The market sentiment in the blockchain ecosystem is still rather bearish. Bitcoin has been severely underperforming for a long time, and most people have already forgotten about the bullish $100,000 BTC price predictions for 2021. This has of course massively impacted the altcoin market as well, and many investors think that the alt season has been postponed for now. But even in this uncertain situation, there are projects that are doing well - so let’s take a look at some of the most important altcoin news from the last 7 days!
Can It Get Any Worse For Solana? SOL Price Keeps Falling Down Among Efficiency Concerns
For a long time, Solana claimed to be the “Ethereum killer” - a next generation blockchain which will supersede ETH and become the largest altcoin in the ecosystem. Today, it seems almost impossible - while Ethereum keeps doing well, SOL is having problem after problem.
Recently, the efficiency of the SOL blockchain has decreased massively. The users have reported that the Solana network is barely operational, with transactions taking much longer than expected.
Members of the Solana Foundation have suggested that the situation might have been caused by a DDoS attack. However, even after the situation was resolved, no statement about the supposed attack has been published officially.
This has caused some observers to believe that SOL’s problems might be much more serious than just hackers - in other words, it’s possible that the efficiency problems were simply caused by a huge number of legitimate transactions. This would mean that Solana is much less efficient and has a lot smaller maximum throughput than previously assumed.
The market has reacted to Solana’s problems as expected - the SOL price has dramatically decreased by almost 22% over the past week. Although the transaction times on the Solana blockchain have been restored back to normal for now, it’s likely that it’s not the end of troubles for SOL.
Mongooses and Hamsters - In the Crazy World of Meme Tokens, Anything Can Pump
Few weeks back, all crypto news websites in the world reported the story of the Squid Game token - a scam cryptocurrency hastily released to cash in on the popularity of the famous Netflix show. After the SQUID token’s price skyrocketed almost instantly, the rug was pulled, leaving naive investors with nothing.
It seems that nowadays, all it takes for a token to pump is a single mention in the media. On Wednesday, US Congressman Brad Sherman has jokingly mentioned “hamster coin”, “mongoose coin” and “cobra coin” in a hearing at the US House of Representatives. Quite unsurprisingly for anyone who has been tracking the meme token ecosystem, the market has reacted enthusiastically.
The price of a previously unknown token Hamster (HAM) has immediately erupted by over 60%. Meanwhile, someone has hastily created and launched Mongoose Coin (GOOSE), which has also quickly started to grow.
It’s almost certain that nobody but the creators of these meme cryptocurrencies ever make any money of them - meanwhile, many blockchain investors are becoming concerned that blatant pump and dump meme tokens make the entire crypto ecosystem look bad, and they can provide the government with an excuse to curb down on crypto.
Ethereum Is Outperforming Bitcoin - Is the Great Flippening Really Possible?
Most blockchain investors still consider the possibility that ETH will surpass BTC and become the largest cryptocurrency in the world, nothing more but a fantasy. However, the recently published data doesn’t lie - Ethereum has been outperforming Bitcoin for the past year, and if the current trend continues, ETH will inevitably become the most valuable crypto on the market sooner or later.
According to the data published by Cointelegraph, ETH has outperformed BTC by over 230% over the course of 2021, and the ETH/BTC ratio has never been higher than it is now. In other words, investors who bought ETH one year ago made much greater gains than people who purchased BTC at the same time.
Furthemore, other metrics seem to also favor Ethereum over Bitcoin. For example, the number of traders who have been shorting BTC keeps increasing - meanwhile, most traders still prefer to long ETH.
In general, Ethereum investors are much more bullish than Bitcoin holders. But is it really possible for ETH to surpass Bitcoin? We might find out in the near future.
Stablecoin Problems Spread to Other Countries
Stablecoins are considered by many experts to be the Achilles’ heel of the blockchain ecosystem. Unregulated, unaudited, centralized stablecoin issuers have essentially become the central banks of the crypto market, and they are printing digital assets at an alarming rate, which might prove to be catastrophic to the crypto sphere.
It seems like the US government is not the only one concerned with the danger of stablecoins. After the US regulators decided to take a closer look at how stablecoins issuers such as Tether operate, the Japanese Financial Services Agency has also announced that it will aim to regulate stablecoins in 2022.
According to estimates, up to 70% of Bitcoin’s market cap might be attributed to stablecoins such as USDT. Soon, we’ll be likely to find out what will happen to the crypto ecosystem when the stablecoin money printers are turned off.