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Is This 1 Massively Undervalued Cryptocurrency a Screaming Buy for Investors With $5,000? | The Motley Fool

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Is This 1 Massively Undervalued Cryptocurrency a Screaming Buy for Investors With ,000? | The Motley Fool

Ethereum isn’t being recognized for the improvements it’s making.

Most assets simply can’t reinvent themselves every few quarters, but Ethereum (ETH +4.21%) arguably does just that. After pushing two major upgrades, Pectra and Fusaka, in 2025, the chain has another two big improvements on the docket for 2026.

Nonetheless, the coin’s price is down by 38% during the past three months alone, largely for macro reasons that are well beyond its control. Thus it’s likely undervalued, and potentially by quite a lot. Does that make it a screaming buy with a hearty investment of $5,000?

Image source: Getty Images.

The upgrade pipeline is solid, but it can’t guarantee returns

Ethereum’s 2025 upgrades were a lot more than cosmetic improvements, and they laid the technical groundwork for a lot of the follow-on work that’s going to happen this year. This stuff might sound boring (and it might actually be) but knowing what’s going on with it is key to appreciating the chain’s place in the crypto sector’s competitive landscape, not to mention its future opportunities for growth.

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The Pectra upgrade went live in May 2025, and it bundled changes aimed at providing better wallet UX, more efficient staking, and more throughput for Layer-2 (L2) chains. Fusaka followed on Dec. 3, and its headline feature, peer-to-peer data availability sampling (PeerDAS) is also a game changer for the chain’s ability to provide rapid performance at scale, and substantially cheaper than before. Today, the chain’s average transaction fees are roughly 75% lower than three years ago, with an average token swap now costing about $0.30, so these successive upgrades are definitely succeeding in making Ethereum a cheaper and easier technology to use.

Ethereum Stock Quote

Today’s Change

(4.21%) $85.83

Current Price

$2123.98

For 2026, the next upgrade, Glamsterdam, will build on those past successes while also adding new censorship resistance features. But, if the coin’s price performance after past updates is any indication, investors simply can’t count on a boost.

There’s no rush to buy it

There’s not exactly a rush to buy Ethereum before Glamsterdam drops.

Ethereum’s upside comes from being the settlement layer that L2s and on-chain finance route through. Given that its upgrades tend to reduce transaction costs rather than increase them, the coin’s value capture from the traffic it supports is still very weak, and it would likely take a deluge of new traffic to move the needle for investors. Realistically, the new traffic will probably ramp up slowly over time, assuming it arrives at all, so buying the coin means getting exposure both to the value generated from the improvement of its underlying tech and also the value generated from people using it to pay for decentralized finance (DeFi) apps and services.

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But it’s still very much an asset worth owning, as it’s one of the most important in the crypto sector. An investment of $5,000 buys roughly 2.5 coins, which is enough exposure in case 2026’s development road map plays out such that the coin’s price significantly rises, which is still possible.

Of course, if you’re usually intolerant of risk, it’s probably better to aim for a much smaller allocation.

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Crypto

Strategy Is No Longer Just Going to “Inoculate the Market,” Selling Crypto May Be Much More Common. Here’s What That Could Mean for the Stock | The Motley Fool

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Strategy Is No Longer Just Going to “Inoculate the Market,” Selling Crypto May Be Much More Common. Here’s What That Could Mean for the Stock | The Motley Fool

When Strategy (MSTR 0.69%) sold a modest amount of Bitcoin earlier this year, it was a noteworthy development given that the company’s business has centered around buying up as much of the cryptocurrency as it can, and vowing to never sell. And it often boasts of being the largest corporate holder of the digital currency.

The company brushed off the sale of 32 Bitcoins, with management saying it simply wanted to “inoculate the market.” Well, now it appears that Strategy is doing much more than just that, and there could be more significant cryptocurrency sales in the future.

Image source: Getty Images.

Strategy unveils a Bitcoin monetization program

On June 29, Strategy released a framework going forward that it says will “enhance liquidity, preserve long-term Bitcoin exposure, and support long-term value creation for shareholders.” Among the notable components is its Bitcoin monetization program.

Within that program, the company says it may sell some of its cryptocurrency holdings for multiple reasons, including to fund a USD reserve, fund dividends or interest expense, or to fund repurchases of digital credit securities or common stock.

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While the company says it remains committed to Bitcoin for the long term and it’s the company’s “primary treasury reserve asset,” it’s a significant change of course for Strategy, which was previously heavily against ever selling the digital asset.

Strategy Stock Quote

Today’s Change

(-0.69%) $-0.69

Current Price

$100.08

The stock is as risky and volatile as ever

Whether or not Strategy buys or sells Bitcoin doesn’t change the fact that this is a highly risky and speculative stock to own. While crypto fans may be disappointed in the company’s change in strategy, selling Bitcoin will likely not be enough to make the business any better or worse as an investment.

In just the past 12 months, the stock has plummeted a whopping 75% as volatility in digital assets has drastically weighed on its earnings, with the company incurring $12.8 billion in losses over the trailing 12 months, on revenue of $490 million.

That’s not likely to change significantly, even if Strategy offloads some of its crypto holdings, because with such a large exposure to Bitcoin, how the cryptocurrency performs will inevitably impact the company’s bottom line in a big way. This year, the leading cryptocurrency is down 28% as investor excitement around it has largely cooled off, which has proven disastrous for Strategy’s stock as well. And at this stage, there’s little reason to anticipate a recovery anytime soon.

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An Easy-to-Miss Radio Traffic Jam Is Behind Many Home WiFi Slowdowns

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An Easy-to-Miss Radio Traffic Jam Is Behind Many Home WiFi Slowdowns

Key Takeaways

Your WiFi can feel rock-solid at midnight and oddly sluggish by breakfast, even when you have not touched a single setting. The culprit is often outside your walls: a crowded slice of public radio spectrum where your router has to negotiate space with every nearby network, plus a grab bag of household gadgets that leak interference. Add peak-hours demand and the signal-blocking quirks of building materials and weather, and “slow internet” starts to look less like a billing issue and more like an invisible traffic problem you are forced to share.

When WiFi slows down without warning

One day your home WiFi feels snappy, the next it drags, even though your router hasn’t moved and your internet plan hasn’t changed. That swing is real, and it’s usually not your imagination or a “bad day” from your ISP. WiFi lives on shared airwaves, and those airwaves get crowded, noisy, and sometimes just plain finicky.

Think of your connection as a conversation in a busy room. Your laptop and router may be talking just fine, but the room itself can fill up fast with other chatter. What looks like a mystery slowdown is often the result of invisible competition and interference that changes hour by hour.

The battle of competing networks

Most homes still rely heavily on the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz WiFi bands, which are unlicensed spectrum in the US. That “free for everyone” reality is convenient, but it also means your network shares space with your neighbors, their smart TVs, their work laptops, and every nearby router doing the same thing.

Congestion has a rhythm. During common work-from-home and school-from-home windows, especially 8-10 AM, and again in the evening 6-10 PM, more devices are streaming, video calling, syncing, and downloading updates. Even if you pay for fast broadband, your WiFi link can become the bottleneck when the local radio environment gets packed.

Interference inside your home

Your own house can sabotage you. A microwave is the classic culprit because it can leak noise near 2.4 GHz, exactly where many WiFi networks still operate. Older cordless phones, some baby monitors, and even dense clusters of Bluetooth gadgets can add more clutter, especially in smaller apartments where everything sits close together.

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Then there’s physics. Concrete, metal, and even water (think aquariums or thick pipes in walls) absorb and scatter radio signals. A router shoved behind a TV, tucked into a cabinet, or stuck in a far corner forces your devices to “hear” through more obstacles, lowering speeds and making dropouts more likely.

Weather, channels, and what you can do tonight

Environmental changes can matter too. Higher humidity and rain can slightly increase signal loss, and shifting temperatures can change how radio waves propagate around a neighborhood. You might never notice on its own, but paired with congestion it can tip a marginal connection into a frustrating one.

The 2.4 GHz band is also channel-limited. In the US there are 11 channels, but only 1, 6, and 11 don’t overlap. Many routers default to “auto channel,” so nearby networks can hop around trying to escape interference, sometimes creating instability. Practical fixes: prefer 5 GHz (or 6 GHz if you have WiFi 6E/7 gear), place the router centrally and higher up, and use a WiFi analyzer app to pick a less crowded channel instead of leaving it on auto.

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U.K.’s sanctions on cryptocurrency exchanges signal new focus on illicit digital financing – Compliance Week

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U.K.’s sanctions on cryptocurrency exchanges signal new focus on illicit digital financing – Compliance Week

Cryptocurrency exchanges believed to be financing Russia’s war in Ukraine have been sanctioned by the U.K. government in the first attempt to prevent evasion via “dark networks.” The move indicates a new focus on digital sanctions evasion, and compliance teams should expect these rules to develop further, potentially in the EU and other jurisdictions.


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Ruth Prickett graduated from Cambridge University with a BA hons in History and has specialized in business and finance journalism for the past 20 years. She was editor of Financial Management, the magazine…
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