Crypto Market Cap Over $2T: Markets Wrap

The cryptocurrency market cap benchmarked a three-month high briefly on Monday morning, hitting $2.036 trillion. 

Altcoins like Cardano (ADA) dipped on Monday, according to Messari. Cardano shed 0.59% on-day but has shot up 45.01% in the past seven days. The altcoin briefly became the third largest crypto by market cap behind ethereum and bitcoin, but slid down to the fifth largest on Monday.

Cardano’s recent surge in price comes ahead of the token’s hard fork, which will bring smart contracts to the platform, Blockworks reported. 

Solana’s SOL token hiked up 27.83% on Monday, benchmarking the token as one of the top 10 cryptos by market cap. The token currently has a cap of around $18 billion, according to Messari. SOL is trading around $63.66 as of press time Monday.

Popular non-fungible token (NFT) drops have coincided with the token’s price hike. Solanart, which utilizes the Solana blockchain, listed ‘The Degenerate Ape Academy’ on its NFT platform. (SOL is used to mint the digital art.) All 10,000 cartoon apes were sold in less than 10 minutes on Saturday. 

Among many other launches, fashion label Dolce & Gabbana is set to debut an NFT collection via their luxury marketplace UNXD later this month.

Ethereum and bitcoin dipped on Monday, shedding 3.58% and 1.88%, respectively.

DeFi

• Uniswap is trading at $29.56 with a total value locked of $4,913,842,916 up 1.1% in 24 hours at 4:00 pm ET. 
• Chainlink is trading at $28.40, advancing 5.4% with trading volume at $1,788,600,016 in 24 hours at 4:00 pm ET.
• DeFi:ETH is 31.8% at 4:00 pm ET.

Crypto

• Bitcoin is trading around $45,843.64, down -1.88% in 24 hours at 4:00 pm ET.
• Ether is trading around $3,216.30, declining -3.58% in 24 hours at 4:00 pm ET.
• ETH:BTC is at 0.0687, falling -2.38% at 4:00 pm ET.
• VIX was up 4.21% to 16.10 at 4:00 pm ET.

Insight

Cody Ryan, co-founder of Clearblock Insights, weighed in on Solana’s recent price action, NFTs and more.

“While Bitcoin quietly approaches another key resistance level at $48K, the big story this week has been the resurgence of NFTs. While the frenzy to own .jpgs of digital penguins, primates or rocks may confuse many in the space, it does have broader implications for the top projects that they are built on, such as Ethereum [and Solana]. NFT marketplace OpenSea has accounted for nearly 10% of the 52,000+ ETH burned since the EIP-1559 update went live – helping push ETH towards deflationary ultrasound money at a rate faster than many originally modeled,” Ryan told Blockworks.

“Meanwhile Solana hit new all times highs following a popular NFT release on the network. As investors discover a new use case for the project backed by a number of power players in the industry, that will likely drive further adoption and increased use in the rapidly expanding NFT ecosystem,” he added.

Equities

• The Dow was up 0.31% to 35,625.
• S&P 500 advanced 0.26% to 4,479.
• Nasdaq declined -0.20% to 14,793.

Commodities

• Brent crude fell to $69.68 per barrel, shedding -1.29%.
• Gold advanced 0.61% to $1,789.20.

Fixed Income

• US 10-year treasury yields 1.292% as of 4:00 pm ET.

Currencies

• The US dollar fell -0.03%, according to the Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index.

In other news…

• Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) is set to expand their East Coast operations, Blockworks reported. The VC giant, which manages roughly $16.6 billion in assets, has recently hired a general partner, based in New York City. Job openings listed on their website include market-development employees, an IT-AV specialist and a receptionist.

We’re watching out for…

• US retail sales are due on Tuesday.
• FOMC minutes are released on Wednesday.

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

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