First Mover Americas: BTC Drops to $70K, TON Rallies

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As ether (ETH) prices rallied and bitcoin (BTC) fell during the early hours of the East Asia trading day, Toncoin (TON) outperformed the market, climbing almost 17% and displacing Cardano as the 10th-largest token by market capitalization. A trader on X said the token could be rallying due to positive ecosystem news. He said USDT on TON is expected to be announced at the Token 2049 conference in Dubai next week. The Ton Network was initially a spinoff from Telegram, with development starting as early as 2018. Telegram stopped work on the network in 2020 following legal action from the SEC, and several community members teamed up to run the project one year later. Bitcoin fell to $70,800, with traders expecting the price to range between $69,000 and $73,000. “Some liquidations will take place this week which shall test both resistance and support levels for a short term as we have seen this morning,” said Laurent Kssis, a crypto ETP specialist at CEC Capital. Kssis warned that the market might witness further downward pressure during the week following bitcoin’s halving later this month.

The percentage of bitcoin’s circulating supply that last moved on-chain at least a year ago declined to the lowest since October 2022, according to data tracked by blockchain analytics firm Glassnode. On Monday, 12.95 million BTC, equating to 65.84% of the circulating supply of 19.67 million BTC, remained unchanged for over a year, the lowest percentage since October 2022. The metric peaked above 70% with the debut of nearly a dozen spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the U.S. in mid-January and has been falling ever since. Since late December, the percentage of the circulating supply that has not moved in at least two years has fallen to 54% from 57.4%. The decline likely represents profit-taking by investors who held coins for one year and over and marks a shift from the holding strategy seen through 2023.

Filecoin liquid-staking platform STFIL said some of its team members are under investigation by the Chinese police. STFIL, which has just under $40 million total value locked (TVL) on its platform, said the core technical team is being investigated and that lawyers have been hired to provide assistance to the individuals, according to a post on X on Tuesday. Furthermore, tokens on the platform were moved to an “unknown, external address” last week while its team members were under detention. The address in question holds over 2.5 million FIL tokens worth around $23 million.

Chart of the Day

• The chart shows the number of active or open call options tied to Solana’s SOL token across maturities on the leading derivatives cryptocurrency exchange, Deribit.

• Maximum open interest is concentrated in strikes above $200, indicating a bullish market bias.

• A call option gives the purchaser the right but not the obligation to buy the underlying asset at a later date at a predetermined price.

• Source: Amberdata

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