This Week in Coins: Bitcoin Leads Parade of Red, Toncoin Down Bad

By Ryan Ozawa

Illustration by Mitchell Preffer for Decrypt.

It was a waterfall of red, spilling down from the top of the cryptocurrency charts this week.

The price of Bitcoin rolled into the weekend at $59,297, according to CoinGecko data, after seeing a sudden drop on Friday. The dip comes after the massively successful spot Bitcoin ETFs also saw more investor cash leave than come in—the first outflows in nearly four months. Analysts tell Decrypt there are solid reasons to expect BTC to face sustained downward pressure in the weeks ahead.

As August draws to a close, BTC is hovering near 8% of losses for the month.

Things weren't especially great for second-ranked Ethereum. The price of ETH ended the week at $2,526, down more than 8% over seven days. The month was even harsher for the proof-of-stake leader, down around 21% for the last 30 days.

Solana (SOL), the once-heralded “Ethereum killer,” also took a hit. It has fallen 10% over the week, trading hands at $138. Like Ethereum, it had a rough month, down over the span by about 19%.

And while Dogecoin (DOGE) fan Elon Musk this week beat a class-action lawsuit over the coin—for now—the top meme cryptocurrency fell 10% this week, wobbling around $0.10.

Not that being in the news is always good for a token. With the arrest and indictment of Telegram founder Pavel Durov, and a DOGS meme coin launch bringing down the TON blockchain (not once, but twice), cryptocurrencies tied to the network suffered big this week. Toncoin fell 20% since last Saturday, and affiliated gaming coin Notcoin (NOT) was the biggest loser of the top 100, down 28%.

With the much more massively popular Telegram game Hamster Kombat finally setting a date next month for its much-anticipated token drop, it's fair to ask if the TON network will be able to handle the load.

September will also bring a milestone for Polygon and its MATIC token, which will migrate to a new, third-generation POL token. This week, though, MATIC has fallen 21% to $0.42.

The obscure outlier for the week is Helium (HNT), the token tied to the decentralized cellular data project Helium Network. It ended the week up more than 7%, trading at $7.24.

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