August recap : narratives, best-performers, and coins to watch
Huge crash to $50K $BTC in early August, chop around $60K afterwards
Welcome to this monthly recap, I am Viktor and you can find me here on Twitter and here on Telegram. Enjoy your reading !
Main events that happened in August :
The most significant event in August was undoubtedly the market-wide crash on August 5 : Bitcoin experienced a sharp decline, plummeting from $60k to as low as $49k within a short time. The major cause of the dump is considered to be the unwind of the yen carry trade, with the Japanese stock market also dumping by more than -20% in 3 days. This sudden capitulation led to heavy liquidations across the board, with $ETH also dropping to $2100. This event set the tone for the rest of the month, leading to a cautious and range-bound market as traders awaited signs of recovery. $BTC actually bounced back to more than $62K in August 8, but that was just a local high in a very choppy environment.
On August 23, Jerome Powell delivered a speech at the Jackson Hole symposium, signaling that the Federal Reserve would likely cut rates in September. This confirmation of the “pivot” that the market had been anticipating led to a strong pump across the crypto market, with $BTC soaring to $65k. However, this optimism was short-lived, as profit-taking and high open interest led to a subsequent -6% pullback within days.
Another notable event was the arrest of Pavel Durov, the founder of Telegram, in France on August 24. This news had a direct impact on $TON, the native token of the Telegram ecosystem, which dropped by -20%, and $NOT, which similarly fell by -25%. Despite these drops, the memecoin on the Ton network, $REDO, managed to gain traction, climbing 3x in the aftermath of the arrest. Pavel Durov has since been released, but he must remain in France.
Ripple’s ongoing legal battle with the SEC saw a new development when a federal judge imposed a $125 million fine on the company. This news was perceived positively by the market, as the fine was seen as relatively low compared to Ripple’s resources. The result was a +30% spike in $XRP’s price, though the rally was short-lived as profit-taking quickly ensued.
August also saw the launch of $CAT, a new cat memecoin inspired by the popular Simon’s Cat character. Backed by the same team behind $FLOKI (if I’m correct), $CAT’s market cap quickly climbed from $80M to $200M. The connection to $FLOKI was pivotal, as FLOKI holders were set to receive an airdrop from the $CAT supply, which helped FLOKI itself rally by +40% during the week leading up to the snapshot on August 29, and then the snapshot was naturally followed by a -20% drop in FLOKI price.
Besides $CAT, there has also been another mid-cap launch which is $DOGS, a new project on the Ton network. The current market cap is around $550M, and it topped at $800M.
Another launch was $RTR (Restore the Republic) in early August which quickly surged to $150M market cap (from $20M) as crypto traders speculated it was a crypto token endorsed by Donald Trump. However, after Eric Trump publicly denied any connection, the token’s value crashed by 99%, plummeting to just $8 million MC within hours.
Maker announced its rebranding to Sky, and the rebranding of $DAI to $USDS, on August 27, which lead to a +6% short-lived pump, but then the whole market tanked.
Main narratives of August :
Alt L1s and the ‘Next SOL’ Narrative
With $SOL now approaching a $100bn fully diluted valuation (FDV), traders turned their attention to hunting for the ‘next SOL,’ and $SUI stood out. It rallied more than 140% from its bottom, positioning itself as a potential successor. $SUI represents the traditional L1 trade, always a hot area in crypto markets, and with its impressive rise, it captured a lot of market attention.
Other VC-backed L1s such as $ZETA and $SAGA also experienced similar outperformance in the post August 5 bounce, but it’s mostly $SUI that has captured mindshare. $APT and $SEI also bounced strongly.
Old L1s like $FTM and $MATIC also saw strong performances, each up +50% to +100% from the August 5 bottom (before dumping), and both have a similar catalyst which is their rebranding and a new ticker : $S (Sonic Network) and $POL.
Tron season
One of the main narratives of the month was also the “Tron season”. Justin Sun started to shill the $SUNDOG memecoin, and it was a great signal to jump on the Tron bandwagon.
$SUNDOG went from $60M market cap to more than $300M at its top. In hindsight, it is the kind of trade you can get a 5x on with size, and there are at least one trade like that each month I would say.
As I said, this run ignited a “Tron season”, which pushed $TRX to have a +25% move in one week, after having already been one of the best performers of the last months. $SUN which is the leading DEX on Tron, and launched a pumpfun competitor called sunfun, also pumped a lot, from $90M mcap to $400M in a few days.
The other main memecoins on Tron are : $SUNWUKONG ($1M → $36M at the top), $FOFAR ($1M → $35M), $SUNCAT ($1M → $23M). All of them are now down bad from their top, so I think Tron season is over. Only $SUNDOG still stands at more than $200M mcap.
AI Narrative Makes a Comeback
The AI coin sector, which had been largely dormant since May, saw signs of revival in August. $RENDER led the charge with a +40% gain in a week, while $FET (now merged into ASI with $OCEAN and $AGIX) saw an +80% rally. This revival seemed to be driven by Nvidia’s earnings report, which sparked optimism in the AI space, but resulted in a classical sell the news event, even with NVDA beating earnings.
$TAO has also shown some strength in August, as it now seems to print higher lows on its BTC pair, since the early July crash.
A few additional comments about some coins and narratives :
BTCfi had a decent month on a relative basis too. $STX showed strength versus BTC because of the Nakamoto upgrade that took place on August 28 (and was a sell the news event). The ordinal coins tend to act like good beta to $BTC, especially $SATS and $RATS which have had huge gains from bottom to top in August, but are dangerous to hold for longer-term.
DeFi 1.0 has been one of the strongest category over the whole month, with $AAVE leading and closing the month at +21% gains, but also $CRV that has been holding decently.
$KMNO and $DRIFT are two Solana projects that were launched at a bad time and as a consequence, their FDVs are not so large. Both have decent fundamentals and are among the strongest Solana ecosystem performers in August.
$ZRO has been the strongest new VC coin over 2 months, but it dumped in early September. You can’t trust relative strength during a long time in the current conditions.
Among the major memecoins, $POPCAT was the best performer in August. Overall, the memecoin market has been weak though.
Silently, $HNT ends up being the best performer of the month among large caps.
$GIGA is a memecoin on Solana based on the GigaChad meme, and it reached $300M market cap in mid-August, and still stands at $150M MC. This kind of strength can’t go unnoticed, but I would like to see it suffer a large drawdown before jumping on the GIGA bandwagon.
$FWOG is another noticeable strong memecoin on Solana, it almost reached $100M amid significant Solana meme weakness.
The Neiro saga continued in August, with the main $NEIRO on ETH reaching $300M market cap, and being listed on Bybit, but it experienced a very sharp drawdown to below $30M mcap since then. The second $NEIRO on ETH (’NEIRO CTO’) pumped to $60M mcap too.
Best-performer list :
Best-performers among large caps in August :
HNT : +45%
AAVE : +21%
TRX : +23%
SUI : +13%
CRV : +9%
ALPH : +9%
XMR : +7%
FTM : +3%
APT : +1%
IMX : -2%
FET : -2%
ZRO : -9%
Smaller coins worth noting that had a good performance in August :
SUNDOG : +453%
SUN : +260%
PORK : +132%
VIDT : +127%
RARE : +115%
SHFL : +33%
RSC : +22%
LYXE : +26%
PEPECOIN : +24%
OHM : +14%
SATS : +10%
RSR : +9%
SUPER : +8%
NMR : +7%
PEOPLE : +3%
GIGA : +3%
Thank you for reading this article,
Cheers,
Viktor.