Cryptocurrencies To Watch: Week of May 15 – Investopedia

Keep an Eye on These Coins

The cryptocurrency market has had a middling week in terms of prices, with most tokens’ values remaining flat. The market is gearing up for some big regulatory changes, especially in the U.S. A handful of tokens dominated the market in the latest week.

We examine Kava (KAVA), Bitcoin SV (BSV), Lido DAO (LDO), Rocket Pool (RPL), and Litecoin (LTC). In selecting these assets, we have considered several factors, including positive technical developments, significant news events, and noticeable changes in price.

Kava (KAVA)

The Kava (KAVA) project’s token was one of the week’s biggest gainers, with the 48% increase likely tied to the upcoming Kava 13 mainnet upgrade. The upgrade, postponed to Wednesday, will bring several improvements to the Kava network, including better performance for stakeholders and an improved capacity to send assets between Cosmos and Ethereum networks.

Kava is a decentralized finance, or DeFi, lending platform that describes itself as combining “the speed and interoperability of Cosmos with the developer power of Ethereum.” KAVA is trading at around $1.01, having been priced at 69 cents last week (see chart below).

Bitcoin SV (BSV)

Bitcoin SV (BSV), a spinoff of Bitcoin, experienced a price increase of more than 17% in the week. There haven’t been any specific developments to account for this, but one might be linked to Bitcoin Ordinals.

The Bitcoin network has become congested due to the popularity of Ordinals, a protocol that enables digital assets to be inscribed onto a satoshi. Some users may be switching to the spinoff, Bitcoin SV, as a consequence of this congestion and also because this network offers low transaction fees. BSV is changing hands at about $35.88, having traded at $30.50 last week (see chart below).

Lido DAO (LDO)

Lido DAO (LDO) is a project focused on ETH staking. The token’s price gained by 13% after the project experienced a large increase in transaction volume.

Lido recorded a notable increase in activity in the first week of May, regularly receiving greater than $50 million in daily transactions during that time. LDO is priced at about $2.10, having been valued at $1.72 last week (see chart below).

Rocket Pool (RPL)

Rocket Pool, another project working on ETH staking, also posted a price increase. The RPL token was up by more than 11% following Ethereum’s recent so-called Shapella upgrade.

This network upgrade allows ETH stakers to unstake their ETH, which is a major move that originally drew many individuals to staking. RPL is trading at around $52.75, having started last week at $47.60 (see chart below).

Litecoin (LTC)

Litecoin (LTC) had a price increase of more than 10%, with the Aug. 4 LTC halving being the most likely reason for the rise.

Halving is a mechanism built in to certain blockchain protocols, including Litecoin’s, and it halves block rewards. The Litecoin mechanism splits rewards every four years. This lowers the rate at which Litecoins are generated. Current Litecoin block reward is 12.5 LTC; after the halving, the block reward will be 6.25 LTC. As such, halved cryptocurrencies will become “rarer” and this usually leads to an increase in price, as has been the case with Bitcoin halvings.

LTC is now priced at $87.43, having been around $82.10 last week (see chart below).

As of the date this article was written, the author does not own any of the assets discussed here.

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