Cryptocurrencies To Watch: Week of March 6

Keep an Eye on These Coins

The cryptocurrency market is holding tight at its current ranges. News of crypto bank Silvergate Capital (SI) potentially being investigated by the U.S. Department of Justice and delaying its annual report sent ripples through the market late last week, but may not have a significant impact. On the whole, it was a middling week for crypto.

This week, we examine Maker (MKR), Synthetix (SNX), XDC Network (XDC), ImmutableX (IMX), and EOS (EOS). In selecting these assets, we have considered several factors, including positive technical developments, major news events, and noticeable changes in price.

Maker (MKR)

Maker (MKR) was one of the week’s biggest gainers, thanks to a potentially major development. Maker is a decentralized finance (DeFi) project that provides an ecosystem with various financial products, including its stablecoin, DAI.

There are reports that the MKR governance token—which is used for voting—may soon be allowed to be used to borrow DAI by holders that have delegated their governance power. This news likely pushed the MKR token up by more than 20%. MKR was priced at $768 seven days ago and is now hovering at around $929 (see chart below).

Synthetix (SNX)

Synthetix (SNX) nearly 20%, possibly in response to the news that 22 new crypto tokens had been added to its perpetual futures market. The market allows trading of perpetual crypto futures contracts, which leverage the benefits of decentralized technology.

Synthetix also released Version 3 of its platform in late February, adding more utility and better performance to the platform. The Synthetix protocol allows the issuance of synthetic assets—or tokenized derivatives—on open-source blockchain Ethereum and offers many other derivatives. SNX was priced at $2.62 last week and is now trading around $3.15 (see chart below).

XDC Network (XDC)

The XDC Network’s coin advanced by 15%, possibly because a partnership with sustainable liquidity protocol Fathom was announced. The partnership will involve lending platform Fathom offering a method through which users can borrow and earn XDC coins, as well as real-world assets that will serve as collateral to borrow Fathom’s FXD token.

The premise behind the Fathom partnership is to offer higher returns than other lending platforms. It is also expected to increase the utility and liquidity of XDC. The XDC coin was valued at $0.026 last week and is now priced at around $0.030 (see chart below).

ImmutableX (IMX)

ImmutableX (IMX) increased by about 10% after Wagyu Games Executive Director Grant Haseley launched a Kill to Earn game called “Undead Blocks” on the network. The game lets players earn ZBUX tokens, which are a digital currency that can be used to acquire rare weapons and character skins in the game, or special weapon nonfungible tokens (NFTs) for killing zombies.

Haseley said that the game experienced sizable participation while in beta mode, with more than 100,000 players in the last quarter. ImmutableX is a popular platform for Web3 games and uses a second-layer scaling (a layer built on top of the original blockchain) to boost transaction performance. IMX was priced at 96 cents last week and is now valued at around $1.06 (see chart below).

EOS (EOS)

The EOS network, which has been viewed as a competitor to the Ethereum blockchain, is experiencing a potential comeback amid several developments in its ecosystem. EOS is a platform for decentralized apps that uses the Delegated Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus method, which is known for its scalability for transaction processing. The token gained about 8% in the latest week.

The EOS Network Foundation has outlined plans for the ecosystem that include an upgrade to the consensus mechanism, which is the way in which a blockchain’s state is agreed upon by its participants.

The network is also experiencing an increase in daily transactions, rising to 1.3 million daily, year-to-date, and 38,000 daily active addresses according to crypto analysis platform Messari. EOS is averaging 1,785 new addresses per day, although that’s a decline from 2022 (when it averaged more than 2,600 new addresses daily) and 2021 (when it recorded almost 13,000 new addresses a day). Last week, EOS traded around $1.11, and it is now stands at approximately $1.21 (see chart below).