The Ethereum price rallied from the uptrend line at $1,200 and sharply moved to $1,550.
The rally in crypto has followed a big rally in stocks as investors expect rate hikes to slow.
ETHUSD – Weekly Chart
Over the last week, the big news in cryptocurrency was the confirmation of Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter. Traders were excited about the prospect of a Web3/crypto remodelling of the Twitter business model.
Ethereum outperformed Bitcoin’s price action on the week, likely because the recent ETH upgrade made the coin 99.9% cleaner in terms of energy consumption.
Elon Musk previously said that Tesla would start to accept the coin as payment for its cars. He later reversed the decision based on the energy-intensive mining of Bitcoin. Any Twitter project will not include Bitcoin but could have something for Ethereum.
Another upgrade, nicknamed Shanghai, is due to get started for Ethereum. Developers needed to align on the timeline for the following path. Still, they reaffirmed that a core focus of Shanghai would be to enable Ethereum validators to withdraw the crypto they “staked” on the network.
The significant upgrade hoped for has always been the reduction in gas fees which clogged up the Ethereum network in 2020 with the rise of decentralised finance projects. Developers have no immediate plans for that, but ETH could crush some pretender coins once they do.
Ethereum’s founder Vitalik Butlerin was vocal about changes on the Twitter platform. Elon Musk previously criticised the divide on Twitter due to the “current lords & peasants system for who has or doesn’t have a blue checkmark is bs.” To give back “power to the people,” he added that Twitter Blue would be available for everyone at an $8/month subscription.
Buterin responded: “I would support a one-time fee. It also makes more sense from an anti-abuse perspective: the one-time fee would be greater than $8, so if you get banned for misusing the blue check, you will have to pay more to try again.”
Regardless of the disputes, Ethereum has more potential to be a part of a Twitter ecosystem than Bitcoin.
