Last week was a great period for numerous altcoins, such as Ethereum (ETH), XRP, or Shiba Inu (SHIB), but Bitcoin (BTC) investors only experienced an overall stagnation in their assets’ valuation. Even though Bitcoin’s performance might sound neutral, it should arguably have a positive, consolidating effect on the entire market, as the more BTC strengthens its $20,000 support, the more stability the crypto market should gain as a whole. Read on to find out what made investors drive up prices, and what’s the market’s status right now.

General Market Performance 

Last week was great for some altcoins, but forgettable for other assets, such as Bitcoin (BTC), or Chainlink (LINK).

Ethereum (ETH) was among the best large-cap performers, closing the week with a more than 3% gain, which is a healthy number when we take the asset’s $144B market cap into account. XRP also did great, as the transaction token was up by 5.7% in seven days. As we move down in market cap, however, we can start seeing some truly high gains; Shiba Inu (SHIB) was some 29% in the green over last week, Polygon (MATIC) recorded a price increase of more than 20%, The Sandbox (SAND) was up by 27%, and Uniswap (UNI) also gained around 15% over the past seven days. Despite such performances, the majority of the above-mentioned assets are still way below their all-time high valuations, which could indicate considerable upside potential.

While some altcoins did great, others were struggling to keep up. Chainlink (LINK), for instance, was down by 11%, and Algorand (ALGO) was also some 4% in the red. Even Bitcoin (BTC) closed the week with a slight overall decrease, however, its price stayed well above $20,000, which indicates that the vital support level at that price became stronger.

Tether To Launch GBPT Stablecoin Pegged To British Pound Sterling 

Major stablecoin company Tether has announced its plans to launch a stablecoin pegged to the British pound sterling (GBP). According to Tether’s announcement, the new asset called GBPT will be launched on the Ethereum blockchain, and will be live by early July 2022.

Polygon's MATIC Goes Up 20% As It Achieves Carbon Neutrality

Ethereum Layer 2 scaling solution Polygon has announced that it has reached carbon neutrality, which fueled a bullish boost for its MATIC token’s valuation.

Goldman Sachs To Raise $2B To Purchase Celsius Assets 

Wall Street bank Goldman Sachs is seeking to raise $2B from investors to purchase assets of crypto lending company Celsius, albeit at considerable discounts. Celsius halted withdrawing a few weeks ago, which led to an immense, negative PR storm in the crypto space.

Spanish Authorities Plan To Make Crypto Holders Report Their Holdings & Transactions From 2023

Spain’s finance chief has also stated that crypto exchanges will be similarly forced to report about their customers’ activities starting 2023.