September 14th

Current Bitcoin Price: $20,212

Bitcoin price is trading in a tight range following yesterday's dump, hovering once again around the magnetic $20,000 mark.

Top-20 altcoins are seeing the same story, as most coins trade less than 1% higher or lower than yesterdays prices. Exceptions include Cardano rising 3%, Solana falling 3% and Ethereum Classing gaining 5% over the last 24 hours.

Ethereum (ETH) price is trading relatively sideways as the long-awaited Merge approaches – the transition that will shift the network from Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake.

The transition will reduce the electricity usage of the network by 99.96%, making it environmentally-friendly and "safe" from potential looming laws against Proof-of-Work mining.

The Merge is expected to occur tonight just after midnight, US Eastern time – or around 14 hours after the distribution of this newsletter.

The US Treasury Department has added a further nine people and six different Bitcoin addresses to its sanctioned list, due to their links to Iranian ransomware attacks.

The group targeted hospitals, schools and transportation companies with ransomware, however none of the sanctioned wallets currently hold any Bitcoin. However, US persons and entities are barred from transacting with the addresses (and individuals) on the list.

Binance-related blockchain, BNB chain, has partnered with Google Cloud to support the growth of early-stage startups in the Web3 and blockchain world.

Projects on BNB Chain are now able to analyze on-chain data and encrypt information via Google cloud, with around 150 BNB accelerator projects to receive access to Google Cloud's startup support program.