Storj, Filecoin and Solana Lead First Week of July Crypto Market Gains

Crypto storage tokens led gains for the first week of July with Filecoin’s FIL and Storj’s STORJ outperforming large cap tokens such as bitcoin and ether.

The native token of the Storj protocol spiked  43% rise on Tuesday, and although it has retreated slightly since, it has recently gained 15% over the last seven days. Filecoin’s FIL, a competitor of Storj, with an almost $2 billion market value (compared to Storj’s $145 million), also gained 12% over the last seven days.

Storj is one of a few competing crypto-backed cloud storage platforms and is often described as an alternative to cloud storage platforms like those offered by Amazon or Google. Filecoin is also a decentralized protocol that enables users to rent out spare storage on their computer.

Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency by market value, sank 0.7% over the same time period. Ether took a harder hit, losing 3.5%. Bitcoin has traded above $30,000 for a couple of weeks, but has struggled to reach the $32,000 level.

Traders have pointed to the current uncertainty in the market as the reason behind the stagnant price movement. Markets are weighing conflicting economic data and ongoing central bank deliberations about how to tame stubbornly high inflation without casting the economy into a steep recession.

“There’s more cause for optimism on the back of the ETF filings but there’s no guarantee they will yield a positive outcome even if the chances are enhanced by the backing of those involved. It could also be a lengthy process which may explain the stall we’ve seen over the last couple of weeks,” wrote Craig Erlham, senior market analyst at OANDA.

Solana’s SOL also posted considerable gains on the week, rising 12%  SOL was up 8% on Friday alone. The reason behind the uptick is unclear, but some analysts are predicting a continued surge for the token.

Sean Farrell, head of digital asset research at data firm FundStrat, said that it’s not clear what the catalyst is but “it’s possible that conditions became super oversold in the wake of the Robinhood forced selling and now we are regressing back to prior support levels.”

The CoinDesk Market Index, a measure of crypto markets performance, has dropped 1.3% over the past seven days.

The Indices’ Computing Sector posted the only weekly gains. Culture & Entertainment tokens dipped 5% with Smart-Contract Platform tokens losing 2.2%.