Cryptocurrencies remained on edge last week as Bitcoin struggled to move above the key resistance at $100,000. 

The recent gains could accelerate this week as investors move back to the office after the Christmas and New Year break and as Donald Trump’s inauguration nears. So, here are some of the top cryptocurrencies to watch this week, including Ethereum Name Service, Aptos, and Flare.

Ethereum Name Service

Ethereum Name Service (ENS) — the biggest domain registrar in the crypto industry — isone of the top cryptos to watch this week. The network will unlock 1.46 million ENS tokens valued at over $52.79 million to contributors and the community. These unlocks are part of the monthly releases that will go on until November this year.

The ENS price soared to a high of $50.5 in December and then retreated by about 28% to a low of $30.47. That was a notable level since it was the highest swing in March last year. It has remained above the 50-day and 100-day Exponential Moving Averages.

Ethereum Name Service token’s outlook is bullish because it remains above key averages and has formed a break-and-retest pattern. If this pattern continues, the next point to watch will be its 2024 high of $50.50.

Flare 

Flare (FLR), a popular Ethereum Virtual Machine, will be another crypto to watch as it unlocks tokens worth $47.6 million. These tokens will be notable because they will represent about 3.2% of the float. 

The daily chart shows that the Flare token has formed a combination of a falling wedge pattern and a bullish flag. A wedge comprises two falling and converging trendlines, which are nearing their confluence level. 

Flare is also supported by the 50-day moving average. Therefore, it will likely rebound, and possibly retest the important resistance at $0.0325, its highest level on June 5.

Aptos

Aptos (APT) is another coin to watch this week as it conducts its monthly token unlocks.

The native token of the Aptos blockchain will release 11.31 million tokens, which will be allocated to the community, core contributors, investors, and the foundation. Aptos will continue with these monthly unlocks until September 2032.

The Aptos network is doing well. Its locked value has risen to over $1.07 billion, and its stablecoins valuation moved to $646 million. Some of the top players in the ecosystem are Aries Markets, Echo Protocol, Thala, and Echelon Market. 

On the daily chart, the APT token has rebounded in the past few days after forming a falling wedge pattern. It has retested the key support at $10 and is above the ascending trendline connecting the lowest swings since Aug. 5.

Therefore, the coin will maintain its uptrend if it is above the ascending trendline.

The bitcoin (BTC) mining industry was shaken up in the last months of 2024 by the sudden entrance of a new player: Cango (CANG), a Chinese firm that specializes in providing loans to automobile buyers.

Based in Shanghai and valued at $363 million on the stock market, Cango is in the process of acquiring 50 exahashes per second (EH/s) worth of mining power, meaning that the auto lending platform will become one of the largest bitcoin miners in the world once its entire fleet goes online.

“I guess it’s surprising for people in the [bitcoin mining] industry because nobody has ever heard of Cango before,” Juliet Ye, the company’s senior director of communications, told CoinDesk in an interview. “But the history of Cango is a history of adaptation. We’ve diversified into different areas at least two or three times [since the firm was established in 2010].”

Getting such a large bitcoin mining fleet isn’t cheap. Cango paid $256 million in cash for the first 32 EH/s worth of computing power, which it purchased from bitcoin mining machine manufacturer Bitmain. It will be issuing $144 million worth of shares for the remaining 18 EH/s, which it is acquiring from Golden TechGen — a firm owned by former Bitmain Chief Financial Officer Max Hua — as well as other undisclosed mining machine sellers. Once the transaction is settled, Golden TechGen and these other sellers will end up owning approximately 37.8% of Cango.

The diversification into bitcoin mining is already bearing fruit. Cango’s stock finished 2024 at $4.56, up more than 362% from the start of that year. Even better, Ye said, this new bitcoin mining strategy has catapulted Cango into the spotlight.

“It’s been really hard for us to gain traction around the company, as a small- to mid-cap listed Chinese firm in the U.S.,” Ye said. “All of a sudden, a lot of people are very much interested in Cango. The buzz around the company — we’ve never seen this before in the past.”

50 EH/s

Cango is more used to helping Chinese banks issue loans for people looking to buy cars. But the firm, which went public in 2018, was already diversifying its operations years before acquiring its bitcoin fleet.

Cango started facilitating car exports from China to other parts of the world and has invested in Li Auto, a Chinese electric vehicle manufacturer. Following that investment, Cango explored business opportunities in the renewable energy sector, including high-compute power projects related to AI, before venturing into on bitcoin mining.

“Bitcoin mining is a very good way to rebalance energy grids,” Ye said, referring to the fact that bitcoin miners can easily switch their rigs off and on again. Some jurisdictions, like Texas, take advantage of that ability by encouraging miners to operate in periods of low energy consumption, and paying them to shut down their machines when local demand surges, like during heatwaves or blizzards.

With Bitcoin’s hashrate now hovering at 823 EH/s, Cango will be providing roughly 6% of the total computing power behind Bitcoin once the firm’s 50 EH/s fully come online. For reference, MARA Holdings (MARA), the largest publicly traded miner in the world, owned a little over 47 EH/s worth of computing power as of November, per TheMinerMag data. CleanSpark (CLSK) and Riot Platforms (RIOT), the two next largest, stood at 32 EH/s and 26 EH/s respectively.

“The Bitcoin mining sector’s imperative for scaled operations was a pivotal consideration in our decision to enter this domain,” Cango’s management team told CoinDesk in an email.

“The current landscape is marked by industry consolidation, with larger-scale operations becoming increasingly dominant due to escalating mining difficulty and the necessity for state-of-the-art hardware.”

One major difference between Cango and other mining heavyweights is that Cango isn’t operating its own mining fleet right now. With machines spread out around the world — including in the U.S., Canada, Paraguay and Ethiopia — Cango is still relying heavily on Bitmain for facilities and infrastructure, and to make sure the sites run smoothly.

“Even though we enter the industry with a significant amount of computing power, we are still new here, and we need time to adapt to the norms, and get a better understanding of the tax situation and the rest of the market,” Ye said. “So at the beginning, we chose to work together with Bitmain and to use its operations teams.”

That situation is likely to change over time, Ye said, as Cango gains experience in the sector and seeks to make its bitcoin mining operations more economically efficient. Nurturing an in-house mining team would likely be cheaper than relying on Bitmain’s expertise in the long run.

As for what Cango plans to do with its growing bitcoin stash, that will depend on how the year unfolds, Ye said. “We don’t rule out the possibility of making some tactical reductions [to the bitcoin holdings] based on market conditions,” she said. Cango mined 363.9 BTC in November alone, a sum worth roughly $35 million at the time of writing.

Sui resumed its strong uptrend, soaring by almost 20%. At last check Saturday, its price hovered at around $5.13.

Sui (SUI), a popular layer-2 network, has been one of the best-performing cryptocurrencies, soaring by over 1,312% from its lowest level in 2023.

This performance has brought its market cap to over $15 billion, making it the 13th biggest cryptocurrency in the industry. 

Sui’s surge coincided with the continued ecosystem growth as the total value locked in its Decentralized Finance ecosystem soared to a record high of $1.96 billion.

The biggest players in its DeFi ecosystem are Suilend Protocol, NAVI Protocol, Cetus, Scallop Lend, and Aftermath Finance. 

Sui partnerships

Sui also grew after securing major partnerships with top companies like VanEck, Grayscale, and Franklin Templeton. For example, Grayscale launched the Sui Trust, which has accumulated over $14 million in assets. If the Securities and Exchange Commission changes its view on crypto ETFs under Paul Atkins, that could signal that the firm will apply for a spot Sui ETF in 2025. 

Sui has also had more successes that have propelled it to a record high. It has incorporated four stablecoins like USD Coin, AUSD, FDUSD, and USDY, which have a combined market cap of over $406 million. 

It also launched Deepbook V3, its native onchain order book, whose trading volume jumped to over $1 billion. Its DEEP token has gained a market value of over $375 million.

Meanwhile, Sui’s DEX ecosystem is booming, handling over $46 billion in volume since its inception. 

More data shows that Sui’s futures open interest soared to a record high of $963 million. This is a notable increase from this week’s low of $650 million and a sign that SUI’s token is gaining traction among investors.

Sui price forecast

The daily chart shows that the SUI token has been bullish this year, rising for four straight days and flipping the resistance at $5 into resistance. By doing that, the coin invalidated the risky double-top pattern whose neckline was at $4. A double-top is a popular reversal sign in the market. 

The price of Sui has been supported by the 50-day moving average, which it has failed to move below since September last year. It is also a cheap coin, as the Z-score of the Market Value to Realized Value has fallen to 2.7. A cryptocurrency is said to be highly expensive when it has a Z score of 3.8.

Therefore, technicals suggest that the SUI price will rise to the extreme overshoot of the Murrey Math Lines at $5.50. A move above that level will raise the odds of it moving to the next crucial level at $10.