Ethereum’s London Upgrade Hits Final Testnet,
VISA Boards the Crypto Train
by Bogdan Giulvezan
Ethereum’s long-anticipated London hard fork, which will introduce the EIP-1559 upgrade, has been deployed on the Rinkeby testnet. This is the final test environment and the full London upgrade is scheduled at block 12965000, which is estimated to be reached on August 4.
According to Ethereum developer Tim Beiko “All three testnets have now successfully upgraded to London”. June 24 marked the first block created on the Ropsten testnet and on June 30 the upgrade was deployed on Goerli.
The rest of the crypto market also gets some good news, this time from card giant Visa who recently announced via a blog post on their official website that “We’re partnering with 50 of the leading crypto platforms on card programs that make it easy to convert and spend digital currency at 70 million merchants worldwide”. Some of the partner crypto platforms are Coinbase, FTX, Crypto.com, and CoinZoom.
According to Visa, more than $1 billion was spent on crypto-linked cards in the first half of 2021, and “it’s clear that the crypto community sees value in linking digital currencies to Visa’s global network”.
The twist is that merchants will not have to accept crypto payments, but rather the Visa card will be linked to the client’s crypto balance and the merchant will instantly receive fiat currency. Using Visa’s words: “It’s the magic of “tap and go” without the complexity of new acceptance points or cryptographic keys”.
Technical Outlook – ETH/USD
Similar to Bitcoin, Ethereum has been stuck in a range since the 20th of May but this behavior may soon come to an end considering the rapid approach of the London upgrade. Currently, the pair is trading at $2,090, just above the major support at $2,000 but ETH is in the green by 2% over the last 7 days.
Although the pair has been climbing since June 26, it has bounced lower as soon as it touched the 50 Days Moving Average (blue line), and it is also capped by the trend line seen on the Daily chart below. These are signs that bullish pressure is low, thus it’s possible to see another dip below the $2,000 level.
If this scenario comes true, the next destination will become the support at $1,700 – $1,710. The break of this support would be a major blow to Ethereum’s recovery and would indicate that the downtrend has resumed.
