Crypto markets were in mixed trading early Thursday morning, with Bitcoin and Ethereum little changed but some alternative coins recording gains of more than 10%.
Leading the rally among the top altcoins with market caps over $1 billion was NEAR, the token of a rival to the fast blockchain Ethereum, which surged 33% in 24 hours to hit an all-time high of $13.52.
As CoinDesk reported on Wednesday, the move comes after decentralized payments network Terra announced it would issue the UST stablecoin on the Near network, pegged 1:1 to the U.S. dollar.
“NEAR is [impressive] “This is a scaling solution that outperforms most available alternatives,” Jack Tao, CEO of cryptocurrency exchange Phemex, told CoinDesk over Telegram. “It won't be surprising to see more and more projects start to integrate or develop into this ecosystem, and with the release of the Aurora EVM solution, we expect to see even more growth in the coming years.”
According to data from CoinGecko, NEAR trading volume reached $1.3 billion on Wednesday. While the price surge triggered $6 million in liquidations in NEAR futures, this was a relatively small amount, suggesting the rally was primarily driven by spot traders.
Meme coin Shiba Inu (SHIB) was the best-performing among other large altcoins, with SHIB prices up 7% on Thursday morning as whales further increased their exposure.
Terra's native token, LUNA, hit an all-time high of $97 on Wednesday before falling 11% to $85 as of Thursday morning. The volatility has led to more than $10 million in liquidations in LUNA futures in the past 24 hours, according to data from CoinGlass.
LUNA’s drop comes after nearly a month of rising from $42, fueled by market-wide interest in Ethereum rivals such as Terra, Solana and Avalanche, as well as increased decentralized finance (DeFi) activity on the Terra network.
Other DeFi-centric tokens have experienced less volatility. DeFi refers to a financial system based on smart contracts on blockchain networks rather than centralized intermediaries for services such as lending, trading and borrowing.
According to data from DeFi Llama, Ethereum is currently the leader in the DeFi market, with over $155 billion locked in protocols on the network. Terra overtook Binance Smart Chain earlier this week to become the second-largest platform, with over $18.97 billion locked on its network.
Over the past 24 hours, the price of Polkadot’s DOT token rose 4% to $27, while Avalanche’s AVAX and Solana’s SOL both fell 2.5%, according to CoinGecko. Tokens for Ethereum-based decentralized exchange Uniswap (UNI) surged about 9% after developers announced they would launch the platform on Polygon, an Ethereum scaling solution with its own blockchain.
Another top gainer was lending protocol Aave, whose token surged 15% in the past 24 hours. The price surge came after Swiss bank SEBA offered to participate in Aave Arc, a permissioned DeFi product for institutional investors. The regulated bank said in a post that its clients are interested in accessing DeFi services via Aave and becoming active participants in the broader DeFi ecosystem.
Bitcoin fell 0.6% on Thursday after failing to break above $49,000 resistance, while Ether dropped 1.6% over the past 24 hours. These moves came as trading volumes on major centralized exchanges remained low ahead of the holiday season.
Similar trading conditions were seen in global markets during European trading hours on Thursday. Bloomberg reported that the Stoxx Europe 600 index, a European stock index that tracks 600 companies, as well as futures for the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 indexes, were little changed.
