This week in coins. Illustration by Mitchell Preffer for Decrypt.
Last week was the first real red week of 2023 thanks to an SEC crackdown on Kraken and staking that shook crypto confidence, but most leading cryptocurrencies managed to recover value this week.
Bitcoin (BTC) rose 13.7% over the past seven days to hit $24,608 as of Saturday morning, according to CoinGecko data, after briefly reclaiming $25k on Thursday. The world’s number one cryptocurrency is currently being buoyed by the success of Ordinals, a popular NFT project on the blockchain.
Due to its limited functionality smart contracts (relative to closest competitor Ethereum), Bitcoin isn’t typically known for NFTs, but the number of Ordinals minted on it has hit 130,000 since the project’s launch last month.
Ethereum (ETH), the world’s second largest cryptocurrency by market cap, rose 12% over the last seven days and currently trades for around $1,700.
Both market leaders briefly traded sideways on Valentine’s Day as investors chewed on the conclusions of the latest Consumer Price Index (CPI) report by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Inflation in January hit 6.4%, overshooting the Bureau’s expectations by 0.2%, however it has generally been receding since June last year.
Cardano (ADA) enjoyed a strong rally of 12% after the network dropped its Valentine upgrade. Valentine improves cross-chain functionality and security for dapps on Cardano. The blockchain’s native token’s price is currently around $0.40.
Strong rallies were enjoyed by holders of Avalanche (AVAX), which rose 10.4% to $19.66; Tron (TRX), which climbed 12% to $0.07; Litecoin (LTC), which went up 10% to $101, Solana (SOL), which surged 14% to $23, Lido DAO (LIDO), which spiked 13% to hit $3, and Polkadot (DOT), which blew up 17% to $7.31.
But
