The cryptocurrency markets have been rather stagnant in Week 16 as the total market capitalization only slightly dropped from $1.89 trillion on April 17 to $1.88 trillion on April 24. However, this does not mean that past week offered no lucrative investment opportunities. In fact, several cryptocurrencies, including the Green Metaverse Token, Terra’s LUNA, KAVA and CRV ended the week with a gain of over 10%. We believe that the coins listed in this article have a high chance to post a profit at the end of Week 17 as well.
3. STEPN – Green Metaverse Token (GMT)
STEPN is a Web3 lifestyle app with fun social elements and gamification design that helps you build and maintain healthy habits, as players receive rewards based on their daily step counts. This is also the reason why STEPN app has been repeatedly labeled as a move-to-earn game. STEPN utilizes a dual-token system. It uses Green Satoshi Token (GST) as the main gaming token and Green Metaverse Token (GMT), which acts as the governance token of STEPN. Besides granting governance rights, the GMT also acts as a basis for profit distribution and can be used to mint and upgrade in-game NFT sneakers. STEPN is developed by an Australian-based fintech studio Find Satoshi Lab. This Solana-based GameFi and Socialism project won the Solana Ignition Hackathon Gaming Track in 2021 and was the 28th project featured on Binance launchpad.
GMT is the best performing crypto YTD
Even though GMT only started trading on March 9, the token’s gain of +3,230% since than makes Green Metaverse Token the best performing crypto asset from the Top 100 cryptos on a year-to-date scale. Furthermore, as of today, April 24, GMT is also the best performing asset from the top 100 on 7 day and 1 month scales. At least part of the STEPN’s market success can be attributed to its participation in the Binance Launchpad, which grants project a great deal of exposure and thereby increases the chances of the project’s success. The other reason for success, is perhaps the STEPN’s unique market model, which allows users to earn crypto rewards by performing physical activity. However, several market observers including Michaël van de Poppe, a popular crypto analyst and full-time trader, think that the GMT’s high price is unsustainable and driven largely by the team’s marketing efforts. While it is absolutely true that GMT price can plummet anytime the exponentially growing interest for STEPN app and the team’s ambitious roadmap are lowering that risk. According to STEPN’s official website, the team plans to roll-out multichain support in Q2 2022 and launch the achievement, quest, and rental system over the course of Q3 2022. The community and SocialFi-focused Q4 2022 will kick-off with an online marathon in October 2022.
2. Monero (XMR)
Monero is the largest privacy-focused cryptocurrency. It that is designed to provide as much privacy and security as possible to its users. Although the Monero project is fully open-source and run by volunteers, the project enjoys a high reputation within the cryptocurrency community. The Monero whitepaper was created in 2014 by an unknown developer using the pseudonym “Nicolas van Saberhagen”. Monero has been repeatedly bashed in the mainstream media for facilitating ransomware and other hacker attacks since the performers of these illicit actions often demand the payments to be made in XMR to avoid being caught. While it is sad that the technology is being used for illegal purposes, the use case itself is a testament of Monero’s privacy features working as intended.
Monero thrives in expectation of July Upgrade, sanctions against Russia are only accelerating the growth
Cryptocurrency analysts have pointed out to an interesting trend that appeared on the crypto markets following the start of the Ukraine war – the cryptocurrencies that preserve the anonymity by obscuring the flow of money across their networks have started to appreciate. Many think that this is a direct consequence of the financial sanctions targeted at Russia put in place by many governments worldwide. Mati Greenspan, founder of the cryptocurrency analysis firm Quantum Economics, described how the sanctions are driving XMR price up:
“We can probably assume that a lot of the sanctions on Russian citizens are forcing them into crypto. If Bitcoin itself is not anonymous enough for their specific needs, they may be buying more privacy-centric coins.”
In addition, the “Fluorine Fermi” network upgrade slated for mid-July that was announced on April 20 served as an additional boost to the ongoing rally.
The upgrade that will roll-out at block number 2,668,888 aims to improve the security and resilience of the network to rapid changes in the fee market and malicious attacks. The upgrade will increase the ring-size from 11 to 16, reduce the typical transaction size and verification performance by 5-7%. In addition, view tags will reduce wallet sync times by 30-40%. Because of the prevailingly positive sentiment, XMR price has climbed to an a five-month high last week. XMR, which is currently changing hands a few dollars above $250, is up over 70% since its yearly low at the start of February.
1. TRON (TRX)
TRON is a delegated proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus model blockchain platform that launched its mainnet in June 2018. However, TRON’s native asset TRX existed even before the mainnet launch in the form of an ERC-20 token on the Ethereum blockchain. Like Ethereum, Solana and Polkadot, TRON blockchain is designed to host smart contracts and decentralized applications (dApps). TRON blockchain is known for its fast transactions and low transaction fees. In addition, TRON blockchain can host custom TRON-based tokens, issued using the TRC10 and TRC20 standards. The project was founded by Chinese entrepreneur Justin Sun, and its development is headed by the Tron Foundation, which was established in 2017. Since than TRON has grown to become a major player in the blockchain sector. Its network host to some of the leading apps in the industry and sees a huge volume of data and wealth transferred across its ecosystem each day.
TRON set to launch its own algorithmic stablecoin called Decentralized USD (USDD)
On April 21, TRON founder Justin Sun published an open letter, in which he announced that a TRON-based algorithmic stablecoin called Decentralized USD (USDD) will enter circulation on May 5. The UDS peg of USDD will be determined by an algorithm connected to a treasury of TRON’s native currency, TRX. Furthermore, Sun already revealed that the stablecoin will also be accessible on Binance Smart Chain (BSC) and Ethereum (ETH). While the announcement of the USDD caused only a small reversal of the TRX price downtrend, TRX’s 24-hour trading vol up surged by 300% following the announcement. Nevertheless, even the TRX price action is not neglectable since the coin ended the week with a slightly more than 7% gain. This was enough for TRX to climb from 27th to 21st spot by market capitalization as other coins ended the week in red numbers. Last but not least, the news of USDD caused an increased activity of TRX whale addresses. Just two whales moved 1.69 billion TRX tokens, worth over $123 million, between anonymous wallets. By launching USDD, TRON is set to enter the space of algorithmic stablecoins, currently dominated by Terra’s UST, which recently surpassed BUSD to become the 3rd largest stablecoin in the market. Do you think that cards will get reshuffled once USDD enters the sector?
