Top Things You Need To Know About The Crypto Market This Week

TL; DR

Across January the cryptocurrency market has had a marketwide uptick in price, volume, and media interest, with a majority of the top 100 seeing substantial gains across the past month and news stories popping up regarding adoption, innovation, and legislation each day. However, these news stories have varied from bullish, bearish, and neutral, signaling an uncertain future for the market on a micro-scale and having saturated the news landscape. To make it easier for you to navigate the market this week, we’re here to break down the top bullish, bearish, and most importantly, impactful, news stories from this week to help you understand this week’s market activity and that of the coming week.

SHIB Ranked As The Most Popular Starter Crypto

Shiba Inu Concept Art (Image Courtesy of AnalyticsInsight )

Across the past week, SHIB has seen a sharp uptick in interest from ETH whales, who have accumulated over $200 million of the asset across a four-day period, as well as newcomers to the space, who have been starting their portfolios with the asset. On-chain data discovered by Nansen has revealed that over the past seven days, over $56 million in SHIB tokens flowed into over 12,000 wallets, making it the most common crypto other than stablecoins to appear in these balances in this timeframe.

Retail Investors’ Confidence Renewed As Inflation Threat Is Minimised

Recent macroeconomic factors and the crypto winter have undeniably broken investors’ confidence in the market, which has led to price and volume decreases market-wide. However, a recent study by eToro has reported that 69% of retail investors are unphased by the current crypto winter and that confidence is being restored to the market space as the threat of inflation is minimized. It was reported in Q3 of 2022 that 24% of retail investors felt threatened by the risk of inflation, with this failing to 11% as of the end of Q4 2022.

Firm Behind XLM Tapped For Position On New CFTC Advisory Committee

Stellar Logo (Image Courtesy of ZipMex)

The team behind the primary XRP competitor, Stella (XLM) has been confirmed to represent the digital asset industry in the newly announced Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s (CFTC) relaunched Global Market Advisory Committee (GMAC). As one of the four nominated crypto-related firms set to represent the digital assets industry, Stellar is the only firm representing an entire blockchain. As a result, Stellare representatives have stated that they hope to ‘bring a unique perspective of layer-1 protocols to the table’.

In addition, Stellar has also noted that they have no intention to ‘supplant’ traditional finance and instead strive to work in tandem with the industry and build on top of already established systems to create an interoperable and seamless financial future. A representative stated: ‘This body will serve as an excellent opportunity for conventional finance and blockchain to find the present and the future prospects for integration to ensure the integrity and competitiveness of US markets.’

XRP Gains Strength As Ripple VS SEC Verdict Looms Near

Ripple Concept Art (Image Courtesy of Financial Times)

Following the release of a possible lawsuit resolution date, Ripple’s native cryptocurrency, XRP has surpassed a $20 billion market capitalization after gaining 18% since the start of January. Currently trading hands at $0.4106, XRP appears to be amidst a rally following Ripple Labs CEO Brad Garlinghouse’s optimistic outlook on the settlement of the lawsuit and the facts that Ripple brings to the table.

Following Garlinghouse’s optimism, XRP breached the key resistance zone of $0.39, from which a newly established resistance zone of $0.4076 was formed. In addition, the Relative Strength Index (RSI) and Awesome Oscillator (AO) both suggest that the bulls currently have control over the asset’s price. However, the On Balance Volume (OBV) has signaled that there is resistance, meaning that a move beyond the current level could result in a rally for XRP. This bullishness is likely to extend into the coming weeks as the verdict looms closer.

Metaverse Project OrbCity Skyrockets Over 100% After Polygon Migration

OrbCity Art (Image Courtesy of OrbCity)

With a resurgence of interest in the metaverse capturing the market as the bull wave ensues, various metaverse projects including Decentraland and The Sandbox have seen an uptick in value and volume. However, the decentralized virtual world, OrbCity, has been privy to an increase in value of over 100% after it successfully migrated to the Polygon network.

OrbCity is a virtual world that allows users to explore and control their own cities using native tokens and NFTs, with various of these neighborhoods (based on real-life regions) on sale on the NFT marketplace Opensea. At the time of writing, an OrbCity neighborhood in San Francisco was reportedly sold for 15 ETH.

Developers Across The Crypto Space Increase

With the recent market crash having generated the dissolution of many crypto projects across various blockchains, the surplus of talent appears to be increasing as more developers flock to a range of blockchains to further innovate and build upon them. Solana was privy to an increase of 83%, a 10x increase from 2018, which the Solana team has noted puts them ahead of any other blockchain in this area.

Other blockchains that witnessed such substantial growth were Polygon, Cosmos, and Polkadot, with them seeing an uptick of developers at respective rates of 40%, 25%, and 2%.