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☕️The Morning Cup: Powell’s tough speech sends BTC below $20K, Reddit airdrops free blockchain-backed avatars
Good morning, good day, and good evening. Welcome back to The Morning Cup. It’s your weekly recap of the latest in crypto news and your start to the week, no matter where you are. Don’t worry, we’ve selected just what you need to stay up-to-date, so you won’t spend time pouring through the news you don’t need, only the news you care about.
So what happened this week?
BTC dipped under $20K after Powell’s hawkish speech
Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) fell Monday morning along with other altcoins including BNB, XRP, ADA and SOL because of US Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s hawkish comments on interest rates last Friday. As of Monday 3am UTC, BTC is trading at $19,763 while ETH is now at $1,447. As for the 24-hour gainers on Poloniex, they are STR/BTC, SNX/BTC, BCHSV/USDT, KSM/USDD, BEAR/USDT and LTC/BTC. Last Friday, Powell vowed to do whatever is necessary to drive down high inflation and warned of some “pain” ahead for Americans, suggesting that larger rate hikes are still firmly on the table. Soon after his comments, BTC dipped under $20,000 for the first time since July 14, losing up to 8.8% at one point. Meanwhile, ETH was below $1,400 on Aug. 27, wiping out an entire month’s gains.
Cardano’s testnet “catastrophically broken” proves hard fork upgrade isn’t easy
While the long-awaited “Ethereum’s Merge” will kick off between Sep 10–20, as confirmed by Ethereum Foundation last Wednesday in high hopes of seeing its consensus mechanism successfully shifting from Proof of Work (PoW) to Proof of Stake (PoS), Cardano, another public blockchain platform, is also planning a hard fork upgrade, dubbed Vasil. However, Cardano’s testnet was noted to be “catastrophically broken” last week by Adam Dean, one of the ecosystem developers, pointing that the problem was related to a bug in Cardano Node v1.35.2. Dean also suggested that the failure was a result of a rush upgrade on the mainnet that created incompatible forks and caused a decrease to chain density. With the aspiration to be the next generation of Ethereum, Cardano is a PoS network. Its native token, ADA, is currently the eighth-largest cryptocurrency by market cap. Cardano’s upgrade was originally due to launch in June, but has been postponed twice. A hard fork refers to a change in a blockchain’s protocol that results in the blockchain splitting into two networks, with one following the old version and one following the new.
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Reddit airdrops free blockchain-backed avatars to top community builders
Popular social media website Reddit began airdropping its blockchain-backed “Collectible Avatars” to top community builders for free last week. Before the campaign, some users were asked to select avatars from the four collections including “The Singularity,” “Aww Friends,” “Drip Squad” and “Meme Team” based on their participation on the website. In July, Reddit announced the collaboration with Polygon, a leading platform for Ethereum scaling and infrastructure development, to launch the collectibles, so that Redditors can purchase them by using fiat currencies and display themed on Reddit. Reddit’s latest announcement is to interact with Redditors and to empower artists who designed them with some proceeds given to recognise their hard work. Right now, the underlying blockchain technology also enables purchasers with ownership and portability of their avatars.
Afghan forces purportedly shut down 16 crypto exchanges
Afghan security forces have closed at least 16 crypto currency exchanges and the corresponding platforms in the past weeks in Herat, the country’s third largest city. According to Ariana News, the self-proclaimed largest news network in Afghanistan, some people were arrested during the busts, but the report didn’t reveal the exact number of people apprehended. Sayed Shah Sa’adat, head of the counter-crime unit of Herat police, said that the move came after the country’s central bank, Da Afghanistan Bank, stated in a letter that digital currency trading had caused “lots of problems and is scamming people”. Although the data on how many Afghans trade in the crypto markets remain unknown, various reports suggested demand for cryptocurrencies in the country were on the rise. However, In June, the Taliban declared all foreign exchange trading is prohibited, further hammering the local economy.
New Listings on Poloniex
Here’s what we’ve listed recently:
New Coins
ETHS (ETH2)- ETH pair, USDT pair, USDD pair
ETHW (ETH1)- ETH pair, USDT pair, USDD pair
Futures
Polopedia
This week we covered crypto mixing, which has floated to the top of the public consciousness in the wake of OFAC’s sanctioning of crypto mixing service, Tornado Cash.
To close out the week, we published a brief introduction to APIs and Poloniex’s own APIs.
Introduction to APIs (Application Programming Interfaces)
Crypto Glossary
Understand crypto terms before investment! This week, we’re going to explain the term PHP.
PHP stands for Hypertext Preprocessor and it is a general-purpose scripting language that is suited for web development and can be embedded into HTML.
For example: Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP) became obsolete in Poloniex’s new trading system.
What’s happening here at Poloniex?
This is what Poloniex’s week looked like
Highlights for the week
Major Updates
We reached 500,000 followers on our Twitter page🎉
Campaigns
Ongoing campaigns that YOU can get involved in!
To celebrate our new API, we are doing a giveaway! Check the tweet for deets😎
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10,000 USDD Airdrop to Celebrate the Listing of SSV
Hold & Earn: $10,000 Giveaway to Ethereum Community (8/25–9/9)
Hold & Earn: $10,000 Giveaway to Ethereum Community
New Trading System feedback bounty! Share your feedback & win rewards up to $1000 USDT! (8/9 — further notice)
Poloniex Feedback Bounty Program
Poloniex Referral Carnival (Phase IV): Invite Friends to Share 10,000 USDD
Poloniex Referral Carnival (Phase IV): Invite Friends to Share 10,000 USDD
The community megaphone📢
Highlights from the community
🥳Once again, thank you all for helping us reach 500k on Twitter!
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And that about covers it for this week! Curious about our campaigns or upcoming events? Give us a shout in our Telegram channel-
Is there anything you’d want to see us cover in our newsletter? Make sure to comment on this Medium article! Just want to show your appreciation? Smash that clap button and give a round of applause👏
Thanks for spending some time with us as we went over what’s going on. And wherever you are, from the team here at Poloniex, good morning, good day, and good evening!
☕️The Morning Cup: Powell’s tough speech sends BTC below $20K, Reddit airdrops free… was originally published in The Poloniex blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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