A flurry of excitement this week around interest rates, crypto leverage, and ETF flows still proved net negative for theprice of Bitcointhis week.
The leading cryptocurrency plunged as low as $65,018 on Friday, according to CoinGecko, edging near a 30-day low, before rolling into the weekend at $66,088. That's down 4.7% for the week—even as AllianceBernstein predicted yesterday that BTC could hit $200,000 next year.
Ethereum (ETH) fell 4% over the same period to $3,538, despite SEC chairman Gary Gensler confirming that Ethereum ETFs will be here soon.
Amid such dim performances, it was Toncoin (TON) that stole the show this week, rising to a new all-time high of $8.25 apiece late Friday. The Telegram-linked coin is now up 8% over the past week (and 17% over 30 days) and crosses into the weekend as the ninth largest crypto by market cap at $19.4 billion.
The rally is warranted: Toncoin is the native currency of The Open Network, which flipped Ethereum in May for its number of daily active addresses—of which it had 547,000 on Thursday compared to Ethereum’s 407,000.
Many TON ecosystem coins have rallied amid the hype. Telegram-based clicker game Notcoin (NOT) rose 20% on Friday, carrying its momentum after reaching 35 million users in March. Hamster Kombat—another TON-based clicker game—hit 100 million players last week and is planning its own token launch for next month.
Telegram’s next victim in the market cap rankings is Dogecoin (DOGE), which already fell 7.5% this week to a $19.7 billion market cap.
Most alts and other meme coins fell drastically alongside the large-cap coins, including NEAR (down 18%) PEPE (down 8%), and Dogwifhat (down 14%). Bitcoin layer-2 platform Stack (STX) tanked by 11% on Friday—down 19% for the week—after the network failed to produce a block for nine hours straight.
And despite Roaring Kitty doubling his stake in GameStop on Friday, the meme stock and its associated Solana-based meme coin, GME, are on the decline.
Some of the worst hit tokens this week were gaming tokens: Ethereum L2-based RPG Guild of Guardians (GOG) is down 46% on the week to less than $0.10, while Parallel’s PRIME token is down 37% to almost $10.
As is typical, massive Bitcoin whale MicroStrategy (MSTR) stock fell 6% alongside Bitcoin this week. However, members of the upcoming wave of ‘mini MicroStrategys’—other companies adopting Bitcoin as their main treasury reserve asset—have surged, with MetaPlanet up 9.76% and Semler Scientific (SMLR) up 17%.
These publicly traded companies have announced a bitcoin buy, or full blown Bitcoin strategy in 2024:
— Luke Mikic⚡️🇸🇻🇦🇺 9-5 Escape Artist (@LukeMikic21) June 10, 2024
Of that group, the biggest gainer by far was Canadian-based crypto fund provider DeFi Technologies (DEFI). Since announcing its Bitcoin Treasury Strategy on Monday, the company’s stock has mooned 50%.
Illustration by Mitchell Preffer for Decrypt.
Is Bitcoin back? For at least a little while, it feels like it may be.
This time last week, it was trading for $53,229. It’s now trading above $60,000, according to CoinGecko. That’s a 12% rise over seven days, and a threshold unseen since last month.
The price rise came as traders grew more confident that the Fed would slash interest rates by 50 basis points instead of 25. All eyes are on the central bank next week after two years of sky-high inter...
Illustration by Mitchell Preffer for Decrypt.
There's depressing news for those hoping the price of crypto markets would improve this week. Depressing news for nearly all investors, it would seem.
Bitcoin continued to drop, and hard, this week. Over the past seven days, the price of the asset has descended by more than 9% and—after dipping as low as $52,690 on Friday—rolled into the weekend trading hands for $53,229, according to CoinGecko.
That’s significantly lower than its 2021 record of $...
Illustration by Mitchell Preffer for Decrypt.
It was a fairly uneventful week in the crypto world... until Friday.
The action-packed end to the week came with an increase in the price of Bitcoin, buoyed by crypto market optimism after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell gave his strongest signal yet that he will slash interest rates come September.
The price of the asset popped above $64,600, according to CoinGecko, a more than 7% rise over the week. It slid into the weekend at $63,500. Still,...
