Ethereum Active Addresses Hits New High Following ETH All-Time High

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The New York Times

The pandemic raised the possibility that more workers could move anywhere, potentially scrambling the map of booming and declining places in the U.S. economy. And new data shows that it did indeed appear to prompt an unusually large flow of urban residents out of New York and San Francisco, two regions with a high share of jobs that can be done remotely even after the pandemic is behind us. Sign up for The Morning newsletter from the New York Times But about 30 million change-of-address requests to the U.S. Postal Service in 2020 show that with these two very visible exceptions — and a few smaller ones — migration patterns during the pandemic have looked a lot like migration patterns before it. Some smaller regional metro areas and vacation hubs benefited. But in general, areas that were already attracting new residents kept attracting them. Those that were losing migrants lost more. And there are few examples, at least in the data so far, of previously down-and-out regions drawing people in. In short, as disruptive as the pandemic has been in nearly every aspect of life, it doesn’t appear to have altered the underlying forces shaping which places are thriving or struggling. The graphic below shows that the metro areas that gained the most net movers in 2020 — or lost the most — are almost entirely the same as those in 2019. For the most part, big pandemic shifts were confined to people moving out of the urban parts of a few large metros at higher rates, and more people moving into smaller metros in New York state, New England and other vacation and seasonal-home destinations. Metro New York and the Bay Area had net outflows in 2020 at twice the rate of 2019. And some of these shifts could last: People able to work remotely at least part of the time might accept a longer commute for more land and a bigger house. But the larger pattern among metros following the diagonal line in the accompanying chart has been the stability of pre-pandemic trends. Sun Belt metros have continued to draw new residents, while those in upstate New York and the Midwest have not. Any pandemic migration windfall has flowed more to rapidly growing Boise, Idaho, than to Cleveland or Buffalo. CBRE, a commercial real estate services firm, has similarly analyzed Postal Service data for its clients, companies and commercial real estate investors eager to know where the next Austin, Texas, is — and if the pandemic has changed the answer. “In many ways, the fundamentals in the data show that Austin is the next Austin,” said Eric Willett, research director at CBRE. That illustrates, he said, “how dramatically durable these long-term trends are, even in the face of a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic.” Data on job growth mirrors this pattern: Most of the places with the biggest job gains (or smallest losses) during the pandemic were booming before the pandemic, too. The census will start to release data later this spring that will tell a more definitive story about population and migration shifts during the pandemic, although with a time lag. In the meantime, Postal Service data gives us some of our best insight, spanning the whole country, down to the ZIP code level. The data the Postal Service captures isn’t a complete picture. Not everyone files a change-of-address form when moving. Young adults making a first move after college are generally missing from this data, as are households moving from abroad, a crucial source of much of the population growth in urban counties that have significant domestic out-migration even in normal years. The data shown here also includes both permanent and temporary moves, although the share of temporary moves is relatively small. And moves in and out of places with little migration might be undercounted by the Postal Service to preserve movers’ confidentiality. In some places, though, it’s clear that things were very different in 2020. A few smaller metros with significant oil-industry employment, like Williston, North Dakota, and Midland and Odessa, Texas, saw bigger outflows in 2020 than in 2019, a reflection of the declining fortunes of the energy sector more than the pandemic. And net in-migration increased most in 2020 in smaller metros around New York City, like those anchored by Hudson and Kingston in New York state; Torrington, Connecticut; and Pittsfield, Massachusetts. In-migration also rose in some vacation areas across the country like Cape Cod, the Outer Banks of North Carolina, and Wasatch County, Utah. Among larger metros, migration increased most in the Cape Coral and Sarasota metros on the west coast of Florida and in Boise, all of which were already growing fast pre-pandemic. Two New England metros that lost more movers than they gained in 2019 reversed that trend in 2020: Fairfield County, Connecticut, and Portland, Maine. Net out-migration — where Postal Service data shows more people leaving than arriving — accelerated most in big, expensive metros where many people were able to work remotely, like San Francisco, New York, Seattle and Boston. In the large coastal metros with net outflows shown here, urban neighborhoods lost more people than suburban neighborhoods did. In fact, with the exception of San Jose, California, the suburban parts of these same large metros had similar or more favorable net migration in 2020 compared with 2019. Within these metros, the neighborhoods with the biggest net outflows were richer and more central, like Tribeca in New York City and Pacific Heights in San Francisco. In general, the ZIP codes where more people moved out during the pandemic were denser neighborhoods in metropolitan areas where a higher share of people work in jobs that could be done from home. A separate analysis of address changes recorded in credit reports, by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, shows similar patterns: an increase in net out-migration specifically from urban neighborhoods in 2020, and a broader acceleration of moves out of large, high-cost metros. But the starkest changes were limited to two regions. “Consistently, in all of those, New York and San Francisco stand out,” said Stephan Whitaker, an economist with the Cleveland Fed who conducted the research. “It really is a remarkably higher level of out-migration appearing in those two areas. It ends up pushing up their net out-migration as well.” Those metros, along with other typically strong labor markets like Washington, Seattle, Denver and San Diego, also had declining net migration in 2020 because their usual influx of new residents dwindled during the pandemic. In the Cleveland Fed analysis, that decline in new arrivals was more consequential in many of these cities than the increase in people leaving. And it’s likely that those inflows will pick back up as the pandemic eases — as new hires and young adults who didn’t leave Cleveland or St. Louis for New York or Boston in 2020 do so this coming year. Postal Service and credit reporting data all suggest that the greatest beneficiaries of migrants who did leave New York and San Francisco were other communities relatively close by. Other analyses by The San Francisco Chronicle and the California Policy Lab found that people who left San Francisco mostly stayed within the state, or even within the Bay Area. And that’s consistent with research on the housing market that shows suburban home prices and rents rising in these metros. More limited data from moving companies on interstate moves — reflecting the behavior of higher-income households — also captures people moving away from regions with more remote work and higher rents. All together, this evidence shows neither a broad pandemic urban exodus, nor a California-specific exodus, nor a remote-work boon for declining communities hoping the past year might usher in their revival. But even if the pandemic didn’t upend migration patterns, some pandemic-era shifts could endure. And local labor markets around cities like New York and San Francisco could stretch to include more peripheral towns — satellite communities from which a daily commute wouldn’t make sense, but a once-a-week drive might. This article originally appeared in The New York Times. © 2021 The New York Times Company

How Ethereum Works: It Seems Like We’re Living in a Futuristic Alternate Universe

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How Ethereum Works: It Seems Like We’re Living in a Futuristic Alternate Universe

The world is changing so fast that it’s tough to understand where the crypto revolution is going, but Ethereum will be part of that story.

Photo courtesy of Pixabay

It’s already a mad, mad world; add cryptocurrency, and it seems like we’re living in a futuristic alternate universe. It appears that new crypto technologies are popping up every week, and more people are becoming accustomed to investing money into digital coins. But what many of us don’t understand is that blockchain—the man behind the curtain of crypto—can be used for purposes beyond our current imaginations, the second-most-popular platform being Ethereum. Recently, the ether coin reached an all-time high of $2,200. But before we dive into Ethereum, let’s do a recap on how blockchain works.

Blockchain is revolutionary because it’s a decentralized technology that isn’t backed by a central authority. It’s a type of database that stores information; specifically for Bitcoin, it reserves the comprehensive history of Bitcoin transactions. This coin has been making headlines because of its institutionalization by everyone from Elon Musk and governments to banks and politicians—not to mention its skyrocketing value. Blockchain is difficult to alter, so that’s why it’s used in the digital currency space.

The cryptocurrency revolution is already affecting the way we live, how we view the world and—more fundamentally—the way our economy works. As of now, our economy depends on institutions for transactions. So, if you go to the store and buy something, it’s with cash that’s originated by a) the Federal Reserve or b) a credit card that uses U.S. dollars. And you have to go through a bank, so, at every transaction, there’s a touchpoint between centralized institutions—public or private, whether they’re governments or banks. The thing about cryptocurrency is it doesn’t depend on central players to get business across the finish line.

A lot of the news focuses on Bitcoin, but it’s just a currency. In December 2020, the World Economic Forum released a report titled “Crypto: What Is It Good For?” and they didn’t focus on Bitcoin. There are new emerging players.

Related Bitcoin 101: Could Cryptocurrencies Eventually Replace the Dollar?

The biggest story you’ve never heard of is Ethereum. It’s more advanced than Bitcoin in the sense that it’s customizable and open source. It can be used in such a vast capacity that we don’t know the extent of its possibilities. Ethereum is the new kid on the block.

Ethereum has a decentralized finance (DeFi) system, and it powers its own digital currency: ether (ETH). But according to their website, Ethereum builds upon Bitcoin’s innovation. Ether is the “gas” that “fuels” the network which is a programmable blockchain. Our world’s brightest minds can come up with endless possibilities for this technology; you can even use it for Bitcoin. It also runs thousands of decentralized applications (dapps).

Bank of America recently stated that “Bitcoin is the most talked about cryptocurrency, but Ethereum [the blockchain] has more features, including being more flexible,” according to CoinDesk.

Ethereum is much more flexible than Bitcoin because it’s not just a coin. The platform calls itself a “marketplace of financial services, games and apps that can’t steal your data or censor you.” One example of an Ethereum application is the use of non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Any of your assets can be tokenized, like how Kings of Leon sold their latest album.

Related How Cryptocurrency Could Inspire a New Kind of Financial Literacy

And they extend an open invitation to all of the coders and programmers out there.

“…[E]verything here is open-source and ready for you to extend and improve,” they stated.

So, get ready to learn some new vocabulary and adjust to new technologies in every facet of life. Bitcoin isn’t the height of blockchain technology. NFTs and DeFi aren’t the most advanced applications we will see. The world is changing so fast that it’s tough to understand where the crypto revolution is going, but Ethereum will be part of that story.

David Grasso is the host of the Follow the Profit podcast, where he shares simple ideas for financial success and lessons learned the hard way. He is also the CEO of Bold TV, Inc, a nonprofit media company dedicated to entrepreneurship and cultural empowerment.

Hannah Buczek is the managing editor and journalist for Bold TV. She also reports and edits for GenBiz, a nonprofit media brand focused on promoting financial freedom.

Latest Ethereum price and analysis (ETH to USD)

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Ethereum is currently recovering from a dramatic 20.68% sell-off just 24-hours after it formed a new all-time high of $2,645.

At the time of writing the world’s second largest cryptocurrency is trading at $2,262 after bouncing by more than 8% from its overnight lows.

The sell-off was reflected across the wider cryptocurrency market, with Bitcoin slumping below $50,000 for the first time since March 7 as speculators begin to question whether the bull market has come to its conclusion.

It’s worth noting that while Bitcoin has formed a series of lower highs followed by a lower low, Ethereum remains in a bullish posture having bounced at $2,134 to keep its structure intact.

ETHUSD chart by TradingView

This could mean that altcoins like Ethereum may continue to perform well over the coming weeks despite a potential drop in the price of Bitcoin, similar to “alt season” played out in January, 2018.

From a technical perspective, Ethereum needs to hold above the previous higher low at $2,065, as well as the daily 200 exponential moving average which is coming in at around $2,100.

Failure to to do this would bring around price targets as low as $1,930 and even $1,805, although it depends on Bitcoin’s desire to bounce in the mid $40,000 region.

For more news, guides and cryptocurrency analysis, click here.

About Ethereum

Ethereum was launched by Vitalik Buterin on July 30 2015. He was a researcher and programmer working on Bitcoin Magazine and he initially wrote a whitepaper in 2013 describing Ethereum.

Buterin had proposed that Bitcoin needed a scripting language. He decided to develop a new platform with a more general scripting language when he couldn’t get buy-in to his proposal.

More Ethereum news and information

If you want to find out more information about Ethereum or cryptocurrencies in general, then use the search box at the top of this page. Please check the below article:

https://coinrivet.com/ethereum-adopts-erc-1155-as-an-official-standard/

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As with any investment, it pays to do some homework before you part with your money. The prices of cryptocurrencies are volatile and go up and down quickly. This page is not recommending a particular currency or whether you should invest or not.

You may be interested in our range of cryptocurrency guides along with the latest cryptocurrency news.

Disclaimer: This is not financial advice.