Morning Crypto Market Overview: Standard Chartered Predicts 40x Growth for UNI, While Decentralized AI Gains Momentum
While market participants were resting, the crypto industry did not stand still. The morning of June 16 brought several significant events, from an ambitious forecast for Uniswap to the closure of the popular mobile game Pudgy Party. Let's break down the key trends and movements in the market.
Bitcoin and Ethereum: Morning Correction
The largest cryptocurrencies started the day in the red zone. At the time of writing this review, Bitcoin (BTC) is trading near the $65,828 mark, having updated its 24-hour low at $65,468 and high at $67,248. Ethereum (ETH) is also showing a decline, sitting at the $1,763 level. This is a short-term correction following recent growth, which does not negate the overall positive market sentiment.
Among the leaders by market cap, Hyperliquid stands out, showing a confident increase of 6.20% over the day and 13.59% over the week. At the same time, Dogecoin became the day's underperformer, losing 1.96%, and Tron the week's, declining by 2.35%. In the top 100 coins, Jito became the undisputed leader with a 27.32% gain in 24 hours, while the best weekly result belongs to SKYAI at +62.53%.
Standard Chartered Bets on DeFi: UNI Could Surge 40x
One of the world's oldest banks, Standard Chartered, has published its first analytical report on the Uniswap protocol. The forecast is impressive: according to analysts, the UNI token could rise from its current $2.70 to $100 by the end of 2030. The main driver is the explosive growth of tokenized real-world assets (RWA) in DeFi. Their volume is expected to increase 37-fold, leading to a multiple expansion of Uniswap's liquidity pools.
The bank's head of research, Geoffrey Kendrick, draws a bold analogy, comparing Uniswap to YouTube and Coinbase to Netflix. Uniswap, in his view, provides an open infrastructure where anyone can create pools, radically lowering barriers to entry. An additional catalyst is the UNIfication upgrade, which launched a token burning mechanism, already reducing the total supply from 1 billion to 895 million.
Decentralized AI: The New Hot Topic
A decision by the U.S. government, requiring Anthropic to restrict access to its advanced models Fable 5 and Mythos 5, caused a powerful resonance. The company even disabled them for all users. Grayscale analysts rightly note that this incident clearly demonstrates the risks of centralized control over AI technologies and becomes a strong argument in favor of decentralized alternatives.
The market reacted instantly: the TAO token of the Bittensor project, dubbed "Bitcoin for AI," surged 30% in 12 hours, reaching a three-week high of $283. This is a clear signal that investors are beginning to reassess the prospects of decentralized AI networks.
Pudgy Penguins Shuts Down Mobile Game, Focusing on Browser
The popular NFT project Pudgy Penguins is winding down its mobile game Pudgy Party, which had amassed over 1 million downloads since August 2025. The developers are reallocating resources to the browser-based project Pudgy World, which they call the flagship gaming product of the ecosystem. This decision reflects a general trend: the Web3 gaming market, despite the recent recovery of the NFT market to $1.5 billion, is still far from its 2022 peak of $17 billion. Many projects, such as Fishing Frenzy, cannot find a sustainable business model.
Expert Opinion: Standard Chartered's forecast for UNI is not just numbers, but a powerful signal of institutional recognition of DeFi as a mature asset class. However, investors should remember: 40x growth is a 5-year horizon fraught with intense competition and regulatory risks. In the short term, the decentralized AI sector looks more interesting, where events are developing rapidly, as we see with TAO.