After sideways trading through most of this week, Bitcoin dipped below the $20k level today while Ethereum managed to keep support at $1,500. With September being a historically weak month, BTCUSD is struggling this week, down over 8% in the past 24 hours. Ethereum is also showing signs of weakness ahead of the merge, down 9% this week but remaining above the $1,500 range. The global cryptocurrency market cap is down by an additional 1.38% today, currently at $964 billion. Let’s look at relevant Bitcoin, Ethereum, and cryptocurrency news affecting today’s markets.
Key Points:
The big news of today is Michael Saylor’s lawsuit for Tax Fraud. One of Bitcoin’s most prominent proponents, and the CEO of MicroStrategy, Michael Saylor, has been sued by the District of Columbia for tax fraud.
According to a report from CNBC, Saylor is accused of evading over $25 million in district taxes. The lawsuit filed on Wednesday also names Micro Strategy as a defendant, suggesting that the company conspired with Saylor to help him evade the taxes. In total, the Attorney Genera’s office is looking to recover over $100 million in unpaid taxes and penalties, quite a substantial amount.
While the tax fraud allegations don’t necessarily correlate directly to Bitcoin’s underperformance this week, the fact that one of Bitcoin’s most prominent supporters is being accused of tax fraud isn’t helping BTC’s price in any way.
In other news, a Yahoo Finance report suggests that Bitcoin won’t bottom out until the economy bottoms out, which could take several more months. In an interview with Yahoo Finance Live, Michael Kantrowitz said:
“Like high-beta stocks, the cryptocurrency is unlikely to reach a low until leading economic indicators bottom.”
As the Fed is planning to continue to raise interest rates this year, we will likely see further corrections in the global economy and cryptocurrency markets. Bitcoin could dip as low as $15k in the next several weeks or months before establishing support, bottoming out, and preparing for its next bull run.
The talk of the town for Ethereum is the network merge scheduled to happen in two weeks. The network merge will upgrade Ethereum’s network from a proof-of-work to a proof-of-stake consensus model, which will increase the transaction throughput and decrease average gas fees, and create a much more sustainable network when it comes to environmental pollution and energy waste.
With the upcoming merge, the community is talking about various Ethereum forks which might arise from those not looking to switch to the PoS consensus model. OpenSea published a Tweet mentioning that they won’t be supporting any Ethereum forks and are committed to only providing service to the original Ethereum PoS chain:
The decision will help create a smooth transition for Ethereum’s network from a PoW to a PoS chain and will avoid any confusion for various forks, which will only cause division in the community.
Ethereum remains above the $1,500 range, up 0.38% in the past 24 hours. Its market cap is $187 billion, with a 24-hour trading volume of $16.9 billion. While Ethereum’s trading volume is down by 22% in the past 24 hours, the cryptocurrency holds support at $1,500 relatively well, suggesting that ETH will likely close the week at the current range.
Disclosure: This is not trading or investment advice. Always do your research before buying any cryptocurrency or investing in any services.
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