Weekend Movers – Injective Protocol (INJ) and Radix (XRD)

Major cryptocurrencies were trading in the green, marking a bullish start to the last week of May. The total crypto market cap increased by 2.4% to just above $1.2 trillion. In the last 24 hours alone, the market volume has also increased by 5.6% to $39.2 billion.

The largest cryptocurrency Bitcoin, which has been stuck in a tight range most of May, went on to hit $28,355 early on Monday. The prices started trending up right before the weekend when the BTC price was around $26k.

This is a noteworthy development, as Bitcoin has been moving in one direction for the third consecutive day. The continued bullish performance shows that the bulls have gotten stronger during the weekend.

However, it is to be seen if BTC will continue its move till $30k, but the market leader is expected to hit the key resistance in the near term with the range between $22K and $25K acting as a reliable support for bulls.

The fact is that BTC is still trading within the narrow range, which means the latest upside is still not a clear indicator that a breakout was in the works. A resurgence of sell pressure is more likely, now that the RSI is approaching its mid-point.

According to crypto asset data provider Glassode, the transfer volumes by long-term holders in profit have been on the rise, meaning an increase in sell pressure by BTC holders in profit for the last few months. With Bitcoin holders taking profits, it has been putting pressure on Bitcoin price that didn’t allow the price of the crypto king to sustain its upside above the $28,000 price level.

However, those who bought BTC in the last 6 to 12 months have been contributing the most to the selling pressure, revealing a shift from long-term profits to short-term profits. Despite this surge in profit-taking, on-chain data also indicates buying activity from whales.

What’s Behind the Move?

The spike in crypto prices over the weekend was the result of Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and President Joe Biden coming closer to finalizing a deal on America’s debt ceiling to avoid any default and assess the support they have to pass legislation this week.

Calling it a compromise, President Biden said the agreement is “an important step forward.” “Earlier this evening, Speaker McCarthy and I reached a budget agreement in principle,” Biden tweeted on Saturday. “Over the next day, our negotiating teams will finalize legislative text.”

The stakes are high as US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has repeatedly warned that the US would be shaken by an “economic catastrophe” if it failed to raise the debt ceiling in time.

There has been a disagreement between Democrats and Republicans that has dragged on for weeks. One sticking point for this “big gap” between Republicans and the president on raising the debt ceiling, according to Biden, was “wealthy tax cheats and crypto traders” that he said shouldn’t be protected under a deal.

It has been unlikely that the US would default as previous debt-ceiling debacles had ended in last-minute deals. As the government’s projected June 5 debt default looms, the announcement of reaching a deal to avert the debt ceiling crisis has the crypto markets traded into the green.

Additionally, authorities at the Beijing Municipal Science & Technology Commission, which oversees a cluster of China’s top tech companies and academic institutions called the Zhongguancun Chaoyang Park, released a whitepaper over the weekend outlining suggestions for China’s web3 policy. However, the whitepaper is more about blockchain than crypto.

Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, or CZ, called the timing “interesting,” considering Hong Kong is going to allow retailer crypto trading and enable crypto regulatory framework as early as next week.

Best Weekend Performer

With all this positive news, crypto assets like NEO (18.5%), IOTA (14.6%), and Conflux (12.7%) surged most in the last week. Meanwhile, in the past 24 hours, LDO (6%) recorded the most gains. This past weekend, however, was good for the likes of Quant (10.5%), The Graph (9.5%), Bitcoin (6.95%), and ETH (5%).

Ethereum and Lido are actually two of the leading revenue generators, as per Token Terminal. Over the past 30 days, Ethereum accumulated a staggering $374.9 million in revenue, and in 3rd spot is Lido which generated an impressive revenue of $86.9 million. Meanwhile, over the last 180 days, Ethereum’s cumulative revenue has exceeded $1 billion.

According to Crypto Fees data, Ethereum has collected over $6.1 million in fees, with a weekly average surpassing $9 million. Meanwhile, in the DeFi ecosystem, the Total Value Locked (TVL) in Ethereum is $27.4 billion, while Lido’s stands at $12.75 billion.

However, one coin among the top 100 cryptos emerged as the best performer over the weekend.

Injective Protocol (INJ)

With an almost 14% upside, INJ led the gains this weekend. The $595 billion market cap cryptocurrency is trading at $7.42 while managing $95.5 mln in 24-hour trading volume at the time of writing.

INJ is also in the green on Monday, recording an impressive 453% gain in 2023. Despite such an amazing performance, the coin is still down 70.22% from its $24.90 peak that it touched in April 2021.

These gains come as the protocol announced on Sunday that the Avalon Mainnet Upgrade has been initiated to bring its most powerful version of Injective to date to the users. The governance proposal is active, and the upgrade is scheduled to occur later this week with improvements, including L1 scalability optimizations, sub-second block times, and a PoS delegation revamp.

Moreover, on Friday, the project had another successful burn completed that resulted in the burning of 5,689,124 INJ to date. Injective protocol is programmed to burn tokens on a weekly basis.

The Injective protocol is a layer 1 blockchain built to shape the future of finance. Backed by Binance, Pantera, and Mark Cuban, the Injective platform is powered by a global network of developers, validators, builders, institutions, and partners.

The platform revolutionizes smart contracts by launching dynamic dApps with its powerful CosmWasm smart contract layer. It boasts of being the first blockchain to offer auto-executing smart contracts, which empower faster, more innovative, and groundbreaking applications.

The network is secured by globally distributed validator nodes, with the largest institutions contributing to the proof-of-stake (PoS) network. Injective uses the Tendermint PoS consensus to secure transactions with instant finality.

The blockchain also allows for the secure transfer of crypto assets and Web3 data from prominent blockchains to utilize on any application built on Injective. All dApps within its ecosystem can natively access sovereign layer one chains such as Ethereum, Cosmos, and Solana for frictionless interoperable communication.

The blockchain further enables customized DeFi solutions such as the world’s first on-chain derivatives orderbook. On Injective protocol, developers can build sophisticated dApps rapidly through its plug-and-play modules while gaining deep liquidity support right from day one.

Click here to learn all about investing in Injective Protocol (INJ).

Worst Weekend Performer

In the past 24 hours, Render (3.8%), BitTorrent (1.5%), and EOS (1.2%) fell the most in value. Pepe (7.5%), GMX (5.9%), Algorand (5.5%), Fantom (5.2%), and ApeCoin (5.1%) are the biggest losers of the last week.

One thing to remember for this week is that several prominent crypto projects will be unlocking tokens, potentially impacting the token prices negatively.

The most prominent unlock will come on May 30, when 3.6% of Layer 2 network Optimism’s OP token supply will enter the market, equating to 154.6 million tokens worth around $255 million. This will mark the first major unlock for the core contributors and investor groups, as per Token Unlocks.

Other unlocks include 61 million SUI tokens, 3.2 million Sweatcoin (SWEAT), and 586,666 Galxe (GAL) tokens. STEPN, Hedera, Acala, 1inch, and Nym, too, will be unlocking tokens.

Meanwhile, Render (6.3%) recorded one of the most losses this weekend, along with Tether Gold (3%) and BitDAO (1.7%). But the biggest loser was Radix.

Radix (XRD)

With 7.2% losses, XRD declined the most over the weekend among the top 100 cryptocurrencies. As of writing, the $710 million market cap coin is trading at $0.07 while managing $4.12 million in 24-hour trading volume. XRD is currently down 89.28% from its all-time high of $0.65 in Nov. 2021 but is up 107% YTD.

XRD is the native token that powers the Radix ecosystem. It is required for securing the network via staking, accessing DeFi, deploying smart contracts, and paying for transactions.

Radix is secured using a delegated proof of stake, and staking is a critical function of the network. To help ensure network security, 300 mln XRD tokens are generated by the protocol every year to be shared amongst stakers.

Besides XRD’s use as collateral for DeFi on Radix, users can also leverage eRADIX (eXRD). The eXRD is a wrapped ERC20 of the XRD, issued on the Ethereum Network, which can be swapped 1:1 for XRD via Instabridge.io or Bitfinex.

This decentralized network offers a purpose-built DeFi programming environment to enable fast and secure development. To accelerate DeFi ecosystem growth, it uses a system of on-ledger royalties to reward those contributing dApp code to the ecosystem.

The platform supports a wide range of DeFi applications covering stablecoins, collateralized lending, perpetual futures, decentralized exchanges, wallets & dashboards, money markets, yield farming, options & derivatives, NFTs, gaming, DeFi insurance, and portfolio management.

Radix is currently planning for Babylon, an open, self-incentivizing DeFi ecosystem with Scrypto “component” smart contracts running on-network, decentralized Royalty System, and on-network Blueprint Catalogue, that will be released in July 2023.

Then, next year, Xi’an will be the focus that will offer unlimited scalability and composability to carry DeFi into the global mainstream future with sharded, linearly scalable Cerberus consensus.