What's Driving Token Prices? April 24, 2024

SAFE (-8.7%) - The Safe Wallet, created and spun out by the Gnosis team, is considered the gold standard for multi-sig digital assets wallets and is widely used across the ecosystem. The project released a governance token, SAFE, in late 2022 via an airdrop. However, the token was non-transferable until today when a governance vote approved the token to be transferable and, therefore, sellable. The token was subsequently listed on Coinbase and has since declined in price by -8.7%. The token now sits at $1.97, putting the valuation at $1.9B.
BTC (+5.1%) - Unless you live under a rock, you have probably heard about Bitcoin’s fourth halving event last Friday. For those unfamiliar, Bitcoin’s issuance schedule is hardcoded to cut itself by half roughly every four years. When Bitcoin first launched, miners earned 50 BTC for every block they mined on the network. That has slowly reduced with each halving event, and now miners only earn 3.125 BTC for every block. However, this halving came with another important Bitcoin launch- a new token standard called Runes. Runes, developed by Casey Rodamor who created the Ordinals standard, went live on Friday causing quite a frenzy as several tokens launched and users raced to trade these new issues on the Bitcoin network. The resulting flurry of activity drove up Bitcoin’s network fees and, at one point, accounted for over 3x the fees earned via block rewards. Network fees have since come down and normalized as the mania around Runes has died down but many are pointing to the past few days of how Bitcoin’s network can become self-sustaining long-term on fees alone.
SHIB (+18%) - Shibu Inu, the memecoin project turned Layer-2 protocol, announced it had raised $12M this week for its new privacy-focused Layer-3 project. Companies, including Polygon Ventures, Mechanism Capital, Big Brain Holdings, Shima Capital, Animoca Brands, and others, invested in the yet-to-launch token, TREAT, which will function as a governance and utility token for the upcoming Layer-3. Shibu Inu has attempted to shed its memecoin background by launching various projects within its ecosystem, including Shibarium, a Layer-2 that uses the BONE token.
AKT (+30%) - Decentralized compute project, Akash, saw its token shoot up this week due to an exchange listing and new partnership announcement. Brev.dev, which simplifies AI/ML models, partnered with Akash to use its decentralized GPU marketplace for its compute needs. The AKT token was also listed on Upbit, one of the largest crypto exchanges in Korea.

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