Weekly Recap: Ethereum Leads the Rest of the Market in Green
After weeks of bloodbath, the crypto market finally saw significant gains last week with Ethereum taking the lead. Several altcoins, including Ethereum Classic and Lido DAO, profited handsomely from Ethereum's Merge news. For the first time in 35 days, Bitcoin had a daily close above the $23,000 mark. This week, the total cryptocurrency market cap added some $175 billion, bringing it above $1.05 trillion. In contrast, the total market cap has aggregated around a trillion dollars since mid-June.
Bitcoin began the previous week at about $20,850 and fell slightly below $18,900, prompting minimal fear. However, on Wednesday, the king crypto saw some positive market pressure and began its ascent. Bitcoin closed above $22,000 on Monday and then above $23,000 yesterday, representing over a 20% gain.
On the other hand, in a week of recovery, some tokens like CEEK and PAXG struggled to capitalize on the market rally.
Top Gainers: ETH and Ethereum Classic Lead Rally
Ethereum
This week, Ethereum led the top gainers after revealing the date for the Merge phase of Ethereum's transition to Proof-of-Stake. The second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap began its rally on Wednesday from a low of $1006.32. It went on to break a 31-day high of $1280 on Friday, wrapping up the week at $1338.65. Over the last seven days, ETH has bagged a whopping 43%, quickly recovering from the recent inflation-induced price drop.
Despite the brief rally, ETH is still down 68% from its November record high of $4868. At the time of writing, ETH trades at around $1536.
Ethereum Classic
Interestingly, Ethereum’s sister coin ETC joined the rally, racking up gains prior to the Ethereum Merge. While Ethereum Classic will not be making the transition to PoS, its gains are still Merge-related. Indeed, the Ethereum Classic protocol would likely soon accommodate a lot of miners migrating from the new Ethereum free of mining.
This past week, ETC notably closed in double digits. Given its long downtrend since May 2021, this was long anticipated. ETC has risen from $13.34 to $27.77 in the last seven days, reflecting a 108% increase. In fact, the ETC token achieved a five-day green candle streak, the first since March. It also surpassed an 8-week high of $25.69.
Lido DAO
This liquid staking solution accumulated one of the biggest gains this week, stealing into the top 80 cryptocurrencies. LDO opened the week at $0.640 and has since climbed to a high of $1.865, surging by over 193%.
Despite dropping from the high and steadying not long after, LDO still profited 155% over the previous week's closing price.
Like the ETC, Lido DAO's price hike might have been aided by the Merge announcement, as it is closely linked to the Ethereum network.
Polygon
Of late, the popular Ethereum scaling solution has been on a green streak. Polygon's MATIC token surpassed its previous monthly high of $0.671 yesterday, climbing to $0.984. In fact, since the beginning of July, the layer-2 token has accumulated 93.1% in gains. This effectively makes it one of the most profitable cryptocurrencies this month.
Aside from Ethereum-related developments, the recent announcement of Polygon's participation in Disney's Accelerator Program might have also influenced MATIC's value.
Aave
From its proposed GHO stablecoin to an integration with DeFi protocol Merlin, the Aave protocol has seen major fundamental moves this month.
Regardless of these steps, Celsius' loan repayment to the DeFi giant might be the most responsible for Aave’s uptrend. The price of AAVE, which is currently worth around $96.81, reflects this the most. While AAVE traded as low as $45.6 last month, it has since gone up by more than 101%.
In the last seven days, AAVE's price surged by 42.08%.
Top Losers: CEEK, ELF Unfazed by Short-term Rally
Ceek VR
Despite a short-lived recovery in early July, CEEK ended the preceding week in the red. For the majority of the week, CEEK ranged between the $0.345 and $0.281 levels. However, the virtual reality project’s token saw some activity towards the weekend. The token’s price tumbled to $0.257 losing about 11.42% in the past week. CEEK trades around $0.282 at press time.
PAX Gold
Aside from a brief spike to $1751 last Wednesday, Pax Gold’s value has remained bearish in the past few days. The gold-backed cryptocurrency has been influenced by the price of gold following discussions about prohibiting Russian gold exports. With a 2.3% weekly decline, PAXG is among the week's most significant losers. PAXG trades around $1705 at press time.
Chain
The value of the Chain’s XCN, like CEEK, has been on a random decline. Last Monday, the token native to the blockchain service provider reached a daily high of $0.1075 before plummeting almost immediately. Moreover, XCN has dropped nearly 51.9% since reaching an all-time high of $0.1841 in May. At press time, the token is trading at $0.08931, a 10.25% decrease over the past week.
aelf
aelf (ELF) has continued to fall in value, following a weekly structure of lower lows and lower highs. After posting a string of bullish daily candles, ELF quickly plunged early last week. The token dropped about 25% last Tuesday, wiping out previous gains. Since then, it has been consolidating with little price movement. ELF is currently trading at $0.1915, down 15% in the last seven days.
FEI USD
FEI USD is a DeFi algorithmic stablecoin similar to the once-popular USTC stablecoin. Last week, the algorithmic stablecoin traded between $0.9716 and $1.0033, losing 0.48%. As at writing, the stablecoin trades at $0.9925.