Ethereum price tumbles despite big adoption by adidas and Ubisoft
While another dip may be witnessed over the coming few days, ETH's general prospects continue to remain bullish.
- Ethereum's recent volatility can, in part, be attributed to news of Russia potentially looking to ban its local crypto market.
- Despite various alts losing value, Solana has continued to gain mainstream support, accruing over $660 million over the past year.
- Video game giant Ubisoft announced that it is all set to make its way into the Web 3.0 ecosystem via its Quartz platform.
Ethereum, the world's second-largest cryptocurrency by total market capitalisation, has continued to showcase an extremely high degree of monetary turbulence over the past week, registering losses of 5.3%. In fact, after surging to AUD$5,750 on 17 December, the altcoin proceeded to plummet to AUD$5,200 within a matter of hours, before recovering slightly. At press time, ETH is trading at a price point of AUD$5,539.
Even though ETH could plummet to as low as AUD$5,000 over the coming few days, derivatives data available online suggests that pro traders are still quite bullish on the digital asset's general price prospects.
The uncertainty seems to stem from the fact that just a few days ago Elvira Nabiullina, governor of Russia's central bank, was quoted as saying that a ban on the country's local crypto market could very well be on the cards, claiming that digital assets are being used for a host of illegal operations across the region, posing a massive risk on local investors.
Even President Vladimir Putin recently criticised cryptos like ETH, stating that they are not backed by anything of substantial value. That said, media reports suggest that Russia is actively looking to devise its very own CBDC, an interesting development, especially when considering that the ruble has lost a whopping 45% of its value against SOV powerhouse gold over the last 48 months.
As alts dip Solana seems primed for another run
Despite the general bearish mood that seems to have engulfed the crypto market at large, Solana, a decentralised blockchain built to enable scalable, user-friendly apps, seems to be growing at a rapid rate, accruing US$660 million over the past year – all while expanding its overall reach to a total of 40 dApps.
Solana's meteoric rise has seen its total market capitalisation more than double compared to that of other prominent alt-projects such as Avalanche and Terra. The project has also been able to amass immense institutional capital recently. For starters, in June Solana Labs raised US$314 million via its private token sale followed by another US$18 million fundraiser that took place in September.
Video game publisher Ubisoft enters the NFT market
After news of adidas making its way into the metaverse recently took the crypto world by storm, tech giant Ubisoft too announced that it was going to take the Web 3.0 route by announcing the launch of its upcoming "Ubisoft Quartz" offering on the Tezos blockchain.
Once live, the platform will allow users to buy and sell digital collectibles, such as in-game items using crypto. The development is extremely significant since it will be the first time players will be able to gain complete ownership of their in-game purchases. For reference, Ubisoft is one of the world's top gaming firms, estimated to possess a total capital pool of approximately US$6 billion.
Interested in cryptocurrency? Learn more about the basics with our beginner's guide to Bitcoin, dive deeper by learning about Ethereum and see what blockchain can do with our simple guide to DeFi.
Disclosure: The author owns a range of cryptocurrencies at the time of writing.
