Sorting week. While bitcoin slipped below $75,000, altcoins did the splits. Bitcoin Cash lost more than 6% on Thursday and hit $262 (the lowest since September). Zcash activated its NU7 update and took almost 10% in the process while freezing $16 million in coins that no one will be able to spend again. Lavoisier had not foreseen this case.
Bitcoin Cash below its 100-day average: the forgotten fork stalls
BCH is trading around $262 on the morning of Saturday, November 7, as we write, after a 6.5% fall on Thursday and a further 4.5% drop on Friday (CryptoTicker, November 6). The price has returned below its 100-day moving average, a threshold that traders follow as the border between correction and trend reversal. Volume spiked during the decline, signaling convinced selling rather than a simple lack of buyers.
Why him, and why now? Bitcoin Cash has no negative news or hack to deplore. It pays for its status as a high beta asset on bitcoin: when BTC loses more than 10% in a week, historical forks fall even further. The movement recalls the episode of the launch of CME contracts, which boosted BCH before an equally rapid relapse. Long-time holders know the song, and the $260 support, already touched on Thursday, is the last bastion before the September lows.
Zcash after NU7: 12,200 ZEC frozen forever and one block every 25 seconds
Zcash activated its NU7 network update on the night of November 5-6. Two concrete changes. Block time is reduced from 75 to 25 seconds, making shielded transactions (confidential, zero-disclosure proof-encrypted transactions) significantly more responsive. And the Sprout pool, the network's very first generation of private transactions launched in 2016, is permanently closed (ZIP 2003). Around 12,200 ZEC that were still lying there, or around $16 million at the current rate, are becoming impossible to spend (KuCoin News, November 6).
The market welcomed the operation. ZEC gained between 8 and 11% after activation and remains around $1,300 at the time of writing, going against the tide of a market in full purge. The coin is celebrating its tenth anniversary and one of its co-founders has just proposed cutting off the tap on subsidies to developers, a debate that we detailed in our previous altcoins update. NU7 was the last big technical stage of the year. The rest will be about governance.
ETH, XRP, SOL, BNB: installed values cash in
Ethereum is hovering around $2,240 on Saturday morning, after a 7.5% drop over 24 hours. Ether ETFs returned to net exit this week and developers once again postponed, on November 6, the deployment of Glamsterdam on the Hoodi testnet, the time to resolve eight risks identified on smart contracts. Grayscale may recall in a note relayed on Friday that Ethereum remains first in stablecoins, tokenized assets and the number of developers, the price does not take this into account for the moment.
XRP is holding around $1.18, down 2.3% over 24 hours but still up 3% over five sessions, making it one of the few heavyweights to end the week in the green. Solana is once again flirting with $96 and the $100 mark is moving away, while the Chinese central bank has banned the foundation from organizing its events in Shanghai. BNB is holding up the best, around $693, despite the warning from the Singapore Monetary Authority after the Binance hack.
