25 April 2025

Finally, a hopeful week!

Bitcoin is a cool 10% up while many altcoins have done double digit gains as well. Bitcoin surged past $94,000 this week, breaking out of its post-March malaise and reclaiming its bullish momentum. The move was fuelled by a combination of factors: renewed institutional appetite, nearly $1 billion in spot ETF inflows, and a growing narrative of BTC as a safe-haven asset amid global market volatility.

We are in an interesting zone for Bitcoin – a break above $96,000 would mean that we continue to be bullish leading into May. A retest of its $90,000 support is also possible to keep our emotions in check. It can go either way but at least, we are more hopeful than last week!

The focus today is on Sui – the token has registered an impressive 68% gain this week. What’s driving this change? Let's find out.

Top-3 stories of the week:

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The newsletter is put together by Giottus Crypto Platform. You can read all the previous issues of Cryptogram here.

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WEEKLY MACROS

• Total crypto market cap - $2.94 trillion - UP 10.11%    

• Bitcoin price - $93,761 - UP 10.7%

• The dollar index (DXY) - 99.56 - DOWN 1%

• Bitcoin Dominance - 64.23% -  UP 1.5%

• Crypto Fear and Greed Index - 60 - Market is in Greedy State

THE HOT TAKE

Sui in the limelight

Over the past week, SUI has surged over 65%, climbing from $2.1 to $3.5, fuelled by a potent mix of DeFi momentum, whale accumulation, and a breakout from a long-term downtrend. Let's unpack this surge.

Sui stacks up impressive on-chain activity

Sui has witnessed a dramatic surge in monthly active addresses with a 4x growth – from an average of 10 million to over 42 million in the last two months. This growth has been steady and sustained, signalling a meaningful expansion of user activity on the network. Typically, a rise of this magnitude in active users reflects growing interest and interaction with the blockchain—often a sign of increasing network utility.

Alongside the surge in monthly active addresses, Sui is also racking up new users at an impressive pace. Since the mid-February inflection point, daily new wallet creations have exploded—from a modest 150K per day to a high of 2.1 million on April 1. The network has sustained over a million new wallets per day ever since.

Sui’s DeFi ecosystem is now 9^th largest

Sui has officially made its way into the top 10 DeFi ecosystems, now ranking 9^th globally in Total Value Locked (TVL), according to DeFi Llama. But a steady stream of capital inflow and rising user interest have pushed it ahead of networks like Aptos and Avalanche. TVL on Sui now stands at over $1.43 billion, a clear sign that more users and developers are starting to take the network seriously.

This kind of growth in TVL usually means two things: More money is staying in the ecosystem, and people trust the projects being built. We’re seeing consistent numbers week over week, which suggests real usage and sticky activity.

Sui ecosystem tokens are also exploding

Investor attention isn’t limited to SUI itself. Several major projects building on the Sui blockchain have posted significant price increases over the last week:

• Suilend’s SEND token is up 76%, reflecting growing interest in decentralized lending and borrowing solutions native to Sui.

• Walrus’s WAL token has surged by 41% in the past week, reflecting growing demand for decentralized storage solutions within the Sui ecosystem.

• DeepBook’s DEEP token has nearly doubled, gaining a staggering 111%, as the protocol continues to expand its footprint as a foundational order book infrastructure.

• Navi Protocol’s NAVX has also surged 71%, demonstrating strong traction for Sui-native liquidity protocols.

But, what’s driving this growth?

1. Tech that works at scale

Sui’s recent growth is driven by major upgrades that make the network faster and more efficient:

• Mysticeti v2: Cuts consensus time from ~1900ms to ~390ms, making transactions much faster.

• Pilotfish execution engine: Breaks tasks into smaller parts handled by different machines-solves the scaling problem most chains face.

• Move VM 2.0: Boosts smart contract execution by 30–65% and makes building complex apps easier and faster.

2. BTCfi: Bitcoin finally put to work

Sui’s recent DeFi boom isn’t happening in a vacuum. A big catalyst has been the rise of BTCfi, a new category of Bitcoin-based DeFi primitives. Traditionally, BTC just sat in wallets or cold storage. But now, with tools like LBTC, stBTC, and Sui’s native BTC Bridge, users can actually put their Bitcoin to work in Sui’s DeFi protocols, earning yield or using it as collateral.

Over $111 million worth of BTC has already been deposited into apps like Suilend, Navi, and Cetus. This kind of cross-asset integration gives Sui a unique edge, Ethereum has wrapped BTC too, but doesn’t have the native infrastructure or recent momentum that Sui is now showing. Sui is becoming the go-to Layer 1 for BTC-based DeFi, and that’s drawing in new users who might not have cared about altchains before.

3. Better fees, better tools for builders

Sui’s fee system is another reason the network is gaining popularity. Unlike Ethereum’s global fee market, where a surge in demand anywhere means everyone pays more-Sui’s object-based fee model keeps fees localized. If one app is blowing up, it won’t raise fees across the entire network.

That’s similar to Solana’s localized fees, but Sui takes it a step further by tying fees directly to individual objects. It’s a smarter, fairer system for both developers and users.

On the dev side, Sui is also making life easier. New tools like Move Registry help manage smart contract dependencies, and the ability to trace and replay transactions makes debugging smoother-something that’s still clunky on other chains. All of this lowers the barrier to entry for new builders, who are now flocking to Sui instead of fighting the same old pain points elsewhere.

Key Takeaway: Sui’s momentum feels real

Sui isn’t just riding the wave of a bullish market-it’s carving out real staying power with smart design and sharp execution. From faster transaction speeds to a cleaner, more efficient fee model, it’s solving the pain points that users and developers have long faced on other chains. With innovations like Pilotfish and Move VM 2.0, the network is scaling horizontally and building for the long haul-without sacrificing performance or decentralization.

At the same time, Sui is tapping into new use cases that actually matter. BTCfi is giving Bitcoin a productive role in DeFi for the first time, and the ecosystem is seeing real user and capital inflows as a result. Add in a growing number of wallet creations, surging token prices, and a spot in the top 10 DeFi ecosystems-and it’s clear Sui is no longer an underdog. It’s building momentum with purpose.

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If you have any questions or feedback for us, write to us at [email protected]. You can check out the previous issues here.

Disclaimer: Crypto products and NFTs are unregulated and can be highly risky. There may be no regulatory recourse for any loss from such transactions. Please do your own research before investing and seek independent legal/financial advice if you are unsure about the investments.