The Bitcoin market might be filled with optimism – and more than just a little greed – but certain components of the crypto sector are yet to shake off the effects of China’s crypto crackdown.
Most recently, Sparkpool’s Ethereum GasNow website has shut down. This came soon after Sparkpool itself ceased all operations on 30 September, following the latest ban on crypto transactions in China.
GasNow website not accessible
The former URL of the GasNow website no longer takes users to the original location, which quoted gas prices based on varying speed requirements. At press time, those who tried to access the original website were instead re-directed to a Bitcoin-related website that asked visitors for donations.
Source: gasnow.org
Sparkpool announced its own closure earlier, citing “regulatory requirements.” As per its Twitter account, the mining pool was created in 2016 and was based in Zhejiang, China.
Furthermore, Sparkpool reported on its website that manual withdrawals and API service would stop on 15 October. Adding to this, it noted that users could access historical data via the website until 30 October.
A new order
Until about 30 September, Sparkpool was the second largest Ethereum mining pool, below only Ethermine. However, following the crackdown, Sparkpool’s hashrate slipped to almost nothing, according to Poolwatch.
At the last count, Ethermine controlled about 27.4% of the network hashrate, while hiveon took over Sparkpool’s former rank but controlled only 10.2% of the hashrate.
Despite the loss of Sparkpool, however, the Ethereum ecosystem seems to be recovering. At the time of writing, the Ethereum 2.0 deposit contract was still the top account in terms of Ether balance, according to Etherscan. The contract held more than $31 billion or about 7,974,786 Ether at press time.
What could happen next? The Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index holds a clue. In August 2021, the USA was responsible for 35.40% of the world’s average monthly hashrate share, while China’s share was negligible. It would not be surprising if a similar trend took place in the Ethereum mining ecosystem as well.
Ethereum Metrics
The Ethereum Gas Tracker on Etherscan showed that the average gas fee was about 55 gwei at press time.
Source: Etherscan
Meanwhile, the Ethereum Fear and Greed Index recorded a value of 73, signaling “greed.”
At the time of writing, the price of Ether was $3,932.78.
