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This Week In Crypto: The Holiday Rally
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This Week In Crypto: The Holiday Rally

Bitcoin and most major altcoins are recovering to end the year on a high note. Over the last seven sessions, the downward plunge in most major tokens has reversed, starting a bullish run into the new year.

BTC Attempts Recovery amid Changing Market Sentiment

With the Crypto Fear & Greed Index jumping from 29 to 41 this week, bitcoin (BTC) prices surpassed the critical $50,000 mark. The BTC/USD trading pair hit weekly highs of about $51,500.

Overall, the past two weeks have seen BTC remain mostly sideways. However, BTC has seen gains of about 10% in the past five days, raising hopes that the prices will rally higher by the end of the year.

Meanwhile, BTC’s open interest in the futures market has reversed course and has been moving sharply higher. Accordingly, some investors and analysts anticipate a steep pickup in volatility over the coming days. Finally, a dormant wallet with 321 BTC, lying unused since 2013, was activated earlier this week, prompting speculation across social media that another significant directional move could be approaching. 

Stablecoins and DeFi Lead the Charge Higher

As interest continues to pour into decentralized finance, protocols and stablecoins continue to be the biggest beneficiaries of this trend. LUNA, the native token of the Terra smart contract blockchain, has nearly doubled in value in the past two weeks to record its newest all-time high of $101.27 today. Setting itself apart from other existing stablecoins, LUNA is the only crypto in the top-10 list to rise by more than 30% over the last seven days.

With this latest push, LUNA is sustaining its record four-month upward trend, overshadowing the relatively bleak performance of the overall crypto market. The Terra platform has expanded rapidly in recent months, cementing itself as the second-biggest DeFi ecosystem, next only to Ethereum.

Other than LUNA, altcoins like AVAX have also rallied quickly this week, sparking renewed hope of a broader bullish run across the crypto universe. Near Protocol’s NEAR token also witnessed significant growth this week, with the NEAR token rallying over 86% over the last week.

TRON Price Is Recovering from Justin Sun Departure

Tron’s token TRX dropped sharply last week following the news of Justin Sun leaving the Tron platform to token holders as he begins a career in politics. Once the news went viral, TRX, previously ranked the 23rd largest crypto by capitalization, slid to the 25th spot.

TRX dropped almost 10% after the announcement and was trading back below $0.0800, well off its all-time high of $0.3004 back in 2018. However, with the help of the overall market, TRX has since recovered and is now over $0.083. It now ranks 26th by market cap.

Other tokens have also slumped and mostly recovered, including Elrond (EGLD), which trended down by more than 23% at one point.

Web3 Beef Leads to Jack Dorsey Going on an Unfollow Spree

This week, the crypto war exploded on Twitter. The drama spiraled with Jack Dorsey’s tweet where he shared his opinion about Web3. While Web3 proponents are lobbying for a decentralized internet, Jack emphasized that “Web3 is the same centralized entity, but with a different label.”

The ongoing debate reached a fever pitch after Dorsey claimed that Web3 can’t escape venture capitalist incentives. The question about ownership of the Web3 has gone past meme and text-based wars on Twitter. In the latest iteration, followed by the high-octane drama, Jack Dorsey went on an “unfollow” spree. 

The ex-CEO of Twitter has made his concern clear about the rising venture capital influence in Web3 by unfollowing some of the leading investors in the crypto space, including Andressen Horowitz (a16z), Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, Gemini founder Tyler Winklevoss, and Marc Andreessen, among others.

The Metaverse Expansion Goes Parabolic

Metaverse tokens have also been on a tear higher. Unaffected by the slow-moving market of the last few weeks, almost every metaverse token is holding on tightly to gains.

Other than leading metaverse tokens like AXS (Axie Infinity), MANA (Decentraland), SAND (The Sandbox), ENJ (Enjin Coin), and several others, newly launched tokens like CEEK (CEEK VR), CHR (Chromia), RACA (Radio Caca), DG (Decentral Games), DDL (DeFi Degen Land), and ELAND (Etherland) recorded double-digit gains throughout this week.

Disclosure: At the time of publication, Reuben Jackson did not have a position in any of the securities mentioned in this article.

Disclaimer: The information contained in this article represents the views and opinion of the writer only, and not the views or opinion of TipRanks or its affiliates  Read full disclaimer >

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