Beacon Chain Genesis Nears, Ethereum’s Price Is Set To Surge

As the Beacon Chain genesis nears, Ethereum’s price is set to surge further as it performed well this year due to the increased demand for DeFi apps and yield farming opportunities. In our Ethereum news today, we read more about the update.

Since the start of the year, Ethereum’s price gained 170% from below $140 on New Year’s Day to about $380 current levels. There’s no doubt that the main driver of the demand was the DeFi sector which surged by 200% in terms of ETH locked up. Today, there are about 9 million ETH or 8% of the entire supply that are locked in various Defi protocols according to the DeFi pulse. The demand for yield farming boosted the price higher as they outperformed Bitcoin which only made 62% gains over the same period.

I would not bet against #ETH over the long-term. Sure, #Bitcoin will outperform #Ethereum at certain times, but I anticipate the ROI being higher for Ethereum: pic.twitter.com/W0HaI1LxRI

— intothecryptoverse (@intocryptoverse) October 20, 2020

Another move for Ethereum to the upside could be in the cards thanks to the Beacon chain genesis update for ETH2.0. ETH 2.0 testing phases are almost done as the launch of the real thing nears. Commenting on the participation on the Medalla testnet, Ben Edgington from Consensys said that it is unlikely to be the case on Beacon Chain when it delivers real staking rewards:

 “To be fair, I don’t expect this situation to arise on a network with real value at stake. People will be working hard to keep the network finalising. It’s exactly why we need to move on from the testnets now.”

When people asked if the testnet was broken, he explained that it has low participation because people are getting bored of testnets. At the time of writing, there was about 50% network participation and it needs about 66% to reach finality. It is for the reason that the teams behind the development of ETH 2.0 want to push the real thing in the next six weeks or so. Edgington already stated that the deposit contract is good to go and could even launch this week.

The industry observers and traders labeled this an accumulation phase for ETH which is still 73% down from the all-time highs. The on-chain metrics suggest that a huge amount of it has not moved in more than a year which shows that investors are holding in anticipation of the phase 0 launch. The bullish eHT case is mounting and even the CFTC chairman Dr. Heath Tarbert said how impressed he was with the asset. Once the ETH 2.0 genesis date is official, a rapid move back into $400 is possible.