Bitcoin and Ethereum reached new highs, and the head of Apple revealed investments in cryptocurrencies

Bitcoin and Ethereum reached new all-time highs, Apple’s CEO revealed personal cryptocurrency investments, Binance disabled Dogecoin accounts following a software update, and other noteworthy events occurred this week.

Bitcoin and Ethereum prices have risen to new all-time highs.

The first cryptocurrency achieved a price of $69,000 on November 10th. The Ethereum exchange rate also surpassed the previous high of $4860. For the first time in history, the market valuation of digital assets surpassed $3 trillion.

Some blamed the subsequent decline on the impending default of Chinese real estate developer Evergrande. There was also an auction for the placement of 30-year US government bonds on November 10th evening. Low demand resulted in a drop in prices and a rise in rates, strengthening the currency and putting pressure on riskier assets such as gold and bitcoin.

Bitcoin is currently trading near $64,080, while Ethereum is trading around $4580.

The majority of the top ten digital assets by market capitalization ended the week in the green. Solana and Polkadot were the exceptions. The value of the first asset fell by about 9%, while the value of the second fell by 11.5 percent. CoinGecko provided the data.

The currency of the decentralized messenger Skrumble Network surged the most among digital assets over the week, according to Messari. SKM’s stock price increased by more than 468 percent, bringing its market value to $13.16 million. Messari is the source of information.

The cryptocurrency Ampleforth took the worst of the damage. AMPL’s stock price has decreased by more than 46%, and its market capitalization has dropped to $13.12 million. Messari is the source of information.

The cryptocurrency market has a market capitalisation of $2.95 trillion. The dominance index for Bitcoin has slipped to 41.1 percent.

On the bitcoin network, the Taproot upgrade has been activated

The softfork took place on block 709,632, which was mined by the F2Pool mining pool on Nov. 14 at 08:15 Moscow time, and was aimed to improve the network’s privacy, efficiency, and scalability.

Since the activation of the Segregated Witness (SegWit) protocol in August 2017, this is the largest bitcoin blockchain upgrade. The implementation of the Schorr signature system and the MAST idea are two of the most major technological enhancements in Taproot.

Chatex, a cryptocurrency exchanger, was hit with US sanctions, which resulted in the freezing of customer cash.

The addresses of Telegram-based cryptocurrency exchange bot Chatex, as well as its affiliates Izibits OÜ, Chatextech SIA, and Hightrade Finance Ltd., have been added to the sanctions list by the US Treasury Department and the Department of Justice.

Chatex has processed at least $77.5 million in bitcoin transactions since September 2018, according to Chainalysis, including more than $17 million in criminal assets, including funds from darknet marketplace Hydra, scam projects Finico, QubitTech, and others, as well as operators of several ransomware programs.

Due to an investigation, Chatex suspended operations, shut down withdrawals, and blocked customer cash on Wednesday, November 10. After a software update, Binance disabled Dogecoin accounts.

On November 8, Dogecoin developers published version 1.14.5 of their software. The update also features a drop in suggested transaction fees to 0.01 DOGE, in addition to standard security and performance enhancements.

Binance, a cryptocurrency exchange, replayed an unknown number of user transactions with Dogecoin cryptocurrency conducted several years ago as a result of a software update glitch on November 10. The site asked that the senders of the original transactions reimburse them at the current rate and blocked their balances when the cash were transferred from the exchange’s cold wallet to third-party accounts. Apple CEO Tim Cook discusses his personal cryptocurrency assets. Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, admitted that he owns cryptocurrencies and uses them to diversify his investing portfolio. He claims to have been interested in digital assets for “some time” and has conducted research on the subject.

Cook made it clear that the company has no plans to participate in these financial products or provide associated services. The CEO justified his stance by pointing out that Apple stockholders did not buy stock in order to acquire access to cryptocurrencies. The idea of equating mining to entrepreneurship was embraced by Russian officials.

The move to regulate mining as a business activity for further taxation was supported by representatives from the Ministry of Economic Development, the Ministry of Energy, and the State Duma.