Cryptocurrency holders did not see much gains during the first week of May. While the market saw some positives in Dubai’s regulatory body finally awarding a cryptocurrency exchange an improved license over the provisional ones they have been issuing to virtual asset service providers (VASPs), negative news surrounded all sectors of the crypto economy.
The first-ever non-fungible token (NFT) insider case saw a conviction of a former OpenSea manager while Kenya proposed taxes on crypto and the Central Bank of Argentina also announced that it is halting the use of cryptocurrency in payment applications.
The aforementioned and others contributed to a bearish market from May 1 to 7. While JPEX supports many cryptocurrencies, Pepe (PEPE), Immutable X (IMX), Blur (BLUR), ApeCoin (APE), and Optimism (OP) were the digital assets that saw significant changes within the period.
Below is a thorough analysis of price movements, trading volume, market capitalization changes, and the price drivers that impacted them positively and negatively.
Pepe (PEPE) was the best-performing cryptocurrency on JPEX
JPEX made a huge announcement on Wednesday, May 3 with the listing of PEPE/USDT. “$PEPE is a coin for the people, forever. Fueled by pure memetic power, let’s $PEPE show you the way”, JPEX said in its blog post introducing PEPE into its ecosystem.
On Friday, May 5, JPEX announced a Pepe Sticker Design Competition to shed more light on the project. Coincidentally, PEPE reached a weekly high in daily trading volume of $2.4 billion on the same day.
This helped take the meme coin’s market capitalization to approximately $1 billion from virtually nothing.
Overall, the token benefitted primarily from extensive support from major cryptocurrency exchanges. For those interested in the numbers, PEPE exchanged hands for $0.000002594, as of writing after testing and reaching weekly high and low prices of $0.000004354 and $0.0000006961 respectively.
PEPE opened the week on Sunday, May 1 at $0.000000723, data from CoinMarketCap showed. PEPE increased by 259% over seven (7) days.
While PEPE brought gains, the remaining digital currencies brought double percentage losses to JPEX traders.
Blur (BLUR) worst-performing major cryptocurrency on JPEX
BLUR continues to disappoint despite the milestones achieved by its innovative technology in the form of the Blur NFT marketplace.
Numerous reports making rounds point to a substantial reduction in NFT trading volume and this could explain why liquidity on BLUR continues to drop weekly.
After opening the week on Sunday, May 1 with a trading price of $0.7138, the token reached a weekly high price of $0.7141 on the same day and tested a weekly low price of $0.5191 on Sunday, May 7. BLUR closed the week with a much-improved trading price of $0.5227.
Daily trading volume saw a plunge from $123 million to $65 million and this reflected negatively in market capitalization which also took a hit from $285 million to $240 million.
Over seven (7) days, BLUR holders saw a 27% decline in the worth of their holdings.
Immutable X (IMX) declined by 13% amid the fallen NFT market
Immutable X is an integral part of the Web3 market and has been forecasted to use its features to house several upcoming projects. Unfortunately, the downturn of the market in May has not bode well for the fortunes of Immutable X as an NFT blockchain, and its cryptocurrency IMX.
IMX NFTs sales volume fell by 9% during the week. The same effect was felt around its native asset. IMX descended by 13% during the week after daily trading volume fell below $30 million. Its market capitalization suffered a massive hit from $856 million to $792 million.
The token began the week on Sunday, May 1, with a trading price of $0.9904, reached a weekly high price of $0.9955 on the same day, tested a weekly low price of $0.8379 on Saturday, May 6, and traded for $0.8662, as of writing.
Optimism (OP) went down more than 10%
OP, the novel token of Optimism, is a layer two (2) blockchain on top of Ethereum. Optimism total value locked (TVL) declined to $904 million from $908 million.
OP suffered from an industry-wide bearish engulfing and this explained why it shed 11% of its price during the end of the week where it exchanged hands for $1.9277.
OP’s daily trading volume ranged from $67 million to $104 million and the decreased liquidity impacted OP badly.
After its opening of $2.1747, it reached a weekly low price of $1.8166 after soaring to a weekly high price of $2.1860 on Tuesday, May 2.
OP market capitalization succumbed to the trends of the market and saw a significant reduction of $50 million from $656 million to $606 million.
ApeCoin (APE) dwindled by 8%
APE is the novel token of the ApeCoin ecosystem. APE enjoyed a smooth ride in 2022 in large part to the projects it was connected with such as Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) and others. Unfortunately, the past two months and 2023, in particular, have not been fruitful for the cryptocurrency.
During the first week of May, APE was one of the worst-performing coins as it shed 8% of its value. The performance of other projects by Yuga Labs, developers of the token is not helping APE’s growth in the current crypto climate.
APEs market capitalization suffered a hit from $1.4 billion to $1.3 billion and daily trading volume traded within the smallest range ($39 million to $59 million) – not seen in a long time.
By the end of the week on Sunday, May 7, APE had a trading price of $.5913. The token reached weekly high and low prices of $3.9210 and $3.54 respectively and this came after it opened the week on Sunday, May 1 with a trading price of $3.8995, data from CoinMarketCap displayed.
