Crypto Morning June 16: Standard Chartered sees UNI at $100, Grayscale bets on decentralized AI, and Pudgy Penguins shuts down mobile game
The market starts the day with a slight correction, but key news sets a bullish tone for the week. Standard Chartered has released its first analysis on Uniswap, forecasting UNI growth to $100, Grayscale analysts point to the risks of centralized AI, and NFT giant Pudgy Penguins is shutting down its mobile game to focus on a browser-based project. We break down the main events of the morning of June 16.
Market Dynamics: Slight Decline Among Leaders
As of 07:38 Moscow time, Bitcoin (BTC) is trading around $65,828, having updated its 24-hour low at $65,468 and high at $67,248. Ethereum (ETH) is also showing a downward trend, hovering around $1,763. However, the overall picture does not look alarming — this is more of a profit-taking after the recent growth.
Among the top 10 by market cap, Hyperliquid stands out with a gain of +6.20% over 24 hours and +13.59% over the week. The laggards are Dogecoin (-1.96% in 24 hours) and Tron (-2.35% over seven days). In the top 100, the best 24-hour result is from Jito (+27.32%), and over the week from SKYAI (+62.53%). The biggest losses are recorded for Audiera (-27.88% in a day) and DeXe (-12.40% over the week).
Standard Chartered: UNI Could Grow 40-Fold
Standard Chartered Bank has published its first analytical report on the Uniswap protocol, forecasting the UNI token to rise from its 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-fold, which will multiply liquidity in Uniswap pools.
Head of Research Geoffrey Kendrick compared Uniswap to YouTube and Coinbase to Netflix: Uniswap provides an open infrastructure where anyone can create liquidity pools, lowering capital barriers. The bank also noted the effect of the UNIfication upgrade, which has already reduced the total UNI supply from 1 billion to 895 million tokens. Risks include competition from niche DEXs and the need for closer integration with traditional finance.
Grayscale: Anthropic Incident — An Argument for Decentralized AI
Grayscale analysts stated that the US government's decision to order Anthropic to restrict access to the Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models for national security reasons has become a stark demonstration of the risks of centralized control over advanced AI technologies. In response, Anthropic disabled these models for all users.
Against this backdrop, the TAO token of the decentralized AI project Bittensor surged 30% in 12 hours, reaching a three-week high of $283. Grayscale Head of Research Zach Pandl called Bittensor "Bitcoin for AI," emphasizing its role as a censorship-resistant alternative.
Pudgy Penguins Shuts Down Mobile Game, Focusing on Browser
The NFT project Pudgy Penguins has announced the cessation of development and the closure of the mobile game Pudgy Party, launched in August 2025 and amassing over 1 million downloads. The team is redirecting resources to the browser-based project Pudgy World, which they call the flagship gaming product of the ecosystem with high scaling potential.
This decision reflects the general difficulties of Web3 games: earlier, the Fishing Frenzy project announced its closure, having failed to find a viable crypto-gaming model. The NFT market, although grown to $1.5 billion, is still far from its 2022 peak of $17 billion. Pudgy Penguins' consolidation of efforts around a single product is a logical step in an environment where even successful projects are forced to seek more efficient formats.
Analyst's opinion: Standard Chartered's forecast for UNI looks ambitious but not fantastical — tokenization of real-world assets could indeed become the next big driver for DeFi. As for Bittensor, the Anthropic story only confirms the thesis that decentralized alternatives in AI will gain weight, especially amid geopolitical tensions.