Bitcoin Gains Institutional Trust; Ether Gets Base Fees and Tips Distinction

The institutional adoption of Bitcoin got a renewed push in the month of August, with MicroStrategy leading the front by making an investment of $177 million in the leading cryptocurrency. The total holding of the company after this purchase now stands at 108,992 BTC. The asset management firm, Goldentree also purchased Bitcoin. According to the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings, Bill Miller and Morgan Stanley have purchased $45M and $240M worth of Grayscale Bitcoin Trust’s shares, respectively. 

All these developments signal that despite China’s crackdown on Bitcoin mining firms, the institutional option of the cryptocurrency is on the rise, with more and more companies coming forward to embrace the digital coin. What has further come as an encouraging development for Bitcoin is its adoption by Cuba. The nation has decided to recognize and regulate cryptocurrencies for payment purposes. 

The month of August has also proved to be fruitful for  Ethereum, the second-largest crypto by market capitalization. EIP-1559 came into the picture on August 5th, and the most significant feature of this hard fork was breaking down the fee structure of the blockchain into two different parts: base fees and tips. 

While the base fee is charged for making transactions on the Ethereum blockchain and paid in Ether, the tip part is related to the optional expense that one can include in the transaction cost to avail of the facilities, such as increasing the processing speed of the transaction. This will definitely come in handy to reduce the transaction cost associated with the Ethereum blockchain, which has become a cause for concern among investors and users of late. It is important to note that Ethereum has achieved an all-time high status of 7.15 million Ether being locked away in the systems, and there are no signs that this process will slow down any time soon in the future.