Decentral Block Post

Bitcoin (BTC) shifted higher on Aug. 18 as the latest data confirmed the European Union’s highest ever inflation.

Support and resistance close in on BTC spot price

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC/USD passing $23,500 at the time of writing, having preserved $23,000 as support overnight.

Concerns over a deeper risk asset drawdown had become widespread over the week, with Bitcoin and Ether (ETH) notably unable to crack long-term resistance levels.

With bulls seemingly on the back foot, the mood among analysts was naturally wary.

“BTC did break down from this huge rising channel/wedge everyone seems to be watching,” Daan Crypto Trades wrote in part of his latest Twitter update.

David Schwartz, the chief technical officer of Ripple, didn’t take Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin’s dig on XRP very kindly. In a discussion that started around the recent $30,000 limit imposed by the Ontario crypto exchange on altcoins purchases barring Ether (ETH), Litecoin (LTC) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH).

Buterin, in a quoted response to a tweet, lauded the Ethereum community’s pushback against regulations that privilege ETH over other legitimate cryptocurrencies. David Hoffman, the founder of decentralized media and education platform Bankless.eth responded to Buterin and said that he wouldn’t have minded if they had restricted XRP.

Buterin joined on the XRP bashing claiming they lost their right to protection when they tried to “throw us under the bus as China-controlled.” The response from Buterin created a storm among XRP followers on Twitter, and the debate was later joined by Ripple CTO David Schwartz himself.

Buterin was referring to Ripple’s defense in their ongoing court battle against the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), where they claimed XRP shouldn’t be deemed as security since Ethereum and Bitcoin are similar in nature and even called the top two cryptocurrencies as Chinese controlled. Ripple is fighting a security lawsuit from the SEC over the unlicensed sale and issuance of XRP tokens.

Schwartz reiterated Ripple’s earlier claims of ETH and BTC being security and compared miners in the ecosystem akin to shareholders of eBay. He said:

The crypto community has poured in an impressive $54 million worth of crypto funds through “Aid For Ukraine," aimed at supporting the country's military efforts against Russia, the Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister has revealed. 

The $54 million has been funneled in through the Ukrainian government-run initiative 'Aid For Ukraine', according to Ukraine's Deputy Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov’s Twitter post on Thursday, who thanked the crypto community for their support:

“Every helmet, bulletproof vest, and night vision device save the lives of Ukrainian soldiers. Thus, we must continue to support our defenders. Thanks so much to everyone from the crypto community for supporting Ukraine!”

According to the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine, Aid For Ukraine’s $54 million has mostly come in the form of 10,190 Ether (ETH), worth $18.7 million, 595 Bitcoin (BTC), worth $13.9 million, Tether (USDT) worth $10.4 million and USD Coin (USDC), worth $2.2 million.

The crypto payments have gone towards military equipment, hardware, and munitions, including $11.8 million worth of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which are typically used to spot enemy troops and direct attacks.