As of 6:53 p.m. on April 16, 2023, the price of Bitcoin stands at $30,346.26, representing a minor dip of -0.11% over the past 24 hours. The market capitalization of Bitcoin has reached $587,116,508,454.47 due to recent price fluctuations, resulting in a change of 83.88% since the start of the year.
After nine months, Bitcoin has finally surpassed the $30,000 support barrier, rising by 7.6% to reach its current price of $30,146. This increase was driven by the recent release of the Consumer Price Index for March by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which revealed lower-than-expected inflation rates. This development suggests that the Fed may reconsider its policy of raising interest rates, which could result in more expensive borrowing costs and potentially steer investors away from high-risk assets such as crypto and stocks.
Ethereum (ETH), the closest competitor to Bitcoin, had a tremendous week, surging by 10.1% to reach $2,061. On Friday, the coin briefly broke past $2,100 for the first time in eleven months. Much of the excitement surrounding Ethereum was due to the long-awaited “Shapella” upgrade, which went live on Wednesday. The upgrade consists of two parts: Shanghai and Capella. Both parts have now enabled the withdrawal of ETH staked on the network at the execution and consensus layers, unlocking approximately $34 billion worth of staked ETH.
The execution layer processes Ethereum’s transactions in real-time, while the consensus layer validates them. Every validator has staked 32 ETH to activate their software and is rewarded with ETH for confirming transactions.
