Decentral Block Post

A transaction on the Ethereum blockchain is technically initiated by an external account owner (not a contract). For example, if User A sends 1 Ether (ETH) to User B, the action of debiting from one account and crediting to another changes the blockchain’s state.

The change specifically takes place on the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). Ethereum transactions need to be broadcast to the entire network, and any node can broadcast a request for the execution of a transaction on the EVM.

After broadcasting the request, a validator can then execute the transaction and propagate the state change to the whole network. Transaction fees are incurred during the process of validation, and each transaction must be included in a validated block. There are different types of transactions on the Ethereum network:

How to check the status of an Ethereum transaction

Here’s a brief step-by-step guide on how to track Ethereum transactions:

Step 1: Select an Ethereum blockchain explorer

Confidence in the United States financial system seems to be eroding fast with investors trying to find the next weakest link that is about to collapse. Bill Ackman, CEO of hedge fund management firm Pershing Square, cautioned that time was running out to fix the problem.

The U.S. equities markets have become vulnerable to adverse news on the regional banks as seen from the sell-off in the past three days. Compared to that, Bitcoin (BTC) has held strong and is hovering near its critical overhead resistance at $31,000.

Bitcoin is not the only outperformer. Gold had risen close to its all-time high during the week. This shows that Bitcoin is currently behaving as a safe-haven asset and investors are adding it to their portfolio along with gold.

Could Bitcoin overcome the barrier at $31,000 and extend the up-move? Will the altcoins follow Bitcoin higher? Let’s study the charts of the top-10 cryptocurrencies to find out.

Bitcoin price analysis

Bitcoin continues to trade inside the symmetrical triangle pattern, indicating indecision among the bulls and the bears. Usually, the trend that was in force before the formation of the triangle tends to resume. That means the price is likely to break out to the upside.

The price of Sui (SUI) has dropped sharply after its market debut across leading cryptocurrency exchanges.

On May 5, SUI price was $1.26 per token, down about 70% from its record high of around $4, established two days ago on Binance.

Interestingly, on other exchanges like Kraken, the token's market top was $1.60 or lower, suggesting it was in "price discovery" mode after the launch.

Still, SUI maintains its overall market gains, up nearly 1,200% from its market debut.

Early SUI price fundamentals

SUI's initial uptrend draws support from traders who view Sui — a new entry into the long list of layer-one blockchain projects — as potentially more scalable than its rivals.

Memecoins have been part and parcel of the cryptocurrency space since the inception of Dogecoin back in 2013, with fortunes made and ruined in equal measure. But a new token on the block caused a stir in recent weeks, as Pepe (PEPE) grabs a chunk of the memecoin market share from plucky investors.

As previously reported by Cointelegraph, PEPE saw a 2,000% boom in value following its launch in late April 2023. The token’s rally is primarily attributed to zealous memecoin hype, with the project widely shared on Twitter over the past month.

The Pepecoin website itself is brandished with a closing disclaimer, labeling $PEPE as "a meme coin with no intrinsic value or expectation of financial return." The project also stipulates that it has no formal team or roadmap and that the token is "completely useless and for entertainment purposes only.

Data analytics firm Nansen provided insightful data and key takeaways following the rise of PEPE’s market capitalization. Research analyst Xin Yi estimated that the total memecoin market value is around $20 billion, with the top five tokens, DOGE, SHIB, PEPE, BABYDOGE and FLOKI, accounting for over $18 billion of the value.

Data provided from Nansen Query shows the massive spike in token value and market capitalization of PEPE in relation to the other top five memecoins. Yi also notes that the infographic does not paint a complete picture, given that the data for PEPE reflects its listing on Coingecko, which came a couple of weeks after its inception.

Smart contract auditor CertiK claims to have blocked $160,000 from Merlin, a zk-Sync-based decentralized exchange (DEX) which has been the center of a rogue insider "rugpull" that lost users $1.8 million last week.

CertiK shared the news of its successful $160,000 freeze of the stolen funds in an update to its 257,700 Twitter followers on May 5.

“We have successfully frozen $160K of the stolen funds with the help of partners,” CertiK said, adding that they’re continuing to monitor the movement of the stolen funds:

The firm explained that they tried to “collaborate” with Merlin to recover the funds stolen from the April 25 "rugpull" but the effort was to no avail.

It led the firm to reach out to law enforcement in the United States and the United Kingdom in an attempt to uncover the identities of the pseudonymous operators:

Decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Curve Finance has launched its native algorithmic U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoin, dubbed “crvUSD” on the Ethereum mainnet — minting more than $22 million worth of the crvUSD so far.

According to data from blockchain explorer Etherscan, the contract has minted more than $22 million worth of crvUSD in the past 8 hours, with $20 million of that amount minted within the first 5 minutes.

The deployment of crvUSD on the Ethereum network is a significant step towards the public release of the algorithmic stablecoin. Notably, the stablecoin remains inaccessible to general users, pending integration with Curve’s front-end user interface on its official website.

Responding to a query about when users could expect to see the stablecoin released to the public in the official Curve Finance Telegram chat, an admin claimed it will be coming “soon.”

At the time of publication, Curve Finance is one of the largest DeFi protocols in the industry, with roughly $4.4 billion in total value locked (TVL), according to data from DeFiLlama.

Investors seem to have priced in a 25 basis points rate hike by the United States Federal Reserve on May 3. Next, they will look for clues on the Fed’s actions for the rest of the year.

Will the Fed maintain its hawkish stance as inflation still remains well above its target range or will the bank troubles and the looming recession make the central bank signal a pause in its rate hikes?

The World Economic Forum Chief Economists Outlook report released on May 1 shows that 80% of the chief economists believe that central banks have to maintain a delicate balance between “managing inflation and maintaining financial sector stability.” The economists anticipate that the central banks will find it difficult to bring down inflation to their target levels.

Arthur Hayes, the co-founder and former CEO of crypto derivatives exchange BitMEX, in an exclusive interview with Cointelegraph, cautioned investors that investing in assets "outside of the traditional financial system” is the only way out if they want to preserve their capital.

Could Bitcoin (BTC) and altcoins start an up-move after bouncing off key support levels? Let’s study the charts of the top-10 cryptocurrencies to find out.

New meme-coin Pepe (PEPE) has entered a sharp correction phase after surging by more than 2,000% since its debut a few weeks ago.

On May 3, the PEPE price dropped to $0.00000089, down about 35% from its record high of $0.00000138 established two days ago. As a result of the correction, its market capitalization slipped by nearly $80 million, thus pushing it out of the top-100 top cryptocurrency index. 

A mix of technical and fundamental indicators hint at further downside for PEPE price. 

Retail interest falls

PEPE's daily trading volumes declined across centralized (CEX) and decentralized exchanges (DEX) as prices fell. The same happened to the Google trends for the keyword "Pepe Coin," whose score is down from 100 to 7 in a day, suggesting that the retail hype has subsided in the past 48 hours.

PEPE whale distribution is worrisome

The top 100 richest PEPE addresses, aka "whales," control 45% of the token's circulating supply, according to data tracked by CoinCarp.com.

Major cryptocurrency exchanges around the world are launching trading of the Sui (SUI) token amid the Sui Network's mainnet launch on May 3.

According to an official announcement by the Sui Foundation, the Sui mainnet went live at 12:00 pm UTC. A wide number of global crypto trading platforms opted to support the Sui mainnet launch, enabling investors to buy and sell the new SUI token.

As such, Binance crypto exchange plans to debut SUI trading right away after mainnet launch. The platform will allow users to trade between SUI and cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC), Tether (USDT) and Binance Coin (BNB) at 12:15 pm UTC. The firm will also enable investors to exchange SUI against euros and Turkish liras.

Other big exchanges including Huobi, KuCoin, ByBit, OKX and Poloniex also announced SUI listings. KuCoin noted that it also plans to list SUI USDT-margined futures and isolated margin trading pair SUI/USDT when its “liquidity meets the requirement.”

Poloniex also emphasized that the total supply of SUI is capped at 10 billion tokens.

Litecoin (LTC) can make some big gains versus Bitcoin (BTC), particularly as the August halving event gets closer, according to Litecoin's creator Charlie Lee.

Litecoin up 85% since record lows versus Bitcoin

Lee argues that LTC/BTC could rally to 0.025 BTC, or over 700%, in the next bull cycle, with Litecoin having "higher throughput by design, scalability with extension blocks, better fungibility, and privacy from MWEB."

Lee:

"I can see an upside target of 10% (0.025 LTC/BTC). In the next bull market, 5% (0.0125) shouldn't be too hard to achieve. I honestly don't see it going much below 1% (0.0025) on the downside. The next halving will be in ~92 days. This is going to be fun."

His statements appeared after Litecoin's 85% price recovery from its record low of 0.001716 BTC in June 2022. LTC is still down about 90% below its record high of 0.051 BTC from November 2013, owing to rising competition in the altcoin market.

On May 2, European cryptocurrency investment firm CoinShares published its latest “Digital Asset Fund Flows Weekly Report,” which stated that the digital asset market experienced bearish sentiment for the second consecutive week, resulting in outflows totaling $72 million. The report noted that the bearish sentiment could be attributed to the probability of further interest rate hikes by the United States Federal Reserve this week.

According to the report, crypto market funds experienced outflows across all geographies and providers, particularly in Germany and Canada, where outflows reached $40 million and $14 million, respectively.

Bitcoin (BTC) recorded the largest outflows at $46 million, with short-Bitcoin also experiencing outflows of $7.8 million, its highest figure since December 2022. Despite the recent outflows, short-Bitcoin continues to lead in inflows for the year, with net inflows of $119 million. Meanwhile, Ether (ETH) products saw outflows amounting to $19 million, marking the biggest weekly outflows since the Merge in September 2022.

On a positive note, a small number of altcoin funds experienced minor inflows, with Solana (SOL), Algorand (ALGO) and Polygon (MATIC) each gaining less than $1 million in capital flows. 

Blockchain equities also experienced negative sentiment, resulting in outflows of $2.5 million last week, although the year-to-date net flows remain positive at $27 million.