The second full week of February which culminated in the celebration of St. Valentine’s Day was fruitful for many traders and investors.
During the week, a local regulator in the form of New York’s Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) ordered Paxos to stop issuing the stablecoin Binance United States Dollar (BUSD).
Aside from this, Shopify launched a suite of blockchain commerce tools tailored to the needs and interests of NFT merchants.
Moreover, Wirex announced that it has become a global partner of the popular payment processing company Visa and continues to make strong moves in the Asia Pacific (APAC) region.
While much news content did not favor all cryptocurrencies, Filecoin (FIL), Klaytn (KLAY), Internet Computer (ICP), Astar (ASTR), and Curve DAO (CRV) were among the best-performing cryptocurrencies within the period.
Filecoin (FIL) soars more than 50%
As one of the most used decentralized storage systems in the market today, the mission of Filecoin is to store humanity’s most important information.
During the week, it was announced that the protocol will be launching Filecoin Virtual Machine (FVM) in March 2023, and this will activate smart contracts and user programmability on its blockchain.
The news impacted FIL positively as it reached a weekly high of $7.90 on Saturday, February 18, after testing a low of $4.71 on Monday, February 13 when it opened the week at $5.10 on Sunday, February 12.
FIL closed the week on Saturday, February 18 with a trading price of $7.51. As investor interest soared, daily trading volume rose from a minimum of $127 million to a maximum of $1.5 billion. FIL’s market cap increased in the process to $2.9 billion from $1.9 billion on its opening day. Overall, FIL soared by 54% in seven days.
Internet Computer (ICP) ascends more than 40%
When Internet Computer hit the market in May 2021, it marketed itself as the protocol that would be disrupting every part of the internet. Unfortunately, the price of its native asset in the form of ICP has not traded within the price range of its opening month.
The coin seems to be on a rebound as it spiked 47% during the second full week of February on the back of a major exchange listing.
In crypto, price drivers come about through the listing of a coin or token by a major exchange, availability for staking services, and the adoption of a crypto asset as transactional currency by major corporations.
On Wednesday, February 15, Poloniex added ICP to its list of supported assets. This led to the coin soaring to a weekly high price of $7.47 on Friday, February 17. ICP opened at $5.27 on Sunday, February 12, tested a weekly low price of $5.20 on its opening day, and closed the week at $7.07 on Saturday, February 18.
ICP’s daily minimum trading volume was $48 million and its maximum trading volume stood at $262 million. Market capitalization rose from $1.6 billion to $2 billion over the period.
Astar (ASTR) rose above 40%
As a decentralized application (dApp) hub on the Polkadot network that supports layer 2 solutions such as ZK Rollups, WebAssembly, and Ethereum, Astar Network has the mission of being a multi-chain smart platform that will support virtual machines and multiple blockchains.
On Friday, February 17, Astar Network announced a partnership with Sony Network Communications that will foster a Web3 incubation program.
According to Astar, this incubation program will foster cutting-edge Web3 use cases using the knowledge and resources of Sony and Astar. Participants across the globe can partake in this program which will run from March to June 2023.
The impact on the ASTR price was instant as the token soared to a weekly high of $0.1145 on Friday, after opening the week at $0.0799 on Sunday and testing a weekly low of $0.07254 on Monday, February 13.
ASTR closed the week at $0.1048 on Saturday, February 18. The trading volume for ASTR rose from a daily low of $18 million to a daily high of $132 million and market capitalization also ascended to $433 million from $305 million.
Within seven days, ASTR had risen by 43%.
Klaytn (KLAY) increased by over 30%
As a blockchain with a primary focus on gaming finance (GameFi), the creator economy, and the metaverse, Klaytn is a South Korean-based company that continues to expand its businesses across the globe.
As a public blockchain that has positioned itself as a metaverse-oriented platform, its native asset KLAY has been seeing impressive daily trading volume which has positively impacted its value.
Klaytn total value locked (TVL) has also been affected positively by consistent interest in its price.
Decentralized applications such as KlaySwap, Kleva Protocol, KLAYstation, Stake.ly, NEOPIN, and KalyBank have contributed to more than $198 million in assets locked up in the public blockchain.
The blockchain was also featured in the Top 50 blockchains by Forbes Crypto for the third consecutive year.
KLAY opened on Sunday with a price of $0.1956, spiked to a weekly high price of $0.2787 on Saturday, and tested a weekly low price of $0.1894 on Monday, February 13.
As of the close of the week on Saturday, February 18, KLAY had a price of $0.2694. Within the period, daily trading volume moved from a low of $22 million and a high of $233 million while market capitalization soared to $836 million from $598 million. KLAY went up by 38%.
Curve DAO (CRV) spiked by 30%
As a decentralized exchange (DEX) for stablecoins that thrives on the automated market maker (AMM) to manage liquidity, Curve DAO is an integral part of the decentralized finance revolution.
Its novel token CRV was among the best DeFi tokens within the period. CRV rose by 30% in seven days after the coin opened and closed at $0.9589 and $1.25 respectively.
CRV reached a weekly high price of $1.26 on Saturday while testing a weekly low price of $0.902.
CRV daily trading volume increased to a weekly high of $303 million after seeing a weekly low of $58 million.
In the process, market capitalization increased from $675 million to $915 million.
Aside from the five cryptocurrencies mentioned, Flow (FLOW), VeChain (VET), Polygon (MATIC) Eos (EOS), and Polkadot (DOT) were among the digital assets that brought decent gains to investors within the period.