Standard Chartered gives $100 in UNI, Grayscale praises decentralized AI, and Pudgy Party shuts down — crypto market digest for June 16
Monday morning on the crypto market is marked by a moderate correction, but investors' attention is focused on fundamental news. Standard Chartered has released its first analytical report on Uniswap, predicting a 40-fold increase for the UNI token; Grayscale analysts highlight the risks of centralized AI; and the NFT project Pudgy Penguins is shutting down its mobile game. We break down the key events.
Market: slight correction for Bitcoin and Ethereum
As of 07:38 Moscow time, Bitcoin (BTC) is trading around $65,828, having corrected from its overnight high of $67,248. The 24-hour low is $65,468. Ethereum (ETH) also started the day lower, standing at $1,763.
Among the top 10 by market cap, Hyperliquid shows the best performance over the past 24 hours and week: +6.20% and +13.59%, respectively. The biggest losses over the last 24 hours are seen in Dogecoin (-1.96%), and over seven days in Tron (-2.35%).
Among the top 100 assets, Jito stands out with a 27.32% gain in 24 hours, while the weekly leader is SKYAI (+62.53%). The laggards: Audiera lost 27.88% in a day, DeXe dropped 12.40% over the week.
Standard Chartered: UNI could rise to $100 by 2030
Standard Chartered Bank has published its first analytical report on the Uniswap protocol, predicting the UNI token will rise to $100 by the end of 2030 — from its current $2.70. According to analysts, the key driver is the influx of tokenized real-world assets (RWA) into DeFi. The volume of such assets is expected to grow 37-fold, which would multiply the liquidity of Uniswap pools.
Head of research Jeffrey Kendrick compared Uniswap to YouTube and Coinbase to Netflix: the decentralized protocol provides open infrastructure where anyone can create liquidity pools, lowering capital barriers. The bank also noted the effect of the UNIfication upgrade, which introduced token burning: the UNI supply has already decreased from 1 billion to 895 million.
Risks include competition from niche DEXs and the need for closer integration with traditional finance.
Grayscale: Anthropic incident is an argument for decentralized AI
Grayscale analysts stated that the restriction of access to Anthropic models (Fable 5 and Mythos 5) at the request of the U.S. government clearly demonstrates the risks of centralized control over advanced AI technologies.
Against this news, the TAO token of the Bittensor project, which Grayscale head of research Zach Pandl called "Bitcoin for AI," rose 30% in 12 hours, reaching a three-week high of $283. This event underscores growing interest in decentralized AI networks as an alternative to centralized solutions.
Pudgy Penguins shuts down mobile game Pudgy Party
The NFT project team announced the discontinuation of development for the mobile game Pudgy Party, launched in August 2025 and accumulating over 1 million downloads. Resources are being redirected to the browser-based project Pudgy World, which developers call the flagship gaming product of the ecosystem.
The closure of Pudgy Party reflects the general difficulties of Web3 games: previously, the Fishing Frenzy project announced its shutdown, failing to find a sustainable crypto-gaming model. The NFT market, although it has grown to $1.5 billion, remains far from its 2022 peak of $17 billion.
My comment: Standard Chartered's forecast for UNI is not just a "bullish" signal, but a sign that traditional finance is beginning to seriously evaluate DeFi infrastructure as the future standard for capital markets. However, a 40-fold increase by 2030 requires not only an influx of RWAs but also overcoming regulatory barriers, which remain the main obstacle for protocols like Uniswap.