Cryptocurrency Prices Today on January 7: Tepid markets as Bitcoin, Ethereum fall

moneycontrol.com:

The global crypto market capitalisation fell by 0.99 percent over the last 24 hours to $2.05 trillion while the total trading volume dipped substantially by 11.45 percent to $103.17 billion on January 7.

While DeFi accounted for 16.94 percent of the trading volume at $17.47 billion, stablecoins made up 77.63 percent at $80.09 billion. The market dominance of Bitcoin tumbled 0.02 percent to 39.64 percent today morning. It is currently trading at $42,957.71.

As for major cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin dipped 1.13 percent to trade at Rs 34,53,914 while Ethereum tumbled 3.67 percent to Rs 2,72,036.

Cardano rose 2.78 percent to Rs 101.59 and Avalanche tumbled 2.64 percent to Rs 7,482.39. Polkadot fell 0.09 percent to Rs 2,113.47  and Litecoin rose 1.12 percent at Rs 10,922.3 over the last 24 hours. Tether rose 0.25 percent to trade at Rs 80.19

Ethereum popularized decentralized finance, and app developers on the network turned it into a $250 billion sector. But its percentage of the pie may shrink in 2022, per investment bank JPMorgan Chase.

According to an investment note shared by the bank, sharding—a method for drastically scaling up the number of transactions that can be executed on a blockchain—"might arrive too late" for Ethereum to stave off increased market competition from alternative blockchains.

The note also mentioned that  Avalanche, Binance Smart Chain, Solana, and Terra have been able to provide many of the same types of applications as Ethereum with higher speeds and lower fees. However, Ethereum devs and contributors say their focus on security gives the network a solid foundation upon which to grow

Crime involving cryptocurrencies surged to a new high of $14 billion in 2021, according to blockchain analytics firm