Bitcoin holds $58,000 level, trades sideways as volumes fall

In the recent past, bitcoin has traded flat as investors remained on the sidelines amid the lack of fresh cues.

In the past 24 hours, the digital asset traded in a small range of $56,242.80-58,608.83 and was trading at 58,125.85, up 3.6% at around 5.45pm IST, as per CoinGecko. Bitcoin is still trading 6% away from its lifetime high of $61,711.87.

Meanwhile, other major cryptocurrencies such ethereum, tether, Cardano and ripple were trading up to 1.5% in the green.

The world’s second largest crypto currency, ethereum, is still 12% away from its all-time high of $2,042.

Over the past one year, ethereum has beaten bitcoin by a wide margin in terms of returns. While bitcoin has surged over 800%, ethereum has logged gains of over 1,200% over the last one year.

Smart contracts built on the ethereum network are the backbone of many use cases we see in the crypto space. NFTs (non-fungible tokens) and DeFi (decentralized finance) are nothing but smart contracts built on ethereum.

“As more and more people are using NFTs, DeFi, and other new trends, the transaction fee on ethereum (also known as gas fee) is now higher than ever. Sometimes the transaction fee is higher than the amount being sent. That needs to be fixed, which is why the software upgrade, EIP 1559, is a welcome development. EIP 1559 would lower gas fees and reduce the supply of Ether tokens,” said Rahul Pagidipati, chief executive officer, ZebPay.

“With all these new uses for Ethereum, demand has gone up, so it’s not surprising that the price of Ether tokens has more than doubled since December. Now EIP 1559 is proposing to reduce the supply by taking some Ether out of circulation. With greater demand and lower supply, we might well see further price increases over time,” he added.