This week, crypto has one of the most notable recoveries in recent times.

The notable point is not only that BTC or ETH is rising in price, but the breadth of the money flow. Most of the major industry groups are recording double-digit gains over 7 days, while narratives like NFT, DePIN, AI, RWA, SocialFi, and GameFi all return to the spotlight in unison.

the picture of the past 7 days looks like this:

NFT — +17.41%
DePIN — +16.57%
AI — +15.62%
RWA — +13.04%
SocialFi — +12.45%
GameFi — +12.28%
Meme — +8.73%
Layer 2 — +7.55%
DeFi — +7.15%

This matters more than a few individual tokens pumping hard.

When multiple sectors are rising at the same time, the story shifts from “a few narratives are running” to “risk appetite is coming back across the whole market.”

1. NFT SURPRISES ITS WAY BACK TO #1

NFT was the strongest sector this week, up +17.41%.

This is one of the most notable points because NFT has gone through a long period where the crypto market largely overlooked it.

Meanwhile:

DePIN +16.57%
AI +15.62%

shows that money flow isn’t just going into memes or short-term speculative assets.

AI continues to be supported by a host of stories around AI Agents, compute infrastructure, and autonomous systems.

DePIN also benefits from a narrative linking blockchain with physical infrastructure, computing power, storage, and network resources.

Put simply:

Crypto narrative is starting to run after utility again.

2. RWA STILL IS ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT LONG-TERM STORIES

RWA is up 13.04% over 7 days and about 35.51% year-to-date, based on data cited from SoSoValue.

What’s notable about RWA is that the story isn’t only about token price.

Over the past week, we’ve continued to see development related to:

  • Tokenized stocks

  • Tokenized bonds

  • Stablecoin infrastructure

  • On-chain settlement

  • Institutional blockchain infrastructure

  • Digital deposits

Even seven major banks in the UK have completed trials of trading tokenized sterling deposits between banks.

This is a very different part of today’s crypto market.

Blockchain is increasingly being tested not only as an asset, but also as infrastructure for financial markets.

3. ETF + STABLECOIN: IS LIQUIDITY TURNING BACK ON?

One of the most notable things I paid attention to this week is money flow.

Bitcoin ETF shows signs of improving inflows, while USDC supply is reported to have increased by about $1.5B over a week, to around $75.2B.

If stablecoin supply continues to expand, that means the amount of liquidity that can be deployed into crypto is also increasing.

At the same time, DOGE-related ETF products also recorded a strong trading week.

That doesn’t mean every new inflow will immediately go into altcoins.

But it shows one thing:

Market liquidity is becoming an important story again.

4. THORCHAIN: DECENTRALIZATION BROKEN DOWN AND EXAMINED

One of the biggest dramas of the week is the THORChain story following the Bitget-related incident.

A large amount of funds stolen were moved through cross-chain infrastructure, sparking debate about:

Permissionless vs. intervention

THORChain emphasizes that the network operates under a decentralized model and has no arbitrary authority to intervene in transactions.

At the same time, some figures in the industry are questioning the real decentralization of the TSS + validator model and the potential for network intervention.

This is a very crypto kind of debate:

If the protocol is fully permissionless, it has to handle transactions that the community doesn’t like.

But if the protocol can intervene, the next question is:

Who gets the kill switch?

And that’s the core issue of decentralization.

5. BITGET + BTC WITHDRAWAL: DON’T PANIC JUST BECAUSE OF THE WITHDRAWAL ORDER

This week, Bitget also became the focus after announcing a plan to open withdrawals in phases.

The disclosed order is:

BTC → ETH → USD → other tokens

Some analysts think this arrangement could create incentives for users to swap tokens into BTC before withdrawals.

But it needs to be clearly distinguished:

This is an analysis/speculation about the operating mechanism, not proof that BTC on Bitget has an abnormal price.

Bitget also said they have a Protection Fund, so seeing a phased withdrawal notice shouldn’t be automatically interpreted as a solvency event.

In situations like this:

Don’t panic. Check the mechanism. Check the reserves. Check the official announcement.

6. MEME IS STILL MEME

Meanwhile, even as other sectors surge, the Meme Index is still up about 8.73% over 7 days.

Pump.fun continues to be one of the most closely watched names.

The on-chain data mentioned over the week shows that this foundation continues to generate large-scale SOL sell transactions.

Here’s a pretty simple reminder:

The meme market can generate massive volume in a very short time.

But:

Volume ≠ sustainable demand.

And:

Narrative ≠ fundamentals.

Meme can run the fastest.

It also might reverse as quickly as possible.

7. WHAT IS THE ETH WHALE UP TO?

A whale address reportedly accumulated about 9,158 ETH, worth roughly $24.3M, over the span of about three weeks.

The estimated average buy price is around $2,658/ETH.

On the other hand, another whale is said to have taken profits of about 30,825 ETH—equivalent to roughly $83M—after holding for about three years.

Here’s a very clear example of how the market operates:

One whale might be accumulating.

Another whale might be distributing.

At the same time.

So, seeing just one whale trade isn’t enough to conclude whether the whole market is bullish or bearish.

8. TOKENIZED STOCKS ARE TURNING INTO A REAL MARKET

Another noteworthy datapoint:

The reported trading volume of tokenized stocks on DEX is around $20.9B over 30 days, with Uniswap V3/V4 accounting for over 60% of market share by the cited data.

If this trend continues, the boundary between:

Traditional Finance

and

On-chain Finance

it will become thinner and thinner.

Stock → token
Bond → token
Deposit → token
Gold → token
FX → on-chain

This could be one of the bigger changes for crypto over the next few years.

9. AI + CRYPTO CONTINUE TO COLLIDE

This week also saw many stories revolving around AI.

DeepSeek publicly released the D-Sec / DSec system for training Agents at the scale of thousands of execution environments every second.

Meta continues to push Muse AI.

Crypto companies are once again continuing to build AI Agents, AI-native infrastructure, and autonomous trading systems.

The common thread across all these stories is:

AI is no longer just a chatbot.

It’s becoming a new layer of execution.

An Agent can:

  • read the data

  • analyze

  • call the API

  • execute the workflow

  • interact with the blockchain

  • manage liquidity

  • execute trades conditionally

And this is exactly where AI + crypto can intersect strongly.

10. MACRO IS STILL THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM

Crypto can pump.

AI can pump.

Meme can pump.

But in the end, liquidity is still heavily affected by macro.

Over the past week, the market continued to track:

Fed
BOJ
US Treasury yields
USD
Oil
US-China relations
Middle East

Especially, Japan’s monetary policy is still an important variable for global liquidity.

If JPY funding conditions change sharply, carry trade positions and international capital flows could also be affected.

That’s why I don’t want to just look at crypto charts.

Crypto doesn’t exist in a vacuum.

BTC trades 24/7, but liquidity doesn't come from nowhere.

THE BIG PICTURE

If I bundle everything that happened over the week into a bigger picture, I see 4 stories running in parallel:

1. Liquidity

ETF flows and stablecoin supply are becoming variables you need to track.

2. Narrative rotation

AI, DePIN, RWA, NFT, and SocialFi all rising together shows that money flow is expanding into multiple sectors.

3. Institutionalization

Tokenized stocks, tokenized deposits, blockchain settlement, and stablecoin infrastructure continue to be tested by financial institutions.

4. Risk

THORChain, Bitget, whale movements, and regulatory developments remind us that crypto is still a market with very high risk levels.

AND THIS IS THE MOST INTERESTING THING I THINK

A healthy market doesn’t necessarily mean everything rises at the same time.

More notable is that when multiple different narratives start to each have their own money flows:

AI has an AI story.
DePIN has a DePIN story.
RWA has an RWA story.
Meme still has a Meme story.
ETFs have an institutional liquidity story.

When these stories show up together in a single week, the market starts to look very different from a one-off BTC pump.

But right when the market starts heating up, distinguishing between:

Liquidity → Narrative → Speculation → FOMO

becomes more important than ever.

Crypto can change narratives in just a few hours.

A week ago, AI was hot.

Tomorrow could be RWA.

The day after tomorrow might be another nameless meme coin with a $50M market cap.

That’s crypto.

WEEKLY MARKET SNAPSHOT

NFT: +17.41%
DePIN: +16.57%
AI: +15.62%
RWA: +13.04%
SocialFi: +12.45%
GameFi: +12.28%
Meme: +8.73%
Layer 2: +7.55%
DeFi: +7.15%

Next week, I’ll be especially tracking ETF flows, stablecoin supply, BTC liquidity, ETH whale activity, RWA/tokenized assets, and the developments in AI Agents.

The market is recovering broadly—so the question now isn’t only “what’s pumping?” but:

“Is this money flow strong enough to turn a green week into a bigger trend?”