Dubbed "ETH2," the symbol appeared to have been tracking the original Ether market data synchronously. For instance, the cost to purchase ETH2 came out to be the same as that for ETH. Meanwhile, their market capitalization, volume, circulating supply and price changes were also identical.

Coinbase is already promoting eth2 as a new coin? pic.twitter.com/C67UxooLU0

— Nuno (@nvcoelho) December 6, 2021

Nonetheless, unlike the original, the ETH2 token had no Trading Activity, Popularity Score, or Typical Hold Time, underscoring that its role — for now — is to merely track the ETH market data until at least mid-2022.

ETH vs ETH2.0 market data. Source: Coinbase

That is probably as ETH2 seems to have been posing as the native token of Ethereum's ongoing upgrade, dubbed Ethereum 2.0, which is expected to go fully live by June 2022. But the Coinbase's index listing appears closer to "Arrow Glacier," a fork that would give developers more time to prepare for Ethereum 2.0.

Before Ethereum 2.0

The Arrow Glacier update aims to delay a so-called "difficulty bomb," an incentive hardcoded inside the Ethereum blockchain since its launch in 2015, which would make it difficult for people to mine Ether. In doing so, the BOMB, if triggered, would slow down the Ethereum network, for as long as it remains proof-of-work.

Tim Beiko, one of the core developers working on the Ethereum upgrade, noted that Arrow Glacier might be the last upgrade before Ethereum 2.0 goes live next year. Meanwhile, Coinbase appears to have been treating the Arrow Glacier fork to ensure that there would exist a new token called ETH2 after the Ethereum 2.0 upgrade.

In detail, Ethereum 2.0, also known as "Serenity," would enable significant changes to its design, including a full-scale transition from energy-intensive proof-of-work (PoW) — also used by Bitcoin (BTC) — to proof-of-stake (PoS).

In the current version, nodes must validate every transaction to maintain Ethereum's public ledger. But the Ethereum 2.0 upgrade would launch "sharding," which would divide the network into various segments (called shards) and randomly assign nodes to each shard.

The two firms will create a comprehensive product line and legal infrastructure for institutional investors looking to get exposure to cryptocurrencies.

The partnership with Fidelity Digital Assets will allow Nexo to extend its asset portfolio and add a second custody level to its security architecture, according to an announcement. It also enables Fidelity Digital Assets institutional investors access to Nexo's services as well as crypto prime brokerage.

Kalin Metodiev, co-founder and managing partner at Nexo, commented on the development saying:

“Working with Fidelity Digital Assets is the latest milestone in our quest to offer a complete institutional platform and to onboard traditional finance companies into the digital asset ecosystem. Our client base will now have full use of our industry-leading credit and trading products with reliance on Fidelity Digital Assets’ bespoke custody and security solutions.”

Related: Institutional investors bought the dip as China FUD broke

Christopher Tyrer, head of Fidelity Digital Assets in Europe, said that the firm has seen significant growth in institutional investor interest on the continent, and has expanded its partnerships in order to meet that demand.

Fidelity Investments has been ambitious in its plans for the institutional cryptocurrency market, making a number of strategic hires in the space. The company appears to be taking a more holistic approach to cryptocurrency, as the asset manager seeks to provide more institutional access points. 

In an anti-ETH tirade between Nov. 20 and Nov. 22, Zhu tweeted about why he had “abandoned Ethereum despite supporting it in the past.” The thread came in response to a tweet from Synthetix founder Kain Warwick, who’d called out people who have “sold out in pursuit of profit maximization.” During the tweet storm, Zhu claimed that Ethereum culture “suffers massively from the Founders’ Dilemma” and that “everyone is already far too rich to remember what they originally set out to do.”

However, after attracting wide attention, he made a U-turn, saying he wanted to “soften” his original stance and that “I love Ethereum and what it stands for.”

In the 17 days or so since the threads, approximately 156,400 ETH or $676.37 million has been transferred to a wallet that blockchain analytics firm Nansen has associated with 3AC.

Almost all the funds entering the wallet during this period were transferred from Binance, FTX exchange or Coinbase.

Look I couldn't let you guys jerk off watching the burn without me

Eth L1 still unusable for newcomers, show it to your grandma if you don't believe me

I'll still bid it hard on any panic dump like this weekend obv

100k eth is dust fwiw, more coming

— Zhu Su (@zhusu) December 7, 2021

Zhu confirmed the transactions earlier today in response to a tweet from Chinese blogger Wu Blockchain, saying that although Ethereum’s layer one is still “unusable for newcomers,” he’d still “bid hard on any panic dump like this weekend.”

The wallet shows 3AC made the majority of its purchases during the weekend price crash.

When the anti-ETH tweets emerged, many Twitter users believed he was trying to pump rival project Avalanche (AVAX), which 3AC has invested in. In response to a user asking if the ETH purchases meant he’d dumped his AVAX holdings for ETH, he said that he has “never sold AVAX” and simply “bought this ETH from whoever was financially illiterate enough to sell this weekend.”

In early November, Three Arrows Capital was announced as an investor in Blizzard, a fund to promote the development of AVAX. Following Zhu’s initial tweets, AVAX pushed out Dogecoin (DOGE) from its spot as the 10th-largest crypto by market capitalization. Zhu tweeted a graph of AVAX’s growth captioned “top 10” in the hours before his U-turn.

Yes I have abandoned Ethereum despite supporting it in the past.

Yes Ethereum has abandoned its users despite supporting them in the past.

The idea of sitting around jerking off watching the burn and concocting purity tests, while zero newcomers can afford the chain, is gross.

— Zhu Su (@zhusu) November 21, 2021

Related: Three Arrows Capital executives launch NFT fund

At 23:34 UTC on Tuesday, 93,791.894 ETH was moved from the wallet belonging to 3AC to an address that appears to belong to a major trader. Smaller amounts have been moved to other addresses, including 500 ETH moved to an apparent NFT investment wallet.

The firm said on Wednesday that its crypto advisory practice, housed within its consulting and analytics division, will offer advice to financial institutions, retailers and other firms on everything from rolling out crypto features and exploring nonfungible tokens to developing wallets for central bank digital currencies.

According to Visa, part of banks’ interest in cryptocurrencies is in remaining competitive. Citing a recent in-house study, Visa said that “40% of crypto owners surveyed report they would be likely or very likely to switch their primary bank to one that offers crypto-related products in the next 12 months.”

Per Reuters, American financial services company UMB is a client of Visa’s crypto advisory services. 

“We came to Visa to learn more about crypto and stablecoins and the use cases that are most relevant for our retail and commercial business lines,” said Uma Wilson, executive vice president of UMB Bank.

Related: Mastercard is preparing its infrastructure for the deployment of CBDCs

The move marks Visa’s latest attempt to push deeper into the cryptocurrency industry, with the firm having filed for numerous blockchain-related patents in the past. Visa’s research team is also working on a “Universal Payment Channel” project, which is a blockchain interoperability hub connecting multiple blockchain networks and allowing digital assets to move from various protocols and wallets.

Visa is one of the many payments processors that has entered the cryptocurrency business in recent years. Its rival, Mastercard, recently rolled out crypto-linked payment cards throughout the Asia-Pacific region, while online payments giants PayPal launched a new consumer app for crypto, savings and direct deposits earlier this year.

Ethereum was envisioned as a “global computer” that would allow developers to publish and execute apps powered by smart contracts — programmable scripts that facilitate the flow of digital assets. 

Ethereum’s native cryptocurrency, Ether (ETH), not only provides an incentive structure similar to Bitcoin (BTC) in securing and maintaining the network but is also used as “gas” to run transactions through smart contracts. This functions as a security measure to protect the network from inefficient code and attacks by malicious actors. 

At Cointelegraph, we are chronicling the progress of the Ethereum space. Will it become essential infrastructure for a more open, freer internet? Or will it be surpassed by other smart contract (or traditional) platforms vying for mind and market share? 

Stay tuned.