These 3 Cryptos Caught Massive Capital Flow Last Week
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| By Marija Matic |
What a week!
And no, I’m not talking about the beautiful trip to southern Italy I just returned from.
I’m talking about how the crypto market officially woke from its slumber. It roared back to life and went for a run as the top 100 digital assets stage an aggressive, market-wide rally.
From ecosystem-driving Layer-2s …
To high-yield DeFi and cash-flowing memecoin factories …
Green candles are dominating the charts.
The Broader Market Scorecard: A Rising Tide Lifts the Top 300
Over the past seven days, the tide has lifted nearly every boat in the ecosystem. Green weekly candles were printed across almost the entire top 300 asset universe.
Speculative capital and sector-specific rotations have triggered vertical legacy moves.
And a diverse basket of prominent altcoins — from sectors as far apart as memecoins to infrastructure — comfortably cleared the +40% weekly return threshold:
- The Culture & Meme Core: Pudgy Penguins (PENGU, “D+”) and Pepe (PEPE, “C-”) captured heavy retail momentum, proving that community-driven liquidity remains highly reactive during macro market shifts.
- DeFi & Legacy Giants: Aave (AAVE, “C-”) and XRP (XRP, “C+”) experienced significant institutional and network-driven inflows, reasserting their structural dominance in decentralized credit and cross-border settlement.
- Scalability & App-Chains: Polygon (POL, “D+”, formerly MATIC), Injective (INJ, “D+”) and Lighter (LIT, “E+”) rallied aggressively as ecosystem liquidity rotated heavily into high-throughput execution layers.
But you don’t want to just match the market. Savvy investors look for the coins that outperform in moments like this.
So, here are the three standouts that caught my attention.
DeFi Powerhouse Posts a Near-Doubling Week
The headline story of the week belongs to Ethena (ENA, “B+”).
This synthetic dollar protocol saw its price skyrocket by 90% over the past seven days. It even momentarily doubled in value before entering a mild healthy correction today.
Ethena’s core offering — its delta-neutral synthetic dollar, USDe — and additional other products currently command a $4.5 billion Total Value Locked (TVL).
USDe captures much of its 4% yield via basis trading. That strategy has maintained positive funding days roughly 80% of the year.1
That acts as the strong yield engine as Ethena's broader capital allocation relies heavily on DeFi lending and liquid stables, resulting in a staggering $761+ million in total rewards distributed to date.
Where the Capital is Moving:
- Kraken Integration: Users holding USDe on Kraken can now automatically earn yield. This creates a seamless environment for traders looking to cycle in and out of stable positions.
- Coinbase DeFi Earn: Ethena assets deployed within Coinbase’s ecosystem have officially scaled past the $330 million mark
- Robinhood Chain: The newest growth frontier for Ethena is on Robinhood's chain infrastructure, where TVL has rapidly crossed $309 million, clocking the protocol's fastest monthly growth rate according to DeFiLlama data:2
The Caveat:
Despite the massive explosive upside, ENA remains -89.8% below its all-time high. The primary headwind is a heavy structural overhang: a highly dilutive unlock schedule running until April 1, 2028.
In short, this powerhouse still has notable headwinds. That said, ENA has a proven historical track record of violent, rapid rallies once a macro floor has been established.
An Economic Engine Enters Beast Mode
The Solana (SOL, “B-”) network’s premier memecoin launchpad, Pump.fun (PUMP, “C-”), is putting on an absolute masterclass in revenue generation.
The token is up 63% in a week and a staggering 168% over the last 30 days. And it notably began its upward trajectory well before Bitcoin’s macro breakout.
As the most heavily utilized application on the Solana network, Pump.fun’s 30-day structural metrics show strength:
- DEX Volume Processed: $2.298 billion3
- 30-Day Fees Generated: $39.91 million4
- Annualized Revenue Projection: $394.28 million (in pure fee generation)5
The Deflationary Burn:
The protocol aggressively converts its massive revenue into token scarcity.
To date, a total of $436.15 million worth of PUMP has been bought back and permanently burned. That successfully erases 16.16% of the total supply.
Daily buybacks and burns currently clock in at an impressive $842,000.
These metrics solidify Pump.fun’s status as a dominant revenue engine for the entire memecoin ecosystem.
Privacy Resurgence Confronts Historic Resistance
Privacy giant ZCash (ZEC, “B-”) printed a stellar 62% gain this week as it aggressively pushed toward its 2018 high of $880.20. That still acts a major technical and psychological resistance level.
Most notably, the "optional privacy" pioneer has put on an absolute clinic against the market leader, soaring 2,763% against Bitcoin (BTC) over the past year.
ZEC Network Reality Check:7
- Daily transactions: 7,031 (up 163% year over year, 50% week over week)
- Capital staged in shielded (privacy) pools: 28.4%
- Historical context: 22.8% shielded a year ago; 7.4% shielded five years ago.
The Inside Story:
A 50% week-over-week increase in transaction count sounds strong. But we need to put it into context: An absolute average of roughly 7,000 daily transactions indicates that users are primarily purchasing ZEC on centralized exchanges and holding it there, off chain.
They’re treating this as a macro investment vehicle.
This contrasts sharply with "private-by-default" giant Monero, which sees a very heavy day-to-day transactional utility.
However, Monero does not beat ZCash’s accessibility. And internal privacy dynamics of the ZCash network are growing stronger too.
Today, 28.4% of all circulating ZEC sits privately inside shielded pools, marking a large structural shift toward actual privacy adoption compared to just 7.4% five years ago.
The Outliers in Red
The market-wide expansion was so pervasive that finding assets trading in the red required digging deep into isolated narrative traps.
It’s good news when you have to actively hunt for the losers.
The only notable exceptions to the top 300 rally were assets tightly bound to Justin Sun and World Liberty Finance (WLFI, Not Yet Rated). Both ecosystems remain heavily weighed down by ongoing, high-profile legal friction.
Otherwise, if you were exposed to crypto this past week, chances are your positions improved.
That won’t always be the case.
So, learning how to spot the coins that’ll stay strong through the crypto winter and outperform when the ice thaws is critical to your crypto strategy.
To see how my colleague Juan Villaverde helps his Weiss Crypto Investor members do just that for their long-term crypto holdings, click here.
Best,
Marija Matić
1https://app.ethena.fi/dashboards/market-data
2https://defillama.com/stablecoins/robinhood-chain
3https://defillama.com/protocol/pump.fun?groupBy=monthly
4https://defillama.com/protocol/pump.fun?groupBy=monthly
5https://defillama.com/protocol/pump.fun?groupBy=monthly
6https://zecstats.com/chart/correlation?from=2025-08-24&to=2026-08-24
