The lead-up to the first week of March was an exciting time for many traders and investors who locked in gains and took off with profits made in the first two months of 2023.
On March 1, JPEX made the first JPC Buy Back and Burn announcement for the year. The Buy Back and Burn is a strategy that has been adopted by JPEX to reduce the number of JPC tokens in circulation. This will help decrease the number of cryptocurrencies available to traders which will make them scarce and result in a price spike in the future.
It was also reported that payment processing giants Visa and Mastercard have paused the launch of certain products related to the cryptocurrency industry. Within hours, Cuy Sheffield, an executive at Visa came out strongly to deny the reports pointing out that despite the unprofitability of the market created by crypto winter, Visa is still holding on firmly and will continue to develop its crypto ecosystem.
While some cryptocurrencies traded in the green, the last days of February which gave birth to the first week of March were not kind to many digital currencies.
On JPEX, MakerDAO (MKR), Eos (EOS), and Immutable X (IMX) brought double-digital percentage gains while Klaytn (KLAY) and Optimism (OP) also brought double-digital losses to traders.
Below is a review of the performance of the aforementioned cryptocurrencies within a seven (7) – day period (Sunday, Feb. 26 to Saturday, March 4).
MakerDAO (MKR) increased by more than 20%
MKR, the novel token of Maker Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO), a platform that enables users to issue and manage the DAI stablecoin rose by around 21% within seven days.
While total value locked (TVL) has seen a significant reduction ever since Terra Luna plunged to irrecoverable zones in May 2022, MakerDAO TVL has increased to more than $7 billion from a little over $6 billion at the start of the year.
MKR opened on Sunday, February 26 with a trading price of $706.32 and increased by 34% to a weekly high price of $949.50 on Friday, March 3. Although the token tested a weekly low value of $704.78 on Feb. 26, it closed the week on Saturday, March 4 with a much-improved price of $858.01.
With traders and investors interested in decentralized applications (dApps) and decentralized finance (DeFi) tokens pouring liquidity into the cryptocurrency, MKR trading volume increased from a weekly low of $45 million to a weekly high of $111 million.
In the process, MKR’s market capitalization also rose from $758 million on the opening day to $839 million.
Eos (EOS) spiked by 19%
As one of the smart contract protocols that continues to show promise in an ever-growing sector where new blockchain technologies are added to the market daily, Eos has done well in remaining relevant in this saturated market.
EOS is the native asset of Eos, an open-source blockchain platform that gives credence to security, flexibility, high performance, and developer experience.
Like MKR, EOS benefitted strongly from its ties to the DeFi world and has also seen a great ascension in value locked from $87 million on January 1 to around $124 million on March 4.
EOS opened on Sunday, February 26 with a trading price of $1.11 and tested a weekly low of $1.10 on the same day.
With trading volume moving from a daily low of $85 million to a daily high of $470 million, EOS reached a weekly high of $1.33 on March 3 and 4 and eventually closed the week on Saturday, March 4 at a new trading price of $1.22.
While 19% gains will be considered mild for a cryptocurrency, it took the project’s market capitalization from $1.2 billion to $1.32 billion.
Immutable X (IMX) rose by 16%
As one of the most popular metaverse and non-fungible token (NFT) – related cryptocurrencies in the market, IMX continued to catch the eye of traders during the week.
IMX is the novel token of Immutable X, a platform that refers to itself as the first layer-two scaling solution for NFTs on the biggest digital collectibles platform of all time by sales volume in the form of Ethereum. Immutable X is among the biggest NFT platforms by sales volume and the renewed interest in NFTs in February resulted positively in the price of its native asset.
After opening at $0.961 on February 26, IMX reached a weekly high price of $1.12 on Wednesday, March 1.
Before that, the crypto asset had tested a weekly low price of $0.9396 on Monday, February 27, and eventually closed the week with a much-improved value of $0.9896 on Saturday, March 4.
IMX trading volume rose from a daily low of $20 million to a daily high of $108 million.
The 16% spike in price also resulted in a slightly improved market value from $811 million to $841 million.
Klaytn (KLAY) and Optimism (OP) both shed a quarter of their respective values
Although many traders believe the crypto market should always resort to gains, unfavourable market conditions can lead many projects to take periodic nosedives. This is what happened to Klaytn and Optimism.
As a public blockchain with a primary focus on gaming finance (GameFi), the metaverse, and the creator economy, Klaytn remains South Korea’s most dominant blockchain platform. KLAY is the coin behind the project and decreased by 25% within the period.
The coin reached a weekly high price of $0.3081 on Sunday, February 26 after opening at $0.2781 on the same day. The cryptocurrency tested a weekly low of $0.2283 and followed this low up by closing at $0.2321 on Saturday, March 4.
Much of the plunge in the coin’s price was attributed to a slash in trader demand which was reflected in falling trading volumes from $160 million to $42 million. KLAY’s market capitalization also plunged from $945 million to $714 million.
Optimism commands nearly $1 billion in total value locked from dApps such as Velodrome, Synthetix, Curve, Aave, Beefy, Uniswap, PoolTogether, Soone Finance, Stargate, and KyberSwap among others.
It continues to use the possibilities of its layer-two blockchain to scale most applications deployed on Vitalik Buterin’s innovative platform.
OP was among the worst-performing cryptocurrencies on JPEX.
The token reached a weekly high price of $3.03 on its opening day on Sunday, February 26, and closed the week on Saturday, March 4 at $2.36 after testing a weekly low of $2.26 on the same day. Overall, OP brought a 25% loss to its holders.
Others such as The Sandbox (SAND) and Theta Network (THETA) were among the worst-performing cryptocurrencies within the period (February 28 to March 4) largely due to a bearish market outlook.