JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon keeps attacking Bitcoin, and Ethereum is making progress towards the Metropolis update. Here are the cryptocurrency highlights of week 38:
- JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon lashed out against Bitcoin again this week, stating “governments will close down Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies if they get too big”. “It’s creating something out of nothing that to me is worth nothing,” Dimon added. “It will end badly.” Interestingly Dimon made the exact same comment almost two years ago, when he stated “there will be no real, non-controlled currency in the world. There is no government that’s going to put up with it for long.”
- The planned roll-out date for Ethereum’s “Byzantium” upgrade is being postponed by just over a week. The hard fork for Byzantium – the first leg in Ethereum’s Metropolis update – will now occur at block number 437,000,000, or about October 17 given current block production metrics. The original expected launch date was October 9, barring any complications during testing. Byzantium officially launched on Ropsten, the Ethereum testing environment, earlier this week.
- One of Ethereum’s most highly anticipated scaling projects is preparing to launch a token sale. To be held this October, the initial coin offering (ICO) for Raiden Network will seek to further fund the development of the payments protocol. Led by blockchain consulting firm Brainbot and its co-founder Heiko Hees, the milestone will be the latest for a project first unveiled in 2015 as a way to increase transaction capacity on the world’s second-largest blockchain. This project is therefore similar to the Lightning Network on Bitcoin.
- One of Australia’s largest utility providers is working with blockchain start up Power Ledger to test a new energy trading platform. Origin Energy works in a number of energy fields, including power plant operation, natural gas processing and both commercial and domestic power delivery. As such, the project will see the company using the trial platform to connect customers who want to either buy or sell excess energy, with blockchain creating an immutable record of where energy is being allocated.
- Compared to the previous week the price of Bitcoin has increased by around six percent, with the exchange rate currently at about $3,794 per BTC. The price of Ethereum increased by more than 16 percent over the same period, taking Ether up to a rate of $281 per ETH. Ethereum Classic gained about 7 percent, with the price increasing to $10.67 per ETC. Zcash gained 30 percent. One ZEC is now trading at roughly $215 per coin.
