Altcoin AVAX Surges on Funding News: Markets Wrap

Major cryptocurrencies fell on Thursday as altcoins behind Avalanche, Terra and Cosmos made decent gains.

$AVAX, the native token behind Avalanche, surged on Thursday following the company’s funding news.

Avalanche Foundation announced a $230 million token sale in June with participation from big-name investors such as Three Arrows Capital, Polychain and more. The funding will go toward accelerating the growth of NFTs, DeFi and various other asset classes on its blockchain. $AVAX hit a day-high of $67.90, but later simmered down to $65.97, as of press time. The token is currently the the twelfth largest digital asset with a market capitalization of $14.12 billion, according to Messari.

Terra’s native token, $LUNA, inched up to $37.87 as the altcoin prepares for its upcoming upgrade, referred to as Columbus 5 fork, in late-September.

$ATOM, the token behind Cosmos, was trading at $35.97, up 6% on-day. The crypto has been on a recent hot streak, hitting its all-time high on Tuesday of $38.78. $ATOM is up 485.9% in the past year.

Bitcoin and ethereum were steady on Thursday. BTC shed around 0.5% and ETH was up 1%, respectively.

Crypto

• Bitcoin is trading around $47,721.48, declining -0.48% in 24 hours at 4:00 pm ET.
• Ether is trading around $3,583.39, up 0.76% in 24 hours at 4:00 pm ET.
• ETH:BTC is at 0.075, rising 0.06% at 4:00 pm ET.

DeFi

• Terra ($LUNA) is trading at $37.87, up 2.8% and trading volume at $1,196,454,692 in 24 hours.
• Uniswap ($UNI) is trading at $26.38, advancing 0.8% with a total value locked at $4,897,757,636 in 24 hours at 4:00 pm ET.
• DeFi:ETH is 32.1% at 4:00 pm ET.

Insight

“With Ethereum transaction costs soaring over the past few weeks, attention has focused on the evolution of so-called ‘Ethereum killers’, alternative smart contract platforms that offer higher throughput, faster settlement times and lower fees,” Noelle Acheson, head of market insights at Genesis, said in a statement. “While some of these, such as Solana and Avalanche, are seeing strong activity and soaring token prices, they are not so much Ethereum competitors as Ethereum complements. Each offers the user advantages such as speed and cost savings, and some are gaining significant traction with users.”

Equities

• The Dow was down -0.18% to 34,751.
• S&P 500 fell -0.16% to 4,473.
• Nasdaq made gains of 0.13% to 15,181.

Commodities

• Brent crude was up to $75.66 per barrel, advancing 0.27%.
• Gold was down -2.31% to $1,753.30.

Currencies

• The US dollar strengthened 0.33%, according to the Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index.

Fixed Income

• US 10-year treasury yields 1.304% as of 4:00 pm ET.

In other news…

LayerZero, an omnichain interoperability protocol, announced a $6.3 million Series A funding round on Thursday, Blockworks reported. Co-led by Binance Labs and MultiCoin Capital, the funding is set to go toward further creation of its endpoints across the ecosystem, according to LayerZero Labs co-founder Bryan Pellegrino.

We are looking out for

• Quadruple witching day for US markets will be on Friday.

That’s it for today’s markets wrap. I’ll see you back here tomorrow.

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