Криптопространство на грани: биткоин падает до апрельских минимумов, Cloudflare обнажает уязвимости Web3 Headline: Crypto space on the brink: Bitcoin drops to April lows, Cloudflare exposes Web3 vulnerabilities

The first cryptocurrency plunged to $82,000, and technical issues from Cloudflare highlighted vulnerabilities in Web3. Nvidia’s quarterly results surpassed expectations, alongside other events of the past week.

Over the last week, Bitcoin accelerated its downward trend, testing levels not seen since April.

On Monday, the asset started at $95,000 but began a steady decline. By Thursday, prices had dipped below $85,000.

On Friday, November 21, the correction hit a low at around $81,700 — marking the minimum since April.

That day, the daily liquidation volume in the crypto market exceeded $2 billion. Concurrently, the volume of realized losses reached levels last seen since the FTX collapse.

By Sunday evening, digital gold had rebounded to $86,500. Overall, its weekly decline was approximately 10%.

The asset’s market capitalization fell to $1.72 trillion of a total cryptocurrency market value of $3.04 trillion.

With Bitcoin’s dominance remaining high at 56.8%, the dynamics of other cryptocurrencies have closely followed its lead. All ten largest cryptocurrencies showed declines of 7-10%.

Ethereum dipped to $2,800, momentarily hitting $2,600. BNB trades around $850, while Solana is at $130.

The Fear and Greed Index stands at 13 points, indicating extreme fear.

Vincent Liu, the Chief Investment Officer at Kronos Research, noted that the correction relates to stronger-than-expected U.S. employment data for September. This data, originally scheduled for early October release, was postponed due to a government shutdown.

The country saw the creation of 119,000 new jobs—the most significant increase since December—while unemployment rose to 4.4%, attributed to increased labor market supply.

The report potentially undermined bullish predictions regarding the Federal Reserve interest rate decision in December. The regulator will have to base its decisions on outdated statistics, with October and November data missing from the report.

Investors see a 71% chance of continued easing of policy, down from 98% at the beginning of the month.

On November 18, a major outage occurred at Cloudflare, causing disruptions to numerous websites and applications, including those in the crypto sector.

Among the affected were the social network X, OpenAI’s website, the music service Spotify, Amazon Web Services, Uber, the video game League of Legends, and many others, impacting at least 20% of total internet traffic.

In the crypto industry, issues affected the Coinbase exchange, the L2 network Base, online broker Robinhood, and trading platform BitMEX.

Additionally, the crypto wallet Ledger and its services faced problems. According to the company’s analytical resource, the situation impacted several blockchains, including TON, Cardano, and Filecoin.

Amid the outage, shares of Cloudflare Inc (NET) fell from $208 to $187 within the week.

A representative of the platform EthStorage stated that the provider’s issues highlighted the dependency of crypto projects on centralized internet infrastructure.

They argued that the incident demonstrated the need for widespread decentralization—from the blockchain to user interfaces and data storage systems. Many projects rely on centralized DNS, APIs, and cloud storage, rendering infrastructure vulnerable.

“Decentralizing blockchains through consensus, a reliable set of validators, and smart contracts is essential, but it’s only one aspect of the equation. True resilience requires a rethinking of the entire stack, not just the distributed ledger level,” the expert noted.

The team from the blockchain platform Filecoin remarked that the Cloudflare outage “showed how much traffic is funneled through a handful of centralized networks.”

On November 17, the total number of Bitcoins mined surpassed 19.95 million BTC—95% of the programmed limit of 21 million BTC.

While the majority of the cryptocurrency is already in circulation, the final 5% (about 1.05 million BTC) will be mined slowly—over approximately 115 years, until the year 2140.

Bitcoin issuance slows with each halving. The next reduction in miners’ rewards is set to occur around April 2028.

This structural transformation has already impacted mining metrics. Its difficulty is at historical highs. During the last recalculation on November 12, it reached 152.27 T.

Experts elaborated on the significance of the «maturity» of digital gold and the role of mining in this process in our article.

Meanwhile, Bitcoin miners’ income from transaction fees dropped to a 12-month low.

This figure fell to $300,000 per day—just 1% of the total miners’ revenue. The bulk of this figure comes from the block reward of 3.125 BTC.

On-chain data shows that the primary use case of the network remains linked to monetary transfers, which limits the potential for generating high transaction fees.

The non-profit Ethereum Foundation revealed details about the upcoming launch of the Interop Layer (EIL)—a protocol designed to unite the fragmented second-tier ecosystem into a “single chain.”

The solution implements a «wallet-oriented» approach where users sign a single transaction for cross-network operations without trusting intermediaries. It is built on account abstraction techniques and the principles of “Trust Manifesto.”

“Our vision is for users to interact with the entire L2 ecosystem as a unified Ethereum network—no complex bridges, multiple chain names, or divided balances. EIL aims to restore a sense of wholeness without sacrificing decentralization and security,” the blog stated.

The protocol is intended to make wallets a single access point to the ecosystem with automatic support for new compatible networks. Use cases include:

EIL is likened to the HTTP protocol for the early internet—just as browsers unified disparate servers, the solution will consolidate L2 networks into one domain.

During the week, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin identified two threats to blockchain development.

The first is developer outflow. This could potentially increase due to some community members’ reluctance to engage with Wall Street.

Currently, nine financial giants, including BlackRock, manage assets totaling $17 billion through exchange-traded funds. Additionally, dozens of treasury companies hold a similar amount on their balance sheets. Collectively, these market participants have accumulated 10.35% of the coin’s supply.

The second risk lies in pressures on technical development. Investors may lobby for changes to the underlying protocol that benefit them but could harm everyday users.

As a solution, Buterin proposed focusing on Ethereum’s unique advantages:

“It is essential to focus on elements that would otherwise be lacking: a global, unbiased, and censorship-resistant protocol.”

Following the third quarter, Nvidia’s revenue reached $57 billion, up 62% compared to the same period last year.

The company’s net profit hit $32 billion, increasing by 65%. Both figures exceeded Wall Street’s forecasts.

The data processing business contributed $51.2 billion, while the remainder came from gaming, visualization, and automotive sectors.

Nvidia projected further revenue growth—up to $65 billion in the fourth quarter.

The company’s CEO Jensen Huang stated that sales “are exceeding all expectations.” The GPU Blackwell Ultra, introduced in March, gained particular popularity.

“The demand for computing power continues to surge in training and inference—both are growing exponentially. We have entered a spiral of success. The ecosystem is rapidly expanding—more and more new developers of basic models and AI startups emerge across various industries and countries. The technology is pervasive, doing everything and all at once,” noted the CEO of Nvidia.

Investors worried that weak results from the American chip manufacturer could signal a possible bubble burst and trigger further declines. However, a significant collapse was largely averted.

Nvidia’s shares jumped from $185 to $197 following the data release on November 19. Nevertheless, they fell to $180 by the week’s end.

The report also propelled growth in other players within the AI and mining sector. Shares of Cipher Mining surged over 10%, followed by IREN, Bitfarms, TeraWulf, CleanSpark, and MARA, although they also plummeted by Sunday.

The CEO of Nvidia provided three arguments supporting the notion that the AI sector does not represent a bursting bubble:

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