August 12th

Current Bitcoin Price: $24,009

Bitcoin price continues to hang around $24,000 as the market appears to be encountering some resistance on its recent rally.

Top-20 altcoins have also become stagnant over the last 24 hours, as Ethereum gains less than 1%, BNB falls half a percent and Uniswap is the largest mover with just a 2% drop.

The team behind the planned "ETHPoW" Ethereum fork says the new chain is "inevitable", as the network's proof-of-stake Merge draws closer.

ETHPoW, led by prominent miner Chandler Guo, aims to maintain a proof-of-work ecosystem on the chain, removing the hard-coded difficulty bomb from the original protocol. The team is also planning a new ETHPoW testnet and has taken precautions to prevent replay attacks during the fork process.

The new chain will fork away from the primary Ethereum chain next month, around the same time as the Merge.

Trading volume of crypto derivatives products has risen 13.4% in July – the first increase in 4 months, dating back to March of this year.

Data from data aggregator CryptoCompare reports $3.17 trillion in crypto derivatives volume last month, while spot market volume fell to $1.39 trillion. The firm attributes the increase in derivatives action to traders expecting more upside in the short-term, due to there being  no Federal Open Market Committee meeting in August.

Huobi co-founder Leon Li is reportedly looking to sell his majority stake in the exchange, with potentially over $1 billion in equity. A spokesperson for Huobi has confirmed that Li is currently engaging with multiple international giants to sell the stake.

Li informed other stakeholders in the exchange of his decision during a shareholder meeting in July, also offloading his CEO duties to focus on his health. A deal is reportedly due to be finalized at the end of this month.