A lot happened in the crypto landscape this week. For example, Bitcoin (BTC) spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have raised a record amount of capital, the major “Dencun” upgrade was successfully launched on the Ethereum (ETH) mainnet, MicroStrategy is continuing its Bitcoin strategy one more higher level. Gear and Craig Wright is now officially not Satoshi Nakamoto.
Bitcoin ETF record inflows
On March 12, the ten Bitcoin exchange funds collectively welcomed no less than $1.045 billion in capital. It represents by far the highest net inflow since its launch on Jan. 11. The previous record, set on Feb. 28, was $673.4 million.
BlackRock also achieved a personal record on the day with a net inflow of $849 million. It was also a remarkable day for Grayscale. “Only” $79 million flowed from the GBTC fund. The daily outflows recently amounted to hundreds of millions of dollars per day.
Ethereum “Dencun” upgrade live
On the same day, the long-awaited Dencun, fully the “Deneb-cancun” hard fork, was also implemented on the Ethereum mainnet. It is considered the most significant network upgrade since the merger and represents the network’s transition from Proof-of-Work (PoW) to Proof-of-Stake (PoS).
Dencun was successfully launched at 2:55 p.m. Dutch time. The biggest change it brings is the lower fees for Ethereum Layer 2 networks enabled by “proto-Dankharding” due to Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 4844.
MicroStrategy buys even more Bitcoins
MicroStrategy, by far the largest publicly traded Bitcoin owner, also suffered a major blow this week.
On the first day of the week, MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor announced that the company has expanded its Bitcoin holdings with a new purchase worth $800 million. The amount was raised through the sale of so-called convertible bonds. These are bonds that can later be converted into a predetermined number of shares.
The American software provider purchased a total of 12,000 Bitcoins. The company now has 205,000 Bitcoins on its balance sheet.
Two days later, the company was once again at the center of Bitcoin news. Saylor announced plans to raise another 500 million, with the main goal of purchasing even more Bitcoins.
Craig Wright is not the founder of Bitcoin
Finally, a judge concluded this week that Australian Craigh Wright is not Satoshi Nakamoto, the founder of Bitcoin.
Wright has claimed to be the anonymous founder of Bitcoin for years. The Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA), a group of Bitcoin developers, took Wright to court and has now ruled in their favor.
The judge has not yet issued a written verdict, but he was able to quickly reach a conclusion because the evidence was clearly against Wright.