TON gets a boost

The Toncoin (TON) ecosystem growing up around Telegram suddenly seems that much more boundless. Bitget, a crypto exchange, in conjunction with Foresight Ventures, a Singapore-based investment firm, is launching a $20 million TON fund designed to "fully support project development within the TON ecosystem," the firms jointly announced, according to Cointelegraph.

With an $18.4 billion market capitalization, TON is the ninth-largest digital asset, per CoinGecko's chart of biggest cryptos. Total value locked (TVL) in the TON realm has grown fivefold to reach $600 million. And that's just in the past two months. Among the Top 20 coins, TON has turned in the top one-week performance mark (+8%) amidst a bruising crypto come down that seems to have finally leveled off.

The largest crypto, Bitcoin, has gained 0.2% in the past 24 hours as of 7:55 a.m. (EST). BTC crawling close to $61,400 is perhaps a gut check moment. And it comes as bears and bulls get ready to stage a quarter-end wrestling event that could be on par with the late '90s WWE heyday (e.g., when "Stone Cold" Steve Austin blood-feuded with Bret Hart).

Technically, BTC could sink below $60K later this week and still lay claim to being in an uptrend, some analysts insist.

Kaspa (KAS), Fetch.ai (FET) and Pepe (PEPE) are among a handful of Top 50 coins enjoying a green streak of late.

Most members of this camp (coins with market caps of at least $2B) are bleeding red since last Wednesday, none more so than Uniswap. The pioneering DeFi platform's native UNI declined 7.5% in the past seven says (versus a 6% loss for BTC).

UNI, No. 19, has been reeling in the years since hitting $45 in 2021. Still, UNI was stowing away a $15 handle only a few months ago after having had enough of being below $5 last year at this time. UNI was seeking to cross $10 when we checked it earlier this morning.

Momentum should be on its side: active user stats have sharply upticked. A fresh influx of traders in part stems from Base, the layer-2 chain birthing "Based" tokens, most notably Brett (BRETT), volume for which made its way to Uniswap, currently the biggest DEX on Ethereum (AMBCrypto).

German authorities transferred another 750 BTC (worth $46M) to a bunch of exchanges, presumably to be sold off. Arkham, an analytics firm, has been hot on the trail of the contents of a wallet marked "German Government BKA" and which still holds $2.8B worth of BTC seized from a movie piracy website inactive since 2013. The site's operators are reportedly said to have turned over the coins back in January.

Checking this move was MicroStrategy's recent purchase of $786 million worth of BTC, using proceeds from the issuance of convertible senior notes.

Investors are keeping a wary eye on the threat of real – and perceived – sell pressure coming from not only Germany but also Japan where the Mt. Gox bankruptcy trustee is making good on plans to do right by victims of the hack ten years ago at the now-defunct exchange.

Individual creditors will start receiving reimbursements starting next week. However, experts, per Decrypt’s reporting, are theorizing that these individuals are unlikely to dump now – because they are long-term holders who've had the option to sell their claims for the better part of a decade.

Plus, as BTC's price has ballooned in the past decade, there are major tax considerations, especially for U.S.-based creditors.

"Probably 1-4 weeks of cooling down," said Willy Woo, a popular BTC pundit, in an X post earlier this week, summarizing pressure-cooker considerations.

With more price volatility likely to come in the jitterbug steps toward June's conclusion, BTC market participants have their eyes trained on $56,500 as the crucial support line that has to hold if this 2023-24 uptrend is to continue, per Cointelegraph, citing Material Indicators.

Market pressure is likely to increase due to the weekly, monthly and quarterly close all coming on a single day. The $56.5K level from seven weeks ago will form the floor of a bottoming zone that buyers need to defend, Material Indicators said.