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Top Headlines for 16 March, 2022

Public Bitcoin Miners Increase Hashrate

The industry’s top public BTC miners raised their holdings and hash rate in February 2022, but earned fewer bitcoins than they did in January.

According to an examination of 11 miners with publicly available data, including Core Scientific, CleanSpark, Iris Energy, and Riot, the group’s overall hash rate reached almost 31.01 EH/s (exahashes per second) last
month.

Practically all BTC miners boosted their hash rate in February, with the aggregate rating in January 2022 being 28.41 EH/s. Mike Levitt, CEO of Core Scientific, announced that in 2022 the company expects to expand its hash rate capacity to 40-42 EH/s per second throughout its solo mining and hosted service operations. The corporation is hinting that its rate would
increase by 164 percent by the end of 2022.

BTC holdings by public miners climbed by over 10% in February 2022. Marathon and Core Scientific are the industry’s largest holders, with each holding an estimated 16281 BTC.

Coinbase's BTC Reserves Hit Record Lows

According to blockchain analytics firm Glassnode, Coinbase experienced its lowest BTC reserves in March 2022.

In the two years since 2020 the exchange’s reserves have shrunk by more than 36% with an estimated 649,500 BTC in its treasury on 15 March, 2022. Glassnode reported that the exchange has observed one of the most significant BTC outflows since 2017, leaving an all-time low amount of liquidity on its platform. Strong exchange outflow is a bullish signal for the premier cryptocurrency.

Coinbase has one of the biggest reserves in the United States and is one of the preferred options of big institutions for their cryptocurrency interactions. Glassnode therefore believes that outflows on this exchange particularly suggest strong adoption of BTC by big institutions. The analytics firm considers it “a strong signal that investors see it as a relevant asset in modern portfolios.”

Ethereum Merges Beacon On Kiln Testnet

The Ethereum network successfully conducted a merge of the Beacon Chain with Kiln on 15 March, 2022.

Kilntest is the final public testnet before the network completes its transition to proof-of-stake (PoS) on the mainnet.

Ethereum Foundation also asked its stakeholders to perform tests on Kiln to ensure a smooth transition. Ethereum developers said that they wanted the community to have a chance to safely test their applications on the new system before the transition to Ethereum 2.0.

The test is a preparation for the next iteration of the Ethereum network in which the proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism will be replaced with the more energy efficient proof-of-stake (PoS). The energy usage of the network is expected to drop 99.9% after the transition.

The move to PoS will be one of the most significant changes for the network since its inception. The update aims to solve crucial issues like high transaction costs and low processing speed on the network. The switch will also decrease the issuance of ether by over 90%, introducing strong deflationary pressure on the asset.

ConsenSys Raises $450 Million

ConsenSys, the blockchain development behemoth led by Ethereum founder Joseph Lubin, raised $450 million at a valuation of $7 billion in March 2022.

The investment round was led by Parafi Capital, with major participation from industry giants such as Microsoft and Softbank. ConsenSys’ market valuation has roughly doubled since its last capital raise in late 2021.

ConsenSys is the creator of MetaMask and Infura, two of the most prominent Web 3.0 services. MetaMask is a wallet that has seen incredible growth in 2022, with the user mark surpassing 30 million. It has become one of the most popular entry points into the realm of Web 3.0, providing access to decentralized apps and protocols. Infura is an actively used tool for developers.

MetaMask Wallet Hits 30M Users

Crypto software giant ConsenSys’ popular MetaMask wallet has hit 30 million users in March 2022.

The wallet is used to interact with Web 3.0 and decentralized finance applications. With a 42% growth in user base since December 2021, it has established itself as the dominant player in the Web 3.0 explorer space. The United States, Brazil, Philippines, Germany, and Nigeria are among the wallet’s most active markets.

MetaMask is used by individuals to access decentralized applications, to mint and collect non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and to join decentralized autonomous organization (DAOs). The wallet has released an institutional version of its service to attract businesses, and plans to improve its user interface. It is also working on a DAO for its community that will enable the funding and creation of new features for the application.