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Cryptoassets had a good week last week, with major cryptos such as Bitcoin and Ether in positive territory over seven days, while others such as Solana and Cardano posted big bounces (more on that below).

Bitcoin for its part began the week below $16,400 but traded up across seven days, with a spike above $17,000 last night - a 3.65% price increase in seven days. 

Ether saw larger gains, beginning last week below $1,185 before trading above $1,250 midweek. Overnight the price spiked again to just below $1,300 where it now trades this morning, an increase over the week of 9.7%.
 

Investors sought crypto safe havens in 2022 - eToro data

2022 was a tough year for cryptoasset investors, with significant price volatility that the market hasn’t experienced since 2018. Our data from 2022 show that investors sought safe haven cryptos such as bitcoin and ether. 

Bitcoin stands apart from other projects as it is the original decentralized cryptoasset, while Ethereum has seen high-profile developments in the past year, including the much anticipated Merge.

Despite the volatility of the past year, around half of the cryptoassets on the eToro platform with at least 12 months of data have shown growth in open positions. 

This would suggest investors have continued to look toward the cryptoasset market for investment ideas and may have even been looking to pick up cryptoassets at a discounted price thanks to market weakness.
 

Mastercard launches Web3 artist accelerator

Payments provider Mastercard has launched a new accelerator designed to help artists, singers, musicians, and other creatives use blockchain technology to promote brand engagement among fans. The firm has partnered with the Ethereum scaling platform Polygon on the project.

One of the biggest selling points of Web3 - as of yet still a broad label in crypto - is the power of the decentralized internet. The market for content created by talented people - particularly musicians - is still very much dominated by powerful companies that control much of the pricing and distribution of unique content. This culminates in a raw deal for creators - and is most obvious with major streaming services that pay pennies for their work. 

Web3, as this project suggests, takes this power away from major controlling parties and delivers it back to the individual content creators. Where we are with Web3 as a concept is still early days but crypto and blockchain technology still has a big part to play in that, giving control back to content creators and talented people who want to earn a living directly from what they create. 
 

Cardano, Solana see sudden price bounces

Away from the largest cryptoassets in the market, both Cardano and Solana saw significant price bounces in recent days for a variety of reasons. 

Cardano has seen a price bounce in recent days thanks to an uptick in total value locked (TVL) on the chain. Although still well below all-time high levels in March 2022, the blockchain is witnessing some bounce back in demand through particular projects such as Meld, Indigo, and WingRiders - all projects offering solutions through the Cardano blockchain.

Solana meanwhile has been severely curtailed in price since last year but has been one of the best-performing cryptoassets in the market in the past week. This mainly comes down to the launch of a new token on the blockchain, called BONK, which has been created by Solana developers as a rival to SHIB.

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