Ethereum price remains volatile as rival networks accrue more institutional capital
Rival networks like Avalanche, Cardano, Binance Smart Chain have appropriated +20% of Ethereum’s user base since the start of 2022.
- Avalanche’s estimated valuation has risen to a whopping $5.25B after its most recent funding round.
- Reports suggest that the recent $600M Ronin Bridge hack may have been carried out by a North Korean group called ‘Lazarus.’
- ETH’s market dominance share currently stands at a solid 18.5%.
Ethereum (ETH) continues to float above the all-important $3,000 psychological threshold, albeit with a great deal of difficulty. Over the past week, the altcoin has registered losses of 6%. However, the asset is still in the green MoM (month over month). At press time, ETH is trading at $3,042.
This price development comes when rival network Avalanche, helmed by its parent organization Ava Labs, accrued a sizeable $350 million via its latest funding round, bringing the company’s total valuation to a whopping $5.25 billion. Several investors have continued to exit the Ethereum ecosystem in recent months, thanks to its rising throughput and gas fee issues. The total value locked, or TVL, on AVAX has risen to $14.323 billion within a relatively short time. In fact, Aave now possesses a 33.72% share of the DeFi lending market.
A number of crypto-centric firms have also been showcasing their support for Avalanche in recent months. For example, algorithmic stablecoin issuer Terra recently invested a cool $200M into AVAX, citing the project’s solid fundamentals as a reason for the same. Similar investments were also made by Polychain and Three Arrows Capital, with both firms pouring a combined sum of $230M into the project.
Ronin Bridge hack carried out by a North Korean group?
Recently, blockchain gaming ecosystem Axie Infinity’s Ronin Bridge came under fire from nefarious third-party miscreants who made away with approximately $600 million worth of ETH and USDC illegally. Ronin’s dev team confirmed the hack, but in a surprising turn of events, it now appears as though the entire incident was facilitated by a North Korean cyber-criminal group called ‘Lazarus.’
As a quick reminder, the Ronin compromise was one of the biggest such incidents of its kind and was only discovered a number of days after the hackers had stolen the money. Over the last couple of weeks, Axie’s developers have raised $150 million to help with their client reimbursement efforts.
Musk’s Twitter move seeks to cut down on crypto scam tweets
After having bought a sizeable 9% stake in social media platform Twitter, Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently stated at a TED Talk event that he could even go ahead and buy the platform outright. This move may not be outside the realm of possibilities since Musk is reported to have a net worth of more than $300 billion.
Speaking with the event’s moderator Chris Anderson, he stated unequivocally that if his bid to take over Twitter is successful, one of his top priorities would be to mitigate crypto scams emanating from the platform, adding:
“A top priority I would have is eliminating the spam and scam bots and the bot armies on Twitter. They make the product much worse. If I had a Dogecoin for every crypto scam I saw, we’d have 100 billion Dogecoin.”
Interested in cryptocurrency? Learn more about the basics with our beginner’s guide to Bitcoin, dive deeper by learning about Ethereum and see what blockchain can do with our simple guide to DeFi.
Disclosure: The author owns a range of cryptocurrencies at the time of writing
