Ethereum price continues downward spiral while a major competitor posts gains of 50%
Ethereum's performance reflects the bearish mood of crypto investors globally, with the market cap of the sector down more than 30% since November 2021.
- ETH has continued to register daily losses over the past week.
- Cardano (ADA) has rallied by nearly 50% since 12 January thanks to the release of a new decentralised exchange (DEX) called SundaeSwap.
- Prominent NFT marketplace OpenSea completed the successful purchase of decentralised finance (DeFi) lending protocol Dharma Labs earlier this week.
Ethereum, the world's second-largest cryptocurrency by total market capitalisation, has continued to regress monetarily over the last couple of weeks, registering losses of nearly 17% since the start of the new year. At press time ETH is trading at AUD$4,394.
The altcoin seems to be following in the footsteps of the market at large, which continues to be engulfed by a bearish mood since 8 November 2021. Despite this, ETH's fundamentals appear to be quite strong, with the altcoin still showcasing annualised profits of over 150% while maintaining a solid market cap of over AUD$520 billion (US$375 billion).
As the market continues to suffer, Binance coin (BNB) has been on the receiving end of a massive financial wipeout too, having lost a whopping 33% of its value since hitting its all-time high of US$692 during Q2 2021. Analysts believe that with traders currently shorting BNB futures' short positions, more dips may be witnessed for the token over the coming few weeks.
Cardano rallies prior to SundaeSwap launch
Even as the total market cap of the crypto sector continues to dip, leaving a vast majority of prominent altcoin projects on the receiving end of heavy losses, Cardano (ADA) has seen its value rise to a 21-day high of AUD$2.12 (US$1.52). It lead many pundits to predict that a trend reversal may be on the cards for the highly touted digital asset.
The bounce-back comes in the wake of the release of a DEX called "SundaeSwap" that has been built atop the Cardano ecosystem. As soon as news of the launch went live on 17 January, ADA's price spiked by over 11%, taking its price to a relative high of AUD$2.23 (US$1.60) before showcasing a minor correction. ADA's price has jumped by nearly 50% over the last week alone.
OpenSea acquires prominent DeFi platform Dharma Labs
Prominent NFT marketplace OpenSea announced earlier this week that it had completed the acquisition of crypto wallet and lending platform Dharma Labs for an undisclosed amount. As a result, the latter's co-founders Nadav Hollander and Brendan Forster will be stepping down from their existing roles and taking over as OpenSea's new CTO and strategy head respectively.
According to a representative for OpenSea, the move seeks to help the platform expand its footprint — primarily in terms of safety and reliability — within the global NFT and Web 3.0 ecosystems.
Interested in cryptocurrency? Learn more about the basics with our beginner's guide to Bitcoin, dive deeper by learning about Ethereum and see what blockchain can do with our simple guide to DeFi.
Disclosure: The author owns a range of cryptocurrencies at the time of writing.
