Risk-takers waver

A handful of decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms are thriving in these tumultuous times. Just in the past seven days, for example, Morpho’s MORPHO climbed 17%, reaching $1.76, an advance that coincides with the borrowing and lending protocol having rolled out a beta-test fleet of AI Agents that’ll aim to learn to interact with traders and developers.

Also humming along over a weekly time frame is HYPE, native token of Hyperliquid, a platform which lately has enjoyed a multi-billion-dollar gusher of speculative oil contract activity. HYPE’s spot price has gained 12% since last Thursday. HYPE’s trying to nibble at the $40 per-coin mark. It has a market cap of $9.2B, making it the 14th-largest digital asset, according to CoinGecko.

Meanwhile, a smallish ($176M in market cap) and perhaps unfairly discarded metaverse coin, Decentraland, took a jog today. Its native MANA gained 4% in the past 24 hours, CoinGecko said. Weekly online parties/live music events in a shared virtual space apparently are becoming a thing, Decentraland insists. 

Excitement about the metaverse has waned. The hype reached an apex in 2021 when Facebook rebranded as Meta. But Mark Zuckerberg’s vision for the virtual realm never matched up with bottom-line realities and the mega tech company has since pivoted. 

Decentraland’s MANA hit its record high of $5.85 on Nov. 25, 2021. MANA began this year at about 12 cents. It’s currently about 9 cents following a gain of 8% over the past two weeks.

Oil prices, one day after recording their biggest drop in six years, have just spurted higher again after Iran accused the U.S. and Israel of violating the ceasefire deal. International benchmark Brent crude oil futures jumped 4% to roughly $98.50. That was as of today at 7:45 a.m. (EST). Maritime industry experts say traffic through the Strait of Hormuz likely will not normalize anytime soon.

U.S. stocks and most digital assets slightly dipped. Over the past day, Bitcoin fell 1% to $71.2K, per CoinGecko.

“Despite a geopolitical ‘risk-on’ boost,” noted CoinDesk, “crypto markets remain range-bound.”

A newly launched spot Bitcoin ETF from a hallowed Wall Street bank had a fairly respectable debut yesterday. Morgan Stanley’s MSBT garnered a net inflow of $30.6M following its first day of trading, even as the entire cohort of BTC ETFs collectively shed $124.5M.

Fund flows into the category remain net positive on the week, owing to a mondo supremo Monday which brought a one-day haul of $471M.

Bullish sentiment surrounding the biggest, best-known digital asset is percolating, points out CoinDesk, flagging up how whales are accumulating and that the most popular trade on a major options exchange right now happens to be the BTC $80K call contract.

If the fragile ceasefire somehow holds; and if global oil tanker traffic can proceed back toward normal levels; and if oil prices cool, then there is a more realistic scenario to contemplate: inflation declines and the Fed starts cutting interest rates.

BTC is testing a major trendline; a breakout, say, above $75K, could possibly trigger a rally “toward $100,000 by June,” CoinDesk said.

If the biggest crypto can’t get beyond $75K anytime soon, then, well, watch out for worst-case scenarios, a notable Bloomberg commodities analyst has recently cautioned. 

For a rose-colored-glasses-tinged take on downside risk, leave it to Michael Saylor, among BTC’s biggest champions, to pronounce BTC’s bottom — in the vicinity of around $60K — has come and gone.

Speaking at an investor event, Saylor, per The Block, explained that downturns conclude when forced sellers get utterly exhausted (not when sentiment turns) and he emphasized that this latest drawdown was driven by over-leveraged miners.

As for quantum risks, Saylor dismissed them as “theoretical.”