ADA price is recovering after hovering around $0.25 for one month. The Cardano’s native token has fired up with a nearly 30% price surge since the advent of the New Year.

The hype around Cardano’s upcoming stablecoin DJED launch could be among the factors pushing ADA’s price forward. The news of Hoskinson’s new healthcare facility that would accept ADA as payment might have also contributed to the token’s mad surge.

ADA opened this week with almost a 10% increase in trading price, which has got Cardano’s founder, Charles Hoskinson, swelling with pride. Hoskinson took to Twitter and responded to comments about ADA’s skyrocketing price. He boasted that additional gains are coming with upcoming improvements on the Cardano Network.

According to Charles Hoskinson’s response tweet, the proposed CIP 1694 and the MBO will strengthen the Cardano community. The Voltaire upgrade would see millions of people collaborating for the growth and utility of ADA.

What Is CIP 1694?

The Cardano improvement proposal (CIP) 1694 seeks to bring Cardano into the Voltaire Era. The CIP 1694 upgrade is the bedrock for a decentralized decision-making system. Jared Corduan, a software engineering lead on Input Output Global, Cardano’s developer company, proposed its adoption and voting in November 2022.

The CIP aims to enable a smooth transition into fully decentralized governance. Following the Cardano roadmap, CIP 1694 is the fifth and last stage of network development after the Alonzo and Vasil upgrade.

According to Charles Hoskinson, Voltaire will set the pace on how to implement decentralized blockchain management in the crypto industry.

Since the proposal for voting and adoption release, some community members have been studying its details. A Cardano-based outlet provided details about the CIP, starting with a video explaining the voting section. They released another video that explains the governance state section of the CIP.

Hoskinson commended the community’s efforts in learning about the CIP and encouraged them to share opinions about its pro and cons. According to Cardano’s roadmap, the Voltaire upgrade would introduce a voting and a community-controlled treasury system. These features will allow participants to use their stakes to influence future developments on the network.

Up-scaling Cardano’s decentralization could further increase ADA’s adoption and push the token’s value upward.

Previous Upgrade Of Cardano, Was It A Success?

Voltaire would be the next upgrade on Cardano after the Vasil hard fork in September 2022. Vasil introduced CIP (Cardano improvement proposal)-31, 32, and 33, each with unique scaling properties.

The CIP-31 brought a new reference input mechanism to enable DApps easy access to transactional output data. CIP-32 enhanced Cardano’s decentralization by bringing on-chain data storage functionality for network users. The CIP-33 was designed to allow faster processing time and reduced transaction fees.

The Vasil hard fork successfully went live on September 22, 2022, after facing several delays. The purpose of the Vasil upgrade was to improve the scalability, overall transaction throughput, and DApps development capacity on the network. However, it barely had any effect on ADA’s performance. The cryptocurrency continued its journey down the bottomless pit.

ADA experienced a one-month-long decline in value until January 2022, when it started recovering. ADA currently trades at $0.316 with a 12.40% 24-hour price increase. Who knows? The upcoming CIP 1694 upgrade might bring notable improvements to the Cardano Network that could add more upward push to ADA’s price.

Featured image from Pixabay and charts from Tradingview.com

Bitcoin’s price has taken a hit since it hit its all-time high back in 2021, and as a result, the number of bitcoin millionaires has dwindled dramatically since then. These addresses holding more than $1 million in BTC peaked in November 2021 and have been on a steady decline since then.

Bitcoin Millionaires Suffer Losses

Back in November 2021, when the bitcoin bull market was in full bloom, the number of BTC millionaires had crossed 100,000 wallets. At its highest point, there were 108,886 wallets with more than $1 million worth of BTC in their balances, but according to data from BitInfoCharts, this number has dropped below 25,000.

At a current count of 24,533 millionaire wallets, more than 77% of bitcoin investors with the millionaire status have been wiped out in a little over a year. The majority of the losses came in the first half of 2022 and by June 2022, there were only a little over 26,000 BTC wallets with more than $1 million in their balances. 

Wallets holding at least $10 million worth of BTC also took a hit during this time. It was sitting at only 3,852 at the time of this writing. However, smaller investors have been on the rise. According to a report from Glassnode, the number of BTC addresses holding higher than 0.1 and 1 BTC reached new all-time highs on Tuesday, January 10.

This marked accumulation from these smaller addresses shows that investors are not deterred by the decline in prices. But rather, are taking advantage of the low prices to increase their holdings.

BTC price holding steady above $17,000 | Source: BTCUSD on TradingView.com

BTC Profitability Declines As Well

The drop in the number of bitcoin millionaires is also in line with the decline in the profitability of the digital asset. Bitcoin started the year 2022 with only about a quarter of its investor seeing losses, but by January 2023, it has dropped drastically, and now only 51% of BTC investors are in profit.

Its large holder concentration has also dropped during this time. Only 10% of wallets are now classified as large holders, indicating a redistribution of BTC from whales to smaller holders. It also points to more decentralization with supply being more adequately distributed for market participants.

As for bitcoin’s price, it is still trading well below its all-time high price despite its recent recovery above $17,000. Data from Messari shows that the price of the digital asset is currently down more than 74% from its November 2021 high.

BTC is changing hands at $17,320 at the time of this writing. It is up 3.7% in the last week with a 24-hour trading volume of $16.2 billion.

The plaintiffs in a class action lawsuit against TerraUSD and its affiliated companies voluntarily dismissed their case on Monday.

Matthew Albright filed the lawsuit on behalf of others against Terraform Labs (TFL), Pte Limited, and other affiliates in the Southern District of New York Court in August 2022.

The plaintiffs alleged that the defendants falsely promoted, manipulated, and offered UST stablecoin and LUNA. Zhu Su, a cofounder of failed crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital (3AC), announced the voluntary dismissal of the class action lawsuit via a tweet on January 10.

Matthew Albright, the lead plaintiff in the case, filed a notice in Court stating a voluntary dismissal of the case against the defendants. The defendants include Terraform Labs, Do Kwon, Delphi Digital Consulting, Luna Foundation Guard (LFG), Jump Trading, Nicholas Platias, and three others.

Albright and his co-plaintiffs accused TerraUSD and the other defendants of falsely promoting UST, LUNA, and other related coins. According to the lawsuit, the defendants falsely projected the coins’ stability while laundering the profits from Terraform Labs into personal accounts.

3AC Blames FTX For TerraUSD’s Fallout

The lawsuit could be linked to the November tweets by 3AC’s cofounder Zhu Su that FTX and Alameda Research manipulated the crypto market. Zhu claimed that FTX was part of a conspiracy that resulted in the UST collapse.

Three Arrows Capital got hit badly by the crisis and went bankrupt shortly after due to severe exposure to Terraform Labs. Zhu Su and TerraUSD’s founder, Do Kwon, previously blamed Genesis and Alameda Research for UST and LUNA’s crash.

Nonetheless, TerraUSD and its affiliates also faced two other class action cases, which are still active. Bragar Eagle and Squire, P.C. law firm, and Scott + Scott, a securities and consumer rights litigation firm, filed the lawsuits.

Primary Cause Of TerraUSD Collapse, Was It A Hack?

Meanwhile, investigations on collapse remain ongoing. In a December 6 tweet, FatmanTerra alleged that TFL’s claims that UST recorded a hack attack are false. FatmanTerra, is an integral part of the puzzle in TerraUSD collapse, and its been reporting on the firm’s collapse for over a year. The Twitter user has been helping the crypto community to bring the founder of TerraUSD to justice.

According to Fatman’s tweet, Terraform Labs dumped over $450 million UST on the open market a few days before the implosion.

Fatman cited data from Cycle_22, an anonymous researcher who discovered Hodlnaut, a Singapore-based crypto lender’s insolvency. The data revealed that TFL started dumping millions of UST a few days before the depeg.

According to Fatman, dumping such an amount of UST within that short period reduced the stablecoin’s liquidity and weakened its peg.

The UST dump and the $2.7 billion removed by TFL through Degenbox contributed to the implosion. Fatman implied that Do Kwon and Terraform Labs withdrew real dollars from the ecosystem, making UST redemption impossible.

More so, the independent audit released by TFL and Luna Foundation Guard (LFG) to show its efforts in redeeming the UST peg were incomplete. According to the Twitter user, the audit did not account for the 47,000BTC sent to Jump Crypto by the LFG.

This revelation further increased the evidence against TFL and Do Kwon, who remains on the run from South Korean prosecutors.

Meanwhile, LUNA witnessed a 12.79% price surge in the past 24 hours and trades at $1.56. LUNA’s price rally happened during the ongoing developments on the 2.0 chain.

Jared from TFL revealed, via a tweet, that the current version of TerraUSD Station undergoes an automatic update, which is incompatible with the Classic. Jared told the Station users on Classic that an update to Station will occur on January 10, 2023. Cover image from Pixabay, LUNA chart from Tradingview.