NEAR surges on user growth, LUNA loses 10% after peg drop

The crypto market is mostly bearish with the majority of top 100 coins in the red at the time of writing. The new reality of heightened recessionary fears and higher interest rates shook crypto markets over the weekend.

Top cryptos

Bitcoin and Ethereum plummeted over the weekend as concerns over rising interest rates and the possibility of a recession escalated. At the time of publication, Bitcoin had lost around 3%, trading just above $33,500. 

Ethereum, the second biggest crypto by market cap, was down 4%, bringing its losses over the past 7 days to 14%.

The rest of the top ten cryptocurrencies were also in the red. Terra’s LUNA dropped by 10% yesterday evening after its stablecoin UST briefly lost its peg to the USD. Its losses for the past 7 days now total 26%.   

Cryptos outside the top 10 did not fare any better, with most down 3-7%. Notable exceptions are Tron and NEAR Protocol, up 3% and 10% resp. 

TRON has been in the spotlight over the past few weeks because of its much anticipated USDD stablecoin.

Its bull run started at the end of April, when the ecosystem announced investment initiatives in Suriname among other exciting developments.

NEAR Protocol reported that 500,000 new accounts had been created on its platform in a single day. NEAR has continued to rally since and was up around 10% at the time of writing. 

Top movers

Outside the top 20, most coins were lower. The biggest losers are Kava (-9%) and Maker, AAVE, and ApeCoin, down around 8% each. 

ApeCoin, which showed great promise, is also one of the week’s biggest losers. It has shed 31% of its value in the last 7 days.  

The top 100 is not without gainers: Monero (+5%), Waves (+4%), XDC Network and ICON (+3% each), and Celo with modest gains of 2%. Monero’s hash rate is over 40% and rising. 

Trending

The biggest winner today is MetaPay, which is trading for $0.000034 and has gained 547% in the last 24 hours. MetaPay is a token that can be used to shop in the Metaxion metaverse.