coindesk.com
Ether, the second biggest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, is positioned to log its first weekly loss since the end of March, as its price, along with that of larger sibling bitcoin, are in the red on Saturday.
At press time ether’s changing hands at $3,779.81, down 8.48% in the past 24 hours, according to CoinDesk 20. Meanwhile bitcoin, the No. 1 cryptocurrency by market capitalization, has also fallen, down 5.88% in the past 24 hours to below $48,000.
After having logged a six-week-long winning streak, ether’s set to end the week on a down note, according to data from TradingView and Kraken.
As for bitcoin, the balance of that cryptocurrency held on major exchanges is increasing again after dropping for more than a year, according to data from Glassnode. Some analysts interpreted it as a bearish sign for the market. as it could show more BTCs are available to sell on exchanges.
Meanwhile, the winners of the day appear to be tokens of so-called Ethereum Killers and layer 2 scaling projects, as some those tokens have logged new all-time highs on Saturday.
The price of scaling solution Polygon Network’s native token, MATIC, was up by more than 22% in the past 24 hours, per data from Messari. Its price logged a record high on Saturday at around $1.87.
On a year-to-date basis, MATIC has also chalked a 100-fold rise with its market capitalization rising to more than $8.96 billion.
At the same time, prices of tokens for smart contract platforms such as Cardano (ADA) and Cosmos (ATOM) were also on the rise. At the time of writing, ADA is up 18.30% in the past 24 hours to $2.25 and ATOM is up 5.39% to about $26.47.
The network congestion on Ethereum blockchain has increased demand for Ethereum alternatives as well as layer 2 scaling projects like Polygon, which has sent their tokens’ prices skyrocketing.