As Christmas approaches, crypto investors might be looking to cash in some of the profits. And while the blockchain ecosystem as a whole is still rather bearish at the moment, with Bitcoin unable to maintain a price level over $50,000, the past week brought some positive developments for some altcoins on the market. Although many popular coins and tokens depreciated in value, a number of alternative cryptocurrencies managed to make massive gains. Without further delay, let’s take a look at the most important altcoin news from the last 7 days!
OKB, YFI and AVAX Become the Most Profitable Altcoins of the Week
Technically speaking, the past few days have been mostly bearish, especially for the top 50 largest cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin and many popular altcoins ended the week in red. However, for some altcoin investors Christmas came earlier this year, and they have a lot of reasons to be happy.
This week’s biggest winner was, quite surprisingly, the OKB token - the native cryptocurrency of the OKEx crypto exchange. The OKB price appreciated by almost 31% and reached $32.61 - still almost $10 lower from its all-time high $42.36 from May 2nd, 2021.
The OKB price growth doesn’t seem to be related to any major announcement. Instead, OKB is simply yet another exchange-related crypto asset to see a massive eruption in price over the past couple months. In an uncertain market atmosphere, tokens backed by exchanges such as FTX Token (FTT), Binance Coin (BNB) and Crypto.com Coin (CRO) are increasingly viewed as safe investments.
The second best performing digital asset of the week has been yearn.finance (YFI). YFI used to be one of the original DeFi projects, largely responsible for popularizing concepts such as yield farming. Over the past year, yearn.finance was steadily losing popularity, but this week was very good for the project, as the price of YFI managed to rise by almost 29%.
Finally, the third best altcoin of the week was Avalanche (AVAX). The AVAX price was growing steadily over the past few months, and Avalanche is now the 9th largest cryptocurrency in the blockchain ecosystem. Over the past 7 days, the AVAX price grew by over 17%, and many experts start to consider Avalanche a serious competitor to projects like Solana (SOL) and Cardano (ADA).
Elon Musk Tries to Give Dogecoin Price a Bump, Without Much Success
Elon Musk’s spectacular pump of Dogecoin was one of the most highly discussed crypto events of 2021. After the DOGE price plummeted down following Musk’s appearance on Saturday’s Night Live, the Tesla CEO seemed to have lost interest in the meme cryptocurrency. However, this might not be fully true, as on Tuesday Musk tried his hand at pumping the DOGE price again.
Musk’s Twitter announcement seemed huge at first - Tesla will accept Dogecoin for payments! However, there’s a catch: nobody will be able to actually buy an electric vehicle with DOGE. Instead, people will be able to use DOGE to pay only for “some merch”. In other words, you still can’t buy a Tesla Model 3 with dogecoins - but you can buy a t-shirt or a pair of socks.
While the initial reaction of the market was enthusiastic, with the DOGE price appreciating by almost 25%, the original euphoria quickly vanished as people realized that the perspective of buying a t-shirt with crypto is not that groundbreaking. In the end, even Musk’s attempt at pumping the price didn’t help Dogecoin, and the original meme coin lost 5% in value over the past 7 days.
Justin Sun Leaves Tron, Making the TRX Price Plummet
For many years, Tron was one of the most popular altcoins in the blockchain ecosystem, and its founder Justin Sun was among the most recognizable crypto entrepreneurs. That era seems to be finally over - on Friday, Sun has announced that he’ll be stepping down from all roles within the Tron Foundation.
Instead of developing Tron, Sun will be focusing on his new career. The crypto entrepreneur is now a diplomat, and will be serving as an Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Grenada to the World Trade Organization (WTO).
Unsurprisingly, the market reaction to Sun’s surprising announcement was very negative. Over the course of the past week, the TRX price has decreased by almost 14%. However, it’s worth noting that even though it has been underperforming for a long time, Tron is still one of the top 25 largest cryptocurrencies on the market.
