TLDR: BTC and ETH continues to climb up. Bitcoin dominance stays stagnant. Hot coins we look at are AVAX, HNT & STRD.

BTC & ETH Market Update 📈

Prices are up on the weekly, with BTC up 4.6% and ETH 3.6%.

Bitcoin dominance is more or less on par with how the week started, peaking at 52% ending the week around 50%. It’s starting to look more and more bullish both for mid and low cap coins, where capital often flows to when Bitcoin dominance has peaked.

The Bitcoin halving is coming up end of March or beginning of April 2024, and if history is any guidance we will continue to see BTC dominance climb up until after Bitcoin halving, whereafter people start to look for higher return moving further on the risk curve entering altcoins. This typically starts with ETH, and then on to mid- and low cap coins. Other coins being moved into are typically “ETH killers” like SOL, XRP or ADA. Yet ETH is still king amongst altcoins.

A natural result of BTC dominance dropping slightly at the end of the week is the BTC/ETH ratio also increasing further sitting at 18.6 ETH per BTC, underlining that BTC continues to be king in crypto.

Hot Coins 🪙 

This week’s top three coins we are following:

• High cap ($1B+): AVAX

• Mid cap ($200M-$1B): HNT

• Low Cap ($0-$200M): STRD

AVAX (Avalanche)

The rapid rise in token price seems to be fueled by the AI portfolio management talk and a renewed interest in Avalanche subnets, where developers on the chain have the ability to build custom blockchains called subnets.

These subnets are scaling solutions akin to the layer-2 solutions implemented by Bitcoin and Ethereum but possess distinct differences in their design and performance, affording complete control over the programmability of their networks.

This includes the customization of tokens, fee structures, and rules, aligning with specific project requirements or regulatory compliance, and it is this aspect that will drive Avalanche to wide-spread adoption in the near future.

As a result, the Avalanche network has seem a positive spike in fees generated, and the price of AVAX has followed the same positive trend as a result:

HNT (Helium Network)

We've seen a 200% increase in the price of HNT over the last month, and with the latest announcement of Helium Mobile the future looks promising

Helium Mobile promises nationwide $20/month Unlimited Phone Plan! The average American spends $157/month on their phone plan, but with Helium Mobile, anyone in the US can join Helium Mobile & say goodbye to overpriced bills!

The price of HNT has jumped over this past week from $2.8 to currently $4.8:

It will be exciting to see Helium Network continue to build a decentralised network powering the internet, and the HNT price climb up together with the widespread adoption of the Helium Network.

STRD (Stride Protocol)

Stride is a protocol for multichain liquid staking in the Cosmos ecosystem

The TVL of Stride is exploding these days, surpassing $75M as they announced on X:

Similar to KUJI that we mentioned last week, eventually the price of the native STRD token will break out to catch up to the TVL growth, and this is exactly what has happened with STRD:

Despite STRD’s recent run, the price of the token still looks attractive to us when you compare the market cap to TVL, where the ratio is only sitting at $74.7M / $173M = 0.43.

Compare that to SOL (Solana) that has also been performing really well, the ratio sits at $893M / $30.5B = 0.03!

Now, TVL to market cap is not the only factor that drives price, obviously. That said, it there has been a correlation between the two - especially when it comes to liquid staking protocols.