Crypto markets remain rangebound, with certain pockets surging after key event triggers

Hola folks!

Happy Monday! Welcome to the cryptosphere. The crypto market has been on a rollercoaster ride since the spot Bitcoin ETF approval in January. Last week brought in some much-needed stabilization to the crypto markets. Bitcoin seems to be cooling off, but Ethereum is gaining momentum as it crossed the $3k mark. The altcoin universe also saw some interesting price action.

Read on to learn more about the factors that moved the market and the tokens that witnessed some interesting price action. As usual, you wind up the heavy read with a fun-filled crypto crossword. 

Crypto markets traded sideways last week, with Bitcoin ending the week marginally in the red but continuing to hold its $51k price level. The newly launched spot BTC ETFs continued to accumulate AUM, but the pace has slowed down drastically, with the lowest inflows of ~500 BTC on certain days, which is lower than daily mined new BTC. Blackrock and Fidelity continue to be leaders in the race, with BTC holdings now over $6.5bn and $4.5bn, respectively.

The focus this week shifted towards ETH, as it led prices ahead of BTC and crossed the crucial $3k level, where it currently continues to trade. Both the upcoming Dencun upgrade and possible spot ETF approvals for ETH have been driving increasing institutional demand. Overall crypto market cap too remains above $2trn in value. 

ETH's price gain also resulted in a surge in its Defi TVL, which came at the cost of other L1s losing market share and also saw a reduction in their prices. SOL, AVAX, and APT all fell over 10% last week. For Avalanche's AVAX, there were a couple of other big triggers causing downward pressure in prices, including a network outage and a huge token unlock.

For the broader crypto markets, it was a mixed bag as several tokens saw a major correction after the recent run-up in prices, primarily the ETH Layer-1 competitors. 

However, there were also several pockets of positive price action as well, with AI-related tokens leading the pack. The reason was the blockbuster earnings reported by chip maker Nvidia, which signaled that the tide has turned for AI-related projects. Render's RNDR surged 30%, Graph's GRT moved up 50%, Fetch's FET gained 50%, and Singularity Net's AGIX jumped over 100%. Even OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's ambitious WorldCoin (WLD) went up by over 100% and hit its all-time high.

The other highlight for the week was Uniswap's announcement about a proposal to start sharing protocol fees with the UNI token holders. The news resulted in a major spike of 60% in prices within hours. 

Other major gainers included tokens that introduced strong partnerships, like Filecoin's FIL which surged 40% after announcing a partnership with Solana. Similarly, Hedera's HBAR soared 30% after announcing a collaboration with an innovation fund in Saudi Arabia.

• BTC $51,250 ⏬ 1.86%

• ETH $3,078 ⏫ 5.60%

• WLD $9.03 ⏫ 21.11%

• UNI $10.63 ⏫ 39.14%

(All data here is as of 2:50 p.m., 26 February 2024)

Before we conclude, here’s a quick look at some important news from around the crypto world.

• UNI jumped on Feb. 23 as much as 60% after a proposal to overhaul the protocol’s governance system, submitted by Uniswap Foundation’s governance lead, Erin Koen. The proposal aims to “strengthen and invigorate” Uniswap’s governance and also would UNI token holders who staked and delegated their tokens. Read more here. 

• Bitcoin exchange-traded funds posted the most trading since their debut in the US last month. Volume amounted to nearly $2 billion, the highest total since the first day of trading on Jan. 11, Bloomberg Intelligence senior ETF analyst Eric Balchunas noted on X. Read more here. 

Take a break and catch your breath with our crypto crossword!

That’s it for now. Thanks for sticking around.

See you later, folks! 👋

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