ETH refuses to be ignored

Ethereum, enjoying a renewed sense of purpose, touched $2,700 for the second time in about a week. The "other big coin" (barely $1,400 in early April) arrived at the $2.7K mark yesterday afternoon, spiking by as much as 6% over the course of mid-Tuesday, strutting as the Bitcoin 2025 Conference was hitting its stride.

Gathered at The Venetian on the Vegas Strip are a Who's Who of crypto industry honchos as well as key political figures, including Vice President J.D. Vance and Republican Senator Cynthia Lummis. Bitcoin, for its part, did try to be the best version of itself, or at least spend yesterday holding above $110,000. Making splashy headlines during the confab's opening salvo of fireside chats was Donald Trump Jr. who revealed that Trump Media and Technology Group was forming a $2.5B BTC treasury. "We're going to the moon guys," Trump Jr. said. "Stay in. Stay Strong."

By day's end, the world's largest crypto had slid to $108,600. As for ETH, it too fell back, dipping to $2,600.

Over the past week, ETH is +5%, versus a 2% rise for BTC, per CoinGecko's chart as of today at 9 a.m. (EST).

"Ethereum likely is building energy to smash through $3,000," CoinDesk said.

Major coins, including SOL and XRP, slipped 1%-2% over the past 24 hours as the world awaits word on Nvidia's Q1 earnings due out later today. 

Meanwhile, Zebec Network (ZBCN), a Solana-run financial infrastructure network, has come in for a landing after going parabolic, nearly doubling over the past week.

With a market cap of roughly $315M, ZBCN now fits easily within the ranks of CoinGecko's largest 250 digital assets. On Monday, ZBCN quietly hit an all-time high per-coin price of $0.005244. It has since shed about 25%. Still, ZBCN's value has soared 240% in just the past month amidst a flurry of announced sponsorships and partnerships, including the integration of Chainlink's oracles and also the creation of a featured RWA-related role for Ondo Finance’s USDY stablecoin. Last month, Zebec, building on its ecosystem's growth in Europe, became a sponsor of Germany's Bundesliga football league (99Bitcoins).

Bitcoin devotees flocked to Las Vegas this week for Bitcoin Magazine's sixth annual Bitcoin Conference.

This year's event (whoa, wait, was it really a year ago Trump gave the keynote in Nashville?) is described as the world’s largest and most influential gathering of cryptocurrency enthusiasts, professionals and thought leaders committed to fostering Bitcoin adoption.

Recently pardoned Silk Road pioneer Ross Ulbricht, billed as a "freedom fighter," is set to deliver a keynote speech on Friday.

Organizer David Bailey, CEO of BTC Inc., on Monday declared via X post the event had five times as many institutional investor attendees compared to last year, Decrypt said.

Strategy founder Michael Saylor inspired an early round of teeth gnashing after brashly dismissing the whole "proof-of-reserves" concept as more of a security risk than any useful exercise in transparency.

Robinhood's Vlad Tenev said AI will eviscerate white collar workforces, leaving "single-person companies" as the norm. You know, like how one mysterious, pseudonymous creator named Satoshi Nakamoto created Bitcoin.

In something of a showstopper, Jack Dorsey’s Square has captured buzz share with its pilot of a Bitcoin payments facilitation offering. Its high-profile test run is coming by way of a pop-up merch truck parked just off the casino floor inside The Venetian, per Decrypt. The system runs on Lightning, which settles transactions off the main chain. Customers scan QR codes; Square handles things behind the scenes, as Decrypt explained. That includes finding and confirming real-time exchange rates.