MATIC, the utility token of the Polygon network and one of the biggest altcoins, has been on a steady decline in the last few weeks along with most of the crypto market due to the ongoing financial troubles of the popular crypto-friendly bank, Silvergate.
Based on data from Coingecko, MATIC has plummeted by 6.9% in the last 24 hours and 20.3% in the last seven days. Interestingly, this price fall has occurred despite the Polygon network recording some massive whale transactions recently.
According to the on-chain analytics platform Santiment, Polygon has just recorded its two biggest whale transactions of the last six weeks. The report states that 50.2 million and 58.8 million MATIC tokens were transferred between on-exchange addresses on March 8 and March 9, respectively.
Source: Santiment
However, these whale transactions have so far been unable to halt the downward price trajectory of the altcoin. At the time of writing, MATIC is valued at $0.101, representing a 35.2% decline from its year-to-date (YTD) value.
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Meanwhile, its daily trading volume has boosted by 40.75% to $830.4 million, with its market cap still valued at around $8.3 billion, allowing the token to retain its position as the ninth biggest cryptocurrency in the world.
MATIC trading at $1.01 | Source: MATICUSD chart on Tradingview.com
Some Good News For Polygon
In addition to its massive whale activity in recent days, the Polygon network has also recorded a spike in daily active addresses. According to more data from Santiment, the number of daily active addresses on Polygon boosted from 163,500 on March 8 to 179,930 on March 9.
Source: Santiment
Prior to this increase, this metric had been on a downward spiral, having fallen off from an initial figure of 187,070 at the beginning of the week. However, this gain in traction indicates that there is still significant user activity on the Polygon network regardless of MATIC’s current price performance.
Furthermore, this development is quite important for the Polygon network, especially with the upcoming zkEVM upgrade later this month. Per a tweet by Polygon’s official Twitter handle, the zkEVM upgrade will allow transactions to be executed at a lower cost and faster speed.
More importantly, Polygon states this upgrade will lead to EVM equivalence, thus making its network compatible with any smart contract deployed on the Ethereum network regardless of its complexity. Following a smooth implementation of the zkEVM upgrade, the MATIC token is expected to receive a boost and perhaps return to higher price levels, as seen at the beginning of the year.
MATIC Price Prediction 2023
Notwithstanding its current bearish state, MATIC remains one of the most exciting tokens in the industry, attracting lots of investment interest. However, price prediction site Coincodex is projecting the altcoin will experience little to no price growth within the next 30 days, maintaining its value around a region of $1.01.
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DigitalCoinPrice, another popular price prediction team, provides a long-term forecast of MATIC’s price growth. According to their price projections for 2023, MATIC is expected to trade as high as $2.24 before the annual market closes. However, they warn that negative market forces could pull the token’s price to a minimum value of $0.92.
That said, investors should be aware that these price predictions are merely speculation and should not be relied on as investment advice.