We are currently entering a very exciting period on the global cryptocurrency market, and in the altcoin world especially. Regulatory concerns are making some investors bearish, but bulls are still holding strong and nobody can say for sure whether the end of the year will bring us spectacular pump or a tremendous slump down.
The overall situation in the blockchain ecosystem is clearly reflected on the altcoin market: while some alternative currencies have grown massively over the past week, some are experiencing significant problems. Let’s take a look at some of the biggest winners and biggest losers of the last 7 days!
Little Known Gaming Token GALA Becomes the Best Performing Asset of the Week by Far
Although the company Gala Games has been around since 2019, up until now almost nobody has heard about its token GALA, which was launched in 2020. Quite unexpectedly, GALA has become the best performing major crypto asset of the past week, massively surpassing all other gaming and metaverse related coins and tokens on the market.
The GALA token has appreciated in price by over 211% in the last 7 days, which is a spectacular result. To put things in perspective, Zcash, the second best performing asset of the week, has only increased in price by 83%.
As is often the case with altcoins, the reasons for GALA’s sudden spike are not fully clear. Although the GALA token has been listed on some major exchanges such as Coinbase, FTX and Huobi Global not that long ago, there were no announcement or development which would explain why the token has performed so much better than competing gaming-related assets like Decentraland (LAND), The Sandbox (SAND) or Axie Infinity (AXIE), which have made much lesser gains.
Remember Zcash? Long Forgotten Privacy Coin Comes Back To Rally by Over 83% In a Week
Zcash (ZEC), the second-best performing coin of the week, is perhaps even more surprising than the unexpected number one that is GALA. For the most part, Zcash looks like a relic of a bygone era, but somehow it has managed to appreciate in price by over 83% over the past 7 days.
Launched in 2016, Zcash is one of the oldest assets on the list of top 100 largest coins by market capitalization. Like many other privacy coins created at the time, ZEC was aiming to solve the privacy issues troubling popular cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Although many privacy coins were created, the only one to achieve actual adoption was Monero (XMR), which has become the favourite cryptocurrency of darknet vendors and ransomware attackers. However, if we look at the market capitalization of Zcash and Monero, ZEC might surpass its much more popular competitor in value very soon, as Monero’s market cap is now larger than ZEC’s by less than $1 Billion.
Shiba Inu In a Downfall - Is the “DOGE killer” Dead Already?
For a couple weeks, Shiba Inu was the most popular altcoin in the blockchain ecosystem. At the height of its popularity, SHIB even managed to briefly surpass Dogecoin, its predecessor and greatest competitor. However, ever since reaching its all-time high of $0.00008845 a month ago, the SHIB price has been steadily declining. Recently, the price plummeted to $0.00003611, which is the lowest it has been in over a month, and comes dangerously close to levels from before October's massive pump.
Even the fact that the number of Shiba Inu wallets has just surpassed 1 million did nothing to help revive SHIB’s price. It seems that the main problem of SHIB is still the fact that it’s a token with zero utility, with most of the market cap locked in less than 10 wallets.
The fact that Shiba Inu looks like a rug pull just waiting to happen have caused many exchanges and trading platforms to refuse listing SHIB, citing safety concerns as the reason. Since the attention of meme tokens enthusiasts is usually short-lived and they are always on the lookout for new projects, it might be likely that Shiba Inu’s days of glory are already over.
Cardano and Tron Delisted From eToro Amid Regulatory Concerns
The investors of Cardano (ADA) and Tron (TRX) might have some reasons to worry. The Israel-based eToro, one of the most popular trading platforms in the world, has just announced that it will remove the ability to trade Cardano and Tron for some of its users.
Although the two cryptocurrencies will not be delisted completely for now, and the access to them will only be removed from US-based users of the platform, the prices of both ADA and TRX have fallen sharply. Meanwhile, eToro representatives have not given a clear reason for the delisting, citing “business-related considerations in the evolving regulatory environment” as the cause for restricting the access to Cardano and Tron.
