Bitcoin and Ether rose on Friday morning in Asia, along with nearly all other top 10 non-stablecoin cryptocurrencies. Binance is jumping on the non-fungible token (NFT) lending bandwagon to take on Blur, which launched an NFT lending protocol earlier this month that’s now dominating the market. U.S. investors continue to monitor the country’s ongoing debt ceiling talks, with media reports saying negotiations are edging closer to a deal.
Nvidia boost for cryptocurrencies
Bitcoin rose 1.82% over the last 24 hours
to US$26,431 at 9:30 a.m. in Hong Kong, according to data from CoinMarketCap.
The world’s largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization was, however, down
1.53% over the past seven days.
Ether climbed 1.85% in the past 24 hours to
US$1,800. It remained little changed over the past week.
“This week, Bitcoin briefly dipped below
its two-week range between US$26,500 and US$27,000, now challenging the
critical 200-weekly moving average at $26,275,” said Rachel Lin, chief
executive officer of Singapore-based decentralized derivatives exchange
Synfutures.
“A close below this weekly range could
negatively impact Bitcoin and the broader crypto market, but a bounce from this
level could signify a possible recovery,” Lin added.
Litecoin was the biggest gainer in the past
day among the top 10 non-stablecoin cryptos. It rose 4.53% in the last 24 hours
to US$87.4, but it logged a 4.09% loss for the week.
Tron recorded the largest weekly rise among
the top 10 tokens, adding 9.38% for the week. However, it slid 0.17% in the
past 24 hours to US$0.07684. Cardano’s ADA token dipped 0.22% in the past day
and dropped 3.94% over the past week.
Meanwhile, the surge of interest in
chipmaker Nvidia – whose Nasdaq stock closed 24% higher on Thursday given its
strong first-quarter earnings results – has extended to the crypto space.
Tokens related to artificial intelligence are showing significant gains.
FET — which has a market capitalization of
US$193 million — is the native currency of AI-powered blockchain platform
Fetch.ai. It gained 4.13% over the past 24 hours.
Similarly, SingularityNET, the native coin
of the decentralized AI marketplace SingularityNET, rose 9% over the past day.
Render Token, the native coin of GPU-based rendering platform Render Network,
also added 3.31%.
Elsewhere, crypto exchange OKX announced
Thursday that it has upgraded its app to serve retail investors in Hong Kong.
The city’s new crypto trading framework is set to take effect on June 1.
OKX users in Hong Kong will soon be able to
trade 16 major cryptos, including Bitcoin and Ether.
Blur, Binance vie for top NFT lender status
The indexes are proxy measures of the
performance of the global NFT market. They are managed by CryptoSlam, a sister
company of Forkast.News under the Forkast.Labs umbrella.
In the non-fungible token (NFT) market, the
Forkast 500 NFT index slipped 0.94% to 3,336.45 in the 24 hours to 11:00 a.m.
in Hong Kong. The index was down 1.7% over the past seven days.
NFT sales on Ethereum fell 25.33% in the
past 24 hours to US$13.75 million, according to CryptoSlam data. Whereas, sales
on the Bitcoin blockchain rose 9.04% to US$2.2 million.
NFT lending has emerged as a major area of
competition between industry players, with Binance and Blur now vying for top
spot as the sector’s primary lender.
Binance, the world’s largest crypto
exchange, is betting big on NFT lending. On Thursday it launched an NFT loan
feature that, it says, “merges the NFT and DeFi spaces to provide liquidity to
NFT owners through collateral-based loans.”
The move builds on Binance’s launch of its
own NFT marketplace in June 2021.
Blur — an NFT marketplace that rose to
prominence earlier this year with its zero-fee transaction model — introduced
its own NFT lending protocol Blend on May 1. It has since cornered 82% of the
NFT lending market, according to a Thursday report from blockchain data firm
DappRadar.
The report reveals that Blend handled a
total loan volume of 169,900 Ether (roughly US$305.8 million) in its first 22
days.
“Blur continues to push forward innovation
in bringing products and tools to traders, and NFT-lending options are an
important part of the development and maturation of the NFT space as a whole,”
said Brendan Humphries, head of business at Pine Protocol, a peer-to-protocol
NFT lending platform, via email.
Humphries added that Blur’s governance
framework and its token incentives have allowed it to capture dominant market
share in its emerging rivalry with other NFT marketplaces such as OpenSea.
“The continuous nature of Blend’s loans has
proven attractive to traders seeking additional leverage,” Humphries said.
“Products like Blend contribute to the continued maturation of the NFT market,
increase market efficiency, and make the space more attractive to new entrants
seeking sophisticated products and tools.”
Elsewhere, Pudgy Penguins, an Ethereum NFT
collection launched in July 2021, gained momentum with a 24.34% rise in the
past 24 hours. That made it the 14th most sold collection with US$280,680 in
daily sales. Those gains follow the project’s release of new physical action
figures on May 19. Over 20,000 of the figures sold in the first two days.
Additionally, sportswear brand Nike’s
virtual creation debut has received positive industry reactions. Its Force 1
NFT sneaker collection — which went on sale from Wednesday — sold over 55,000
pieces to over 30,000 unique members in the first day via the brand’s own NFT
platform .SWOOSH.
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