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Bitcoin managed to remain above the $30k mark over the weekend, despite minor losses registered across the altcoins. And as of writing, BTC/USD has been trading at $30,325, still up 14.9% in the past week and 82.69% year-to-date (YTD). 

After surging past $31,000 and reaching a one-year high on Friday, Bitcoin has now entered a consolidation phase around the $30k mark.

A break above the $31,250 resistance level could see Bitcoin surging higher to $32k or even above $34k. However, breaking the key psychological support level of $30,000 could conversely result in BTC falling toward the $28,250 mark, signaling a bearish trend.

ETH, meanwhile, has lost some steam, with its prices down 1.8% in the last 24 hours, but weekly gains are still at 9.6% as it continues to trade at just under $1,900. Now, the total crypto market cap is at $1.22 trillion while recording $35.2 billion in trading volume.

Amidst this, over the weekend, the good news came from the National Tax Agency of Japan, which amended the nation’s tax law to exclude unrealized gains of self-issued crypto from taxation, bringing a huge relief for crypto startups that issue their own tokens.

Meanwhile, the Nevada Department of Business and Industry said that state-chartered crypto custodian Prime Trust had “a shortfall in customer funds” and could not meet withdrawal requests this month. The Department’s Financial Institutions Division ordered the firm, which once held funds on behalf of FTX, Binance.US, and Celsius Network, to cease and desist all activities that violate state regulations.

What’s Driving the Price Upwards?

The world’s largest digital currency has risen more than 12% since the start of this month, primarily due to the US asset management giant BlackRock filing for a spot Bitcoin ETF and other large institutions taking steps to embrace BTC.

Meanwhile, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approved the nation’s first leveraged Bitcoin futures ETF on Friday. Offered by Florida-based Volatility Shares, it is set to start trading on June 27 on CBOE BZX Exchange.

Besides institutional interest, the latest price action is also driven by thin market liquidity, which means relatively smaller buy or sell orders can move the price up and down in a big way. 

According to Kaiko, Bitcoin’s market depth has fallen 20% since the beginning of the year. The data firm said that Bitcoin had been one of the hardest-hit cryptos in terms of market depth.

“Bitcoin’s recent surge in value has largely been driven by large trades within a less liquid market,” Jamie Sly, CCData’s head of research, told CNBC. As per CCData’s analysis, market orders over 5 BTC shows an aggressive surge in market buying, “suggesting large players are seeking to gain exposure to digital assets,” which, combined with thin books, creates more volatile movements.

Daily Bitcoin trading volume has also fallen to around $24 billion from $100 billion during the peak of the 2021 crypto rally. Trading volume is currently at multi-year lows, and the slight increase recorded recently still puts numbers at a level lower than that recorded from January to March, which suggests even an increase in price isn’t able to draw traders in. 

Meanwhile, Mark Yusko, founder and CIO of Morgan Creek Capital, believes the ongoing rally in Bitcoin is just the beginning of a larger bull market driven by the four-year cycle surrounding Bitcoin’s halving events.

These sentiments are echoed by Bitwise CEO Matt Hougan, who said in a Bloomberg interview that a multi-year bull market is now kicking off. According to him, pent-up demand in the crypto space will see “material stronger results” as prices continue to rise.

Although the recent wave of interest from traditional financial (TradFi) institutions, like Blackrock, Citadel, and Fidelity, infuses a renewed optimism in the market, it still can’t be said if the worst is over for Bitcoin and by extension, the broad crypto market, especially with the wider macro environment yet to turn favorable.

Best Weekend Performer 

As the crypto market started rejoicing, many top DeFi tokens outperformed the broader market. The native tokens of Uniswap, Compound, and Synthetix posted double-digit gains over the weekend, which are now continuing on Monday.

DeFi assets went on a tear on Saturday, with COMP surging by 30% while UNI gained 12%, and Curve (CRV), dYdX (DYDX), and PancakeSwap (CAKE) also managed to go up by 7%. SNX price went up by 19% before going down by 9.7%.

The combined total value locked in DeFi protocols is up over 10% in the past ten days to now stand at $44.94 billion, as per DeFi Llama. The market cap of DeFi assets has also risen to $47.44 billion, up 14.2% from June 15.

DeFi tokens underperformed for much of 2023, but now they are seeing a resurgence as the crypto sector faces regulatory scrutiny. In June, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued two major exchanges, Coinbase and Binance.

This might have shifted user attention to DeFi as a June 22 report from DappRadar noted an increase in on-chain activity for many DeFi dApps, including Lido, Convex Finance, Pendle, and Polygon’s PoS Chain bridge. DeFi integration of liquid staking tokens, dubbed LSTfi, in particular, is seeing a lot of traction thanks to offering additional sources of yield to LST holders.

Besides DeFi tokens, ApeCoin also pumped 13% over the weekend, and Radix saw a 12.5% surge in its price. Even privacy coin Monero jumped 8.8% while Ton recorded an 8% increase in price.

Aave (AAVE)

Amidst the green weekend and a greener DeFi market, AAVE emerged as the best-performing coin with 33% gains. The $947.7 million market cap token went on to hit nearly $76 before it dropped 10.6% on Monday to now trade at $65.12.

All this price action resulted in a surge in the coin’s market activity, with AAVE’s trading volume recording a 156% increase from a day ago to $490.6 million. Up 29% in the past week and only 24.4% YTD, AAVE price is currently down 90.15% from its all-time high (ATH) of $661.69. 

This latest surge in the DeFi token came as a certain whale accumulated $13.2 million worth of tokens on June 25, as per Lookonchain. When it comes to Total Value Locked (TVL), DefiLlama showed that AAVE’s TVL is at $5.62 billion, up from $4.92 bln on June 15 and $3.68 bln from earlier this year. Data from DappRadar meanwhile shows the number of unique wallets engaging with Aave is up 28% this month.

AAVE is the native cryptocurrency of the Aave platform, where users can borrow and lend crypto assets in exchange for interest payments, all without an intermediary. Founded by Stani Kulechov in 2017 in Switzerland, Aave was originally called ETHLend until it was rebranded in September 2018.

The token was first distributed as LEND tokens following an ICO in Nov. 2017, in which Aave raised $16.2 million, with 77% of the tokens going to investors and 23% to the project and its founders.

Then in 2020, LEND tokens were swapped for the new AAVE coin at a ratio of 1:100. AAVE is a governance token whose holders get lower fees on the platform and the ability to vote on decisions that affect the platform’s future. 

Amidst all this, Aave’s Lens Protocol introduced Lens Improvement Proposals (LIPs) to guide the future development of the protocol in a decentralized manner. 

The latest initiative comes after Lens Protocol secured a massive $15 million in funding led by IDEO CoLab Ventures with participation from VC firms like Variant, General Catalyst, and Blockchain Capital, as well as DAOs like DAOJones, Punk DAO, Flamingo DAO, DAO5 and Global Coin Research, and angel investors including OpenSea co-founder Alex Atallah, Uniswap CEO Hayden Adams, Sandbox co-founder Sébastien Borget, Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal, and entrepreneur and investor Balaji Srinivasan, among others.

Click here to learn all about investing in Aave (AAVE).

Worst Weekend Performer 

Despite the broad green market, some coins still dropped. For instance, the CRV token initially jumped 5.6% only to then dump by 6.9%, all on the weekend. Other prominent losers include Maker, which lost 7.7% of its value during this period, while ETC’s price fell 6% and MANA dropped by 3%.

Conflux (CFX)

It was CFX that led the losses over the weekend with its negative price performance of 15%. The $483.4 million market cap token is also in the red on Monday and is currently exchanging hands at $0.234.

The latest losses came after the coin surged 50% in the week, right before retracing the gains over the weekend. With this, the trading volume of CFX also dropped over 26% to $64.84 million. 

The token’s 7-day price performance is still in the green by 26.9%, the same as the 14-day at 27.6%. CFX is up 938.4% in 2023 so far while being down 86.5% from its peak.

CFX is the native token of the Conflux Network, an open protocol for the new world of dApps, finance, and Web3. It is a public blockchain network that aims to enhance the scalability and security of existing blockchain platforms. CFX is used to pay gas fees and transactions on the network.

Dubbed China’s MATIC, Conflux has been working on its ecosystem expansion. In 2023, it collaborated with China’s second-largest telecommunications company China Telecom to produce blockchain-enabled SIM cards. 

And most recently, it partnered with dappOS, a Web3 unified operating protocol and member of the Binance Labs program, to allow its users to “experience simplified workflows and seamless cross-chain execution without incurring additional gas fees.”

Click here to learn all about investing in Conflux Network (CFX).