STEPN, AXS, APT, FTM, HFT Jumped: Here’s Why and Next!

While the bulls continue to gain strength in the crypto money market, some altcoin projects such as Aptos and STEPN are striking with their performance. Analysts explain the reasons for their performance and predict their next move.

Tremendous increase from STEPN (GMT)

Crypto analyst Arman Shirinyan looks at the background of the STEPN price surge. Any rally in NFT or GameFi-related projects is surprising, especially in 2023, when the vast majority of NFT-related projects have lost most of their capitalization and are not receiving new funding. However, STEPN has recently gained a solid foothold in the market and has seen a 21% price increase in the last 24 hours. Since the cryptocurrency market started to recover, STEPN has gained more than 100% in value. Thus, it showed one of the best performances among the top 100 assets by market capitalization.

Such an explosive rally was possible thanks to the traditionally high volatility of assets and the overall recovery of the NFT and DeFi industries. According to Delphi Digital, both NFTs and GameFi are seeing an improvement in inputs. The trend is most likely linked to increased tolerance for risks. The GameFi and NFT industries are similar to volatile assets in terms of risk. With the market recovering further, we will likely see continued upward movements in assets like STEPN as their true potential is revealed during rallies as we saw in 2021.

Unfortunately, there is no way to tell how long the recovery rally in the market or STEPN in particular will last. GMT is currently reaching the local resistance level of $0.69, which is reflected in the 200-day moving average. Other assets broke, gaining a foothold above said resistance.

AXS price rises: is this a bull trap?

Crypto analyst Crispus Nyaga reviews Axie Infinity (AXS). There are reasons to avoid this rally. First, as with stocks, it’s always important to do your due diligence before investing in an asset. A quick due diligence shows that this rally is not supported by fundamentals.

First, a closer look at their tokens has around 4.8 million AXS tokens to be unlocked on Monday. These tokens are worth over $65 million. This is remarkable. Because token unlocks are often a bearish catalyst as they increase the amount of cryptocurrencies in circulation. Meanwhile, 32% of the total AXS tokens are currently locked. As such, analysts believe the team could make an announcement before it goes live to counterbalance the move.

Second, Axie Infinity is only valuable if the number of users in the ecosystem are using it. For example, in the stock market you only invest in companies that generate at least income. Unfortunately, Axie Infinity’s ecosystem is having trouble with player numbers, which are on a downward trend. Data collected by ActivePlayer shows that the number of monthly users has fallen to its lowest level in years. The average player count over the past 30 days was 432k, below the all-time high of 2.7 million. Therefore, AXS recovery should be viewed with skepticism as the fundamentals do not support it.

AXS formed a double bottom pattern between November and December at $5.92. It managed to climb above the top of the double bottom at $10.23. Another bullish aspect is that the daily volume of the cryptocurrency has increased in the last 2 days. Therefore, despite these bullish moves, I believe AXS price will likely continue the downtrend and retest the support at $10.23. Of course, traders can push an asset much higher for no reason. If this happens, the key resistance level to watch will be $16.

Phantom (FTM) jumped 20% weekly, what’s next?

Crypto analyst Tomiwabold Olajide covers the rise of Phantom. According to CoinMarketCap data, FTM is up 20% weekly. The altcoin is trading at $0.381 at the time of this writing. The token is in the green zone of 2% in the last 24 hours as most of its intraday gains have dwindled. Fantom Blockchain is receiving positive news as the Squid SDK, which allows developers to index, transform and use Blockchain data for free, finally reaches Fantom.

Squid SDK helps users to import, convert and use Web3 data. Now this is available in Phantom. This allows participants on the Blockchain to index up to 50,000 blocks per second and distribute them anywhere using a free hosted service.

Last week, Fantom announced the launch of its decentralized ‘Ecosystem Vault’ to fund projects and applications built on Blockchain. As part of Fantom’s continued development towards decentralization, the Ecosystem Vault represents a community-controlled on-chain fund funded by 10% of the transaction fees on Fantom. The initiative was made possible by reducing the burn rate of the FTM and diverting the resulting 10% to the chassis.

Could Hashflow (HFT) be the next Aptos (APT)?

Crypto analyst Gamza Khanzadaev is assessing whether Hashflow can follow the route of Aptos. There are many tokens that have exhibited incredible price movements during these three weeks. But the most favorite of them is definitely Aptos (APT). The altcoin has almost tripled in price, making it the most profitable major crypto asset among the top 100. As the Aptos token is already rising at triple-digit rates, buying it seems riskier than before. However, there are tokens that are similar to APT at their starting point but have yet to show similar price action in tenth.

One such token is HFT, the token of the decentralized exchange Hashflow. Like Aptos, HFT entered the market in late 2022, when the market and its participants were most depressed following the collapse of FTX. It is thought that the new market entry played a decisive role in the price increase of APT. HFT was launched on Binance Launchpad, which has become the starting point for projects such as Polygon (MATIC), Sandbox (SAND), and STEPN (GMT), raising several billion dollars in staking pools during its IEO. Also, according to CryptoRank, both projects have roughly the same investors, such as DragonFly Capital and Jump Crypto.

Finally, it is necessary to take a look at the price charts. We cannot claim that history will repeat itself as these are two fundamentally different tokens with different market makers, but there are overlaps nonetheless.

Why has the price of Aptos (APT) increased?

As you follow on Kriptokoin.com, the price of Aptos has increased by almost 250% in the last 14 days, despite today’s price drop. This has happened despite the broader crypto market grappling with bankruptcies as most crypto players expect a bull rally during the year.

Just last week, Aptos was trading at around $7 and $3 in November 2022, meaning it’s up more than 300% since November last year. A move primarily spearheaded by spot tokens, while futures markets remain largely silent. The Aptos price surge has corresponded to a broader crypto recovery since the start of the year, while the massive 249% increase has fueled speculation about what’s going on behind the scenes.

Basically, what has pushed up the price of Aptos over the past two weeks is the increased activity in the Topaz NFT market, Aptos Labs’ NFT marketplace. Data from Topaz reveals that NFT collections such as the Aptomingos NFT collection and Aptos Monkeys have attracted tens of thousands of trading volumes, and the price of individual NFTs has also increased. In addition to the ongoing APT price increase, popular crypto traders expect interest in Aptos NFTs to continue to rise in the coming days, with NFTs taking center stage.