[Inventory] The top 5 cryptocurrencies and NFTs that performed best in the past week

Time: September 19, 2022 to September 26, 2022

• The highly anticipated Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting concluded last week. Stocks fell along with Bitcoin, while altcoins were strong. Among them, Ripple (XRP), which is on the verge of death, performed most brilliantly. It has been revived again amid hopes that the lawsuit might be settled.

• Daily volumes on OpenSea, the largest NFT exchange by volume, continued to decline as Ethereum prices remained in freefall after the merger. Although the emerging NFT project failed to squeeze into the top 5 trading volume, the project initiated by the creator of Pepeva is still worth discussing.

Last week was turbulent for global investors. At the end of the FOMC meeting, the Fed decided to raise interest rates by 75 basis points for the third time in a row, trying to control inflation at multi-decade highs. The hike lifted the benchmark interest rate to 3.0% to 3.25% from the current range of 2.25% to 2.5%, the highest level since the 2008 financial crisis. Investing assets reacted differently to the rate hike, with stocks seeing the biggest losses, while bitcoin rallied the next day. Both are currently testing the mid-June lows of this year.

Although the macroeconomic situation continues to deteriorate, funds in the currency circle are constantly chasing projects with good news. No matter which token it is, as long as there is good news, funds will follow. Ripple (XRP) was the biggest gainer last week in terms of market capitalization. In the previous week, the market value of XRP was only 17.9 billion US dollars, and it increased to 24.5 billion US dollars a week later, successfully surpassing BUSD to become the sixth largest cryptocurrency. The reason for XRP's rise is that the 1-year, 9-month-long lawsuit between its parent company Ripple Labs and the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) may be coming to an end. At present, the two parties have filed a motion to request the New York court to make a "summary judgment" on the case, that is, the judge can directly make substantive and binding judgments on all or part of the case without a trial. The move was seen as crucial to the settlement of the long-running lawsuit. Although the price of XRP is rising, CryptoLaw founder and lawyer John Deaton warned XRP investors not to be too confident, because the court may not fully accept Ripple Labs' arguments against the SEC.

As the price of Ethereum continues to free fall, the total transaction volume of the NFT market has also declined. My weekly column started in July 2022, and every week I see at least one new item in the top 5 by trading volume, but last week broke that tradition. Ethereum's emerging NFT projects could not attract enough sales, collectors reinvested in Yuga Labs' BAYC and MAYC arms, while other NFT blue-chip floor prices continued to fall. As for the popular Solana projects such as DeGods and y00ts some time ago, the market's buying interest is slowly fading.

OpenSea daily transaction volume. Source: Dune Analytics @sealaunch

While new NFT projects haven't gained enough traction, one project is worth talking about. The creator of one of the web's most popular mascots, Pepe the Frog, just launched an NFT collectible called "Hedz by Matt Furie." This collection consists of 1,000 1/1 hand-painted quirky creatures. The public sale mint price was 0.666 ETH each, while the resale price has soared to over 1.5 ETH on the first day. Hedz's highest transaction price so far is a frog named "Bootleg Samuraifrog", which looks a bit like Pepe's frog. It was bought by Cole Thereum, the co-founder of Pudgy Penguins, at a high price of 6 ETH. It should be noted that Hedz is a purely artistic NFT project without any roadmap and empowerment, but collectors are willing to bid thousands of dollars to buy it. I think this is the power of art!

On the left is the warrior Pepeva, and on the right is the collection display of Hedz. If you are interested, please click https://www.hedz.fun/grid