The percentage of bitcoin’s total circulating supply that is seen as inactive – i.e. has not moved in at least a year – has just reached a 4-year high above 60.6%, suggesting investors are holding onto their BTC.

Bitcoin has, according to JPMorgan strategists, passed its “first real stress tests” earlier this year, during the coronavirus-induced market crash in March.

Ethereum mining pool Ethermine has decided to distribute the $2.6 million it mined from am mysterious ETH transaction with a large fee to its users, after the original sender failed to claim the funds.

Top stories in the Crypto Roundup today:

• Inactive Bitcoin Supply Hits 4-Year High
• Bitcoin Passed its ‘First Real Stress Test’, say JPMorgan Strategists
• Ether Mining Pool Cashes its $2.6 Million Gas Fee After receiving False Refund Claims

At the time of writing, bitcoin (BTC) is trading at $9,477.53 (3.71%) with a daily Top Tier volume of $3.20 bn. As for ether (ETH), it is trading at $232.23 (3.63%) with a daily Top Tier volume of $784.73 million. The MVIS CryptoCompare Digital Assets 10 Index is currently tracking at 3,104.92 (1.59%).

Inactive Bitcoin Supply Hits 4-Year High

The amount of bitcoin that has not moved in at least a year has just reached a 4-year high, hitting 60.63%, suggesting investors who bought the dip in 2018 have not been taking profits and decided instead to hold onto their BTC.

One method used to analyze inactive bitcoin has been to group them by the length of time they’ve been inactive, in the so-called “HODL Waves.” These waves, pioneered by Unchained Capital, represent different time periods in which a percentage of the BTC has not been moved.

Speaking to CoinDesk Dhruv Bansal, co-founder and CSO at Unchained Capital, explained that the HODL Waves now suggest that investors who bought BTC on the way down from $6,000 to $3,000 in 2018 “are still holding it despite the tremendous gains since then and the recent economic turbulence.”

The two waves that have grown the most are those representing coins being held for more than 10 years, and those representing coins held for two to three years, going up 31% and 25% year to date, respectively. Some investors, analysts speculated, could have lost access to their coins, which are now considered inactive.

Bitcoin Passed its ‘First Real Stress Test’, say JPMorgan Strategists

According to JPMorgan strategists, bitcoin has successfully passed its “first real stress tests” during March’s coronavirus-induced economic turmoil. A report published by strategists at the financial institution led by Joshua Younger and Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou noted that BTC rarely deviated from its intrinsic value or mining cost in the last few months, and proved its resilience outperforming traditional financial asset classes.

The strategists added there was little sign of a flight to liquidity in the cryptocurrency market, which had a “more resilient structure” than equities, treasures, forex, and gold. While bitcoin had one of the “most severe” drops in liquidity in March, its “disruption was cured much faster than other asset classes.”

The analysts added:

“That cryptocurrencies largely survived the stresses of March point to longevity as an asset class, but price action points to their continued use more as a vehicle for speculation than medium of exchange or store of value.”

JPMorgan’s strategists added there is “little evidence” bitcoin was used as a safe haven, and instead its value appeared to be correlated with that of other risky assets, like equities. The report also said stablecoins like Tether’s USDt and Centre’s USDC were largely “unscathed” from the turmoil.

Ether Mining Pool Cashes its $2.6 Million Gas Fee After receiving False Refund Claims

Ethermine, the Ethereum mining pool that received a $2.6 million ETH fee from a mysterious transaction that baffled the cryptocurrency community, has decided to distribute the funds among its miners as a reward for processing the transaction.

The Bitfly-owned mining pool has decided to make the move after the original entity behind the transaction failed to make a valid claim for it after a few days. On social media, Bitfly wrote:

“As the sender of the transaction … has not contacted us after 4 days we have made the final decision to distribute the tx fee to the miners of our pool. Given the amount involved we believe 4 days is sufficient time for the sender to get in touch with us.”

Several Ethereum users tried to claim ownership of the transactions, but these failed to “produce a valid signature of the sending account,” Ethermine said. Per Bitfly the funds will be distributed to miners according to their hashrate.

After users pushed Bitfly to wait more time before distributing the funds, the mining pool operator said it’s “a mining pool and not an arbiter of the ETH network,” and that to avoid these discussions in the future, it will “be immediately distributing any block reward independent of its size.”

Maker (MKR) is the Daily Mover

This week’s Daily Mover featured asset is Maker (MKR), a governance token in MakerDAO’s protocol that underpins the crypto-collateralized stablecoin DAI, on the Ethereum network. MKR token holders vote on proposals within the ecosystem that creates the DAI stablecoin, most commonly on its stability fee.

Maker’s FCAS score increased 2.86% in the last two weeks, thanks to a 7.51% rise in User Activity, and a 6.17% rise in Market Maturity. Its Developer Behavior, over the same time, remained unchanged, but its price surged 32%.

The FCAS increase comes days after MKR token holders agreed to further diversify accepted collateral for loans by including real-world assets, more specifically supply chain invoices and musicians’ future royalty streams. These are set to be represented on the Ethereum blockchain using unique non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

Smaller businesses and artists can now use these to borrow DAI, which trades 1:1 with the U.S. dollar, and convert it to cash they can use. The push to diversify MakerDAO’s collateral is important, as it could reduce risk and improve liquidity.

Over the last two weeks the community voted on adding new stablecoins, other cryptocurrencies, and even fiat currencies as collateral assets, but ended up adding real-world assets. Rune Christensen, founder of MakerDAO, said:

“These should be seen as the first two [RWAs] in the greatest portfolio of assets that’s ever been built. It’s just the first step. Thousands and thousands of assets will exist alongside them.”

Some fear that MakerDAO may be moving away from the trustless system, as in the event of default lenders will have to work with the legal system to enforce their rights, instead of relying on a smart contract. Vogelsang, CEO of Centrifuge, argued that risk of abuse is still limited.

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