Crypto's Red Relapse

Trending down. Crypto assets shook the downturn and managed to eke out a green candle last week, but are at risk of relapsing into the all too familiar red pattern that has afflicted price since April. What happened this week in markets, and where is the outsized upside?

With BTC yet again pressed against the bottom of its local range and funding rates remaining at relatively healthy levels, bulls can get comfortable entries here if markets are to maintain their uptrend, but should remain cognizant that a break of $60k support will extend the downside.

While gains made by the total crypto market lagged behind those of BTC last week, Bitcoin dominance fell slightly this week, which can clearly be observed through strength from a smattering alts amid the broader down week.

Two of the leading projects enabling decentralized compute sharing, Akash and Render Network, managed to decouple themselves from Nvidia’s performance this week, ranking among the best performing coins despite relatively flat performance from the AI heavyweight.

Additionally, The Open Network (TON), a blockchain originally created by popular messaging application Telegram, was a top performer, rallying over 22% off crypto fund Pantera’s May 8 announcement that it had made the token its largest investment ever.

Unfortunately for Ethereans, their chosen asset sat out on the altcoin rally this week, with the token not only plunging over 10% from its weekly high in dollar terms but also losing relative strength in the ETH/BTC ratio.

News that ARK Invest had removed staking from its pending spot ETH ETF application – a feature not considered in the approval process for spot BTC ETFs and one whose inclusion could derail an application’s approval – caused the odds of approval to surge to 18% on Polymarket.

Although some traders interpreted the move as an indication that approval for non-staking applications may be imminent, it seems participants in more liquid markets continue to brace for denial, considering the relatively unchanged nature of the ETH/BTC ratio following the news and the continued slide of the pair ahead of the SEC’s first final decision deadline on May 23.