Weekly Recap: Metal, Syscoin Stand Firm as Solana Stumbles
After a long grueling month for the crypto market, Bitcoin ended the week in green for the first time in nine weeks. Despite this and other gentle signs of a positive upturn, Bitcoin made no significant changes to the previous week. It traded between the $29K and $32K zone.
The leading crypto started the week on a strong note, breaking its 20-day high of $32,200. With its brief rise, the world’s total market capitalization surged by some $15 billion, rising to $1.3 trillion, before dropping considerably.
Meanwhile, some altcoins saw slight gains during that period, with tokens like Polymath and Metal leading the dismal week. The market’s modest gains are still reassuring considering the flurry of uncertain news in the past seven days like the leaked US draft bill and other regulatory possibilities.
Ethereum, on the other hand, followed Bitcoin's lead but concluded the past week with a value of $1806, signifying a 0.41% decrease. Likewise, blockchain protocols such as Elrond and Solana succumbed to market pressure.
Top Gainers: Metal, Syscoin Record Gains Despite Bitcoin Instability
Polymath
Following BTC's trend, the security-driven project Polymath recorded some gains in the market. POLY, the Polymath ecosystem's native coin, has risen by 6% in the last week.
Of late, the Polymath ecosystem has been witnessing several developments. One was the listing of its sister project, Polymesh, on the Huobi Global exchange. This week, the team behind the security-driven initiative also announced the launch of the Polymesh Ecosystem Development Fund (EDF). POLY is trading at $0.27 at the time of writing.
Metal
The past week has been good for Metal DeFi initiative as its MTL token soared by 18% from a price of $1.3 to $1.67. The price increase conveniently coincides with the launch of Metal Pay in Europe.
The company's presence in Europe is a significant development, especially considering its objective of making cryptocurrencies more accessible to the general public. While the coin is far from its high of $3.38 made in April, its consistent average gains in the past three weeks could see it break the $2 resistance. MTL is up by 1.9% at $1.74 at press time.
Ontology Gas
Ontology Gas (ONG), the utility token of the high-speed Ontology network, also did well despite the prevailing sentiment. On Monday, ONG skyrocketed as high as $0.74 from its previous weekly open of $0.45, giving traders a profit of more than 70%.
The price increase, however, was short-lived, as it had dropped to $0.46 at the time of writing.
Syscoin
This layer 1 blockchain project kicked off the year strong, reaching an all-time high of $1.31. The Web3-based initiative, however, has since collapsed, hitting a low of $0.136. A few days back, the Syscoin team announced the full integration of its network with DeNet Desk, a multichain ecosystem.
The new development might be responsible for Syscoin’s 16% increase last week. At the time of writing, SYS, the token of the layer 1 blockchain, is trading at $0.24.
eCash
eCash (XEC) has been in a sustained downturn since August, yet it maintains its position in CoinMarketCap top 100. The past week was quite favorable for the blockchain scaling project following two weeks of consolidation.
XEC has risen more than 7% in the last seven days, presumably as a result of a network update on the KuCoin exchange.
Top Losers: Axie Infinity, Solana Takes a Nosedive
TerraClassicUSD
It comes as no surprise to find Terra’s old stablecoin still on this list, as the token continues to lose hope of ever re-pegging. USTC, formerly UST, has plummeted by more than 33% in the past week.
Thus far, there has been no new information from the team regarding the restoration of UST, although Terra’s leadership did make clear that the old stablecoin was not in its new plans. At present, USTC is valued at $0.01233, a staggering difference from its expected $1 pegged value.
Convex Finance
Convex Finance’s CVX has yet to see a bullish weekly candle since early April. Last week was no exception for the Curve staking-related project, as it suffered a 24% loss.
While CVX is up 4% in the past 48 hours, it is still very far from its high of $38 in April, trading at $7.6 at the time of writing.
Secret
This privacy-focused blockchain project, just like Convex Finance, has been seeking new lows. Secret has steadily declined since its $6.85 peak in January. Since then, the privacy coin has lost more than 86% of its value. Likewise, in the last seven days, SCRT has declined by 22%, with a price of $1.30 at the time of writing.
Axie Infinity
Axie Infinity bravely spiked to a high of $28.2 last Tuesday, even amid the market instability. Its capitulation however was just as sudden as its rise. AXS subsequently broke through its daily support of $19.72 yesterday, resulting in a low of $19.42.
The play-to-earn token lost about 14% of its value this week, making it one of the week's biggest losers. At the time of writing, AXS is worth approximately $20, with a 2% gain in the past 24 hours.
Elrond
Elrond, dubbed the “Internet Scale Blockchain”, recently suffered a hack that led to the loss of $1.65 million. The hack negatively impacted the layer 1 network. As a result, EGLD, Elrond’s native token, has sunk by more than 16% within the week to trade at $66.58. On the chart, EGLD appears to be moving downwards, attempting to break through its most recent low of $64.17.
Solana
The popular high-performance blockchain went through a rough week. Solana network halted for more than five hours on Thursday, June 1, prompting some users to claim they’d “lost faith” in the coin. Amid the network outage, SOL plummeted by more than 12%, tripping to $35.71. After recovering to $44 on Monday, SOL dipped again and currently trades below the psychological $40 support level.
