Decentral Block Post

Over the last couple of years, games using blockchain technology have been actively developing and attracting new players, and the decentralized games market — broadly referred to as GameFi — has gained great popularity. 

The GameFi industry started back in 2013, and since then, the sphere has been slowly developing, but in 2021 the popularity of decentralized games exploded along with the boom in nonfungible tokens (NFT). According to the DappRadar analytical service, the total value of one of the most popular blockchain-based games, Axie Infinity, exceeds $550 million.

But the GameFi industry has its issues. Many projects often “launch” regardless of the game’s development stage.

And while Bitcoin’s (BTC) price trend can enhance or weaken the success of GameFi projects, there isn’t necessarily a direct correlation. 

Despite the bear market, the price of many GameFi tokens is growing today due to their NFT component as investors aim to make money on the resale of in-game heroes and digital items, rather than concentrating on the improvement of game mechanics.

Layer-2 scaling solution Synthetix recently collaborated with liquidity provider Curve Finance to create Curve pools for Synthetic Ether (sETH)/Ether (ETH), Synthetic Bitcoin (sBTC)/Bitcoin (BTC) and Synthetic U.S. dollar (sUSD)/3CRV, allowing investors to cheaply convert synths such as sETH to ETH.

Given the investors’ willingness to hold tokens instead of synths, the protocol racked up over $1.02 million in trading fees — overshadowing Bitcoin’s (BTC) daily performance by five times.

Synthetix, Ethereum-based decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol, created a buzz across the crypto ecosystem after witnessing a sudden increase in trading activities and an unprecedented comeback of its in-house token, SNX, during an unforgiving bear market.

As a direct result of the massive trading volumes, the SNX token, too, witnessed a momentary surge of 105%, bringing up its value to over $3.00, according to data from CoinMarketCap.

Sharing his thoughts on the development, Synthetix founder Kain Warwick, otherwise known as kain.eth, released a blog post that highlighted the difficulty of DeFi protocols to absorb Bitcoin’s volatility if the price drops even further:

Bitcoin (BTC) plummeted to $17,622 on June 18. This marked the first time in Bitcoin’s history that it has fallen below its previous cycle high. The United States Federal Reserve’s aggressive monetary tightening, a crisis at crypto lending platform Celsius and liquidity issues at investment fund Three Arrows Capital are creating a sense of panic among traders.

Markets commentator Holger Zschaepitz said that Bitcoin has crashed more than 80% four times in history. That puts the current fall of about 74% within historical standards. Previous bear markets have bottomed out just below the 200-week moving average, according to market analyst Rekt Capital. If history repeats itself, Bitcoin is unlikely to stay at the current depressed levels for a long time.

Coinglass data suggests that Bitcoin’s 39% loss in June of this year is the worst ever since 2013. While several investors expect Bitcoin to bottom out soon, crypto critic Peter Schiff warned that the selling could continue and the largest cryptocurrency may drop to $3,000.

Could bulls arrest the decline in Bitcoin in the short term? If that happens, let’s study the charts of the top-5 cryptocurrencies that may outperform the other coins.

BTC/USDT

Bitcoin plummeted below the crucial support of $20,111 on June 18, indicating the resumption of the downtrend. A minor positive is that the bulls purchased the dip as seen from the long tail on the day’s candlestick.