One small-cap crypto newcomer is defying the widespread downturn that’s hammered Bitcoin and the altcoin markets at large.
The global payments infrastructure platform Celo (CELO) has soared more than 50% in the past week, as larger assets like Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Binance Coin (BNB) and Cardano (ADA) remain in the red on their weekly charts.
The platform’s governance and utility asset is ranked 122nd by market cap and is trading at $3.52 at time of writing, according to CoinGecko.
Celo’s backers include big names in the crypto space like Coinbase, Polychain Capital, and Andreessen Horowitz.
The project, which bills itself as the “platform for mobile DeFi,” is also backed by two huge figures in the social media world – LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman and Twitter founder Jack Dorsey. Telecommunications giant Deutsche Telekom has also invested in the Celo network.
One potential reason for the asset’s price surge is that Telekom and Andreesen Horowitz both announced last week that they had partnered to stake CELO tokens on Celo’s public blockchain network. Staking allows a user on the network to generate rewards on their crypto assets by depositing coins into the protocol to validate network transactions.
Explains Katie Haun, general partner at Andreessen Horowitz,
“We partnered with Deutsche Telekom because their incentives align with Celo’s vision of building a global payment platform that can be used by anyone with just a mobile phone.”
Although it has significantly outperformed the markets in the past week, CELO is down more than 50% from its all-time high of $7.32, which it reached on May 18th amid a market-wide rally.
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