This Week in Coins: Bitcoin and Ethereum Flat Again, Axie Infinity Sees Rare Jump – Decrypt

This week's crypto market was another mixed bag, as the industry continues to navigate the ongoing contagion from the FTX crash.

Bitcoin and Ethereum again ended the week basically unchanged, which could be considered a win considering the losses being experienced by some of the other major coins. As of Saturday morning, Bitcoin (BTC) is up less than 1% over the past seven days, and Ethereum (ETH) is down 1.5%. Most of the top 50 coins by market capitalization were in the red over the past week or, if in the green, they were up less than 2%.

BTC fluctuated between roughly $17,300 and $16,700 while Ethereum jumped between $1,300 and $1,225 as bears and bulls battled for control.

But one rare winner in the last seven days was Axie Infinity's native AXS token. The token is up 21% since last weekend and is now trading at about $8.50, per CoinGecko.

The AXS token is used in the popular crypto game of play to win, where users battle Pokémon-like creatures.

AXS is the project's governance token, allowing holders to vote on things like how the project's treasury should be allocated or to propose new in-game features. The game uses another token called Smooth Love Potion (SLP), which is used as a reward for users for winning duels.

This week's peak follows the throw of the project's Axie Contributors initiative. Approximately 700 "engaged" members of the community will be given formal roles within the game's governance model as part of Axie's push for more informed discussions about how the game should work.

After AXS, the native token powering self-custodial Trust Wallet crypto wallet is also on the rise. TWT is up about 6% in the last seven days, almost reaching $3, according to CoinGecko. Like the Axie Infinity token, the Trust Wallet is a governance token used to vote on new developments for the Binance-owned wallet.

Tokens for decentralized exchange aggregator 1 inch (1 INCH), Chainlink (LINK) and Flow (FLOW), round out this week's biggest losers.

The spread of FTX continues

The collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried's crypto empire last month is still wreaking havoc on the industry, with several companies announcing more layoffs this week in the wake of FTX's bankruptcy.

Bybit, SwytfxY Koinly all announced a cut in their workforce, citing both contagion from the FTX collapse and the ongoing bear market.

In addition to the layoffs, Maple Finance, a platform that allows companies to launch a line of credit using smart contracts, was also affected by knock-on effects. The platform Announced this week that it would cut all ties with Orthogonal Trading after the latter "misrepresented" its exposure to FTX, leading to its default on its loans.

M11 Credit, the firm that created the credit facility in Maple from which Orthogonal borrowed, said: "We believe that Orthogonal Trading previously knowingly misrepresented its exposure and has therefore committed a material breach of the Master Lending Agreement (MLA). )".

It wasn't just M11 and Maple that burned. Crypto insurance protocol Nexus Mutual, another borrower from the same M11 group, also revealed losses of approximately $3 million in Ethereum due to the Orthogonal default.

Regarding SBF, it seems that he's finally coming back to Washington DC to testify before the House Committee on Financial Services.

After a public back and forth on Twitter with committee chair Maxine Waters, the former FTX CEO said he would be "willing to testify" despite "a limit" to what he can say due to not having " access to much of [his] data—professional or personal.”

The meeting is scheduled for December 13 and will seek to unravel how the exchange fell apart last month.