By James Davis
On Tuesday, Polygon’s native token MATIC rose 9.5% to trade at $0.739. The rally is attributed to declining selling pressure, a positive regulatory outlook, and on-chain growth.
At the start of last month, MATIC plunged massively after the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) declared the token as security in its lawsuits against two top trading platforms, Coinbase and Binance. At the time, MATIC went from $0.913 to $0.595 within ten days.
Another driver that fueled the token’s price drop was the now-collapsed lending protocol Celsius. The court recently gave the firm the green light to sell its over 85 million MATIC tokens, estimated to be worth $65 million, for crypto assets considered more liquid such as Ethereum and Bitcoin.
However, recent on-chain data from blockchain analytics company Nansen indicates that the selling pressure has reduced after Celcius completed unloading all its MATIC tokens.
Data Shows Investors are Choosing to Hodl MATIC
Meanwhile, another analytics company Santiment says Polygon has witnessed increased network activity over the last few days. The firm adds that MATIC transfers to self-custody wallets have surged recently, suggeting that most investors now prefer hodling this crypto asset rather than selling it.
According to Nansen’s report, the total trading volume for Polygon-based NFTs rose 12% in June despite the Securities and Exchange Commission’s charges. In addition, more NFTs were minted on the blockchain in June than in the previous month.
Market sentiments around MATIC have improved since June 28, when Polygon Labs announced plans for Polygon 2.0. The upgrade is expected to simplify the process of creating Polygon chains. It will also enhance interoperability between the chains so that users won’t need wrapped tokens to make cross-chain transfers. It, however, remains unclear when the upgrade will be rolled out.
Polygon Labs Leadership Shakeup
Polygon 2.0 announcement came a week before Polygon Labs made some leadership changes. The current CEO of the company Ryan Wyatt is set to leave the office at the end of this month and will be replaced by Marc Boiron, Polygon Labs’ Chief Legal Officer.
It is important to mention that Wyatt will continue working at Polygon Labs, this time as the firm’s advisor.