CoinLoan Weekly: ETH London Hard Fork and Monero Bug
Bitcoin Price News
From July 29 to 30, BTC was fluctuating between $40,547 and $38,397, according to CoinMarketCap. Then in the late evening on Friday, July 30, Bitcoin price started to rise, reaching $42,235 on July 31. Through the weekend, the trend was similar, with the minimum price of $41,213 and the maximum price of $42,502 (on August 1).
The new week BTC begins with a price fall: today, on August 2, it is $39,577, which is -4.49% in the last 24 hours.
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Ethereum Price
For the second cryptocurrency, last week was more stable and calm with gradual price growth: since July 30, the price began to rise, ethereum max price this week was $2,686 on August 1. As of August 2, Ethereum's price went through a correction and reached $2,596, a 0.94% rise in the 24 hours.
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XRP Price
XRP value was experiencing dramatic price changes through the week, with $0.775 being an all-week high and $0.612 being an all-week low. On August 2, XRP is $0.752, a 0.76% price drop in 24 hours.
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Ethereum Hard Fork to Commence on August 5
ETH's first block was mined on July 30, 2015 - now, cryptocurrency is six years old.
On August 5, Ethereum will go through the London hard fork. Ethereum 2.0 will be an upgrade to Ethereum on several levels: changing PoW for PoS will result in increased transaction capacity and smaller fees. Overall, the network will become more sustainable.
On its FAQ page, Ethereum developers are warning ETH holders not to fall for scams that may insist to somehow prepare for the merge. Be careful: you don't need to do anything. However, the merge and shard chain upgrade may impact dApp developers, but the specifications have not been finalized yet.
Monero Bug Can Affect Privacy
On July 27, the Monero team posted a thread on Twitter, saying that they spotted a significant bug in XMR's decoy selection algorithm that may impact transactions' privacy. In short, if a user spends funds immediately after receiving them (about 20 minutes), there's a good chance of action being identified as the true spend. This bug in no way increases the risks of one's funds being stolen or transactions info revealed.
Monero developers recommend waiting at least one hour before spending newly-received XMR funds until a fix is deployed.
Bitcoin Mining Difficulty Rise
According to BTC.com, Bitcoin's mining difficulty is now 14.50T, which is 6.03% higher than the previous rate. For the first time since May, difficulty rose. In July, the rate started to recover amidst Chinese miners moving out of their provinces and finding new jurisdictions to operate.
Even though mining difficulty increased, it's still 54% easier to mine bitcoin than it was in mid-May.