Weekend Movers – Maker (MKR) and Decred (DCR)

Cryptocurrency prices are showing some signs of stabilizing on Monday after a sharp sell-off was triggered by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) suing the two largest crypto exchanges, Coinbase and Binance, for selling unregistered securities, among other charges. The regulator also listed several crypto assets that it considers securities and should be registered.

“The investing public has the benefit of U.S. securities law. Crypto should be no different, and these platforms, these intermediaries need to come into compliance,” said SEC Chairman Gary Gensler in an interview, adding, “We don’t need more digital currency.”

Former SEC Chairman Jay Clayton, meanwhile, is of the opinion that blockchain and crypto’s application across various aspects of the financial system should be seen as “non-controversial.” “People used to refer to me as a crypto hawk. We successfully put an end to the ICO mania. However, I believe we need to approach this topic more nuanced and subtly,” said Clayton.

The US House Financial Services Committee will be presenting the 3rd version of the draft bill that focuses on stablecoins as part of a larger initiative aimed at bringing transparency to the digital asset industry regulation. This week, on Tuesday, the committee will be holding a hearing titled “The Future of Digital Assets: Providing Clarity for the Digital Asset Ecosystem.”

While the crypto industry is grappling with the global crackdown on crypto, the Eurozone's recession is also adding to investor worries. The good thing about the macro world is policymakers in the US are expected to leave rates in a range of 5% to 5.25% at their June 13-14 meeting.

But while the May labor market report, which was central in the Federal Reserve's decision-making process, pointed to a gradual acceleration in unemployment, the consumer price index, which is due out on Tuesday, is expected to rise.

So, it remains to be seen if the Fed will finally take a breather after more than a year of driving up interest rates. The US Fed has increased interest rates by 500 basis points since it started trying to curb inflation and prevent the economy from slipping into a possible recession. These rate hikes have strengthened the dollar and, in the process, made commodities denominated in USD more expensive for other currency holders.

Volumes Dropping Across the Board

The largest crypto asset Bitcoin is up 1% in the past 24 hours as it trades at $25,969 at the time of writing while being down 3.1% in the past week. Ether, on the other hand, is currently in the green by just 0.1% to now trade at $1,748, down 6.5% from last week.

These losses have sent the total crypto market cap to $1.098 trillion, down from nearly $1.2 trillion at the beginning of the month, according to CoinGecko.

While the selling pressure increased over the weekend, the crypto fear and greed index maintained its position in the neutral zone at 47 points. Major market oscillators also point toward a neutral sentiment, with the Relative Strength Index sitting at 41.

Amidst all this, Crypto.com will be temporarily halting its services for institutional customers in the US starting June 21 in response to the decreased demand from institutional clients.

Centralized crypto exchanges (CEXs) across the board are actually experiencing a drop in their trading volume. According to CoinMarketCap, volume for the top CEXs has fallen 30% to 55% over the past 24 hours. Binance’s volume has declined 33.4% to $5.6 billion, and Coinbase saw a 41% decline, while Kraken and Bitfinex volumes had plummeted by more than 50%. However, total trading volumes have only returned to where they were before last week’s onslaught by the SEC.

Despite all this, a notable surge in demand for USDT has been recorded in Turkey since early May, according to Bloomberg. This could be due to the fact that the fiat currency Turkish lira, is experiencing much greater depreciation compared to major crypto, even as crypto prices decline. In 2023, so far, the lira has dropped 20% against the dollar, and since 2018, the currency has lost 80% of its value.

Lira trades peaked at 18% in May, as per the data provided by Kaiko, which further revealed that it accounted for 10% of all crypto trading volumes earlier this month. Meanwhile, the market share of Tether (USDT) in local marketplaces reached its highest level last month since 2020.

Worst Performers

Over the past week, SAND (35%), MANA (32%), CHZ (32%), AXS (32%), and FLOW (30%) recorded the most losses, all of which were labeled as securities by the SEC in the suits against two crypto heavyweights.

Trading platform Robinhood also withdrew support for three crypto — Solana (SOL), Polygon (MATIC), and Cardano (ADA) as part of its regular review of crypto. Starting June 27, traders won’t be able to access these coins on the platform, which were also listed as securities by the regulator.

Meanwhile, over the weekend, Immutable X (19%), KuCoin (12%), BNB (10%), and ETC (10%) are some of the worst performers among the top coins by market cap.

Decred (DCR)

The $182.8 million market cap DCR fell 22.6% over the weekend to now trade at $12.33. The coin is also in the red on Monday by 3.9% and down by 34.92% year-to-date (YTD) and over 95% since its all-time high (ATH).

DCR is the native crypto of Decred, a forked version of the Bitcoin protocol that uses a hybrid consensus mechanism to focus on community governance and sustainability.

Founded in 2016, Decred’s blockchain is compatible with Lightning Network technology and lets users perform atomic swaps of BTC, BTC, and LTC.

Under its hybrid model, 60% of the block reward goes to PoW miners when a new block is found, and 30% goes to PoS voters, while the rest goes to the Decred treasury to fund the project’s development. Currently, just over 15 million DCRs, out of its total supply of about 21 million, are circulating in the market.

Click here to learn all about investing in Decred (DCR). 

ApeCoin (APE)

Falling by 20% over the weekend, APE has been on the decline since late Jan. this year, during which it lost more than 63% of its value. Trading at $2.31, the $857 million market cap token is also down 91.28% from its ATH.

ApeCoin is a Bored Ape Yacht Club-affiliated cryptocurrency that was released in March 2022 that promises to power the new metaverse ecosystem being built out by BAYC creator Yuga Labs. It is a governance token which means as a holder, you are a member of ApeCoin DAO that governs how the DAO’s treasury is spent and votes on proposals about future projects related to the coin. Yuga Labs claims that they have no ownership over ApeCoin DAO, which is a five-member board with each member getting a six-month term.

The token has a total supply of 1 billion total APE tokens, out of which 62% went to the ApeCoin DAO community, 15% to BAYC and MAYC holders, 16% were allocated to Yuga Labs, 14% to the project team, and 8% to the four founders of Yuga Labs and BAYC.

According to NotLarvaLabs founder Pauly, 95% of ApeCoin are at a loss. Also, the token has been having a noticeable decrease in interest from new addresses.

Click here to learn all about investing in ApeCoin (APE). 

Best Performers

While the broad crypto market took a brutal beating this past week and then continued to drop even more so over the weekend, some coins did manage to recover ahead of the new week.

XRP is one of the top coins that tumbled 9.8%, only to gain 8.6% of its value the following day. Similarly, CRO dumped 13% and then regained 8.4% of its price. In the past 24 hours, TOMO (18.2%), SUI (7.4%), SNX (7%), APT (6%), and ADA (5.5%) surged the most among the top 200 coins.

Maker (MKR)

MKR managed to stay in the green by 1.3% over the weekend and is up 2.4% on Monday. The $557.7 million market cap token is currently trading at $617.52, having recorded 18.89% gains YTD but still down 90.2% since its ATH.

MKR is the native token of the lending platform Maker, which was created in 2015 by a developer group headed by Rune Christensen. The protocol enables over-collateralized loans by locking Ether and minting Dai, a full-reserve stablecoin pegged to the USD.

MKR is a governance token that gives its holders the ability to govern the protocol through MakerDAO. The token is generated by the market's demand and supply for DAI tokens.

Click here to learn all about investing in Maker (MKR).

Toncoin (TON)

TON is one of the coins that initially fell by 33% but soon after went up by 34%. The $2.2 billion market cap token is trading at $1.51 and is having a green start of the week, but in 2023 so far, the coin is down by 35.42% while its losses from its peak stand at 71.6%.

It is the native token of the Open Network that aims to be a secure, fast, and scalable blockchain. TON was created in 2018 by Telegram Messenger founders the Durov brothers and was later handed over to the open TON community. The token is used to pay for gas fees, transaction fees, and storage payments on the platform. Another feature of the network is TON payments, a platform for micropayments.

Click here to learn all about investing in The Open Network (TON).