The Week That Mattered For Crypto: BONK, Avalanche Lead Gainers; Terra Classic, Chainlink Top Losers' Pack

While the week started on a high note of $43,800 for Bitcoin BTC/USD, it didn't reach that level again for the rest of the week. The crypto’s apex king reported a 4% drop in the past 7-days trade while Ethereum ETH/USD saw a 4.6% fall in the same timeframe. Currently, the global crypto market cap is standing at $1.6 trillion with a Bitcoin dominance of 51.6%.

What Happened: Solana memecoin BONK BONK/USD was leading the gainers' list amongst all the cryptocurrencies with 150.6% gains in the last 7-day trading session. With a caution notification to investors for high volatility, BONK was listed on Binance. Terra Classic LUNC/USD was one of the leading losers with a 13.8% drop.

Based on the top 20 cryptocurrencies in the past 7-day trade, Avalanche AVAX/USD stood at the first spot with gains of 43% followed by Cardano ADA/USD with 16.9% gains. Cosmos ATOM/USD and Polkadot DOT/USD followed the list with 8.3% gains each. Solana was the fifth highest gainer with 5.7% gains led by Saga smartphone sales nearing tenfold.

Avalanche witnessed a significant growth in transactions with around 1,000 transactions bigger than $100,000. Also, an analyst's opinion on Avalanche stands strong with expectations of turning to a bigger win in upcoming weeks riding on a great narrative with GameFi.

Cardano is accumulating gains with robust activity in projects built on the network and total value locked peaking to all-time highs.

Amongst the losers, Chainlink LINK/USD was leading the list with an 11.2% drop followed by Bitcoin Cash BCH/USD with an 8.4% decline. Litecoin LITE/USD and XRP XRP/USD followed with a decrease of 7.6% and a 6.4%, respective, drop. Toncoin TON/USD was in the fifth position with a 6.1% fall.

Chainlink unveiled its LINK v0.2 community staking pool to the public for general access after which it has witnessed a significant drop. It now allows users to lock LINK for a 4.3% variable (reward). XRP’s fall came on the heels of Ripple lawyer John Deaton identifying U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren as the most pronounced threat to crypto.

Why It Matters: The last week witnessed one of the much-awaited events of the year-end which was the FOMC final meet of 2023. The meeting took a call on interest rates to be maintained by the Fed with three rate cuts to be expected in 2024. The week also witnessed an anti-crypto bill in the U.S. by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, which dampened investors sentiment.

Turning to the spot Bitcoin ETF approval, the week saw BlackRock opening gates to Wall Street banks for indirect ownership of the digital asset. Also, four applicants of the spot Bitcoin ETF met individually with the SEC this week in the presence of the SEC divisions that are required for final approval before approvals and listing. Valkyrie also amended its filing for the fourth time this week.

A major rattle to the crypto space was Ledger’s revelation that a former employee was trapped in a phishing attack wherein the attacker managed to access the Ledger Connectkit Library and introduce a malicious bug.

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