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Axie Infinity (AXS/USD), the native governance token of the play-to-earn blockchain-based game Axie Infinity, has been on a bullish streak that has seen it register significant gains. Over the past month, the coin has gained more than 951% despite the overall bearish sentiment in the crypto market. As a result of this astronomical rise, the coin also breached its previous all-time high (ATH) and traded higher.
AXS is the biggest gainer in the top-100 list of leading cryptocurrencies after rising 33.83% over the past 24 hours to trade. These gains also saw the coin set a new ATH earlier today after surging as high as $32.22 (£23.46). At the time of writing, AXS has had a slight downward correction to change hands at $30.40 (£22.14). This value depicts a 5,646% rise since the start of the year.
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The coin currently occupies the 46th position on CoinMarketCap’s list of leading cryptocurrencies by capitalization, with a market cap of $1,868,748,674 (£1,360,495,753.39) and 60,907,500 tokens in circulation.
Reasons behind the bullish performance
The play-to-earn nature of Axie Infinity is the biggest reason behind the coin’s recent performance. The game involves breeding, battling, and trading Axies, digital pets in the form of non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Reportedly, players in economies that have taken a massive hit from the COVID-19 pandemic consider the game a source of income. As a result, the game’s player base has expanded rapidly, forcing AXS to surge further.
The declining yields in the Bitcoin and DeFi markets are another factor that has contributed to pushing AXS up. According to the head of research at Synergia Capital, Denis Vinokourov, there is a hot flow of funds into the NFT space. As such, Axie Infinity’s popularity in the NFT space is also helping the token soar.
Axie Infinity also toppled PancakeSwap to become the highest-grossing decentralized application (dApp) of the month. Per data from Token Terminal, the game raked in $102 million (£74.30 million) in protocol revenue over the past 30 days. In contrast, PancakeSwap only netted $11.4 million (£8.30 million), while Ethereum’s largest DeFi protocol, Curve, only generated $1.5 million (£1.09 million) in revenue. As a result of this outstanding performance, AXS has become popular among crypto adopters, an achievement that has contributed to its rally.