Bitcoin and Ethereum have emerged as the flag bearers of the cryptocurrency sector, and are firmly established as the first and second crypto assets in the market cap rankings. Bitcoin is especially influential, as its price moves are typically also reflected in the markets for other cryptocurrencies. Recently, we’ve seen negative news coming out of China souring the sentiment on Bitcoin, which eventually also translated in the prices of smaller cryptocurrencies taking a hit.
According to the news that circulated throughout the weekend, Chinese authorities in Sichuan ordered the miners in the region to pack up their mining equipment starting from June 25. The recent development came off the back of a previous order in five other provinces around the region to the same effect. With the order now spanning across five of the strongest Bitcoin mining provinces in the country, the impact of the development on the digital asset has been felt thoroughly. Before now, Chinese miners were in control of about 65% of the total hash rate Bitcoin hashrate (the power that is used to guarantee security on the network).
Ethereum’s price recently fell under $2,000 amidst the bearish turn in the cryptocurrency market. Despite the unexciting price action, the technical development of the Ethereum project has been showing a lot of promise.
Ethereum developer Tim Beiko recently revealed that Ethereum’s London upgrade will go live on the Ropsten testnet at block 10499401. This block will most likely be mined on June 24. This is a very important step towards the mainnet deployment of the London upgrade, which will bring multiple changes to the Ethereum blockchain. The most notable change will be EIP-1559, which will change how Ethereum’s transaction fee market works. With EIP-1559, the transaction fees will be burned instead of going to miners, but users will still be able to give their transactions priority by including ETH tips for miners.
