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 started off slow, with the markets largely bracing themselves for the CPI and PPI readings in the middle of the week. Although both CPI and PPI came in hot, the market largely shrugged it off after an initial sell off, quickly recovering into the end of the week. Total crypto market cap climbed this week by 1.62%, from $3.26T to $3.313T.
Bitcoin (BTC) ended the week up 0.16%, while Ethereum (ETH) trailed not far behind, closing at 0.54% down from the prior week.
Daily liquidations on both sides stayed largely muted throughout the week, especially with the relatively low volatility across the markets. Total liquidations per day barely touched above $300M, with most days even holding under $250M. Funding rates have continued to stay pretty much unchanged, with relatively low levels of leverage in the system after the wipe out from the week prior.
📌 Michael Saylor’s Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) has acquired another 7,633 BTC for 742M at an average price of $97,255 per Bitcoin. - Link
📌 21Shares files with the SEC to a request to permit staking for their Ethereum spot ETF, making them the first ETF to do so. - Link
📌 Michael Saylor’s MicroStrategy rebrands to Strategy, adopting the classic Bitcoin orange color and a new logo sporting Bitcoin’s stylized “B” logo. - Link
Why does it matter?
Despite macroeconomic data taking center stage just a couple of weeks back, it seems that this week’s inflation data had little impact on the markets despite a negative reading. The markets continued chugging along, also showing little reaction to announcements by the Trump administration with regard to the tariff situation. Nevertheless, the crypto markets still lag their traditional counterparts, with the S&P 500 returning 0.49% this week and the Nasdaq returning 1.13%.
Despite the volatility, Bitcoin dominance has begun to lose its shine, slowly trailing down from its highs to close the week off at 60.95%, down 1.69% from the week prior. The move could indicate the start of a shift towards altcoins again, although not all market participants are so confident.
Several subsectors of altcoins outperformed this week, with notable outperformers including AI tokens such as AI Rig Complex (ARC) and ai16z (AI16Z), which are both up more than 50% on the week, and BNB-based PancakeSwap (CAKE), which saw a resurgence, climbing almost 100% this week. Other strong performers include memecoin, Popcat (POPCAT), NFT marketplace Magic Eden (ME) and Sonic (S).
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Narrative of the Week 📰
After the memecoin rush on Solana, the spotlight has returned to the Binance Smart Chain, after a test token turns into a memecoin, sparking a new memecoin meta on the chain.
📌 Binance lists the “test” memecoin, TST, a token used in a video tutorial from Binance, much to the surprise, and outrage, of many memecoin traders. Binance founder, Changpeng Zhao, later also released a tweet to address some of the concerns. - Link
📌 Binance founder, CZ, shares the story of his dog, Broccoli, after being asked for his dog’s name and photo, spawning a series of BROCCOLI memecoins on both the Binance Smart Chain and Solana. - Link
Why does it matter?
For most of the cycle, memecoin action has taken place on Solana, with much of the movement taking place on pump.fun. With the rapid rise of the TST token, supported by CZ himself and a Binance listing, many speculators have looked to the Binance Smart Chain as the new hot bed for new memecoins. This shift has also pushed forward the Binance Smart Chain ecosystem, with ecosystem tokens surging and BNB flipping Solana in market cap.
Major Project Updates 🗓️
📌 Real-time blockchain, MegaETH, sells out the mint of their soulbound NFT collection, The Fluffle, raising 5,000 ETH for the protocol. - Link
📌 Tokenized IP blockchain, Story Protocol, launches their mainnet, alongside the IP token airdrop. - Link
📌 Uniswap L2, Unichain, goes live with their public mainnet. Unichain supports one second block times and cheaper gas costs than Ethereum mainnet. Unichain will integrate with the Optimism Superchain later in the year. - Link
📌 Gaming blockchain, Ronin, removes the allowlist for contract deployment on the chain, allowing permissionless smart contract deployment to all users. - Link
📌 Arbitrum launches Bounded Liquidity Delay (BoLD) on Arbitrum One. BoLD enables truly permissionless validation, enabling a single honest validator to defend against any number of malicious actors, while challenges are resolved in parallel. - Link
📌 Move-based L1, Aptos, announces Zaptos, a new network architecture, designed to scale Aptos up to 20K transactions per second, with sub-second latency and reducing latency by more than 40% under high load. - Link
📌 Decentralized AI layer, Bittensor, passes the governance vote for their upcoming upgrade to dynamic TAO (dTAO). - Link
📌 Base AI agent launchpad, Virtuals Protocol, launches on Solana expanding their reach into Solana, which already has several other competing AI agent launchpads. The bridging of the VIRTUAL token will be supported by Stargate. - Link
Why does it matter?
MegaETH’s soulbound NFT mint has been praised as an interesting mechanism for a token sale, especially with harsh criticisms of “VC coins” being a recurring theme throughout this cycle. The NFT is soulbound, and guarantees its holders a minimum of 5% of MegaETH’s token supply, which will be subject to a six month vesting period. At a mint price of 1 ETH, minters are effectively investing into the project at a fully diluted valuation of ~$520M.
DeFi Brief 🏦
📌 The Ethereum Foundation deploys 45,000 ETH into lending protocols on Ethereum, including Aave, Compound and Spark (by MakerDAO), with plans to explore staking incoming. - Link
📌 Trump’s World Liberty Financial announces plans for a strategic token reserve, designed to support leading projects like Bitcoin and Ethereum, which are “reshaping global finance”. - Link
📌 ETH staking platform, Lido, introduces Lido V3 with staking vaults (stVaults), enabling more flexible and customized staking setups built around stETH. - Link
📌 StarkNet lending protocol, zkLend, was exploited for 3,300 ETH (~$8.5M). The team has contacted the exploiter, offering a 10% white hat bounty. The exploiter has not responded. - Link
📌 USDT0 introduces Legacy mesh, the infrastructure linking USDT deployments to the USDT0 ecosystem. Legacy Mesh has been deployed on Ethereum, TON, Arbitrum and Tron. - Link
Why does it matter?
The move by the Ethereum Foundation to deploy some of their ETH reserves into Ethereum DeFi projects comes as a pleasant surprise to Ethereum supporters. The Foundation had come under fire for their constant selling of ETH to fund their expenses, while many others also criticized the foundation for not supporting applications on Ethereum. The move helps to target both sets of criticisms, with the yield helping to cover some expenses while the Ethereum Foundation directly supports projects on Ethereum.
Meme Coins 🚀
📌 Founder of memecoin launchpad, Pump.fun, Alon, denies rumors that there is an upcoming pump.fun token. - Link
📌 The Central African Republic (CAR), releases an official CAR memecoin via pump.fun. The token reached a market cap high of $970M before retracing downwards. - Link
Fundraises 💰
📌 Web3 smart contract security automation protocol, Drosera, raises $3.25M in a seed round led by Greenfield Capital, with support from Paper Ventures, Anagram, Arrington Capital and more. - Link
📌 Web3 development studio, Mirai Labs, raises $4M in a seed round led by Mechanism Capital, with participation from Sophon Foundation, Selini Capital, Manifold and more. - Link
📌 Crypto trading app, Blum, raises $5M in a funding round led by gumi Cryptos Capital, with other investors including Spartan Group, YZi Labs, OKX Ventures and more. - Link
📌 Bittensor-based financial layer, TaoFi, raises an undisclosed amount in a strategic funding round led by Digital Currency Group (DCG), with participation from Pantera, Taostats, Lyrik Ventures and more. - Link
📌 Stablecoin payment blockchain, Plasma, raises $24M in a funding round led by Framework Ventures and Bitfinex, with support from Mirana Ventures, Nomura, 6th Man Ventures and more. - Link
Airdrops Abound 🎁
📌 IP-focused blockchain, Story Protocol, opens their IP token airdrop for claims, distributing 10% of the total token supply to eligible wallets, which can now claim for the next 30 days. - Link
📌 Solana restaking layer, Solayer, opens claims for the LAYER token airdrop, distributing 12% of the token supply in their genesis airdrop. - Link
📌 The Din Foundation, introduces DIN, the native token for Din, the chain for AI agents and applications. The airdrop checker is now live, with airdrop claims opening on February 14th. - Link
📌 EVM NFT marketplace, OpenSea, announces SEA, the governance token for OpenSea. The claim will be accessible to US citizens and no claim date has been announced yet. - Link
📌 Decentralized stablecoin issuer, Avalon Finance, announces the AVL token and upcoming airdrop, which distributes 12.5% of the token supply to early users and supporters. - Link
Tweet of the Week 📝
Source: VitalikButerin
Vitalik bottomed Solana when they needed it most, but Vitalik tops Ethereum once a week with his tweets. Balanced, as all things should be.
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