Market at the start of the week: Standard Chartered gives a forecast for UNI, decentralized AI gains momentum, and Pudgy Penguins shuts down its mobile game
Monday morning, June 16, sees the cryptocurrency market experiencing a moderate decline. Bitcoin (BTC) started the day with a drop, and as of 07:38 MSK, it is trading around $65,828. Over the past 24 hours, the asset has fluctuated between $65,468 and $67,248, indicating sustained high volatility. Ether (ETH) is also showing a downward trend, sitting at approximately $1,763.
Market Cap Leaders and Laggards
Among the top 10 assets by market capitalization, Hyperliquid shows the best performance over the past 24 hours and week, gaining 6.20% and 13.59%, respectively. The largest losses over 24 hours are seen in Dogecoin (-1.96%), and over seven days in Tron (-2.35%). Among the top 100 cryptocurrencies, the situation is more contrasting: Jito rose by 27.32% in 24 hours, while SKYAI gained 62.53% over the week. The worst daily result is for Audiera (-27.88%), and the worst weekly result is for DeXe (-12.40%).
Standard Chartered: Uniswap Forecast at $100 by 2030
Standard Chartered Bank has published its first analytical report on the Uniswap protocol, forecasting a 40-fold increase in the UNI token price — from the current $2.70 to $100 by the end of 2030. According to analysts, the key driver will be the influx of tokenized real-world assets (RWA) into DeFi. Their volume is expected to grow 37 times, leading to a significant increase in liquidity in Uniswap pools. Head of Research Geoffrey Kendrick called DeFi protocols "the next opportunity for creating large fortunes in crypto," comparing Uniswap to YouTube and Coinbase to Netflix. He emphasized that Uniswap's open infrastructure lowers barriers to entry. An additional positive factor is the UNIfication upgrade, which launched token burning: the total UNI supply has already decreased from 1 billion to 895 million.
Decentralized AI on the Rise
Grayscale analysts highlighted the resonant case with Anthropic. After the US government ordered restrictions on access to the Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models for foreigners, the company completely disabled them for all users. According to Grayscale Head of Research Zach Pandl, this incident clearly demonstrates the risks of centralized control over advanced AI technologies. Against this backdrop, the TAO token of the Bittensor project, which Pandl called "Bitcoin for AI," surged 30% in 12 hours, reaching a three-week high of $283.
Pudgy Penguins Shuts Down Mobile Game
The team behind the NFT project Pudgy Penguins announced the cessation of development and closure of the mobile game Pudgy Party, launched in August 2025, which had garnered over 1 million downloads. Resources are being redirected to the browser-based project Pudgy World, which developers call the ecosystem's flagship gaming product. This decision reflects general difficulties in the Web3 gaming segment — the Fishing Frenzy project also announced its closure the day before, having failed to find sustainable monetization. The NFT market, although it has grown to $1.5 billion, is still far from its 2022 peak of $17 billion.
My view: Standard Chartered's forecast for Uniswap looks ambitious but reflects the long-term trend of tokenizing real-world assets. However, competition from specialized DEXs and the need for integration with TradFi remain significant risks. The Anthropic incident is a powerful catalyst for decentralized AI. Bittensor could become one of the main beneficiaries here, but investors should remember the high volatility of such projects. The winding down of Pudgy Party is another reminder that in current market conditions, only projects that can offer real utility, rather than just a pretty wrapper, survive.