Avalanche, Polygon See Slight Gains as Crypto Markets Remain Flat

Major cryptocurrencies held support levels after last week’s drop to post slight gains on Monday morning after a largely flat weekend.

Bitcoin (BTC) held on to its $41,000 support level after last week’s sell-off, which was spurred by the release of the minutes of the U.S. Federal Reserve’s December 2021 meeting. The minutes of the meeting suggested the Fed will end its record asset-purchase program and will likely hike interest rates at a faster pace.

Avalanche (AVAX) and polygon (MATIC) rose 4% in the past 24 hours to post the largest gains among major cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin (BTC) rose 0.4% and ethereum (ETH) rose 0.5% in the same period.

AVAX reached as high as $92 in early Asian hours on Monday before traders took profits to bring to it $88 at the time of writing. AVAX was trading near its major support level of $85, with a drop to $80 should that level not hold.

Other major cryptocurrencies also saw nominal losses. In the past 24 hours, Binance coin (BNB) declined 0.5%, Polkadot and Solana lost 0.6%, Cardano was down 0.8%, and XRP fell 1.2%, leading the losses among major cryptos.

Meanwhile, compound ether (cETH) emerged as the biggest gainer among all cryptocurrencies valued over $1 billion by market capitalization, data from CoinGecko showed, rising over 8.2% in the past 24 hours.

cETH represents a stake in Ethereum-based lending tool Compound Finance, allowing users to lend ETH and accrue interest on the protocol. However, Compound’s COMP governance token – which allows users to take part in platform decisions – lost 4.3% of its value in the past 24 hours.

On the losing side was the governance token of Yearn Finance (YFI), a smart contract-based aggregator for on-chain lending and interest-earning tools. YFI lost 10% in the past 24 hours to trade just above $31,760 during European hours on Monday.