Bitcoin’s Massive Rollercoaster and Coinbase L2 Network Base: This Week’s Crypto Recap

Bitcoin’s price has been on a rollercoaster throughout the past seven days, and it has failed to chart any significant increase (or decrease) throughout the period. However, it was particularly volatile.

Last week at this time, the price was hovering around similar levels, around $24K, but it quickly took for the skies and touched $25K on Sunday. What followed was the first correction back to $24K, after which BTC bounced again and reached $25K once more. It remained there for a couple of days, but bulls were unable to establish control, and bears eventually won the war, pushing the price back below $24K.

On Thursday, BTC attempted yet another shot at recovery and got to around $24,700, but was unable to sustain these levels and retraced to where it’s currently trading at around $24K.

That said, Bitcoin’s volatility wasn’t the biggest news of the week. This spot is reserved for Coinbase’s announcement that they are launching an Ethereum layer-two scaling solution based on Optimis. Needless to say, this caused a serious pump in the price of OP.

According to the official press release, the leading US-based cryptocurrency exchange aims to lure millions of new users in the industry through Base (that’s how the new network is called). The latter boasts a full EVM equivalence and aims to do so at a fraction of the cost.

This has caused a somewhat mixed reaction in the industry’s community because many argued that Arbitrum is the better way to go because it’s cheaper than Optimism. Others said that Base will attract millions in fees revenue because of Coinbase’s massive network of users and, hence, increase the value of its stock.

All in all, it was an interesting week in the market even though the capitalization remained more or less where it was. It’s exciting to see how the following weeks will shape up.

Market Data

Market Cap: $1142B | 24H Vol: $78B | BTC Dominance: 40.2%

BTC: $23,822 (+0.3%) | ETH: $1,646 (+0%) | BNB: $309 (+1%)

Here’s Why Stacks (STX) Exploded 160% in a Week. Stacks saw its native cryptocurrency skyrocket by a whopping 160% in the last seven days. STX is one of the best performers in the entire market. Here are a few possible reasons why.

Coinbase Launch ETH Layer-2 Network Based on Optimism, OP Token Pumps 6%. The leading US-based cryptocurrency exchange, Coinbase, surprised the industry. The company revealed that it has launched the testnet for a brand new Ethereum layer-two scaling solution based on Optimism. The new chain is called Base.

Spotify Runs a Pilot for Token-Enabled Playlists with NFT Partners. The leading music streaming app – Spotify – announced that it’s running a pilot program for token-enabled playlists with certain non-fungible token partners. It’s testing the new service.

Banks Are Still Allowed to Service the Crypto Industry, Clarifies Federal Reserve. Three US federal bank regulators – the Federal Reserve, the FDIC, and OCC, had a clarifying message for banking organizations. They said that servicing the cryptocurrency industry is neither illegal nor discouraged.

Sam Bankman-Fried Slapped With 4 New Criminal Charges After FTX Fallout. Sam Bankman-Fried was slapped with a total of four new criminal charges in a new indictment filed against him on Thursday. It includes more details about alleged illegal political donations made by the former FTX CEO.

Bitcoin Volatility Increases as Binance Closes Some Aussie Derivatives Accounts. Binance closed all derivatives positions of Australian accounts that have been mistakenly classified. This caused an uptick in volatility, and Bitcoin’s price went on a rollercoaster.

Charts

This week we have a chart analysis of Ethereum, Ripple, Cardano, Polkadot, and Chainlink – click here for the complete price analysis.