Share this article

Altcoins Heat Up With AVAX and HNT Leading the Way

Money is flowing into more speculative names following bitcoin's big run higher.

Updated Mar 8, 2024, 6:20 p.m. Published Dec 6, 2023, 5:25 p.m.
Avalanche Price Chart (CoinDesk)
Avalanche Price Chart (CoinDesk)

Following its roughly 15% move ahead over the past 72 hours, bitcoin is little changed Wednesday at $44,000. The speculative juices are flowing though, with a number of altcoins moving sharply higher.

Among the leaders is Avalanche’s AVAX token, whose 17% gain on Wednesday makes it the leader among those cryptocurrencies with a market value above $1 billion. This comes following the token's near-doubling in price in November.

STORY CONTINUES BELOW
Don't miss another story.Subscribe to the Crypto Daybook Americas Newsletter today. See all newsletters

Another big mover is Helium, the crypto connectivity project that migrated from its own blockchain to layer-1 Solana last year. It's higher by 42% on the day after the company announced it launched a mobile phone plan in the U.S. with unlimited data, texts and calls for $20 a month.

Memecoins are moving too, led by dogecoin [DOGE], which is ahead 11% over the past 24 hours to rise past $0.10 for the first time since April.

Read more: Solana Hype Bumps BONK to Third-Largest Dog Token, Behind DOGE, SHIB

“The [bitcoin] rally has been quite extraordinary even by bitcoin's standards and highlights how excited the community is by the prospect of an ETF approval,” said Craig Erlam, a senior analyst at OANDA. Erlam said that lower interest rate expectations have also helped the cryptocurrency’s rise but he thinks the ETF hype is the primary driver.

More For You

Protocol Research: GoPlus Security

GP Basic Image

What to know:

  • As of October 2025, GoPlus has generated $4.7M in total revenue across its product lines. The GoPlus App is the primary revenue driver, contributing $2.5M (approx. 53%), followed by the SafeToken Protocol at $1.7M.
  • GoPlus Intelligence's Token Security API averaged 717 million monthly calls year-to-date in 2025 , with a peak of nearly 1 billion calls in February 2025. Total blockchain-level requests, including transaction simulations, averaged an additional 350 million per month.
  • Since its January 2025 launch , the $GPS token has registered over $5B in total spot volume and $10B in derivatives volume in 2025. Monthly spot volume peaked in March 2025 at over $1.1B , while derivatives volume peaked the same month at over $4B.

More For You

LUNC Surges Over 160% in a Week as Do Kwon Sentencing and Token Burns Draw Traders

(Midjourney/CoinDesk)

The rally is driven by speculation that a final verdict could bring clarity to the project, as well as technical factors like token burns.

What to know:

  • Terra Classic (LUNC) surged 74% to $0.0000072, up 160% in the past week, on exploding trading volume, ahead of Terraform Labs founder Do Kwon's sentencing on Dec. 11.
  • The rally is driven by speculation that a final verdict could bring clarity to the project, as well as technical factors like token burns, with 849 million LUNC destroyed in the past week.
  • The token's momentum is also fueled by Binance's pause on LUNC withdrawals ahead of the Terra Chain's v2.18 upgrade, which aims to improve network stability, despite the token remaining volatile.