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.

El Salvador has revealed plans to build a city dedicated to the leading cryptocurrency to drive the crypto’s adoption. According to Nayib Bukele, the country’s president, the city will be known as Bitcoin City. To fund its development, El Salvador will issue Bitcoin bonds worth one billion USD.

Bukele first announced the plans during the Bitcoin Week summit to court more Salvadorans to join the BTC train.

The city will offer “technological education” and be powered by “geothermal energy.” People will also be able to move around the city using sustainable transport options.

According to Bukele, Bitcoin City will follow El Salvador’s footsteps and use BTC as legal tender. Bitcoin City inhabitants will enjoy benefits such as zero percent income tax, capital gains tax, property tax, payroll tax, and municipal taxes.

The El Salvadoran president also holds that there will be zero percent carbon dioxide emission from the city. However, the city’s development will be conducted in partnership with leading virtual currency companies.

Some crypto-focused companies working with El Salvador to actualize Bitcoin City include Bitfinex and Blockstream.

We “Are Making History Together”

Bitfinex’s chief technology officer, Paolo Ardoino, noted that the cryptocurrency exchange will build a storage platform for the BTC bonds. In a tweet, the CTO added that apart from securing El Salvador’s BTC bonds, the platform will “soon” become a preferred place for “many local and foreign digital assets offerings developing new digital asset regulation for the country!” He also noted that the three “are making history together.”

Bukele sees Bitcoin City as a conventional city with everything from a port, residential spaces, shopping areas, among other amenities. However, “everything” will revolve around the leading cryptocurrency.

Despite most of the taxes being scrapped, Bitcoin City inhabitants will pay VAT or value-added tax. VAT will fund the city’s maintenance needs, among other costs.

Samson Mao, Blockstream’s CSO, observed that El Salvador will easily attract “a $1 billion bond” since Bitfinex has “a lot of whales.”

According to the CSO, $500 million of the BTC bonds will be locked up for five years. As such, it’ll help make Bitcoin more scarce by removing the invested amount from the total circulation.

From Bitcoin Trust to Bitcoin Schools, to Bitcoin City

Since El Salvador adopted BTC as legal tender in September, it announced initiatives to draw more Salvadorans into Bitcoin. For example, earlier this month, the country’s president disclosed that the extra amount in the El Salvador Bitcoin Trust will go into establishing “Bitcoin Schools.”

At the time, Bukele’s spokesperson also noted that profits from the country’s BTC purchases will benefit Salvadorans. It was reported that the Bitcoin education centers will provide virtual currency education for Salvadorans.

Last month, Bukele revealed that his government used four million USD from the BTC Trust’s profits to build a veterinary hospital. Apart from crypto-focused initiatives, El Salvador has also been filling up its Bitcoin bags.

As El Salvador moves to build Bitcoin City, Indian banks have sent warning emails to cryptocurrency investors. Banks that have sent such notifications include Axis Bank and HDFC Bank.

According to available information, the Indian financial institutions sent the emails to their customers who double as crypto investors.

The banks are concerned that uneducated investors may be driven by the ongoing cryptocurrency marketing efforts and put funds into virtual currencies without adequate knowledge of crypto price volatility.

Indian Banks Can’t Prevent Depositors from Investing in Crypto

According to the banks, crypto ads are promising high returns on investments. For example, Axis Bank’s MD, Amitabh Chaudhry, observed that one such ad indicated “that the returns are four times that of fixed-deposit rates.”

Chaudhry also noted that while it’s possible to “put all sorts of algorithms to trace customers” putting money into virtual currencies to warn them against the risks, banks “can’t do much because it’s depositors’ money.”

Speaking to The Economic Times, the financial institutions said that the country’s central bank, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), has advised them “to be very careful” when opening up to virtual currency trading.

However, some in the crypto community have indicated that the country’s banking ecosystem houses risks just as crypto. The community took the opportunity to bring up the Yes Bank collapse last year. At the time, the bank was the third-largest in the country.

Currently, Indian crypto supporters are engaging the government in talks hoping to develop a favorable crypto regulatory framework.

Cardo ADA is the 5th most popular cryptocurrency, hitting its all-time high at $3.1 in early September 2021, with the launch of its smart contracts. Since then, it has been in corrections. Cardano (ADA), which has risen to become the world's sixth-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalisation, had an optimistic 2021 forecast, but it was unable to maintain the September highs. In late October, it lost 15% of its value in one day due to a pre-Halloween fright.

Like other prominent cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH), ADA has struggled to gain traction, which has lately plummeted from all-time highs. By November 9, it had risen to $2.28, only to fall back to $1.70 on November 18. Bears failed to push the price further below. As Cardano's on-chain activity has skyrocketed, the daily transaction volume briefly overtook the second-largest cryptocurrency Ethereum on Friday, November 19, 2021. At the AIBC gaming convention, Cardano was recently honoured as the best DeFi project.

Key Takeaways

Here are the key takeaways:

• Analysts believe that Cardano will recover the recent drop below $2.
• Pointing a Metaverse by the founder Charles Hoskinson could be a big factor for the price to fall further.
• Cardano (ADA) secures the #5 spot on top cryptocurrencies, with a price of $1.77, market cap of $59,550,121,211, 24h volume of $1,464,894,647 and circulations supply of 33,313,246,915 ADA (74.03%).
• ADA was recognised as the best DeFi project at the AIBC summit.

What is Cardano (ADA)

Cardano is a blockchain network with its mainnet. Furthermore, the crypto may do anything it thought was essential for the network with no limitations. Notably, Cardano was built by the Input-Output Hong Kong corporation (IOHK) when it comes to platform development. Furthermore, the Cardano network intends to provide a platform for developers to implement smart contracts and decentralised apps. Cardano just updated to Goguen mainnet, a blockchain platform that provides token lock network functionality. Daedalus is the company's own crypto wallet where users can keep their coins safely.

Technicals of ADA

Cardano is being developed in five stages in order to provide a development platform. This platform will have a multi-asset ledger and verifiable smart contracts for decentralised apps (DApps). Here are the five stages:

1.     Foundation os Cardano ADA

Cardano's Phase 1 or Byron was the initial release for the general public in September 2017. In addition, the Daedalus desktop wallet and the ADA cryptocurrency were introduced by the business.

2.     Decentralization

In the second step, anybody might participate in the Cardano transaction verification process, making it decentralised. Shelley will start in June 2020.

3.     Smart Contracts

Smart contracts and decentralised apps will be available in Cardano's third era. The Alonzo update launch illustrates the Cardano Goguen era's plan. The Alonzo update was released in August 2021.

4.     Scaling

Basho intends to build sidechains for Cardano in order to increase its scalability even more. Therefore, the main blockchain will be divided into several smaller chains known as shards.

5.     Governance

Cardano's long-term ambition is to create an autonomous system that is not dependent on its parent firm, IOHK. Voltaire will unveil a full-fledged governance system in the next weeks, allowing users to vote on new features. Cardano will be able to construct a genuinely decentralised platform after the first phase is done.

Cardano (ADA) Price Analysis 2021

Cardano (ADA) is currently sitting on the number 5 top cryptocurrencies as of November 23, 2021.

Most analysts have bullish sentiment for Cardano (ADA) at this time. However, the correction isn't over in others' opinion, and a drop to $1.50 is imminent. That being said, let's break down Cardano's daily and weekly chart to see what are the major possibilities in terms of technical analysis.

Weekly Chart Breakdown of Cardano (ADA)

Source: TradingView

If we look at the weekly chart of Cardano/TetherUS, we can see that the price is currently in a channel after touching $1.71 support. Moreover, at this point, we can also see the bullish divergence with the relative strength index, which also indicates a bull market strongly. Weekly market sentiment seems bullish at the moment, and if the buyers can hold above $1.71 support, we might see a rally towards the all-time high of $3.1.

On the other hand, if the price breaks below the channel support, we might see $1.50, which is expected to be the last support (on daily) for it, before $1.0.

Daily Chart Breakdown of Cardano (ADA)

Source: TradingView

If we look at the daily chart, the price is in a perfect rising channel. A double bottom around $1.7 horizontal and channel support, which strongly indicates a rally towards $2.3 and a break above $2.3, will obviously result in the rally towards all times high $3.1.

On the other hand, a break below might result in a move towards $1.5, which is the next daily support.

Market sentiment for Cardano remains bullish at this point. If the fundamentals align with the technical, we might see a strong rally towards $4 in 2022.

Conclusion

Despite Cardano's price decline, this is not the endgame since price corrections are unavoidable for any cryptocurrency. Cardano would hopefully endure in order to restore its full performance and return to the top.

Ripple was sued by the US Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) in Dec 2020. The argument SEC made was that XRP issued by Ripple falls in the category of securities, not cryptocurrencies, which requires Ripple to abide by the regulations set by the SEC. The SEC argued that $1.38 billion gains made by Ripple in the past few years by selling its XRP coin could not be considered legal because it is not registered with SEC.

Ripple dropped a legal framework on Tuesday, which describes its approach towards cryptocurrency regulations in the US. "We believe clear communication and collaboration between private and public actors will be key in developing an effective policy framework for cryptocurrencies," Susan Friedman, Ripple Head of Public Policy, says.

A Real Approach To Cryptocurrency Regulation by Ripple

Here are the key takeaways from Ripple regulatory framework:

• There is a need for "active dialogue between regulators and market participants."
• The measures proposed to bring clarity for crypto regulations "in a way that an ad hoc, the regulation-by-enforcement approach simply cannot."
• Securities laws do not apply to certain cryptocurrencies. Therefore they might fall in the category of commodity assets and be looked over by CFTC.
• Cryptocurrency innovation sandboxes should be promoted and encouraged

Will A Settlement Be Possible Shortly Between Ripple And The SEC?

It's easy to wonder why to recommend the regulatory framework now unless Ripple aims to lay the basis for a post-settlement state of affairs with the SEC. There is a good probability that a settlement will be reached soon, and it stands to reason that Ripple will want a clear glide path for its operations to run smoothly in the future. However, the timing may be coincidental because an alphabet soup of government agencies appears to be wasting time and squabbling over domains of power affecting stablecoins and cryptos in general. Perhaps it is a quick response to Coinbase's regulatory framework, which was announced last month.

Regardless, Lawsuits do not last forever. It is a wise move that puts the SEC back on its heels with a tone to collaborate with public companies, lodging of current regs, and a vision for the longer future. You have to hand it to Ripple; they've continued to play the terrible card they were dealt when the SEC filed an action lawsuit in December of 2020. And the time is ticking for the SEC and, in particular, its Chair, Gary Gensler. From an optics and public relations standpoint, time is running out for the daring Gensler who needs a neutral answer shortly. The longer this case goes on for Gensler, the less chance he has of landing his long-stated dream job as Treasury Secretary.

Conclusion

Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen, Garlinghouse, and CTO David Schwartz have all expressed worry about the "patchwork" of rules that crypto businesses must cross in order to operate in the US. Despite the fact that the company's present headquarters being in San Francisco, officials have previously stated that they are considering leaving the United States for a "more friendly jurisdiction." Whether intentional or not, this approach is pushing the SEC legal battle into the court of public opinion and may force the SEC to compromise. A settlement would almost certainly be excellent news for Ripple and XRP holders.