Cryptocurrency Weekly Results: Bitcoin Below $110,000, Aster Rising, and Plasma Launch
Date: 2025-09-29 Author: Henry Casey Categories: CRYPTO PAYMENTS
Bitcoin and Altcoins Under Pressure
By the end of the week, Bitcoin lost more than 5% and settled below $110,000. Over the weekend, the price remained near new levels, suggesting the beginning of consolidation. Among altcoins, the decline was even more significant: Ethereum lost 10% but held above $4,000, while Solana fell 16%, avoiding a drop below $200. Dogecoin (-14.8%) and Cardano (-12.6%) also declined.
The total crypto market capitalization fell to $3.8 trillion, which, amid a strong altcoin correction, strengthened Bitcoin's dominance to 56.4%. The Alt Season Index fell from 75 to 66 points, while the Fear and Greed Index fell to 37, entering the moderate fear zone.
Aster Overtakes Hyperliquid
On September 24, the decentralized exchange Aster surpassed Hyperliquid in daily perpetual contract trading volumes for the first time, with $20.8 billion versus $9.7 billion. By the end of the week, the gap widened: Aster had $42.8 billion versus its competitor's $4.6 billion. The BNB Chain-based exchange also surpassed Hyperliquid in fee income.
Aster emerged after the merger of APX Finance and Astherus in March and attracted community attention with the launch of its native token on September 17. Further impetus was provided by the public endorsement of Changpeng Zhao (CZ), who confirmed that former Binance employees are working on the Aster team, with himself serving as an advisor. YZi Labs, the venture arm of Binance, holds a minority stake in the project.
CZ noted that while Aster competes with Binance, its development benefits the entire BNB Chain ecosystem.
Ethereum and Plasma Updates
Vitalik Buterin stated that PeerDAS technology will be a key part of the upcoming Fusaka upgrade and will enable scaling on Ethereum. The new approach involves distributing block data across nodes with the ability to recover the information through erasure coding, making the system resilient to attacks.
Meanwhile, the Plasma project launched its mainnet and introduced the XPL token. The blockchain offers free USDT transfers thanks to the PlasmaBFT consensus and is EVM-compatible. At launch, the network supports over 100 DeFi integrations, including Aave, Ethena, Fluid, and Euler. The total value locked (TVL) reached $4.9 billion, allowing Plasma to overtake Base and take sixth place in the rankings. Plasma One, a neobank with promised returns exceeding 10% per annum based on its own DeFi protocols, was also presented.
Developed by Uniswap Labs
Uniswap Labs announced The Compact v1, a tool based on the ERC-6909 standard. It aims to overcome cross-chain fragmentation and ensure secure settlements using resource locks and programmable commitments.
Thus, the week was marked by a decline in the prices of major cryptocurrencies, a strengthening of Aster on the back of CZ support, technical news from Ethereum and Plasma, and the announcement of a new solution from Uniswap.
