After an eventful and highly volatile trading week, bitcoin’s price movements calmed during the weekend, and the asset sits quietly at $63,000.

Most altcoins have also stalled on a daily scale, but the weekly timeframe shows some impressive gainers from the likes of TAO, SUI, APT, and others.

Bitcoin Stalls at $63K

The week started with a price decline that drove BTC from over $60,000 to under $58,000. More volatility was expected mid-week when the US Federal Reserve met to discuss lowering the interest rate. Once that meeting took place and the US central bank cut the rates by 0.5%, BTC went on a rollercoaster with several big moves.

However, the bulls prevailed after the fluctuations and pushed the cryptocurrency from under $59,500 to over $64,000 registered on Friday. It became bitcoin’s highest price tag in over three weeks.

Nevertheless, the asset failed to maintain its run and retraced by just over a grand. Since then, it has been predominantly trading sideways at around $63,000. Still, it’s up by 4.6% on a weekly scale, which has pushed its market capitalization to just over $1.240 trillion.

Its dominance over the alts, though, has declined by 1% in the past few days to 54% (on CG) after soaring to 55% earlier this week.

Top Gainers

As mentioned above, the week quite well for most crypto assets. Ethereum is up by 7% in this timeframe and sits close to $2,700 now. SOL has increased by a similar percentage and is up to $147. BNB (5.5%) is above $585, SHIB has soared by 6%, while AVAX has gained almost 10% and trades north of $27.

Nevertheless, the top gainers from the larger-cap alts are TAO (47%), SUI (37%), and APT (28%). As a result, TAO sits at $477, SUI is close to $1.5, and APT trades at $7.85.

The total crypto market cap has added over $100 billion since last Sunday and is up to $2.3 trillion on CG now.

The Wrapped Bitcoin market is seeing the emergence of new players, like Coinbase, the largest American crypto exchange. Analysts believe the market’s current condition presents an opportunity for higher user engagement, enhanced cross-chain liquidity, and significant growth in the coming years.

However, observations made in the latest CryptoQuant report suggest the race may not be smooth, and investors may be reluctant to use some tokens because of the mechanisms used by the custodians.

The Emergence of New Wrapped Bitcoin Tokens

Wrapped Bitcoin tokens enable holders to use other networks and decentralized finance (DeFi) applications that are not on the Bitcoin network without selling their BTC. They are backed 1:1 with BTC and are mostly found on Ethereum. The first of its kind, WBTC, was created in 2019 by digital asset infrastructure provider BitGo. It is currently the largest Wrapped Bitcoin in the market, with a circulating supply of 153,000.

Other types of Wrapped Bitcoin were launched in 2020, including HTX exchange’s HBTC, the Threshold Network’s tBTC, and the Ren Protocol’s renBTC. Coinbase’s cbBTC is the latest in the market, and it is found on the Ethereum layer-1 network and the exchange’s layer-2 protocol Base.

Coinbase launched cbBTC on September 12, and within a week, the token became the third-largest Wrapped Bitcoin in the market, surpassing HBTC and renBTC. CryptoQuant analysts found that 64% of the token’s supply on Ethereum is on the decentralized exchange (DEX) Uniswap. The token has been deposited in pools to provide liquidity for several trading pairs like cbBTC/WBTC and cbBTC/USDC.

Issues and Criticisms

The Coinbase Wrapped Bitcoin has a circulating supply of roughly 1,670 cbBTC ($101 million), with 941 cbBTC directly on Ethereum and 729 on Base. While cbBTC has unlocked a range of financial opportunities and offers holders access to trading, lending, borrowing, and yield farming on DEXs, the token has faced criticism from the community.

Unlike BitGo, which publishes the list of addresses holding the BTC backing WBTC on the Bitcoin network, Coinbase has refused to disclose the same information for cbBTC. This has made it impossible for any user to remotely verify that the BTC backing up cbBTC actually exists on the Bitcoin blockchain.

“Other criticisms have surfaced because the cbBTC smart contract administrator can blacklist addresses from transferring, minting, and burning cbBTC. This could imply a risk for cbBTC users that their holdings could be frozen,” CryptoQuant said.

TL;DR

• Santiment ranked Oasis Network (ROSE) as the top AI cryptocurrency in development activity.
• Despite its 80% price rally over the past month, Artificial Superintelligence Alliance (FET) did not make the list.

The Leaderboard

Artificial Intelligence (AI) cryptocurrencies have been quite trendy lately due to the rising prices of many of the tokens encompassing that niche. The crypto analytics platform Santiment recently ranked the top 10 such assets in terms of monthly development activity, and in the following lines, we will present the results.

Oasis Network (ROSE) took first place with a score of 85.07. Near Protocol (NEAR), the largest AI-related cryptocurrency by market capitalization, occupied the second place. It is worth mentioning that the coin topped the previous ranking.

The Graph follows next in third place, whereas Oraichain (ORAI) and Bittensor (TAO) are fourth and fifth, respectively.

The rest of the AI cryptocurrencies down the line include Ocean Protocol (OCEAN), Golem (GLM), Aleph.im (ALEPH), Masa (MASA), and iExec RLC (RLC). 

To conduct its research, Santiment touches upon numerous factors, such as tracking GitHub commits and code activity for development insights, monitoring on-chain data and observing social media trends to gauge community and market perceptions.

Which One is Missing?

It is interesting to note that one of the largest AI cryptocurrencies, with a market cap of over $4 billion, did not make the list. This is the Artificial Superintelligence Alliance (FET), which was formed by the merger of three major AI-related blockchain platforms: Fetch.ai, SingularityNET, and Ocean Protocol.

The asset’s price has been rallying lately, registering an 80% rise on a monthly scale. It currently trades at around $1.60 (per CoinGecko’s data), with some analysts envisioning much more substantial gains in the future.

Crypto Rover (a popular X user with over 800,000 followers), for instance, predicted FET could be “a great play this cycle,” seeing its price exploding to as high as $10 in the following months. Captain Faibik contributed, too, setting a midterm target of $3.90.

$FET Descending Broadening Wedge Upside Breakout is finally Confirmed..✅

Midterm Target : 3.90$#Crypto #FET #FETUSDT pic.twitter.com/QF4xkcVSWk

— Captain Faibik (@CryptoFaibik) September 20, 2024