CMC Market Pulse delivers actionable market insights, giving you all the key narratives and developments you need in under 5 minutes.
Market Overview 📉
The week kicked off strong, carrying the strength from the week prior with the victory of Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump. The upward movement lost steam later into the week, with the markets weakening, especially in altcoins. Nevertheless, the Total Crypto Market Cap closed up 18.5% at $3.12T.
Bitcoin (BTC) saw a gain of 16.81% across the week, while Ethereum (ETH) finally underperformed against BTC, closing only 9.65% higher from the week prior.
Daily liquidations surged on both the long and short sides, with heavy liquidations reaching almost $800M on Tuesday and Wednesday as markets made new highs. Funding rates on BTC and ETH surged higher through the week to 50%, before resetting after a wave of liquidations.
📌 Michael Saylor announces the purchase of an additional 27,200 BTC under Microstrategy for $2.03B at an average price of $74,463 per Bitcoin. - Link
📌 Donald Trump announces that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will be leading the newly formed “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE). - Link
📌 Fintech application, Revolut, expands their crypto exchange services to 30 European markets. - Link
Why does it matter?
Crypto markets continue their runup, with BTC breaking upwards to break through the $93K level, riding on the bullish sentiment from the Trump victory. The move went against traditional equities, which largely stayed flat across the week, with the S&P 500 closing the week down 0.23% and the Nasdaq down 0.51%.
The week continued to see strong BTC strength against altcoins, with BTC Dominance making a new high at 61.06%. That said, several altcoins continued to outperform, especially in the memecoin sector, with several catalysts pushing up selected memecoins.
Notable outperformers among altcoins mostly centered around memecoins. Peanut the Squirrel (PNUT), and Act I: The AI Prophecy (ACT) ranked as some of the top performers this week, surging more than a 10x after the release of the Binance listing news. Other larger market cap altcoins such as Pepe (PEPE) and Dogwifhat (WIF) also fared well this week, on news of listing on Coinbase and Robinhood.
Join us in showcasing the cryptocurrency revolution, one newsletter at a time. Subscribe now to get daily news and market updates right to your inbox, along with our millions of other subscribers (that’s right, millions love us!) — what are you waiting for?
Narrative of the Week 📰
Memecoins take the spotlight this week, amidst big moves across memecoins of various market capitalizations.
📌 Frog-themed memecoin, PEPE, gets a listing on both Coinbase and Robinhood, sending the token up by 60% in a single day. - Link
📌 Binance lists two memecoins, Act I: The AI Prophecy (ACT) and Peanut the Squirrel (PNUT), drawing criticism for their listing due to the small market cap of these tokens, with some speculating insider trading. - Link
Why does it matter?
The listing of two prominent memecoins, WIF and PEPE, on Coinbase and on Robinhood signal a shift in the regulatory environment towards the listing of memecoins on US-based centralized exchanges (CEXs). The move could be due to the likely more favorable stance adopted by the incoming government under Donald Trump. A more relaxed regulatory environment could also trigger a listing race between the major CEXs, in a bid to attract more users with tokens with higher demand.
Major Project Updates 🗓️
📌 Ethereum researcher, Justin Drake, announces plans for “the Beam Chain”, the long-term roadmap for Ethereum to redesign its consensus layer for faster blocktimes, upgrade for quantum resistance and more. - Link
📌 Coinbase introduces Coinbase 50 Index, an index of the top 50 largest liquid crypto assets by market capitalization, enabling investors to easily track the market using a single index. - Link
📌 PayPal and LayerZero partner up to enable seamless transfers of PayPal's stablecoin, PYUSD, between Solana and Ethereum. - Link
📌 The FBI seizes the phones and electronic devices of Polymarket CEO, Shayne Coplan, after the prediction market successfully predicts the results of the US presidential elections. - Link
📌 Ethereum Name Service (ENS) will be launching their own purpose-built L2, Namechain, which seeks to reduce costs and improve performance, while retaining the familiar Ethereum developer experience for new applications to be built around ENS. - Link
📌 Zero Network, the L2 built by Zerion, is now live, enabling zero-fee transactions including transfers, swaps, bridging, mints and more. - Link
📌 Uniswap L2 Unichain shuts down the RPC for the chain, citing that the chain is not ready for public use, leaving many early users stranded in tokens that have been launched on the chain already. - Link
📌 AltLayer launches Autonome, a platform to build, deploy and distribute verifiable autonomous AI agents, in a no-code manner, with DeFi integrations enabled. - Link
📌 Split Capital puts up a governance proposal for NFT marketplace, Blur, proposing the addition of protocol fees and a fee-sharing mechanism for holders of vote-escrowed BLUR (veBLUR). - Link
Why does it matter?
Despite the launch of the ETH spot ETF, Ethereum has underperformed the majority of the market with the rise of alt L1s and many investors questioning its valuation premium. The latest announcement for Ethereum could be a gamechanger for the chain, to ensure it remains competitive against rising alt L1s that are faster and cheaper than it. However, the timeline for the upgrade is 2030, leaving many investors feeling slightly underwhelmed.
DeFi Brief 🏦
📌 Stablecoin automated market-maker (AMM), Curve Finance, announces Savings crvUSD (scrvUSD), a yield-bearing version of Curve’s stablecoin, crvUSD. - Link
📌 BlackRock announces the expansion of their $522M tokenized asset fund, BUIDL, to Aptos, Arbitrum, Avalanche, Optimism and Polygon, giving investors greater accessibility to the fund. - Link
📌 Yield tokenization platform, Pendle, introduces Boros, the latest iteration of the project, designed to bring margin yield trading to any yield, including off-chain rates such as funding rates. - Link
📌 Delta Prime, a trustless prime brokerage platform, has been exploited for $4.8M on both Arbitrum and Avalanche. The protocol is currently paused while measures are taken to secure the remaining funds. - Link
📌 Coinbase launches their wrapped BTC token, cbBTC, on Solana, making it the first SPL token to be deployed by Coinbase. CbBTC is backed 1:1 by BTC tokens held on Coinbase. - Link
Why does it matter?
With the low adoption of Sky’s (formerly MakerDAO) newly launched USDS token, Curve Finance has announced their upcoming yield-bearing stablecoin, scrvUSD. ScrvUSD takes aim at USDS’s market share, competing for a piece of the yield-bearing stablecoin market share. With Curve Finance as a DeFi heavyweight, the stage is set for a battle for dominance in the decentralized yield-bearing stablecoin market.
Meme Coins 🚀
📌 The liquidity pool for the popular memecoin, HarryPotterObamaSonic10Inu (BITCOIN), has been migrated from Uniswap V2 to V3, a move which has drawn flak due to the increase in swap fee from 0.3% to 1%. - Link
Fundraises 💰
📌 Zero-knowledge coprocessor, Brevis Network, raises $7.5M in a seed round led by Polychain and Binance Labs, with support from IOSG Ventures, Nomad Capital, Bankless Ventures and more. - Link
📌 Full-stack parallel blockchain, Pharos Network, raises $8M in a seed round led by Hack VC and Faction VC, with participation from SNZ Holding, Hash Global, Chorus One, and more. - Link
📌 Real-world AI project, Eidon AI, raises $3.5M in a seed round led by Framework Ventures, with participation from Cyber Fund. - Link
📌 Animoca-backed Mocaverse raises $10M in its latest funding round led by OKX Ventures, HongShan (formerly Sequoia China) and CMCC Global, with support from Republic Crypto, Decima Fund and others. - Link
📌 Cross-chain DeFi protocol, Folks Finance, raises a $3.2M strategic funding round, led by Borderless Capital, with participation from Algorand Ventures, Mapleblock Capital and more. - Link
Airdrops Abound 🎁
📌 Hyperliquid extends the deadline for acceptance of their Genesis Terms, enabling users who have originally missed the deadline to opt in for their upcoming airdrop. - Link
📌 Linea announces the Linea Association, along with plans for the launch of their token by Q1 2025, to set the stage for the next stage in decentralization. - Link
📌 Users who staked EIGEN tokens on liquid restaking platform, EtherFi, are now eligible to claim their allocation of ZRC, the governance token for restaking L2, Zircuit. - Link
Tweet of the Week 📝
Source: elonmusk
Nobody bull-posts DOGE like Elon Musk does.
This article contains links to third-party websites or other content for information purposes only (“Third-Party Sites”). The Third-Party Sites are not under the control of CoinMarketCap, and CoinMarketCap is not responsible for the content of any Third-Party Site, including without limitation any link contained in a Third-Party Site, or any changes or updates to a Third-Party Site. CoinMarketCap is providing these links to you only as a convenience, and the inclusion of any link does not imply endorsement, approval or recommendation by CoinMarketCap of the site or any association with its operators. This article is intended to be used and must be used for informational purposes only. It is important to do your own research and analysis before making any material decisions related to any of the products or services described. This article is not intended as, and shall not be construed as, financial advice. The views and opinions expressed in this article are the author’s [company’s] own and do not necessarily reflect those of CoinMarketCap.
