Litecoin Defies Market Trends, Bitcoin Recovers From Drop to $82K (Market Watch)
Bitcoin’s nosedive continued in the past 24 hours as the asset plunged to another multi-month low of just over $82,000 before it managed to recover some ground.
Ethereum is the top loser from the larger-cap alts today, while LTC and AVAX stand with minor gains after another massacre.
BTC Rebounds to $86K
A lot can change in the cryptocurrency markets in the span of a week, and sometimes even less. Just last Friday, the largest of the bunch was climbing confidently toward $100,000 after gaining more than five grand in a few days.
However, the Bybit hack stopped its ascent and pushed it south to $96,000 during the weekend. Trump’s tariffs and other controversial economic measures, as well as the growing concerns about rising inflation, pushed investors away from BTC and the ETFs, with massive outflows for several consecutive days now.
The primary cryptocurrency dropped to $94,000 on Monday, but the real pain was observed on Tuesday, with a slump to $86,000, and on Wednesday, with another decline to $82,100 (on Bitstamp). The latter became the new three-month low.
Although BTC has recovered some ground since then and now sits above $86,000, it’s still 3% down on the day. Its market cap has dropped to $1.7 trillion, and its dominance over the alts has decreased to 57.5% on CG.
BTCUSD. Source: TradingView ETH Down, LTC Up
Ethereum continues to dig new lows and dropped toward $2,200 yesterday. It now sits above $2,350, but it is still down by 5% since this time yesterday. XRP, BNB, DOGE, ADA, TRX, XLM, SUI, and TON are also in the red from the larger-cap alts.
In contrast, AVAX and LTC have marked gains of over 3% within the same timeframe. APT has stolen the show after recent speculations about an ETF tracking its performance and has soared by 7% to over $6.1.
The total crypto market cap, though, has shed another $70 billion since yesterday’s peak and is down to $2.970 trillion on CG.
Cryptocurrency Market Overview. Source: QuantifyCrypto
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Meme Coins and AI Lose Big While Bitcoin Remains Strong: Report
Bitcoin (BTC) has outperformed all other sectors in the crypto market this year, with various categories experiencing significant losses.
Especially, sectors like meme coins and AI appear to have taken a hit in 2025.
Market Trends Reverse
According to recent findings by Delphi Digital, the most severe declines were observed in AI-related sectors, with AI Frameworks suffering the largest drop at 84.05%, followed by Agents at 70.27%. Next up was meme coins, a sector that often sees extreme volatility and speculative trading, which recorded an average loss of 51.74%, while Gaming Infrastructure fell 51.54%, reflecting broader challenges in the blockchain gaming industry.
The Modular sector, which focuses on blockchain scalability and development, also saw a considerable decline of 47.48%.
The results defy earlier market expectations, as traders were largely optimistic that AI-related projects and meme coins would take the lead in the crypto space by 2025. In fact, a Binance survey conducted in December found that almost 45% of respondents predicted that these sectors would emerge as major forces in the coming year.
Meme Coins Struggle to Recover
While several top cryptocurrencies have erased their post-2024 US Presidential Election gains, meme coins have been hit the hardest. Their market capitalization has returned to November 2024 levels, undoing the surge seen during the winter “meme coin season.”
The OG Dogecoin (DOGE), for one, rallied to nearly $0.50 after Trump’s victory but has since dropped back to $0.2. Shiba Inu (SHIB), Pepe (PEPE), Bonk (BONK), and FLOKI (FLOKI) have all suffered similar declines, with WIF experiencing the steepest drop – falling 86% from $4.20 to $0.55.
Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan believes the crypto market is currently experiencing the decline of the meme coin boom. In a recent tweet, he pointed to several key factors contributing to this downturn, including the involvement of Melania, Libra, and the Lazarus Group in using meme coins to launder stolen Ethereum.
Hougan suggests that these developments have severely damaged investor confidence in the sector, predicting that meme coins will collapse entirely within the next six months.
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Jupiter Joins Top DeFi Earners, Outpacing Pump.fun, PancakeSwap
Jupiter Exchange has surpassed major decentralized finance (DeFi) players, securing the second-highest daily fee ranking after stablecoin issuer Tether.
Additionally, the decentralized exchange (DEX) generated $2.73 million in revenue over a 24-hour period, going above fellow Solana stalwart Pump.fun.
Jupiter Usurps Pump.fun
According to data from DefiLlama, the exchange has earned $10.88 million in fees since yesterday, about $7.3 million less than the amount Tether raked in.
However, Jupiter performed markedly better than Uniswap, PancakeSwap, sister platform Meteora, and Hyperliquid, a rising star in the perpetual futures trading space. Apart from Uniswap, none of these competing protocols earned more than $5 million in fees in the last 24 hours.
In terms of revenue in the same period, Tether is heads and shoulders above everyone, with its $18.19 million being three times more than its closest competitor, Circle. Hyperliquid was third, bringing in $3.53 million, while Jupiter went above Pump.fun with a 24-hour revenue of $2.42 million.
Over seven days, the DEX’s fee earnings stand at $23.31 million, only bettered by Tether’s $127.26 million, Circle’s $41.54 million, and PancakeSwap’s $36.15 million. Other Solana-based platforms in the top ten include Meteora, Jito, and Pump.fun, which respectively received $19.52 million, $15.69 million, and $14.55 million in the last week.
Jupiter’s improving fortunes have come in the wake of turbulence in Solana’s DeFi space. Last week, Meteora, co-founded by Jupiter’s pseudonymous lead, Meow, faced leadership upheavals after its other co-founder, Ben Chow, resigned over allegations of financial misconduct.
Additionally, the controversy surrounding the LIBRA meme coin, which soared and then crashed after a high-profile endorsement from Argentine President Javier Milei, has also shaken confidence in some DeFi platforms.
JUP Market Performance
Data from CoinGecko shows the decentralized finance category is up by a slight 0.6% since yesterday, with its collective market cap at $102 billion.
Jupiter’s JUP token is among the better-performing cryptocurrencies in the sector, gaining 9.5% on its price over the previous 24 hours. Among the segment’s top ten assets by market cap, it was only bettered by Maker (MKR), up 21.4%, and Hyperliquid’s HYPE, which registered an 11.9% uptick.
Across seven days, JUP also suffered the least loss among DeFi heavyweights, dropping just 1.0% of its value. The biggest large-cap losers were Aave (AAVE), down 17.8%, Chainlink (LINK), which shed more than 14% of its value, and Uniswap’s UNI token, which declined by 13.8%.
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