The crypto market moved up incrementally this week as it added about 0.08%, reflecting that the market is continuing to consolidate on renewed optimism. April had a solid month as it absorbed volatility and posted strong gains as institutional investors and patient investors were rewarded.
The Fear & Greed Index dropped a few points in the past week and currently sits at 49, a neutral stance. Investors are still cautious as they wait for clear signals which would spark increased buying activity. Some investors would see this level as a potential buy zone as they see these assets as undervalued. The market seems well positioned for further upside as there is a strong case for a continued bull run.
Bitcoin Moves Higher – More Gains to Follow?
Bitcoin had a strong month as it is up 21% and 5% for the past week and is currently trading around 80k USD. Volumes remained steady as several multi-billion-dollar trading sessions unfolded as the week progressed.
The main players were institutional investors as BTC ETFs recorded massive April inflows totaling 2.4b USD, the best month this year. BlackRock benefitted the most as they brought in almost 2b USD, sustaining the demand and reducing the supply on trading exchanges. BTC short liquidations hit 375m USD on May 4th as bears bet on BTC dropping in the last week. This mass BTC liquidation (short squeeze) triggered other liquidations across the market, as different sectors had incremental gains.
Is Ethereum Under Valued?
The overall market saw a slight uptick this week and Ethereum experienced a 4% increase, trading at 2.3k USD level. Analysts have stated that the coin is grossly undervalued when compared to several milestones in the industry. ETH boasts hosting 95% of all tokenized commodities which amounts to 5b USD, or 3x growth in the past year.
Blockchain development strategies were discussed at the Soldogn Interop event and over 100 ETH developers discussed the technical advances that the Glamsterdam upgrade will produce. The developers said the launch (tentatively June), will reduce mainnet gas fees to zero or near zero for years. The gas limit would raise transactions from 60m to 200m, increasing L1 capacity.
Another factor that would increase client performance is enhanced validator throughput, enabling massive volumes of data. All these factors support each other without compromising security, and the launch seems very deliberate and well timed, boosting ETH’s awareness during the current bullish trend.
DePIN Continues to Dominate Crypto Market
As the market matures and moves away from speculative environments into revenue generating financial infrastructures, DeFi has emerged as the sector of choice. The sector is driven by high yield opportunities, AI compute and real-world utility.
The 6-year-old Akash (AKT) is known for being the ‘AirBNB for servers’ and is up 28% in the last week. The company allows users to buy/sell computing resources, connecting providers that have spare capacity to those who need more computing power.
The company provides a decentralized cloud marketplace that leases CPUs, storage and GPUs for AI projects. AKT focuses on the hot AI sector, enabling developers to deploy, train and scale AI models at a fraction of other traditional providers (AWS, Google and Microsoft). Cost efficiency has elevated AKT’s market share as AI companies turn to alternative solutions to their computing issues.
A company that originally focused on supply chain transparency for food and pharmaceutical companies, has expanded its technology to include Knowledge Graph that integrates data from many sources and Web3 tracking (RWA assets – art/documentation). Trail Origin (TRAC) launched in 2018 but has expanded its protocol over the past 6 years that combines its decentralized knowledge graph with various blockchains, providing a secure and efficient framework for data sharing that is verifiable.
Industrial DeAI Utility and Revenue
AI sector continues to outperform the overall market because investors are moving toward AI branded narratives. The sector provides critical solutions to a variety of decentralized AI (DeAI) projects with real-world revenue. These DeAI projects have moved beyond the traditional inflationary tokenomics to GPU compute and agentic frameworks, which is providing the basis for the next wave of AI generation and future revenue.
Zerebro Powers Autonomous Content Across Social Media
Zerebro (ZEREBRO) is an AI agent that manages, creates and distributes content across blockchain platforms and social media without human interaction. The company integrates DeFi, generative AI and fictional narratives to influence real-world events through engagement on X, Telegram, Instagram, etc.
Zerebro falls into a subdivision of AI which is AI agent meta (autonomous agents) that meld memes and AI to drive social media narratives. It has gained a lot of attention because it an experiment that focuses on culture creation and outrageous narratives that is motivated by crypto’s media driven markets. The mix of speculation and technology has made Zerebro, the rogue AI, a sought-after token.
Tagger Tackles the AI Training Data Shortage
A company designated as a Decentralized Corporation (DeCorp) utilizes AI for data preparation, connecting AI developers with blockchain data, streamlining the data lifecycle is Tagger (TAG). It solves bottlenecks in AI development, verifying and labeling training data. This data can then be sold, bought or licensed through smart contracts.
The company fits well with the current AI narrative as training data is in a critical shortage and is up 116% in the last 7 days. A recent partnership with Huawei Cloud (and Stables Money) has also increased their profile in the crypto market. Tagger will work with Huawei to label unstructured data (photos/videos) so that it can be utilized for AI and generative AI models. The current situation for Tagger is one of real utility and some speculation which has made it a standout AI token.
Crypto Market Outlook Continues to Strengthen
The broader crypto market is gaining momentum with institutional investors propping up the ETF market and macroeconomic/geopolitical conditions improving for retail investors. The bullish trend is evolving as strong crypto projects with utility and sound fundamentals continue to emerge, pushing crypto to new higher levels.
