Highlights March 15: Major cryptos in the red, China tech firms lead US indices lower

Major cryptos registered mostly small losses. On Monday, the European Parliament’s Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs voted down a bill that could have outlawed proof-of-work in EU territory.

US indices slipped yesterday amid uncertainty ahead of the Federal Reserve’s eagerly awaited policy meeting today. The NASDAQ100 was down 2%, the SPX500 0.75%, while the DJ30 was flat. China-based tech stocks led the declines.

Shares of TV-ratings company Nielsen surged 30% on Monday after it was reported that a group of private-equity firms was in talks to buy the company for about $15 billion.

Top cryptos

Ethereum, Solana, XRP, and BNB lost around 2% each. Bitcoin lost around 1.6%, trading under $40,000 at time of writing.

Terra’s native token Luna is the biggest gainer in the top 20 coins by market cap today. This has been true for it for a few weeks now.

Top movers

THORChain is the biggest mover in the top 100 without a doubt. It added another 11.61% to its value today, bringing its weekly gains to 78%. It is rallying after the cross-chain DeFi project's rollout of synthetic assets and the announcement of a launch date for a suite of new features called THORFi.

After a successful acquisition, Elrond has gained 7%. eCash is up 5%. BAT continues its steady rise. It’s trading for $0.73 with a 24-hour trading volume of $162.18 million. The token, which ranks 72nd by market cap, is up 4.72% in the last 24 hours.

The popularity of Stellar has been rising ever since an XLM token burn two days ago. The 30th biggest coin by market cap achieved a weekly gain of around 4%. According to some analysts, it’s about to break out.

Today, OIG announced a partnership with ioTexPad, the first ever launchpad built on IoTeX. The live IoTeX price today is $0.07 with a 24-hour trading volume of $40.2 million. IoTeX ranks 92nd by market cap and has gained 7% today.

The Graph’s price has risen sharply in the past few weeks. It’s currently trading for $0.36. The platform’s ecosystem is expanding, a fact welcomed by investors. However, some analysts anticipate a bearish turn.

At the other end, the vast majority of top 100 coins lost 2-4% of their value.

Zcash and Anchor each lost 10%. The predictions that Zcash, a privacy token, would start to dip after a meteoric rise have proven accurate. It was rallying on popularity of privacy coins a few days ago against the backdrop of the Russia-Ukraine war.  

Trending

The biggest gainer of little-known coins is Ziktalk, currently trading for $0.009. Its token ZIK generated a 24-hour trading volume of $1.4 million and has gained 1,083% today.

Ziktalk is a Web3 short video platform with over 650,000 users that allows content creators and consumers to earn ZIK tokens for interactions within the app.

It uses the concept of “social mining”, which involves rewarding users for contributions that benefit the growth of the ecosystem. 

Ziktalk provides monetization opportunities to 98% of content creators, whose earnings are below the poverty line, and also supports users in developing countries.