Bitcoin inches closer to a 10-year record, as other stats turn bullish
The world's first cryptocurrency Bitcoin (BTC) is one day away from matching its historic 15-day win streak if its positive price movement keeps up.
In November 2013 Bitcoin posted a 15-day consistent positive price movement, the longest in its history.
₿REAKING: #Bitcoin price has increased 14 days in row — A single day away from making a historic new record! pic.twitter.com/qclJhikcds
— Documenting ₿itcoin (@DocumentingBTC) January 17, 2023Right now, BTC is on day 14 of its win streak, hitting four-month highs in the process.
One more day of upwards price movement will match its 2013 streak. If it continues another day after that it will set a new 16-day record.
It’s not the only bullish metric crossing into new territory.
Ethereum to soon cross 100M non-zero addresses
Ethereum addresses holding at least some Ether (ETH) will soon cross the 100 million mark given the current amount of wallet addresses and the historical growth rate of the metric.
On Jan. 16, crypto analytics firm Glassnode said the number of non-zero ETH addresses reached an all-time high of nearly 92.5 million.
#Ethereum $ETH Number of Non-Zero Addresses just reached an ATH of 92,483,337
View metric:https://t.co/beS1MtIgAZ pic.twitter.com/ripGHhmuEU
— glassnode alerts (@glassnodealerts) January 16, 2023According to the data, Ethereum is just 7.5 million non-zero addresses away from crossing the 100 million milestone.
Since 2019 the figure has risen by roughly 20 million per year. If that rate continues its likely non-zero ETH wallets could hit 100 million by sometime in the second quarter of 2023.
ETH hits half a million validators
Another Ethereum statistic that has continued to grow is the count of its validators — entities responsible for validating transactions made on the blockchain.
The ETH validator count crossed the 500,000 mark on Jan. 12 as per BeaconScan data.
The number of validators over a six-month period ending Jan. 17, the number currently sits at 502,218. Image: BeaconScanIt comes as the Shanghai hard fork slated for March would — among other updates — allow validators to finally withdraw their ETH which was staked so they could help validate the network.
US top country for crypto payments acceptance
The United States is the most accepting country for those who want to splash their crypto on purchases.
More than half of the companies from a list of 250 accepting crypto as paymen were U.S.-based according to the Jan. 14 Forex Suggest Crypto Acceptance Report, giving the country the top spot for the number of crypto-accepting firms.
The top 10 countries with the most businesses accepting crypto as a payment method. Image: Forex SuggestThe U.S. was trailed by runner-up the United Kingdom while third place went to America's neighbors to the north, Canada.
Related: Opinion: The Inter-Blockchain Communication Protocol will end ecosystem maximalism
E-commerce was the most accepting industry of crypto closely followed by the travel industry.
The largest business by market capitalization to accept crypto was the $1.8 trillion big tech player Microsoft.
Wrapped Bitcoin on Ethereum falls 35% from 2022’s peak
Not everything was bullish. Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC), a tokenized and 1:1 backed version of BTC on Ethereum, has seen its supply on the Ethereum blockchain drop by 35% since May 2022.
A Jan. 17 tweet from Glassnode revealed the May 2022 all-time high of 285,000 WBTC on Ethereum came right before the price collapse of TerraLunaClassic (LUNC) and its paired algorithmic stablecoin TerraClassicUSD (USTC).
The total $WBTC Balance wrapped on #Ethereum has declined by over 35% since the collapse of the LUNA/UST project
At the peak, there were 285k #Bitcoin wrapped on #Ethereum, and this has since fallen by 101.55k $WBTC over the course of 2022
Live Chart: https://t.co/y3COK5pbuA pic.twitter.com/QWRYyBcV7j
— glassnode (@glassnode) January 17, 2023The amount of WBTC has fallen by 101,550 over the course of 2022 and the blockchain now hosts around 183,500 tokenized Bitcoin.