Altcoins

The pricing of Chinese meme coins is not grounded in expectations of future cash flows or technological progress, but is jointly shaped by structural changes in narrative transmission efficiency, the intensity of emotional consensus, and the density of attention. From the perspective of narrative economics, meme coins are not an exception marked by the collapse of value, but rather an extreme manifestation of “consensus preceding value”: price no longer serves as a shadow of intrinsic value, but as a metric of whether a narrative continues to be believed. Chinese meme coins are therefore not merely financial assets, but also vehicles for social sentiment and identity formation, with trading behavior simultaneously encompassing risk-based speculation, emotional compensation, and group belonging. In recent years, as attention has become an increasingly scarce resource, price has effectively become a quantitative expression of attention density.

Gate Research Weekly Report: This week, BTC and ETH continued to trade with weak volatility, and market sentiment stayed in the fear range. Rising tensions in the Middle East drove up oil prices and simultaneously increased demand for stablecoins, with USDC demand surging in the Dubai market. Pump.fun may pursue multi-chain expansion, while popular tokens like ACX, Lobster, and PIXEL posted strong gains. Capital activity in the Solana ecosystem remains robust.

Gate Research Institute: Over the past 24 hours, BTC briefly climbed above $71,000, but following a sharp drop and quick rebound during the U.S. market session, it settled back near $69,300. ETH rapidly declined from $2,070 to $2,010 and remains in a recovery phase. Altcoins showed weakness, with most lagging behind BTC, while the Fear & Greed Index remains in the extreme fear range. HUMA, NAORIS, and ARIA saw gains of 50.13%, 39.38%, and 29.02%, respectively, fueled by AI-related narratives. Additionally, Oracle’s earnings beat expectations, driving its share price up nearly 8% after hours, and both Hyperliquid and Circle announced significant product updates.

Gate Research Institute Daily Report: On March 10, the overall cryptocurrency market rebounded, with BTC and ETH rising together. While previous panic selling has eased, extreme fear persists, keeping the market in a cautious recovery phase. Among the top-performing tokens, GF (+106.93%), BEBE (+104.66%), and DOGS (+31.98%) led gains for assets with market caps exceeding $10 million. Fresh capital continues to flow into high-volatility, small- and mid-cap sectors, and market opportunities remain driven by structural rotation. In the industry, stablecoin settlement networks, tokenized stock expansion, and cross-ledger liquidity design have emerged as the key trends to watch. The industry narrative is shifting from simple price speculation to deeper competition in payments, settlements, and on-chain asset infrastructure.

Gate Research Institute Daily: On March 9, the crypto market remained weak and volatile, with BTC and ETH both declining as the overall market maintained a defensive posture. Among trending tokens, DEGO (+53.60%), BABY (+28.04%), and MBOX (+25.26%) recorded the highest gains among assets with market capitalizations over $10 million, with new capital primarily targeting highly elastic small- and mid-cap sectors. On the regulatory front, the enactment of Pakistan's Virtual Assets Act 2026 is advancing legal oversight; Brickken joined the UNE standards framework to support asset tokenization rulemaking; and Cardano is enhancing USDCx infrastructure to strengthen stablecoins’ core functionality in payments and RWA settlement. The industry’s main trajectory continues toward greater compliance and infrastructure maturity.

Gate Research Daily: On March 6, BTC surged above $74,000 before pulling back, currently consolidating near $71,000. ETH dropped from a peak of $2,190 and is now trading in the $2,070–$2,090 range. GT is oscillating narrowly between $7.10 and $7.20, maintaining an overall recovery and consolidation structure. SYND drew market attention with a +55.81% gain. The RWA sector continues to heat up, as Ondo Finance secured regulatory approval from Abu Dhabi to facilitate tokenized stock and ETF trading. The AI Agent business model is attracting interest, with stablecoins and blockchain recognized as essential infrastructure. Short-selling firm Culper Research is betting against Ethereum, warning that its post-upgrade tokenomics could trigger a "death spiral" risk.

Gate Research Daily Report: Affected by factors including Trump’s proposed 15% global tariffs, Bitcoin lacks strong upward momentum. Ethereum continues to consolidate near its 20-day low, with multiple momentum indicators still pointing to a weak market structure. PIPPIN rose 16.62%, mainly driven by strong speculative buying and community momentum. POWER gained 12.05%, largely fueled by leveraged trading activity. Anthropic’s announcement on automating COBOL system modernization triggered an 11% drop in IBM’s share price. ZachXBT is set to release a major investigation, with prediction markets and Trump-related projects expected to face scrutiny. Vitalik sold 10,700 ETH this month at an average price of $2,027, drawing market attention.

Gate Research Daily Report: On January 28, the crypto market saw a brief relief rebound, with broad-based gains and capital rotating back into core assets and large-cap majors. On the thematic side, mid- and small-cap tokens such as PIPPIN, BNKR, and XRD rallied strongly on agent narratives and expectations around product/tooling updates, with flows clearly concentrating into higher-beta names. Meanwhile, Tether launched its USAT dollar stablecoin as part of a two-track approach combining regulatory segmentation and distribution expansion; Kite released a mainnet roadmap centered on agent-native trust and pay-per-call payments; and Polygon continued to lead x402 agentic payment transactions, while Base activity has weakened for eight consecutive days.

Gate Research Daily Report: Bitcoin fell further below $84,000 on Tuesday, and dragged by BTC’s correction, Ethereum dropped below $2,800 over the past 24 hours, approaching its key $2,600 support again. Ancient8 announced a partnership with the gaming identity layer Dæmons, driving A8 up 89% in the past 24 hours; PRIME’s recent gains were mainly fueled by exchange listings and trading incentives, rising 45% over the same period. Kalshi announced it will tokenize thousands of its existing prediction market contracts on Solana, a move likely to attract more institutional and retail participation; meanwhile, Strategy established a $1.44 billion dividend reserve fund to support payouts, signaling robust cash flow and liquidity management to investors.

KNTQ serves as the governance and value capture token for Kinetiq, the liquid staking protocol within the Hyperliquid ecosystem. With a maximum supply of 1 billion, the protocol channels revenue from diverse business lines—liquid staking (kHYPE), perpetual markets (Markets), and HIP-3 deployments (Launch)—back to token holders via buybacks, burns, and the sKNTQ distribution mechanism. This positions KNTQ as the core economic hub linking HYPE staking scale to protocol commercialization.

ZIGChain (ZIG) is a Layer 1 public blockchain built on the Cosmos SDK with native EVM compatibility. Its core mission is to serve as a dedicated infrastructure layer for on-chain Gate Wealth and investment infrastructure, allowing delegated investments, RWA tokenization, and modular DeFi protocols to operate natively on a single chain—instead of relying on fragmented application assembly across general-purpose blockchains.

ZIG, the native utility token of ZIGChain, serves as the settlement medium for Gas payments, PoS network security, on-chain governance voting, and chain-level module fees (ModFee) — including those for Token Factory, Exchange Module, and Wealth Management Engine (WME). It is the core economic unit that links public chain security, application activity, and the operation of the wealth ecosystem.

Request Network (REQ) is a decentralized payment protocol built on an open blockchain ecosystem. Its goal is to unify payment requests, invoicing, payments, reconciliation, and auditing within a single, verifiable data standard. Unlike traditional payment systems that rely on banks and payment processors for record-keeping, Request Network leverages on-chain traceable records, programmable payment conditions, and modular APIs, enabling individuals, DAOs, and enterprises to manage Stablecoin and crypto asset payment workflows across multiple chains. Supported by recent ecosystem developments over the past two years—including enhanced API capabilities, the launch of recurring payments, and exploration of privacy payment integration—Request Network is transitioning from a standalone payment protocol into a comprehensive Web3 financial infrastructure.

Request Network is a Web3 protocol designed for on-chain payments, invoicing, and financial automation, with REQ serving as its core token that connects fees, governance, and incentive structures. In contrast to tokens limited to serving trading speculation, REQ is built around ensuring that growth in payment network usage flows back into the protocol layer, thereby creating a sustainable ecosystem cycle.

XAN is the native token and global coordination medium of the Anoma Distributed Operating System (DOS), with a fixed total supply of 10 billion tokens. Rather than being limited to single-chain Gas payments, its design facilitates economic coordination among users, Solvers, consensus providers, and application developers—handling network fees, locking for governance participation, incentivizing intent solving, and, in future mainnet phases, expanding to include validator staking, slashing, and other security mechanisms.