Ethereum Plunged Below $200, Wiping Out Last Week Gains

This morning, Ethereum (ETH) price further declined following a weekend slide. It wiped out all of its gains last week. Also, the number two cryptocurrency even briefly fell under $200. After that, it recovered to about $205.

Some assume that Ethereum and its ETH token are having somehow a stellar year. It began the year at a lowly $130. Then, Ether doubled in value to brush over $280 by mid-February. During the process, it outperformed Bitcoin (BTC), which was itself enjoying impressive gains in early-2020.

Despite that, Ethereum hasn’t been immune to market-wide crashes. As a result, it failed to escape from the bearish sentiment as BTC dipped below $9,000 in the last week of February. ETH lost $50 as it fell to $220. Also, it came into the weekend outperforming the market. However, Ethereum went down along with the majority of the crypto space as markets crashed on Sunday.

Now, everyone is asking if the bulls have recovered the control of the market. If not, people are wondering if the shockwaves from the oil crash and subsequent stock market sheds will continue to affect cryptocurrency.

Waiting for ETH2.0

This year, Ethereum has gained its fair share of headlines. In addition to that, a maintained rollout of technical and other developments has given renewed optimism for the launch of ETH2.0. This will be a major improvement to the network. And it added some new features and transitioning to a Proof of Stake (PoS) consensus.

Also, the Ethereum network is getting a lot of attention because of its importance for the burgeoning Decentralized Finance (DeFi) industry. Even with some publicized hiccups, like when someone exploited a flaw in a flash loans protocol, many think that DeFi is the killer application that Ethereum has been crying out for.

Aside from that, the latest approval of a mining algorithm changes to programmatic Proof of Work (ProgPoW) divided the community. They aim the move to diminish the advantage of ASIC mining rigs, favoring those using GPUs and leading to further decentralization.

But the fast approval by core developers ironically led to calls of centralized control from several sections of the community.

Venture Studio Invests in Crypto Firm

Meanwhile, a Taiwanese venture studio just became the new lead investor for a Hong Kong-based crypto custodian. And this happened after a million-dollar investment this week.

Yesterday, Nogle revealed that they had given $3 million to First Digital Trust (FDT) – Legacy Trust’s digital asset arm. And the investment serves for the financial custodian to improve its crypto asset platform for the Asia market.

FDT’s Rapid Settlement and Clearing Network trading platform for digital assets will reportedly launch in May. And the platform might give an alternative solution for Asia markets to the Silvergate Exchange Network.

Moreover, they will limit the initial services to crypto assets and traditional fiat currency. But FDT signalled that it might expand the offering to add tokenized securities. Then, users can also send and receive digital assets seamlessly across Asia.

Now, the startup is funding the crypto custodian to improve the trading platform. And FDT becomes the most recent financial target for Nogle.