IOTA Activates Chrysalis 1.5

Key Highlights:

• Bitcoin held by exchanges falls to a 20-month low
• Uniswap transaction fees almost half Bitcoin’s
• Chrysalis 1.5 of IOTA is now live

Trending News: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Uniswap, Defi, and IOTA

After a strong 2-month march to $12,473, Bitcoin bulls have now pulled back. At the time of writing, the Bitcoin price was at $11,775, posting marginal gains against the USD, but still trailing ETH, which continues to pump on several fundamental events. 

Still, there are interesting reports that support Bitcoin bulls, even in the face of uncertainty. 

As it is, there are now more coins in the hands of holders than it was five months ago when Bitcoin flash-crashed to $3,800. 

Christened the Black Thursday, the free fall was fueled by first, fears of coronavirus, which had brought the globe to a sudden halt, and second, the availability of BTC in exchanges. Sensing a slowing economy, many resorted to the stability of the USD, crashing BTC. 

According to data, the amount of BTC held by different custodial exchanges is now around 20-month lows, hinting of confidence. 

At the same time, Bitcoin open interest is up 6X since Jan 2020, while the network remains resilient and secure, despite miners working extra hard to pull the same revenue they did in the second epoch.

Uniswap Transaction Fees is Almost Half Those of Bitcoin

The amount of transaction fees generated by Uniswap is roughly half those of the Bitcoin network, highlighting the DEX’s dominance and how Ethereum is still struggling with high transaction fees. 

According to data, more fees are generated by DeFi dApps, pushing the total transaction fees from the smart contracting network to almost 3X that of Bitcoin. 

The increasing demand for Ethereum and DeFi means competition is stiff and miners have to raise fees for a transaction to be included in a block. 

Therefore, regardless of the block gas limit increment—like what miners have been unanimously agreeing to do in the last few weeks, nothing will change unless there are alternative implementations to inherently scale the network ahead of Eth2.0. 

Layer 2 solutions have been suggested, but like in other systems—example the Lightning Network, it has failed to take off. 

Chrysalis 1.5 is Live

IOTA is firm on its goal of activate Coordicide and eventually eliminate the central coordinator, following the activation of Chrysalis on Aug 19. 

Described as an intermediate phase, Chrysalis 1.5, the stage builds the ground for Chrysalis 2.0 and eventually Nectar before IOTA 2.0. 

This is when the central coordinator—which currently secures the network against bad actors, will be removed completely, decentralizing the Internet-of-Things (IoT)-focused network.

IOTA Price Analysis

At the time of press, IOTA is perched at 20th in the market cap leaderboard. Relatively stable against both the USD and BTC, it still trails ETH, but the uptrend remains firm. 

From the daily chart, bulls are in control. However, this will only last as long as prices trend above the 20-day Moving Average (MA), or the Middle BB. This is the flexible support line. Notably, there are lower lows versus the Upper BB. 

As long as prices steady above $0.35—previous resistance and now support marking February 2020 highs, every low should be a buying opportunity. In this case, the first bull target should be Aug 2020 highs of $0.45.

On the flip side, dips below $0.35 could see IOTA crater to $0.30 or worse $0.26, especially if the break below the 20-day MA is at the back of high trading volumes exceeding those of Aug 11 (data streams from Binance).

Technical chart courtesy of Trading View

Disclaimer: Views and opinions expressed are those of the author. This is not investment advice. Do your research.

Dalmas Ngetich

Dalmas is a very active cryptocurrency content creator and highly regarded technical analyst. He’s passionate about blockchain technology and the futuristic potential of cryptocurrencies.