Avalanche's AVAX and Near Protocol's NEAR Gain Amid Broader Market Decline

According to CoinDesk, Avalanche's native token AVAX and Near Protocol's NEAR experienced solid gains early Friday, despite the broader market trimming gains from earlier this week. At press time, AVAX had a 24-hour gain of 8.2%, while NEAR traded 6% higher. In contrast, bitcoin was down 2.5% in the last 24 hours, trading below $36,500, and ether was down 3.3%, changing hands under $2,000. Avalanche's inclusion in the Monetary Authority of Singapore's (MAS) tokenization initiative Project Guardian likely spurred investor interest in its native token AVAX. Under MAS's Project Guardian, Onyx by J.P. Morgan and Apollo Global demonstrated a blockchain Proof of Concept for revolutionizing asset management, paralleling Citi's use of similar technology for FX trade simulations, according to announcements from Avalanche and the MAS. Onyx is JP Morgan's blockchain-based fixed-income trading network. These demonstrations highlight how tokenization and smart contracts can improve the efficiency and scalability of financial services, a priority for the Singaporean regulator's push towards utilizing blockchain for FinTech and not crypto. NEAR likely gained strength from a series of positive announcements during the Nearcon conference. Meanwhile, the decline in market leaders led to significant liquidations of leveraged positions. Coinglass data reveals that $48 million in bitcoin long positions were liquidated in 24 hours, while $30 million in ether long positions were liquidated in the same time period.