Bitcoin Daily: Ripple Goes To College To Research Blockchain; Bitcoin Value Drops To Lowest Level In 7.5 Weeks

Bitcoin continues to struggle, reaching its lowest level in 7.5 weeks on Wednesday (Feb. 6) to end the session at $3,328. As CoinDesk reported, the crypto also “created a bearish outside reversal candle on the daily chart.” There is a possibility that bitcoin’s decline could reach the low of $3,100 that it saw in December.

In other news, Ethereum Foundation might be taking on a $15-million-dollar venture focused on Verifiable Delay Functions (VDFs). This could play an important role in Serenity, the “proof-of-stake”(PoS) system that the Ethereum network is expected to move to in the next few years.

“We’re basically doing all this groundwork to make an informed go/no-go decision on the bigger project. The bigger project is $15 million on that order of magnitude. So, we want to make sure that if we do go ahead, it’s going to be successful,” said Ethereum Foundation Researcher Justin Drake, according to CoinDesk.

He added that there will be a number of tests completed before a final decision is made on whether the technology should be used in Serenity.

Crypto brokerage startup Voyager has announced it is going public on Canada’s TSX Venture Exchange through a reverse merger, valued at $60 million. The new entity, Voyager Digital (Canada) Ltd., will begin trading next week on the TSX. The company aims to enable retail and institutional investors to buy and sell crypto across multiple exchanges using one account via a mobile app.

“We’re actively looking for parts of the crypto ecosystem that fit with us, that fit with our mission and our culture,” said Stephen Ehrlich, co-founder and CEO of Voyager, to CoinDesk. “Having cash, plus a public currency, will make us more efficient and give us more opportunities.”

Ripple announced the latest partners to join its University Blockchain Research Initiative (UBRI), which aims to boost the growth of the blockchain technology ecosystem. Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, Duke, Georgetown, Morgan State, Kansas, Michigan and Northeastern universities in the U.S., as well as the National University of Singapore and the University of Sao Paulo, have now joined the Institute for FinTech Research at Tsinghua University (THUIFR) in Beijing under the UBRI.

“In less than a year, our initial UBRI partners hit the ground running with the launch of new research projects, events, course offerings and more,” said Ripple’s SVP of Global Operations Eric van Miltenburg in a press release.