Ethereum completed the London upgrade, and blockchain concept stocks soared!

According to news on August 6, at 20:33 pm on August 5, EST, Ethereum reached a block height of 12,965,000, activating the London hard fork network upgrade. According to ZB Research Institute, this upgrade includes five Ethereum improvement proposals (EIPs), namely EIP-1559 (Service fee improvement scheme), EIP-3198 (BaseFee opcode), EIP-3529 (reducing gas refund), EIP-3541 (refusing to create a new contract starting with 0xEF byte to serve Ethereum object format) and EIP-3554 (delaying the difficulty bomb until December this year).

ZB Research Institute believes that the successful bifurcation of Ethereum marks the reactivation of the cryptocurrency trading market. Ethereum will continue to challenge the trading of bitcoin after the upgrade. Affected by this, the global cryptocurrency trading volume has surged, and traditional industry giants have accelerated the layout of the blockchain industry. According to ZB statistics, due to the prosperity of the market, US blockchain concept stocks generally closed up. Kodak closed up 3.32%, Accenture 1.12%, overstock.com 4.55%, Riot Blockchain 2.69%, Marathon Patent 9.58% and Square 5.78%.

On August 6, the Central Bank of Venezuela said in a statement on Twitter that the tweet stated that from October 1, 2021, the “digital bolivar” will begin to circulate. It will use the currency scale to remove six zeros from the national currency to combat currency inflation.

On August 6th, the People’s Bank of China revealed at the work conference in the second half of 2021 that it will steadily advance the digital RMB Winter Olympics scenario pilot. Under the overall coordination of the head office’s R&D working group, strengthen communication and coordination with local governments, continue to strengthen vertical and horizontal communication, and accelerate the promotion of digital RMB pilot work to achieve full coverage of scenarios. Continue to deepen the establishment of a central bank under the rule of law.

ZB Research Institute believes that compared with the cryptocurrency countries led by China, the current process of global cryptocurrency is not unified. Up to now, the United States is still debating whether to conduct the research on digital dollar. Federal Reserve director Waller is highly skeptical about whether it is necessary for the Federal Reserve to establish a central bank digital currency, He believes that the Fed’s central bank digital currency may reduce the intermediary role of commercial banks. Deny the view that “without the central bank digital currency of the Federal Reserve, the status of the US dollar will be affected”.

However, there is no doubt about the future of digital currency. The Fed’s attitude towards digital currency determines that the US dollar will continue to lose its dominant position in the world for a long time in the future.

In sharp contrast to the Federal Reserve and many traditional capital forces in the United States, INVESCO, an asset management company, has submitted bitcoin ETF applications to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, holding GBTC and futures. ZB Research Institute estimates that there will be at least five to ten similar ETF applications by Friday night.

The prosperity of the global cryptocurrency trading market has attracted more institutions to layout the cryptocurrency trading field.

On August 6, MI Store Portugal, Xiaomi’s official retailer in Portugal, recently began to accept cryptocurrency payments. Customers can now use bitcoin, Ethereum, tether and Dash to buy Xiaomi devices such as smart phones, vacuum cleaners and smart watches.

On August 6, Virtu Financial, one of the world’s largest high-frequency trading institutions and market makers, has entered the cryptocurrency market on a large scale. According to the data obtained by ZB Research Institute in the second quarter financial report of Virtu Financial, it has been making market in the main cryptocurrency trading places. In the second quarter, compared with the first quarter, its cryptocurrency market making volume increased by 100%.

On August 6, Coinbase announced a new integration with Apple Pay and Google Pay. Now, when a user who links any Visa or Mastercard debit card in Apple wallet makes a transaction with Coinbase on his mobile phone, Apple Pay will automatically display as a payment method. By the third quarter of this year, users are expected to be able to use Google Pay to buy cryptocurrencies.

On August 6, Bloomberg Intelligence’s Bloomberg encryption outlook report this month continued to be bullish on bitcoin, saying that the trend shows that BTC is expected to exceed $100000. ZB Research Institute believes that the continuous rise in market transactions and institutional layout are sufficient to support the significant rise in the price of bitcoin. But rising to $100000 still needs more good market news.

In the field of minerals, on August 6th, according to the ZB Research Institute, Talen Energy Corporation, a cryptocurrency mining company and data center, is expected to invest 350–400 million U.S. dollars to develop up to 300 MW of zero-carbon Bitcoin mining capacity and promote clean energy and digital infrastructure. The first phase of NautilusCryptomine is to invest $350 million to $400 million to build a 180 megawatt bitcoin mining facility.

ZB Research Institute believes that the integration of clean energy and digital infrastructure assets that TalenEnergyCorporatio wants to build is to cope with the difficult situation of miner shortage faced by the cryptocurrency POW mechanism after the global energy shortage. According to the statistics of ZB Research Institute, during the comprehensive transfer of China’s mineral industry to the world, the market value of global cryptocurrency has lost more than 700 billion US dollars. Therefore, how to ensure the energy supply of mining industry is still one of the issues that most practitioners need to consider carefully in the future.