Weekly Recap: Privacy Coins Shine Amidst Difficult Week
Although the overall market sentiment remains bearish, coins like KDA and ZEC were able to move to the upside this past week. UST, on the other hand, continued to trade downwards, having been depegged from the dollar.
Last week, institutional investors saw the bearish market as an opportunity to increase their Bitcoin investment. They pumped up to $300 million into the Bitcoin fund. And this wasn’t the only positive news for the premier cryptocurrency this past week. Madeira, an autonomous region in Portugal, has also endorsed Bitcoin.
But while Bitcoin was restoring confidence to its community, the Terra community remained in chaos. 90% of the community rejected a proposed hard fork to revive the ecosystem. Thus, LUNA and UST are still hanging in the balance. In fact, Terra’s co-founder has declared UST “a failed stablecoin.”
Top Gainers: Zcash, Monero Record Gains Despite Market Bear
Kyber Network Crystal v2
Kyber token is striving despite the beatdown of the market surrounded by the tampering of interest rates by the US Federal Reserve. The network token had a major take-off after hitting rock bottom at $1.23 last week Wednesday. Since then, Kyber has nearly doubled in trading price to $2.26 within this short time. According to Coinmarketcap, KNC’s price has surged 21.6% this week at the time of writing.
Amp
AMP rose sharply last week Tuesday, ironically amidst Terra’s implosion. The coin of the collateralized asset transfer network Flexa jumped from $0.010 to 0.0144 within 24 hours, accumulating over 43% gains in the process. AMP did swing back during the week failing to break the $0.015 resistance. The collateral token now trades at a respectable $0.0134 at writing.
Kadena
Kadena appears to be this week’s darkhorse, maintaining a bullish run after a significant dip two weeks ago. Amidst getting listed on Binance as well as launching a new blockchain-agnostic protocol, KDA soared 40% last week. The cryptocurrency seemed unaffected by the current crypto market downtime, until the early hours of May 18th. Recent losses leave the token with a trading price of $2.68 at the time of writing.
Zcash
ZEC is having a good week with a price gain of 17.94%. News of the ecosystem’s protocol upgrade to Zcash v5.0.0 has brightened investors' sentiment for the crypto token. After bouncing off a strong support at $71, the privacy coin has maintained a steep uptrend for the past few days. Within this week, ZEC lunged to $114 before retracing to the trading price of $108.
Monero
Monero (XMR) is the latest privacy coin to flourish in the past week. Following a bottom of $131.00 on Sunday, XMR/USD rallied to an intraday high of $171.26 to start the trading week. Since then, XMR has retraced its gains to barely above $160. While the privacy-focused coin still has a long way to go to reach its April high of $285, its forthcoming July hard fork might be all the catalyst XMR needs.
Decentraland
MANA and fellow metaverse token, SAND, recovered this mid-May from downswings. The Decentraland token rallied quickly to a recent high of $1.33. Although the bulls have cooled down a bit this week, the game token still managed to make gains of 20%. At the time of writing, MANA trades at $1.15. Speculation says the game token is likely to take a plunge below the $1 psychological level. The dive is expected to provide the liquidity needed for MANA to make further price pumps.
Top Losers: UST, Convex, Waves Continue to Melt
TerraUSD
TerraUSD lost its peg to the United States dollar and experienced one of the most shocking price crashes in the previous week. Within this month, UST slumped from its stable price at $1.09 to a dime. The algorithmic stable coin is yet to find support this week, its price has taken a further 72% dive. Based on data from Coinmarketcap, TerraUSD now trades at $0.09. Considering founder Do Kwon’s recent comments about the importance of the Terra ecosystem over UST, there is very little doubt the UST might peg again.
Convex Finance
Most DeFi tokens are suffering from the recent market downswings. However, CVX seemed to show some form of resistance. Amidst the crisis, the Convex Finance platform overtook the leading DeFi lending platform AAVE in terms of TLV. However, in the past few days, the DeFi token’s trading price has not been looking up. CVX has dropped 26% within the week to trade at $11.47 according to Coinmarketcap.
Waves
WAVES is one of the altcoins that got hit hard by the current market plunge. After taking a swing to a recent low on the 11th of May, WAVES is yet to make a recovery. The altcoin has remained at the bottom, meandering between $6.5 to $7. At the time of writing, Wave token price has depreciated by 10% within this week.
Shiba (SHIB)
SHIB slipped by more than 30% this month to $0.0000098, with most of the price dive happening within one day. The meme coin appeared to find support shortly after, with an upswing that matched the downward move. However, SHIB met another resistance this weekend and has dropped by 10% since. Despite news of its imminent SHIBverse and other interesting milestones on a much-revamped roadmap, SHIB’s price might need some extra motivation. Shiba Inu currently trades at $0.000012, down 4% in the past day.
Curve DAO Token (CRV)
CRV took a fall to its lowest trading price since August last year at $1. The DAO token hasn’t shown any sign of market reversal yet. It has mostly traded between a one-dollar range for the rest of this week. CRV is currently at the bottom of the range at $1.28 with a 10% loss this week. An interesting curvy end to what has surely been a rollercoaster week.
