Doge retreats over rate hike fears and Ethereum goes to Poland

Watch: Doge retreats as rate hike fears stalk crypto market and Ethereum goes to Poland

Dogecoin has scampered back to its kennel undoing last week's rapid gains after the Dogechain ecosystem failed to inspire a sustained rally.

The alpha memecoin (DOGE-USD) is down 18.59% in the last seven days to sit around $0.068.

The new Dogechain 'layer 2' network that excited the fickle memecoin subculture last week is not an official Dogecoin Foundation project.

Read more: Crypto live prices

In fact, Dogechain utilises the Polygon Edge (MATIC-USD) software to build an Ethereum-compatible blockchain for wrapped-dogecoin.

Wrapped dogecoins (WDOGE) are dogecoins that exist on the new Dogechain network, they are pegged to the value of the original dogecoins on the Dogecoin blockchain.

Dogechain allows these 'wrapped' dogecoins to be used to purchase NFTs and in decentralised applications.

But the short-lived rally reversed since bitcoin crashed and took most of the crypto-market with it on Friday, August 19.

Watch: The Crypto Mile: The Ethereum Merge explained

Bitcoin (BTC-USD) moves in lock-step with the S&P 500 (^GSPC), which fell from 4290 points last Thursday to a low of 4149 on Monday morning.

Bitcoin followed suit and has been side-stepping along a ledge at around $21K for the past day, and down 9.53% in the last week.

Prime memecoins such as dogecoin and shiba inu reacted by heading due south, chasing the tail of blue-chip cryptos, such as ethereum, bitcoin and cardano.

Some memecoins reacted with contrary price action, one notable example being dejitaru tsuka (TSUKA-USD), still fresh with the froth of speculation that it is the new conception of shiba inu's mysterious founder, Ryoshi.

A Fed rate hike fears have held court in the minds of investors who are holding their breath until after Friday's Federal Reserve meeting at Jackson Hole in Wyoming, where Jerome Powel might bestow more information as to how tight the monetary policy belt is to be fastened around a rapidly inflating dollar.

And, a major crypto-event is to take place next week in Poland, with an address prepared in advance by Ethereum's co-founder Vitalik Buterin.

ETHWarsaw, is set to be the biggest Web3 conference in the region and takes place from Thursday, September 1 to Sunday, September 4.

This inaugural conference is coming at a turning point for the whole cryptocurrency industry with the upcoming Ethereum 'merge' to a more environmentally friendly proof of stake method for validating transactions.

Discussing the event, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said: “This is an exciting time to gather the Polish and CEE region community together to celebrate the network upgrade that we have been collectively working on for the last eight years.

"After the Merge, Ethereum will be 55% complete, there’s so much to be done in the coming years and that’s where the opportunity for Web3 builders and enthusiasts comes in.”

The event will the confluence of many leading members of the cryptocurrency sector, including Stani Kulechov, founder and CEO of leading lending protocol on Ethereum, Aave, Sam McPherson, Protocol Engineering at MakerDAO, Julien Bouteloup, Founder of Stake Capital and StakeDAO, Sumit Kishore, Product Lead at Consensys.

And finally, Cardano (ADA-USD) is well on the way to ensuring that the network's staking nodes upgrade to the new software version, v1.35.3.

The blockchain needs 75% of nodes to be on the newest version before the Vasil hard fork can be implemented.

However, the successful update of Cardano's latest software has done nothing to resuscitate ADA, down 15.26% in the last seven days.

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