important network upgrade that is intended to improve the scalability and transaction capacity of the ethereum blockchain. Before the launch, ethereum was only able to process around 15 transactions per second. Now, the network will be able to handle thousands of transactions per second.

A more scalable network will allow decentralized apps and decentralized finance to thrive than ever before because it will eliminate the notorious congestion and exorbitant gas fees that ethereum had become synonymous with.

It should be noted that ETH 2.0 is comprised of a number of different phases. Beacon Chain is just the first step towards ethereum’s complete transition and improvement. In the future, other features like sharding and rollups will be adopted with the rollout of the network’s next phases.

Needless to say, ETH 2.0 Beacon Chain launch is a huge accomplishment for ethereans and the anticipation around its release has been reflected in the price of ETH, which started the year at around $132 but is now trading just below $600.

Notably, Charles Hoskinson, the creator of Cardano (ADA) and co-founder of the ethereum blockchain, also applauded the ethereum community for the recent launch.

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Following its latest plunge to $16.1k, Bitcoin has recuperated and almost at $18k again after dwindling close to $15k, inching closer to the all-time high of around $20,000. The digital asset appears unstoppable in the last couple of weeks, climbing higher every single day with only a few retracement periods.

Nonetheless, this bull rally seems far healthier than that of 2017/18 as it is more controlled and there is currently a lot more trading volume in the market. One of the main sparks of this new run was the support of cryptocurrencies by PayPal, one of the largest payment providers in the world.

The volatility in the cryptocurrency market is extremely high right now with some altcoins jumping up and down by more than 20% within hours. One of the most prominent examples is XRP which had a wild 163% run in the past 5 days to reach a high of $0.78.

The market capitalization of Bitcoin recently reached $353 billion for the first time ever, surpassing JPMorgan’s at $352 billion. Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan has been a prominent critic and hater of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general calling them a ‘fraud’.

Bitcoin has been outperforming pretty much almost any other asset in the market like Gold, the S&P 500, and other mainstream investment options like Commodities or US Treasuries.

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The crypto market has been hitting the headlines of late, much to the delight of crypto enthusiasts. Bitcoin, being the top coin, has gained by double-digit percentages over the last few weeks. In fact, Bitcoin is already over 140% in gains this year. Now, the CEO of Blockstream thinks the era of the top coin is far from over. In fact, Adam Back thinks Bitcoin’s era is yet to fully manifest in the digital world.

In a tweet, Adam Back opined that Bitcoin’s power as a form of digital Gold makes it a game-changer in a world that’s already in a digital era. Adam was replying in support of a tweet by Willy Woo who was comparing the rise of Bitcoin to the relationship between the early technologies and their subsequent successors.


Adam back isn’t the first person to describe Bitcoin as digital Gold. This notion has already been entrenched among the majority of BTC supporters who see Bitcoin as a more secure, faster, and viable option to Gold as a credible store of value. In fact, a lot of people have projected that Bitcoin will soon overtake Gold as the dominant asset favored as a store of value.

According to Willy, Bitcoin is to Finance what the industrial age is to civilization. Basically, Bitcoin ushers in a new era that will totally change how the financial system works. True to that fact, the world is already seeing such changes. For example, there are now more than 10,000 Bitcoin ATMs installed in various regions across the world.

One good fact that heavily supports Adam’s opinion is the ability of individuals to own and keep custody of their own digital assets. That’s unlike real Gold that has to be entrusted to third parties for storage and security. With Bitcoin, everyone keeps the keys to their stash.

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Ethereum price is currently $367 after establishing a renewed uptrend on the daily chart. The smart-contracts pioneer remains rank 2 by market capitalization with $41 billion and has experienced a notable rise in trading volume since July 1.

The ETH 2.0 release has been delayed several times, diminishing the confidence of investors. However, this major and fundamental upgrade will have a huge impact on the price of Ethereum. A successful launch can be the spark of a new and bigger bull rally towards the all-time high and above.

One of the biggest issues faced by Ethereum users is the high gas cost. Back in September 2020, ETH had two major price spikes in gas. Fortunately, it seems that October has cooled off prices, dropping from a high of 500 GWEI to a 3-month low of 48.123.

One of the most bullish on-chain metrics favoring buyers is the number of addresses holding at least 10 ETH coins. According to Glassnode, this number has reached a new all-time high at 289,081 indicating that the interest in the digital asset continues growing.

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The introductory stage of Ethereum 2.0 consensus change has just begun. This will introduce the first phase of its launch, often referred to by developers as “phase 0.” This phase will introduce the implementation of minimal energy on the network. Shard chains will also follow suit, but before this happens, staking must first be completed.

Earlier today, it was disclosed by a Twitter user that the staking process was almost 10% complete. But there’s still nearly 500,000 Ethereum yet to be staked. Certainly a large number, but at the rate that the staking process is taking place, with almost 10% completed in less than 48hours, the process could be complete in less than a week.

he long-awaited Ethereum update that had kept the Ethereum market in a state of uncertainty is set to launch its first phase on the 1st of December, but more than ever, it is important that the short-term goals are achieved, and the relevant steps are taken to ensure that the milestones are surpassed or the network might suffer yet another delay, which could, in turn, lead to the postponement of the update launch. But it seems as though the process is already 9% complete, as staking is already in motion.

Ethereum 2.0. is expected to allow users to control their funds more quickly and eliminate the process of miners, skeptics are still wary of what will become of the network post-launch. While one critic wrote that the blockchain is “doomed to inherit the inequities of the traditional technology sector,” Ethereum proponents are saying that the Blockchain will bring an economic shift to the ecosystem.

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Critics have often taken aim at the world’s second-largest blockchain due to its scalability issues. Truth be told, ethereum has contended with extreme congestion for quite some time now, and this has resulted in exorbitant transaction fees on the network. The bottleneck in ethereum has kept institutional investors from joining the blockchain.

Besides the price actions, ethereum is rarely compared to bitcoin as they were both built with different fundamental economics in mind. Bitcoin is seen as a legit and reliable store of value and a digital version of gold. In contrast, ethereum is believed to be the foundation of the crypto ecosystem. When it comes to the number of decentralized apps (DApps), the number of developers, and daily users, ethereum is the king of the hill.

Nevertheless, one large investor seems to think that ethereum will eventually be on a par with bitcoin regarding its utility. In fact, the investor notes that imminent network changes on the ethereum network could make it  “better digital gold” than the king of cryptos.

Most people believe that bitcoin’s rally is being fueled by a huge influx of institutional money into the crypto market. As a thick cloud of uncertainty weighs on the financial system in the light of the global pandemic, more investors in traditional finance are flocking to the market.

Unlike the 2017 bull market, bitcoin’s current upward moves are characterized by increased institutional participation. This has seen bitcoin blowing past the $18,000 level with little resistance. The cryptocurrency is now just a few dollars away from its $20,000 all-time high. Ethereum has also rallied in recent months but is still a long way from its $1,432 record high.

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Ethereum just hit $600 on most exchanges, peaking at $609.97 on Coinbase. The digital asset has been trading inside a massive uptrend for the past several days after a breakout

Despite the breakout, most of the current buying pressure comes from the deposits on the Eth2 contract. The massive upgrade that will allow the staking of Ethereum on December 1, needs 542,288 ETH to be deposited.

After a slow start on November 4, reaching around 110,000 ETH deposited inside the contract on November 20, deposits exploded shortly after. In the past three days, around 200,000 ETH more have been deposited, reaching 60% of the required amount.

At this pace, it seems that Eth2 will surely launch by December 1, further increasing the buying pressure of Ethereum.

This bull rally is different than the one in 2017
There are several main differences between Ethereum hitting $600 now, vs when it did back in 2017. ETH reached an all-time high of $1,328 on January 14, 2018, after a colossal rally that seemed to have no end.

   
However, most of the fuel of the past rally came from FOMO and there was little trading volume involved. We are now seeing a significant increase in trading volume, for instance, in April 2019, the 24h average trading volume was already as high as the peak of 2017-2018 during the all-time high.

The current trading volume is usually two to three times higher on average. On top of that, the Eth2 update is a massive upgrade for the Ethereum network that will allow users to stake ETH and will shift the current Proof of Work consensus algorithm to Proof of Stake, adding more security, scalability, and speed to its blockchain.

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