YFI and ATOM welcome new year with double-digit gains
After retracing the Santa rally in the lull between Christmas and New Year, Bitcoin finished the week with 7% losses.
The leading crypto fell 19% in December as a whole, marking a muted ending to a lucrative year, and bringing a quiet mood to the network’s birthday celebrations — with January 3rd marking 13 years since the first Bitcoin block was mined. Other cryptoassets welcomed the new year with more exuberance, including Yearn.finance which added 28%, and ATOM which made 17% gains on excitement about crosschain interoperability.
However, most of the altcoin market moved in the same direction as Bitcoin. MANA made double-digit losses despite a New Year’s Eve celebration in Decentraland, as did Polygon (MATIC) after developers patched a bug that put $24B worth of MATIC at risk.
This Week’s Highlights
- DeFi offers refuge from market downturn
- Metaverse tokens stagnate as Shanghai makes big plans
- eToro lists SAND
DeFi offers refuge from market downturn
As Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other majors sank over the last week, a handful of DeFi tokens showed remarkable buoyancy.
Yearn.finance rose above $40K, driven higher by excitement around a proposal to boost the project’s tokenomics, and a new integration with decentralized finance dashboard DeFi Saver.
Meanwhile, ATOM tagged $36 on growing excitement about the interoperability provided by the newly launched Gravity Bridge, which enables the transfer of ERC-20 tokens between Ethereum and Cosmos.
Metaverse tokens stagnate as Shanghai makes big plans
China’s biggest city, Shanghai, is set to engage with one of the hottest sectors of the crypto market.
City authorities mentioned the metaverse in their latest five-year development plan, which encourages the technology to be applied “in areas such as public services, business offices, social entertainment, industrial manufacturing, production safety and electronic games.”
Meanwhile, Metaverse tokens MANA, Enjin Coin and SAND are trading sideways after failing to gain momentum on the news.
eToro lists SAND
eToro’s expansion of supported cryptoassets continues with the listing of SAND.
SAND is the native token of The Sandbox, a virtual metaverse world that combines blockchain technology with gaming. Players can earn SAND through games and contests, and buy and sell virtual goods with the token in the Sandbox Marketplace.
The launch brings the total number of cryptoassets available on eToro to 42.
Week ahead
After a stellar 2021, many of the same themes — including rising inflation, DeFi, and the metaverse — look set to continue driving the crypto market into 2022.
Yet as analyst Bobby Lee points out, one thing that could change in the week ahead is the exit of sellers in China, who had until the end of the year to leave major exchanges.
Lee tweeted earlier in December that he was “waiting for the last hammer to fall in China!” before a “relief rally” that could bring the bull market “back on track.”