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Economists had forecast sizable year-over-year declines in both headline in and core inflation for this report.

The latest price moves in bitcoin (BTC) and crypto markets in context for July 12, 2023. First Mover is CoinDesk’s daily newsletter that contextualizes the latest actions in the crypto markets.

Analysts at Berenberg Capital Markets have increased their price target for software firm MicroStrategy to $510 from $430.

In a note to clients, the firm said that it reiterated its “buy” rating for the company, raising its price target due to an increasingly more favorable environment for bitcoin’s institutional adoption. 

“Based on the faster-than-expected pace at which MSTR has acquired bitcoins since we initiated coverage of the company on April 27, as well our view that the prospects for institutional adoption of bitcoin have improved meaningfully in the interim, we are raising our estimate of the value of the company’s bitcoin holdings as of late-April 2024 to $8.74 billion from $6.27 billion,” the firm said. 

On June 28, MicroStrategy bought another 12,333 bitcoin for a total price of $347 million. 

MicroStrategy and Saylor remain extremely bullish on bitcoin.

“The conviction in our bitcoin strategy remains strong as the digital asset environment continues to mature,” MicroStrategy CEO Phong Le said last month.

The firm’s stock has appreciated by more than 180% since the beginning of the year. 

© 2023 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Coinbase has missed out on “a significant portion of the cryptocurrency market’s upside” and is expected to join this move later, one trader said.

The bank lifted its MicroStrategy price target to $510, representing 24% potential upside, the report said.

The social media analytics platform is expanding from a digital asset trading focus to allow users to search for any topic.

The dollar value of the unlock amounted to 38% of the cryptocurrency’s average 30-day trading volume and had potential to push prices lower, per one analyst.

The Starknet team deployed the Quantum Leap – Starknet V12.0 upgrade on the mainnet, resulting in increasing the network’s throughput.

The upgrade made its debut on the Ethereum mainnet on Wednesday, following over a week’s trial on the Goerli testnet. This period saw the network edging closer to triple-digit transactions per second (TPS). The team, however, said it’s aiming to achieve hundreds of transactions per second by the end of the third quarter.

The team noted that the Quantum Leap upgrade demonstrated consistent delivery of 37 TPS throughout the testing phase, with occasional surges up to 90 TPS. This presented a marked upswing from the network’s previous speed levels of 10 TPS.

Starknet is a decentralized Layer 2 network incorporating Validity-based Layer 2 solutions. These solutions employ a type of zero-knowledge roll-up technology that condenses multiple off-chain transactions and collectively publishes them on the Ethereum network.

“We achieved a consistent TPS of 37, and then at peak moments in the early hours of Wednesday morning, we nearly hit 100 transfer transactions per second,” said Uri Kolodny, co-founder and CEO of StarkWare in a statement. “We said this upgrade would potentially deliver a TPS of hundreds within Q3, and we only hoped that the stress test would confirm we’re on target.”

Latency improvement

In addition to boosting throughput, Quantum Leap has made latency improvements. The upgrade has reduced the time-to-inclusion to less than 10 seconds under normal conditions.

“Moreover, we were aiming for a latency of under 15 seconds, and in the end, the vast majority of transactions had a time-to-inclusion of under 10 seconds,” Kolodny further commented.

StarkWare anticipates these enhancements will help scale Ethereum applications in niches like DeFi and gaming by providing faster transactions and greater throughput for users.

The Starknet team has also outlined plans for version 13.0 later this year, intending to curtail transaction costs. Furthermore, version 14.0, set to be released later, will introduce a system enabling developers to prioritize transactions through additional payment. This version will contribute to creating a marketplace for block space on the Layer 2 network.

© 2023 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) would take a back seat in a crypto oversight bill being re-launched by Sens. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), which would require that crypto exchanges be overseen by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and all stablecoin issuers be regulated depository institutions.

The upgrade went live following a community vote that overwhelmingly agreed to deploy it to mainnet.