Crypto comeback marches on

Majors, altcoins, DeFi platforms, metaverse projects and meme coins all marched higher in a rally that continues to be a beacon for naysayers even as impressive returns pile up.

MANA, powering Decentraland, a Web3 game set in a virtual world, has spiked 82% in the past seven days, giving it the single-largest weekly gain among Top 100 digital assets. Rival SAND, coin of The Sandbox realm, gained 42% in that same span during which time came news that Apple was set to enter the metaverse space (Decrypt).

Another surging asset is Frax Share, an algorithmic-stablecoin-driven DeFi protocol connected with staking activities in the Ethereum universe. FXS is up 77% in the past week. It's the 62nd-largest token, per CoinGecko. Two weeks ago, FXS was fighting to stay above four dollars. Today it could hit ten.

As the World Economic Forum's annual conference gets underway in Davos, Switzerland, attendees can't help but notice a major difference from the last time the forum took place.

“You couldn’t walk more than five or ten feet without seeing a crypto house," said Ripple's Brooks Entwistle, describing for CoinDesk the various lounges, meeting rooms and stages that crypto projects commandeered during the 2022 event. That one was held in May, having been postponed five months from its usual mid-January slot because of Covid.

At this year's Davos, there are “far fewer companies present,” according to CoinDesk.

Conspicuously absent: NFT galleries and crypto-themed pizza stations. However, the industry still showed up at Davos, just in more low-key fashion. Those exhibitionists back for more discussion sponsoring and brand visibility, CoinDesk notes, include Circle, Casper Labs and the Filecoin Foundation.

On the main stages, expect stablecoins and central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) to be among the topics on which to be chewed by economists and luminaries who seem more consumed by a bigger-fish-to-fry debate over worrisome inflationary forces – specifically, China reopening following recent pandemic lockdowns and also the protracted Russia-Ukraine war.

Bitcoin gained 2% over the past 24 hours to reach about $21,200. It's a two-month high. FTX-chaos-related losses have been restored.

Risk assets generally are steaming beanpots stoked by growing suspicions of looser money around the bend. Rampant too are suspicions about the current rally's staying power, Cointelegraph said.

Theories about whales choreographing exit strategies have gained momentum alongside the largest digital asset. Analysts are nosing around order book compositions suggesting supply/demand dynamics skewed toward a short-term bid-up to exploit thin upside liquidity.

A CryptoQuant blog post flagged potential demand insufficiency, as evidenced by BTC moving back to exchanges for sale, while at the same time stablecoin supplies have dwindled.

“More demand is needed for the rally to be sustainable,” the CryptoQuant said.