Key facts: Bitcoin fell below USD 66,000 this Sunday, March 17. Some cryptocurrencies, such as Solana, stand out for their good performance. Investors in the cryptocurrency market were accustomed to a “green wave.” However, the situation began to change a few days ago and a predominantly bearish scenario has been generated over the weekend. Between Saturday March 16 and Sunday March 17, almost all cryptocurrencies in the top 20 (sorted by market capitalization) have seen their price fall. There are only two exceptions: Solana (SOL) and Near Protocol (NEAR). Bitcoin (BTC), the market's leading digital asset, had reached a new all-time high price on March 14, reaching $73,750. Since then, it has fallen 9%, with a decline of 1.5% in the last 24 hours. At the time of writing, BTC is trading at USD 67,111. As is often the case, the rest of the market followed in BTC's footsteps. For example, ether (ETH) fell 2% and BNB did the same by 3.6%. Other similar drops were seen in Cardano (ADA), Avalanche (AVAX) and Polygon (MATIC).
The top 10 in the market had price declines in the last few hours. Source: CoinMarketCap. Within the top 20 cryptocurrencies on the market, there were two exceptions that resist the trend and see their price continue to grow. We are talking about SOL, which rose 1.2% and is approaching the USD 200 line, a price it has not reached since 2021, and NEAR. As reported in BitcoinDynamic, There are several foundations that support Solana's good moment. One of the main ones is the integration of the network on the Binance Web3 Wallet, including the most important decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols such as Jito and Pyth Network, among others. While developers celebrate the high level of use of the network, Solana climbed to second place among the networks with the most capitalization in the DeFi space, displacing Tron. For its part, NEAR experienced an appreciation of 11% in the last 24 hours. On March 14, the network had a update focused on scalability through new shards that accelerate transaction processing.
From October to date, the capitalization of Near Protocol in DeFi grew by 700%. Source: defillama. Likewise, with the inclusion of Frax Finance among its DeFi protocols, the capitalization of Near Protocol as a network grew by 33%. It is thus positioned as the 13th with the most funds in this area, which in turn enhances the value of its native cryptocurrency, as reflected in its market value.