Ethereum takes top trending crypto spot as Merge nears, Tornado Cash follows

The recent tumultuous events in the cryptocurrency industry have resulted in an increased interest in some of the related tokens, especially Ethereum (ETH) and Tornado Cash (TORN).

As it happens, over the past day, Ethereum has emerged as the leader of the crypto trending list, strengthening 0.11% in 24 hours and 2.57% across the week, whereas TORN assumed second place despite losing 16.74% on the day and 32.03% in seven days, according to CoinMarketCap data on August 10.

The increased buzz surrounding Ethereum is connected to the rapid approach of the network’s Merge upgrade, which will mark its transition from the Proof-of-Work (PoW) to the Proof-of-Stake (PoS) algorithm. This has also factored in ETH futures trading volume reaching a 3-month high.

Internet abuzz with Tornado Cash chatter

As for Tornado Cash’s token TORN, it has found itself in the middle of a scandal implicating the crypto mixing service in the attacks on Ethereum bridges (including Harmony’s Horizon bridge) by North Korea state-backed Lazarus Group. 

By the looks of things, Tornado Cash has been used to launder “more than $7 billion worth of virtual currency since its creation in 2019,” including the assets stolen by the Lazarus Group, according to the press release by the United States Treasury Department which placed sanctions on the mixing service on August 8.

That said, the situation that led to this result could get further out of hand as blockchain experts have predicted that the North Korean crypto hacking problem is bound to worsen.

It is also worth mentioning that Tornado Cash was used to move $80 million in digital assets stolen from the Ethereum-based stablecoin protocol Beanstalk Farms in a mid-April flash loan heist, as Finbold reported.

LUNC, Flow, and Bitcoin get more attention

Terra Classic (LUNC) is in third place, garnering interest after Terraform Labs co-founder and CEO Do Kwon broke the three weeks of silence with a tweet in which he explains what decentralized networks need to succeed.

Meanwhile, Flow (FLOW), which was in the leadership position the day before thanks to Meta (NASDAQ: META) announcing the expansion of its Instagram digital collectibles feature to support non-fungible tokens (NFTs) minted on the Flow blockchain, has now dropped to the fourth position.

Lastly, Bitcoin (BTC) has climbed to fifth place, as the largest cryptocurrency records renewed interest after a video from 2014 resurfaced of the former CEO of Google Erich Schmidt hailing it as a “remarkable cryptographic achievement.”

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