Following weeks of uncertainty, the crypto ecosystem is showing promising signs of a renewed bullish run.
Over the last seven sessions, nearly every major cryptocurrency experienced upward momentum as the aggregate market capitalization inches closer to $2.2 trillion.
BTC Breaks Past Key Resistance
Bitcoin prices have finally broken above resistance sitting at $43,500 after consolidating within a narrowing range over the last few months. Over this week, BTC gained nearly 11%, crossing the $47,000 mark, and is now looking to close above the key resistance level at $48,000 before making another attempt to retake $50,000.
According to the Crypto Fear & Greed Index, this is the first time in 2022 that investor sentiment for BTC has shifted to “Greed.”
This upward movement of BTC was triggered in part by Terraform Labs’ ongoing BTC buying spree. Since mid-March, buying has accelerated, with Terra’s not-for-profit organization, The Luna Foundation Guard (LFG), now holding more than 31,000 BTC.
With Terra continuing to purchase BTC, MicroStrategy is also jumping on the bandwagon after securing a $205-million loan from Silvergate to buy more BTC, which experts claim will further help spark further upward momentum in BTC prices.
Altcoins’ Dominant Run Accelerates
Almost every known (and newly added) altcoin is having a dream run this month. This week was no different, with most known altcoins registering double-digit gains, and some lesser-known altcoins recording triple-digit gains.
Ethereum (ETH) is up by over 13% this week among the top 10 altcoins by market capitalization. However, there’s been a significant drop in ETH trading volume over the last 24 hours as the leading altcoin consolidates near the $3,400 mark.
Solana (SOL) has jumped by almost 27% this week, reversing the downward trend of recent weeks. Leading NFT marketplace OpenSea has confirmed that it will begin listing Solana NFTs, triggering an NFT trading spree on the Solana network (a surge of 80% overnight), which drove this week’s significant growth in the value of SOL.
Likewise, memecoin Shiba Inu (SHIB) returned nearly 14% this week, finally breaking out of its own price stagnation. With the Shiba Inu development team launching the much-awaited SHIB Metaverse, investor interest in the memecoin has reignited.
Other performers of the week include Terra (LUNA), Avalanche (AVAX), Uniswap (UNI), NEAR Protocol (NEAR), TRON (TRX), Stellar (XLM), VeChain (VET), EOS (EOS), and Aave (AAVE).
That said, small-cap altcoins like Waves (WAVES) and ThorChain (RUNE) also surged higher. This week, WAVES is up by almost 62% and RUNE by nearly 54%.
ThorChain recently enabled swaps between layer-1 unwrapped Bitcoin and layer-1 unwrapped Ethereum and has introduced new synthetic assets, helping the RUNE token attract renewed investor interest.
Furthermore, the value of Zilliqa (ZIL), another low-cap altcoin, surged by 314.55% this week. This sudden surge is attributed to the recent launch of Zilliqa’s Metaverse-as-a-service solution Metapolis.
Largest Hack Yet Rampages Ronin (RON)
Ronin (RON), the EVM-based blockchain for Play-to-Earn (P2E) games, and Axie Infinity (AXS), the most popular P2E game built on Ronin, reversed most of its recent rally after hackers stole nearly $625 million worth of crypto — representing the largest hack in crypto history.
The hack, which saw 173,600 ETH and 25.5 million USDC stablecoins stolen, occurred on Ronin Network, leading to a more than 35% tumble in the value of RON.
At the same time, Axie’s AXS token gave back most of the week’s earlier gains and is currently trying to recover lost ground. This comes just days before the widely anticipated rollout of Axie Infinity’s updated “Origin” release.
Greener Bitcoin Mining, Increased Adoption
Bengal Energy, the Canadian oil and gas mining giant, has entered the world of BTC mining. As part of its pilot project, the company recently started mining Bitcoin with portable mining rigs from stranded gas wells in Australia’s outback.
In another exciting development, Dubai-based Citizens School has announced that it will begin accepting tuition payments in both BTC (Bitcoin) and ETH (Ethereum).
Finally, Opera, the world’s first native Web3 browser featuring a built-in crypto wallet, has now expanded its platform to add support for more blockchain networks, including Polygon, Solana, Celo, Bitcoin, IXO, Ronin, Nervos, and StarkEx.
With this development, millions of Opera users can seamlessly access decentralized applications (dApps) and other blockchain solutions across eight different ecosystems.
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