Another week, another round of Crypto Tidbits. After last week’s brutal showing, Bitcoin mounted a strong recovery over the past few days, rallying as high as $7,100 yesterday, marking an 85% gain from the $3,800 capitulation bottom. Altcoins followed suit by trending higher, but slightly underperformed BTC as the market continues to centralize amid times of uncertainty about the future of crypto firms.
Bitcoin’s strength came amid a bout of weakness for the stock market. In fact, during this week’s Wall Street trading sessions, the Dow Jones and S&P 500 indices saw their worst weekly performance since the Great Recession of 2018. Simultaneously, the U.S. dollar exploded, crushing almost all foreign currencies while also hurting the value of gold and silver, the latter of which saw a massive drawdown.
This latest leg lower comes as the outbreak of the novel coronavirus disease COVID-19 has spread across the world, resulting in an exponential explosion in cases in world economic hubs like the U.S., the U.K., Spain, and so on and so forth. Namely, millions have been locked at home, businesses have been forced to shut down, and consumer demand has dropped extremely low.
Considering this backdrop, it’s somewhat surprising that Bitcoin and the rest of the crypto industry saw such a relatively strong week, both in terms of price action and in terms of the fundamentals.
Related Reading: Crypto Tidbits: Bitcoin Plunges 50%, COVID-19 Cases at Ethereum Event, Central Banks Inject Billions
Bitcoin & Crypto Tidbits
- Bitcoin Hash Rate Drops 40% From High: According to the latest data from Blockchain.com, the hash rate of the Bitcoin network — how much computational power is being allocated to securing the network — has dropped some 40% from the all-time high established near the end of February. More specifically, the hash rate dropped from the 136 terahashes per second high to 82 terahashes just the other day. The drop in hash rate was further corroborated by the below tweet from Digitalik, a Bitcoin data scientist, who noted on Thursday that he noticed that a mere 40 blocks were mined in a 12-hour period, which is almost 50% fewer blocks than a normal period.
- Ethereum Used as a Mechanism to Bypass China’s “Great Firewall”: The purpose of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other cryptocurrencies have long been questioned by its critics. Recently, this critique was answered in an interesting way: according to Sarah Zheng of the South China Morning Post, excerpts of an interview with a Wuhan doctor banned by the Chinese government were published on the Ethereum blockchain “in an apparent pushback against online censorship.” The transactions involving these excerpts were not given.
my WeChat timeline is still going strong with versions of Dr. Ai Fen’s interview, incl this version explaining how it was posted on Ethereum blockchain and another told in QR code excerpts https://t.co/uYFKpCtsgM pic.twitter.com/kP9kf6t5fV
— Sarah Zheng 鄭雅儒 (@_szheng) March 11, 2020
- Why Bitcoin & Crypto Matters: Cash Crunch In the U.S. As Coronavirus Fears Spread: As aforementioned, the spread of