Today, bitcoin was trading at $19704, while ether was trading at $1,551. The top 10 cryptocurrencies in terms of market capital had the largest weekly gains with Ether and ADA. Despite being weeks away from both blockchain upgrades, ether and ADA saw gains in a mixed week of crypto markets.
Bitcoin is down 1.49% to $19,704 in September. This was due to the loss of gains from Friday’s jobs data in the U.S. Similarly, ether rose more than 4% to $1,551 while Cardano’s native token ADA soared 10.69%.
The Merge will take place in September. It completes Ethereum’s transition from proof-of-work to proof of stake, which has been planned for years. Traders were busy betting on the upgrade during the build-up.
Charles Hoskinson, the Ethereum co-founder, has set a date for Cardano’s own upgrade, which is dubbed vasil. Cardano, the blockchain’s token, increased more than 10% to \$0.498
More traders invest in the merge
Augmented ether derivatives surged, while bitcoin fell, and LedgerPrime reported this week in its market report that bearish strategies for bitcoin options have been dominant.
“Strategies like the bear put spread (2.8K) with low risk have been dominant this week; some investors believe prices are low enough that strategies such as bull call spread are gaining momentum,” said it.
According to the fund, bull call spreads dominated ether strategies, with 42K volume. The bear diagonal spread was second at 42K.
As crypto trading firm QCP Capital noted ahead of time, Friday’s U.S. nonfarm payroll report was more important than in previous months.
We have not considered NFP this year, and relegated it to our 2nd-tier data series behind all other inflation releases.” After last month’s huge print, however, we now give NFP/CPI a 25/75 significance to determine the Sep FOMC .
Non-farm payrolls are used to measure the number workers. It excludes farm workers. They are released every Friday. This figure was slightly lower than the 318,000 estimates for August.
The U.S. unemployment rates rose to 3.7% in July from 3.5% in July. However, they still remain below a multi-decade low.