CoinLoan Weekly: Taproot Activation, BTC Mining Difficulty Surge
Price Dynamics
BTC Price
Bitcoin was rising and falling last week, facing mainly a downward trend. Despite the fluctuation, the leading cryptocurrency reached its new all-time high on November 10, climbing up to $69,044.77. However, the price did not hold and quickly dropped, making Bitcoin lose around $4,000 in value.
As of Monday, November 15, Bitcoin is trading at $65,915, losing 0.1% in the last 24 hours and gaining 2% during the 7-day period.
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Ethereum Price
For the entire week, the Ethereum price was bouncing up and down between $4,528 and $4,849. However, despite the sideways movement, ETH surpassed its previous all-time high. The Ethereum max price reached $4,878.26 on November 10.
On Monday, November 15, Ethereum is trading at the $4,749 mark with a 0.3% negative change in the last 24 hours and a positive 7-day up the movement of 2.5%.
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XRP Price
Like Ethereum and Bitcoin, XRP was experiencing similar fluctuations, going sideways with the price ranging between $1.16 and $1.34. XRP was a subject of downward movement during the past week, falling quickly on November 10 to $1.20. Despite other cryptocurrencies reaching new levels, Ripple coin has not yet repeated the success of 2018. Its all-time high remains at $3.40 that was reached on January 7, 2018.
On November 15, XRP is trading at $1.21, gaining 0.9% during the 7-day period and losing 0.1% in the past 24 hours.
Cryptocurrency News
Taproot Upgrade Activation
The long-awaited Bitcoin upgrade, Taproot, has been finally activated at block 709,632. Taproot primarily serves as a toolbox allowing users to build Dapps on the Bitcoin blockchain. Developers have been waiting for the update for quite some time, and with its introduction, new features will finally come along, improving scalability, security, and privacy of the network.
Back in June, miners voiced their support for Taproot, effectively locking an upgrade. A period between the lock and activation gave enough time for node operators to install the latest version of Bitcoin Core.
BTC Mining Difficulty
Another recalculation showed a 4.69% increase in the BTC mining complexity that reached 22.67 trillion hashes (T). After a slight drop amidst China's mining ban, the index is climbing up for the ninth consecutive period. The difficulty reached a maximum of 25.05 T in mid-May. The actions of the PRC led to a reduction in the hash rate – authorities shut down all the mining equipment in the country.
Since May 2021, the US hash rate increased from 17.8% to 35.4% in August 2021. BTC hash rate recovered in September, and BTC's mining difficulty rose at the end of August, earlier dropping in July.