For those of you who like to get involved in NFTs, the past week (March 17, 2022 through March 24) was an interesting one. This week was largely dominated by the launch of a new cryptocurrency: Apecoin ($APE). This new coin has certainly created a number of new millionaires in the world. This and more is discussed further below in the weekly crypto news review.

BAYC Apecoin airdrop enters top 50 cryptocurrencies

On Wednesday, March 16, Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) announced the launch of their new cryptocurrency, Apecoin ($APE). Last October, the team behind BAYC already revealed that there would be a cryptocurrency for the NFT project.

On March 17, $APE was launched. The cryptocurrency will primarily act as a "governance token," meaning it will give voting rights on important decisions for Bored Ape Yacht Club.

$APE is an ERC-20 token, also known as a token on the Ethereum blockchain. The total supply of $APE is 1 billion tokens and 62% of that goes to the community, the rest is reserved for the Yuga Labs, the company behind BAYC.

Holders of Bored Apes, Mutant Apes and Bored Ape Kennel Club Dogs received their Apecoins on March 17. That same day, $APE was listed on a lot of exchanges and the price shot up to €18. So on the day of launch, the cryptocurrency already shot into the top 50 and even the top 30 coins.

Meanwhile, $APE stands at €12.62 with a market cap of €3.5 billion.

Rolando Brison requests salary in Bitcoin

Sint Maarten parliamentarian Rolando Brison has asked the country's finance minister to pay his salary in Bitcoins.

Brison says he has been following the developments around cryptocurrencies for years. He encourages the digital revolution and therefore thinks it is a logical step to have his salary paid out in crypto. The politician wants Sint Maarten to pay more attention to crypto money and do everything possible to become the "crypto capital" of the Caribbean.

In Latin America, Venezuela, Mexico, Honduras and El Salvador are already showing more interest in crypto currencies. In El Salvador, Bitcoin is legal tender.

Honduras was in the news earlier this week with rumors that the country will soon also adopt Bitcoin as legal tender. Nothing else is known about that yet.

Bullish sentiment in the crypto market

Bullish sentiment is returning to the crypto markets after a slow start to the year. The recent outperformance of alternative cryptocurrencies (altcoins) over Bitcoin points to a greater risk appetite among traders.

On the 7-day charts, almost all cryptocurrencies are in the green. Bitcoin rose 3.8% in the past week and now stands at €39,000. Ethereum, however, rose a lot harder at 8.38% and now stands at €2,775. The biggest winners of the week are Cardano (ADA) with 33.16%, Ethereum Classic (ETC) with 58% and of course Apecoin (APE) with 1247% (!!).

Bitcoin is now bumping up against an important resistance that lies around €39,000, but if it manages to break through this, experts estimate that a new bull run could be started. Nevertheless, it remains important to watch the market with a skeptical eye, as macroeconomic conditions are anything but good. However, the question is how the cryptocurrency market will react to this. So far, it doesn't seem to care.