Weekend Movers – Tron (TRX) and Immutable X (IMX)

This past week has been a bit of a volatile one for the cryptocurrency market, with the Bitcoin (BTC) price starting above $27k, only to drop to $26.5k on Wednesday. Then on Thursday, it surged to almost $27.5k only to drop back down to previous levels. Right ahead of the weekend, BTC's price managed to climb above $27.2k but continued its descent afterward.

Now, on Monday, BTC price started its journey below $26,600 before recovering to $26,875, as of writing. As this shows, Bitcoin has become boring, trading into the tightest price range for months now. This has been despite the lingering concerns about the stability of US regional banks and the country's debt ceiling.

Bitcoin has actually settled into one of the narrowest ranges in the past three years. “It is comparable to Jan. 2023, and July 2020, both of which preceded large market moves. This suggests high volatility is likely on the horizon,” said Glassnode in a tweet from early Monday.

Although safe haven assets like bitcoin could benefit from these issues, the strengthening dollar index, as well as the unresolved deadlock in debt ceiling negotiations, suggest a different outcome.

US stock futures, meanwhile, are trading mixed as investors continue to assess uncertainties surrounding the US debt ceiling talks and the outcomes of the weekend's G7 summit.

Meanwhile, over the weekend, during a speech at the G7 summit in Hiroshima, Japan, US President Joe Biden unexpectedly drew crypto into the conversation, saying he would not agree to “a deal that protects wealthy tax cheats and crypto traders while putting food assistance at risk for (…) nearly 1 million Americans.”

The US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, on the other hand, said in an interview on Sunday that June 1 remains a “hard deadline” to raise the debt limit. She then went on to say that failure to do so would erode confidence in US securities as a secure investment option. 

In addition to all this, Bitcoin has failed to react positively to lower-than-expected US consumer price index (CPI) data. The ongoing macro uncertainty is further dampening retail investors' enthusiasm for risk assets while institutional investors are hedging their bets.

Top Gainers

With Bitcoin stuck in a range, altcoins are not doing much better, but some have still managed to rake in some gains. Among the top 100 crypto assets by market cap, the likes of NEO (4.3%), Radix (2.5%), and IOTA (2.2%) went the greenest over the past 24 hours, and Render (30.5%) and SNX (13.7%) did the best in the past week. 

Now, let's see who came out on top as winners this weekend.  

Kava (KAVA)

Over the weekend, KAVA emerged as the biggest gainer, with 7.75% gains. The $564.5 million market cap cryptocurrency is currently trading at $1.07 while managing $32.4 million in 24-hour trading volume. 

KAVA has been trending up for the past two weeks and has surged more than 55% in value. The token is also up 99.53% in 2023 so far but is down 88.35% from its all-time high (ATH) of $9.12 in August 2021. 

KAVA is the native crypto asset of the Kava blockchain, which is built with the Cosmos SDK. The blockchain has been made Ethereum-compatible through the Kava EVM in order to provide users with an interoperable and highly scalable network.

The Layer-1 blockchain tries to empower developers to build for next-gen blockchain technologies by enabling seamless interoperability, protocol growth, and optimized scalability. The KAVA token, meanwhile, is used for network security, governance, and mechanical functions.

The latest surge in the KAVA token's price came as the network underwent a major mainnet upgrade last week, for which the largest crypto exchange Binance announced support. The latest upgrade offers faster transaction speed and greater security. In addition, the network launched a new bridge to facilitate the transfer of assets from Cosmos to protocols across Kava.

This development marks an important milestone for the Kava ecosystem, as it introduces significant architectural improvements that will enable developers to scale and accelerate their protocols effectively. Moreover, with these improvements, the Kava ecosystem will become more robust and efficient, paving the way for the development of innovative dApps and the expansion of the Kava ecosystem.

However, the price has hit the upper band of the Bollinger, which means a pullback. When it comes to technical levels, the KAVA price has major support available at $0.85 and $0.92, while major resistance levels include $1.02 and $1.12.

Amidst all this, token holders suggested terminating the project's several grants and rewards programs by the year's end, and the Kava Prop 141 was proposed to initiate the Kava horizon.

Click here to learn all about investing in Kava (KAVA).

Tron (TRX)

With gains of 7.14% this past weekend, TRX's price has risen to $0.0775. In the past 24 hours, TRX's price jumped the most by 7.4% while managing $561 million in trading volume. 

TRX is a $6.79 billion market cap coin that has been struggling to perform despite being in the green. The token is up 37.57% year-to-date (YTD) while being down 67.57% from the $0.23 high that was hit in Jan. 2018.

Markus Thielen, head of research and strategy at Singapore-based crypto lender Matrixport, suggested this spike in TRX price may be related to the announcement on May 11 by Tron founder H.E. Justin Sun that he would start trading meme coins. With the latest gains, however, it's Relative Strength Indicator (RSI) has made a strong push from the neutral 50 levels into the overbought zone and now stands near 72. 

TRX is the cryptocurrency that powers the TRON blockchain, whose goal is to create a decentralized Internet. The TRON protocol is designed to offer blockchain support with high throughput and high availability for dApps, according to its whitepaper.

TRON was founded in September 2017, but it wasn't until Dec. 2021 that the Tron network achieved full decentralization and became a community-governed DAO. Additionally, the TRON Virtual Machine was officially launched in the second half of 2018. 

As per Tron's Q1 report, it recorded over $90 million in revenue. Meanwhile, the results for the 4th season of its popular ‘HackaTron' competition revealed that more than 600 participants participated across six tracks, including DeFi, NFT, GameFi, and Web3, alongside new Builder and Eco-Friendly categories. 

“Our thriving community's incredible talent and innovation were on full display for this season's HackaTron,” said Ejaz Merchant, Developer Lead with Tron DAO.

Click here to learn all about investing in Tron (TRX).

Top Losers 

In the past 24 hours, a newly rising memecoin declined the most in value at 7.4%, followed by Sui at 7.1%. Meanwhile, with nearly 14% losses, Sui was the biggest loser last week, followed by Aptos (9.3%), Toncoin (9.3%), Pepe (8.9%), Arbitrum (8.2%), Fantom (7.8%), Solana (7.7%), MultiversX (7.3%), Rocket Pool (7.1%), Theta Network (7%), and ImmutableX (6.9%).

But which coins were the worst performers this past weekend? Let's check them out.

Immutable X (IMX)

With a drop of 8%, IMX ended up with the biggest losses this weekend. The $713 million market cap coin is currently trading at $0.724 while recording $13.5 million in 24-hour trading volume. 

IMX started 2023 on a green note, but it has been on a downtrend ever since the March high of $1.55. The subsequent losses have put IMX YTD gains at 85.75% while still being down 92.5% from the $9.52 peak that was recorded in Nov. 2021. 

This decline could be attributed to the 18 million tokens added to the Web3 gaming platform's token circulating supply. This is because traders usually sell crypto ahead of such unlocks, anticipating a major supply shock, causing its price to drop. Tokens are released as per the vesting schedules determined by the project team at its inception. 

IMX is the native token of the Immutable X protocol, which is Ethereum's first Layer-2 scaling solution for NFTs. The utility token is used to perform governance, pay fees, or stake on the protocol and can be earned by participating in pro-network activities like trading.

James and Robbie Ferguson founded Immutable X in 2018 to address the NFT scaling trilemma: accessibility, decentralization, and scalability without compromising user custody. As a technically advanced NFT scaling solution, Immutable X offers immediate trading, scalability, and zero gas costs for minting and trading. It is based on StarkWare's strong STARK prover and roll-up technology.

Click here to learn all about investing in Immutable X (IMX).

Theta Network (THETA)

Much like IMX, THETA price dropped 8% to now trade at $0.856 and is in the red on Monday too. The $855 million market cap token, which has a total and circulating supply of 1 billion THETA coins, meanwhile manages $13 million in 24-hour trading volume.

The token has been struggling throughout this year, with only 16.42% gains recorded in 2023. It has lost a whopping 94.6% of its value since hitting its ATH at $15.72 in April 2021.

THETA is the native token of the Theta Network, a video-streaming decentralized platform built on blockchain. It is a one-of-a-kind decentralized content delivery network (CDN) that allows its users to share their unused bandwidth and computing resources via peer-to-peer and provide services such as streaming video and data storage. By providing these services, users can earn rewards in the form of THETA tokens. 

The network is dedicated to powering the media and metaverse protocols. Recently, it introduced the Metachain, which is an interconnected network of blockchains that aims to allow permissionless, horizontal scaling. The customizable and highly scalable Metachain is for Web3 businesses. 

Click here to learn all about investing in Theta Network (THETA).