Security Token Exchange

The cryptocurrency market began on a positive note last week, with Bitcoin reaching the $30k milestone and ETH surging to $1,940. Consequently, the total crypto market cap swelled to $1.26 trillion before experiencing a downward trend. Among the top 200 crypto assets by market cap, Avinoc emerged as the week’s biggest gainer, boasting a 183% increase, according to CoinGecko. Other prominent gainers included Render, Krypton DAO, Casper, TomiNet, Blur, Floki, Internet Computer, and Multiverse X.

Weekend Moves

Let’s now examine the tokens that performed exceptionally well over the weekend.

Pepe (PEPE)

This past weekend, the latest meme coin, PEPE, stole the limelight by absorbing liquidity, excitement, and narrative from the crypto market. PEPE recorded a remarkable 280% surge over the weekend, trading at $0.00000110. From its low of $0.000000055142 just thirteen days ago, the meme coin has risen by 1,805%.

On Monday, PEPE reached a new all-time high of $0.00000108, securing its position as the 100th largest cryptocurrency with a market cap of $441.4 million. As is typical with most meme coins, PEPE has an enormous total and circulating supply of 420.69 trillion PEPE coins.

According to Coincarp.com, the number of PEPE holders has grown from 7,000 at the project’s launch on April 17 to 61,474. The top ten PEPE holders control 20.64% of the coin’s entire supply, while the top 100 wallets hold 43.82% of the current supply.

The 24-hour trading volume of the coin has surged to $226.23 million, placing it among the 20 highest-volume coins. This volume continues to rise, up from $93.9 million on Sunday when it surpassed Shiba Inu, which reported only $69 million in trading volume.

Remarkably, Pepe has not only overtaken the once-popular SHIB, the darling of meme coin enthusiasts but also Dogecoin. While Dogecoin is still the 9th largest crypto with a trading volume of almost $393 million, it is down 89.2% from its all-time high (ATH) and has only risen by 12.42% year-to-date (YTD).

Pepe, a meme coin that debuted just last month, features the notorious internet meme character Pepe the Frog as its mascot. Besides leveraging internet culture to attract investors, the Pepe Coin is primarily driven by social media buzz and the hype generated by online communities, contributing to its recent surge in popularity and potential for high returns.

The crypto project was launched in a stealthy manner without any pre-sale or airdrop, focusing solely on the memetic power of the meme to generate interest. It does have a roadmap that includes key milestones such as initial listings, merchandise, educational resources, community partnerships, exchange listings, and a goal of over 100k holders to achieve a “meme takeover.” Despite being largely hype-driven, many have accused the coin of being a pump-and-dump scheme.

The 3rd largest meme coin by market cap is currently available on centralized exchanges like Huobi and Gate.io but is mostly traded on the decentralized exchange (DEX) Uniswap.

Casper Network (CSPR)

Over the weekend, CSPR gained 18.2% and is now trading at $0.059. The coin is down 95.4% from its $1.33 ATH but has risen by over 115% YTD. The $670.5 million market cap coin is currently managing $20 million in 24-hour trading volume.

Amidst the broader market downturn, the Casper team has remained focused on building and recently released the new Casper wallet. The price upsurge could be attributed to this latest development in the Casper ecosystem.

The new wallet offers advanced features, including an improved user interface, functional notifications, complete desktop browser support, and enhanced security. Now, most dApps and users within the Casper Network will have access to a wallet that caters to everyone’s needs.

The decentralized finance (DeFi) project continuously introduces scheduled upgrades to enhance its overall functionalities and drive enterprise adoption across the board. Recently, the protocol partnered with Terra Virtua to achieve Tamper Proof Authenticity.

Launched in 2021, the Casper network runs on a unique variant of the proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus algorithm known as the Highway Protocol. This energy-efficient and flexible consensus protocol enables networks to finalize transactions in a non-binary manner, allowing blocks on the network to be created much faster than other blockchains.

The project, which defines itself as the future-proof blockchain, was created by Medha Parlikar and angel investor Mrinal Manohar. Casper Network is a business-centered public blockchain that is developer-friendly and enables fast, secure, efficient, and low-cost development of sustainable blockchain-based products. It also offers a unique network feature in the form of upgradeable smart contracts, which means they can be modified after they have been deployed. This enables businesses to build blockchain products that adapt to changing consumer needs and market trends.

The native token CSPR is used for payment of network fees, rewards for network validators, and staking.

BitTorrent (BTT)

Although BTT is only up by 1.62% in 2023, it saw gains of 7.8% this weekend. The coin reached $0.00000069 but has since given up some of its gains, trading at $0.00000064 at the time of writing. The $614 million market cap token is also down 81.2% since hitting a peak in Jan. 2022.

These gains came despite the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) bringing a lawsuit against the owner of BitTorrent. Last month, the agency filed a complaint in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York against Justin Sun, the owner of the file-sharing platform BitTorrent, and three of his wholly-owned companies, including Tron.

The US regulator alleged that Sun violated the Exchange Act and Securities Act related to the crypto assets BTT and TRX. The SEC further alleged that Sun offered and sold these tokens without registering them with the agency. He is also accused of manipulating the price of these tokens through fake trades to create an impression of market activity. In addition, the allegations stated that Sun paid celebrities to promote both the crypto tokens on social media without disclosing that they were paid promoters. The regulator has also charged eight celebrities for illegally promoting TRX and BTT without disclosing that they were compensated for doing so.

This recent lawsuit has brought negative attention to all of Sun’s projects, but over the weekend, even TRX’s price jumped 4%.

Besides these three tokens, Binance’s native token, BNB, recorded a 5.2% increase in price over the weekend. BTSE Token surged 5.2%, and even Link managed to see a gain of 3.8%.

As for losers, DEX PancakeSwap lost 22% of its value last week. Other significant losers of the last week include Polymath, Zilliqa (17%), Baby DogeCoin (10.2%), and XDC Network (9.6%).

Kaspa (KAS)

Over the past weekend, Kaspa experienced the most significant drop, falling by 14.3%. On Monday, KAS continued to decline, trading at $0.0265. These losses are expected, given that the cryptocurrency hit its ATH only a month ago at $0.0428. KAS prices have dropped 38% since then.

Kaspa aims to be the fastest and purest proof-of-work (PoW) consensus engine. It is based on the GHOSTDAG protocol, which is a generalization of Bitcoin Consensus, allowing for the processing of almost 100 blocks per second.

As such, the platform has no pre-generated tokens and is independent of major investors. Kaspa was created by David Vorick, who is also behind another crypto project, Sia, a decentralized cloud storage platform. The project aims to build a more scalable and user-friendly decentralized blockchain network than existing cryptocurrencies.

SingularityNET (AGIX)

Over the weekend, AGIX token price initially rose to $0.346, only to fall to $0.336, recording a 2.6% loss. The token extended its losses on Monday to trade at $0.316, now down 25% in the past fortnight and 66.56% from its all-time high of $0.95.

SingularityNET is a blockchain-based AI project launched in 2017. The project raised $36 million through an ICO to create a decentralized, open-source Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).

Built on the Cardano network, it was founded by AI researcher Dr. Ben Goertzel to create an ecosystem of platforms that provide AI-related services. Over 13 AI-based platforms are already live on its network, offering services related to media, finance, arts, entertainment, biomedical, and robotics industries.

AGIX is the native token used to avail of platform services. The token can also be used to cast votes on governance proposals and staked to earn incentives.

The token has risen nearly 600% YTD, surging due to the attention the AI space has been receiving from tech giants like Microsoft and Google, as well as Elon Musk’s efforts to advance AI technology.

Overall, while some cryptocurrencies like Pepe, Casper Network, and BitTorrent experienced significant gains over the weekend, others like Kaspa and SingularityNET faced losses. The crypto market remains volatile, and investors should stay informed about the latest news and trends to make well-informed decisions. Although the future of cryptocurrencies is uncertain, the market continues to demonstrate its resilience and adaptability, making it an exciting and dynamic investment opportunity for those willing to take the risk.