Bitcoin and Ether traded without much fanfare Friday as the top crypto’s volatility continued its rapid decline. At press time, Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency by market volume, was trading at $16,983 after a 0.23% uptick in the past 24 hours.



On the other hand, Ether was exchanging hands at $1,272 after a 0.71% increase in the same period, according to CoinMarketCap data. Notably, the two cryptos continued to hold within a narrow range they have occupied since mid-December.



Other cryptos on the top-ten list of non-stablecoin cryptocurrencies continued to lose ground, with XRP, Dogecoin and MATIC plunging 2.90%, 3.78% and 2.77%, respectively, in the past day. The global cryptocurrency market capitalization increased by 0.74% to $830B, while the total crypto market volume dropped by 14.05% to $27.35B.



Cardano Leads in Gains



Cardano managed to shake off the weakness, surging by 5.66% in the past 24 hours to trade at $0.29 at press time. In the past seven days, ADA, the native token for the Cardano proof-of-stake blockchain, has grown by over 18%, making it the largest gainer among the top ten cryptos.



ADA’s growth has been attributed to a range of key factors, including the user trust that goes with the consistent growth of its ecosystem. Earlier this week, Cardano dApps completed 16 million transactions hitting a new milestone. On January 4, crypto payments giant processor CoinGate noted in a report that ADA entered the top ten most used cryptos list for the first time in 2022.



Large investors also seem to be helping buoy ADA prices as the token’s current prices offer attractive discounts. Crypto market intelligence platform Santiment Feed attributed ADA’s end-of-week mini-surge to aggressive buying by addresses holding between 1M to 100M ADA.



According to the firm, this group of investors have added back 217.2M ADA since Jan 1 2023, despite dumping 568.4M coins in the final two months of 2022. As per the firm, this cohort “may be a main validator to watch for a price breakout”, potentially sending the price back to $0.30.







FTX Contagion Continues To Shake Markets.



Although the crypto market seems to have priced in the events of the last two or so months, the FTX contagion continues to unravel, suppressing crypto prices further. Crypto bank Silvergate Capital became the latest casualty announcing on Thursday it was cutting 40% of its staff after facing US$8.1 billion in withdrawals sparked by the FTX failure in November.



Genesis Global Trading, one of the leading lenders in the industry, also reportedly cut its headcount by 305 and is considering filing for bankruptcy, according to a report by Wall Street Journal, which cited people familiar with the matter. On Friday, Digital Currency Group, the parent company of Genesis Global Trading, announced it is shutting down a wealth-management division called HQ due to, among other reasons, a “prolonged crypto winter.”