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Bitcoin (BTC) attempted to violate local lows on Sep. 16 as the latest cross-crypto downtrend intensified.

No relief for BTC bulls post Merge

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC/USD approaching $19,600 at the time of writing, with buyer support just avoiding a further drop.

The level had remained in place as an intraday floor as the Ethereum (ETH) Merge concluded, only to spark a sell-off, which took ETH/BTC toward three-week lows.

Amid the gloomy mood, traders and analysts showed little inclination to reassess their market outlooks.

“I feel confident with the scenario of quick pump to 23k on BTC and 1800 on ETH and big dump from there,” Il Capo of Crypto wrote, reiterating a long-held theory.

Meme-inspired cryptocurrency Dogecoin (DOGE) is now officially the second largest proof-of-work (PoW) crypto in terms of market cap, following the Ethereum network's proof-of-stake upgrade on Sept. 15. 

Bitcoin (BTC) of course remains miles ahead of Dogecoin’s market cap of $7.83 billion, though the well-followed memecoin is still comfortably ahead of the third place PoW cryptocurrency Ethereum Classic (ETC) (with a market cap of $4.69 billion), Litecoin (LTC)  ($4.01 billion) and Monero (XMR) ($2.65 billion).

One Dogecoin fan appeared to be in disbelief of Dogecoin’s rise to become the second largest PoW cryptocurrency, stating “who would have thought that this would happen. Congrats #Dogefam.”

But it wasn’t taken well by everyone. One Twitter user responding to a tweet about the news asked how people could take the crypto industry seriously with a memecoin so close to the top spot, emphasizing the need to remove “useless coins” from public view.

But Dogecoin may also soon find itself competing against ETHPoW - the Ethereum PoW hard fork chain that will continue mining, according to the official Twitter account of the ETHPoW, which is currently priced at $13.64.

It’s been less than a day since Ethereum’s historic transition to proof-of-stake, with most of the crypto community still abuzz with excitement following the successful Merge.

On Sept. 15 at 06:42:42 UTC, the last Ethereum block using the old proof-of-work consensus mechanism was mined. Replacing it is an energy-efficient proof-of-stake consensus mechanism.

Many crypto enthusiasts and climate advocates worldwide have been thrilled by the positive impact it will have on the environment and thus, crypto’s reputation.

Others have just been in awe of the technological feat of upgrading an entire blockchain network without any stoppages.

Uniswap Labs founder and CEO Hayden Adams told his 232,200 Twitter followers on Sept. 15 that the reduction of Ethereum’s energy usage “will improve the network's public image” more so than anything else in its “entire history.”

The Ethereum Merge has finally happened. It’s over, and fortunately it went smoothly without any major hiccups. As predicted by many, the event turned out to be a “buy the rumor sell the news” style event, or perhaps, the hotter-than-expected consumer price index print on Sept. 12 was the real catalyst that pushed the market in its current direction. 

Regardless of the reasons for this week’s downturn, the Merge is over and in its wake, bulls are left holding a whole lot of nothing. It’s likely that a new bullish narrative will need to emerge, or analysts will need to keep a close eye on smart money to see what assets they elect to rotate into.

Remember, “The Merge,” according to so many “smart” people, was meant to be a bullish event that would possibly send Ether price higher and the treasure trove of hardfork ETH POW tokens was meant to magically materialize multi-billions of dollars in liquidity which would likely inflow to Bitcoin and help the ailing asset to break out of its current range.

Well, none of that happened. It’s not to say that it won’t happen, but the current reality is a market painted in a bright shade of red. Bitcoin’s Sept.15 drop below $20,000, induced a market-wide correction resulting in double-digit losses for a majority of altcoins and at the moment, there isn’t an easily graspable story for investors to interpret as bullish.

Not everything is dumping

There does happen to be an outlier, and its name is Cosmos (ATOM). To the surprise of some, it’s one of the few green assets on the charts on Merge day. Currently, the altcoin reflects a 9.4% gain and it has rebounded strongly off its Sept.14 low at $13.19.

Zircon Finance, an automated market maker (AMM) and a decentralized exchange on Moonbeam, announced the launch of a mainnet network to address investor’s challenges related to impermanent loss in decentralized finance (DeFi).

Impermanent loss relates to a condition wherein investors lose assets they hadpreviously dedicated to providing liquidity to a liquidity pool for earning profits via yields. The mainnet network, dubbed Zircon Gamma, aims to counter such losses through single-sided liquidity over the Moonriver network, which tranches or splits risks between a volatile cryptocurrency and a stablecoin.

For example, in the case of an ETH/USDC pool, Zircon allows Ether (ETH) to maintain full exposure while ensuring safety through USD Coin (USDC) stablecoin. In addition, the mainnet allows both sides to earn swap fees.

As explained by Zircon, Float liquidity pools like ETH double their gains over regular pools but remain at the risk of impermanent loss. However, the AMM’s in-house Async LPing mechanism reduces the risk by at least 90%.

The mechanism does this by incentivizing liquidity pools to restock lost ETH funded via the earned fees. Speaking to Cointelegraph, Andrey Shevchenko, co-founder of Zircon, revealed that his inspiration to create such a system stems from the traders' need for a flexible and permissionless solution, stating:

In this week's episode of Market Talks, we welcome Dr. Julian Hosp, CEO and co-founder of Cake DeFi.

Dr. Julian Hosp is the CEO and co-Founder of Cake DeFi, a highly intuitive online platform dedicated to providing access to decentralized financial services. He is widely regarded as a leading influencer in the crypto and blockchain space with over one million followers across all of his channels globally. He is also a best-selling author and his vision is to bring blockchain awareness and understanding to a billion more people by 2025.

The Merge has been all over the place recently, with different news outlets, influencers and YouTube channels covering the event as much as possible, but why does the Ethereum Merge actually matter, and why is it such a significant event in crypto? We ask Julian to break it down for us.

Now that the Merge is finally complete and Ethereum has successfully moved from proof-of-work to proof-of-stack, what has actually changed? Will the network be any different for users or will it behave differently for day-to-day transactions? Also, what's next for Ethereum? Are there more upgrades or changes planned for the future? Will the Merge bring more institutional adoption now that the network is more environmentally friendly? 

After all the news and attention the merge got, a lot of people were expecting there to either be a huge pump or dump in the price of ETH and other cryptocurrencies. But the markets were largely unaffected by the event. This begs the question, was it all just hype? We get Julian's take on the matter.

Bitcoin (BTC) spent a second day threatening $20,000 support on Sep. 15 as markets processed the Ethereum (ETH) Merge.

BTC stuck between price magnets'

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC/USD spiking below $20,000 again overnight to recover marginally above the boundary for a brief period.

The largest cryptocurrency broadly failed to regain lost ground after surprise United States inflation data on Sep. 13 sent risk assets into a tailspin.

Down 13.5% versus the week’s top at the time of writing, Bitcoin offered little inspiration to traders who were still eyeing further losses.

“Bullish above or after a reclaim of $20,800 or something like this and maybe up,” popular trader Crypto Ed summarized in his latest YouTube update.

Solana-based nonfungible token (NFT) marketplace Magic Eden has fended off some community backlash following the launch of MetaShield, its new enforcement tool aimed at deterring NFT buyers who bypass creator royalties. 

MetaShield, which was reportedly launched in partnership with NFT marketplace and aggregator Coral Cube saw mixed reactions from the NFT community following its launch on Sep. 12, who were split on whether NFT marketplaces should protect creator rights or cut royalty fees to make NFTs cheaper for collectors. 

The NFT royalty enforcement tool is designed to allow NFT creators to flag and blur NFTs that may have been sold that managed to bypass creator royalties.

In an eight-part Twitter post on Sept. 14, Magic Eden defended its new tool, noting that some of the “hardest working creators today” are getting “punished” by “custom” royalty marketplaces. 

The new tool came only a few weeks after NFT marketplace X2Y2 introduced a new feature that affords buyers with the discretion to decide whether they pay a royalty fee (and if so, how much) when buying an NFT.

The United States equities markets and the cryptocurrency markets had been rising leading up to the Sept. 13 release of the August consumer price index data, but the rally fell apart once the data showed inflation rising, rather than falling.

The negative data dashed any hope of a Federal Reserve pivot in the near term and it triggered a sharp decline in risky assets. The market capitalization of U.S. stocks plunged by about $1.6 trillion on Sept. 13 and the market cap of the cryptocurrency markets slipped below $1 trillion.

Statistician and independent market analyst Willy Woo, believes that Bitcoin (BTC) may have to fall further before it reaches the maximum pain experienced during previous bottoms. Woo expects Bitcoin price to decline below $10,000.

Could Bitcoin and altcoins resume their downtrend? Let’s study the charts of the top-10 cryptocurrencies to find out.

BTC/USDT

Bitcoin broke above the 50-day simple moving average ($21,902) on Sept. 12, but this proved to be a bull trap. Buyers attempted to extend the recovery on Sept. 13 but the rally reversed direction from $22,799.

Lido DAO (LDO) has declined by more than 40% in the last 30 days with more room to fall in the coming days amid a potential sell-the-news event, i.e. the Merge.

Lido DAO Ether deposits surge 160% in 2022

Lido DAO is Ethereum's biggest staking service, having deposited over 4.14 million of the blockchain's native asset, Ether (ETH), into the Ethereum 2.0 smart contract on behalf of its users, according to the latest data.

In comparison, Lido DAO's total staked amount was around 1.6 million ETH at the beginning of this year. The boom reflects a growing demand for Lido DAO services ahead of Ethereum's scheduled transition from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake via the Merge on Sep. 15.

LDO, a governance token in the Lido DAO ecosystem, has also undergone an unprecedented price rally in recent months, up more than 350% after bottoming out at $0.39 in June.

Still, the token's sharp correction in the past month raises the possibility of an extended downtrend now that the pre-Merge hype is nearing its end. In addition, a technical setup also alerts about a potential price decline ahe.

While the LUNC community rejoices because of a potential comeback for the Terra Luna Classic (LUNC) token, the founder of the Terraform Labs, Do Kwon, is now facing a warrant of arrest from South Korean authorities. 

A court located in Seoul reportedly issued a warrant of arrest for Kwon and five other people who are all currently located in Singapore. According to the prosecutor’s office in South Korea, the Terra founder is facing allegations of violating the country’s capital markets law

In May, what the Terra community first suspected to be a FUD attack became one of the most devastating market crashes in crypto history, triggering the loss of millions of assets from investors of Terra USD (UST) — now renamed Terra Classic USD (USTC) — and Terra (LUNA), which is also rebranded to Terra Luna Classic (LUNC). The UST stablecoin started to drift away from its dollar peg, dropping to an all-time low of $0.006 in June.

Apart from UST, LUNA, an asset that once reached its peak at $119.18 in April dropped massively to an all-time low of $0.0000009, causing suicide hotlines to be pinned on the project’s Reddit community.

The Terra crash also affected various decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols, leading to an 80% and above decline for projects that were associated with the stablecoin.

Crypto and stock markets are feeling the pain after the Sept. 13 inflation report printed an unexpectedly hot figure that showed headline inflation rising by 0.1% month-over-month.

Even with gas prices falling to multi-month lows and a cooling housing market, core inflation saw a 0.6% month-over-month bump and year-to-year inflation sits at 8.3%.

While market participants and investors had estimated the next Federal Reserve interest hike to be a hefty 0.75 basis points, many also subscribed to a loosely held assumption that Sept. 13’s CPI report would come in softer than projected.

Given that the market had supposedly “priced in” a 0.75 bps hike, crypto traders expected Bitcoin, Ether and select altcoins to break out to the upside.

Well, obviously the complete opposite occurred.

On this week’s “The Market Report” show, Cointelegraph’s resident experts discuss the significance of the Ethereum Merge, the latest CPI data, important things to know in Bitcoin (BTC) this week and altcoins analysis.

To kick things off, we broke down the latest news in the markets this week.

Bitcoin price sheds $1K in 3 minutes as U.S. CPI inflation overshoots. Bitcoin's 4% losses swiftly ensue as inflation fails to cool as quickly as hoped for, resulting in a wave of sell-offs for the crypto market. We do a deep dive into what the data means and the implications on the wider market. Does this mark the end of the recent price pump we saw earlier this week or will we rebound once things settle down? We take a look at what President Joe Biden had to say about the latest CPI data and also what Crypto Twitter is discussing about the matter. Lots to unpack here so make sure you stay tuned as we break down the information for you.

The Fed, the Merge and $22K BTC — 5 things to know in Bitcoin this week. A bullish weekly close sees Bitcoin tackle realized price while analysts speculate on major volatility in the coming days. With the new CPI data causing the price of Bitcoin to fall, can the Merge bring some relief to the markets or will it cause further downside? We also do a deep dive into the Ethereum Merge and explain why it is such a significant event in crypto's history and why you should be keeping a close eye on the developments. We also highlight certain scams you need to be aware of to keep yourself safe.

Price analysis: ADA, SOL, and MATIC. Our experts take a look at a few altcoins that have been making some interesting moves this week. They analyze the charts and make a case for where the price could possibly go. So make sure you stick around because you don't want to miss this vital information.

Solana (SOL) ticked higher on Sep. 13, mirroring similar upside moves in the broader cryptocurrency market, led by Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH).

On the daily chart, SOL's price gained over 4% to $39, its best level in 3 weeks. The token's intraday gains came as an extension of a prevailing uptrend that has seen its price gaining 30% in just 2 weeks.

In comparison to Solana, Bitcoin and Ether underperformed, securing 16% and 22% gains in the same period. Let's look at the mix of fundamental and technicals that may have prompted SOL to rally higher.

Helium's merge with Solana

On Aug. 30, core developers behind the Helium Network, which offers decentralized wireless 5G network coverage by enabling users to become hotspots, announced a governance proposal to migrate to the Solana blockchain from its native chain. 

The Helium developers cited their "need to improve operational efficiency and scalability" while seeing Solana as an ideal fit.

Bitcoin (BTC) crashed below $22,000 instantly on Sept. 13 after United States inflation data failed to meet estimates. 

CPI print sparks major crypto rout

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC/USD swiftly falling $1,000 after Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation for August came in at 8.3% year-on-year.

The consensus was that 8.1% would be the latest figure, and the overshoot suggested that inflation was not slowing at the expected pace.

Nonetheless, versus July, year-on-year growth was still down 0.2%, preserving the overall trend of slowing CPI inflation.

This was not enough to avoid a crypto rout, however, and at the time of writing, Bitcoin was below $21,500, down 4% on the day.

Blockchain technology pioneer Jed McCaleb is shifting some of his focus to a new frontier, space.

The prominent crypto billionaire announced the launch of his new venture “Vast” on Sept. 12, which is aimed at expanding “human habitation in space” — "enabling a future where millions of people are living across the solar system.”

According to a company statement, the space habitation start-up was founded by McCaleb in 2021 and will be tasked with developing the world’s first artificial-gravity space station to essentially allow humans to live and work in space.

McCaleb’s long history of being on the cutting edge of technology began in 2000 when he created eDonkey2000, one of the largest file-sharing networks of the time. In 2007, he founded another company that developed a videogame called The Far Wilds.

He is the creator of Magic: The Gathering Online Exchange, a well-known trading card website that was eventually converted to a Bitcoin exchange called Mt. Gox in 2011. He is also a Ripple Labs co-founder, though he left the company in June 2013.