Week Ahead: Crypto markets set to tip in favor of gaming and AI tokens

We’ve got an interesting next two weeks ahead of us that could potentially boost the crypto markets yet again. This newsletter will focus on the potential narratives that could unfold next week. 

Before we get into that, let’s take a look at the events this week, as well as next week’s handpicked topics that could start taking shape in the coming days. 

Read more: Bitcoin Weekly Forecast: BTC contemplates an increase to $100,000, but when?

This week’s crypto events: 

March 11 

• Arbitrum Arcade Gameathon

March 12 

• US CPI at 12:30 GMT

March 13

• Ethereum Dencun upgrade
• Aptos (APT) will unlock $300 million worth of APT tokens.

March 15

• Dusk (DUSK) Incentivized Testnet Staking ends 
• FTT Creditors meeting
• SUSHI trident pools deprecation

Next week’s crypto events

These are the events that are set to take place next week, but the tokens related to the concerned projects could start rallying beforehand.

March 18 

• NVIDIA AI conference 

March 19

• Pixels (PIXEL) to unlock $30 million worth of PIXEL tokens.

March 20

• US Interest Rate Decision

March 21

• SEC-XRP briefing deadline
• Avalanche (AVAX) to unlock $400 million worth of AVAX tokens.

March 22 

• ImmutableX (IMX) to unlock $110 million worth of IMX tokens.

Crypto narratives that could trigger massive moves this week

Arbitrum Arcade Gameathon: This eight-week onchain gameathon is designed specifically to highlight the most innovative gaming experiences in Web3. It starts on March 11 at 12:00 PM EDT and ends on March 18 at 12:00 PM EDT. However, the gaming ecosystem has already started seeing massive rallies. For example, the GALA project’s GALA token has shot up 125% in the last two weeks and currently sits at $0.07678. 

Other gaming tokens to watch for include Apecoin (APE), Axie Infinity (AXS), and The Sandbox (SAND). 

Read more: Gaming tokens surge, in spillover effect from Bitcoin price rally: GALA, SAND, ENJ, BEAM, APE

Ethereum Dencun upgrade: This major upgrade for Ether’s blockchain will occur on the Ethereum mainnet on March 13, at epoch 269568. The activation of Ethereum’s Dencun upgrade will take place at roughly 13:55 GMT. 

Read more:Ethereum price tags $4,000 on Coinbase for the first time since 2021

As a result, Ethereum-ecosystem tokens like Arbitrum (ARB), Optimism (OP), Ethereum Classic (ETC) or EOS (EOS) could rally along with Decentralized Finance (DeFi) sector altcoins like Uniswap (UNI), dYdX (DYDX), LidoDAO (LDO).

NVIDIA’s AI conference, Set to take place in San Jose, California, from March 18 to 21, is the most important event. OpenAI founder Sam Altman led Worldcoin (WLD), which rallied 121% between March 5 and 10, a move that could be attributed to the upcoming conference and the anticipation of the GPT-5 release. 

Other AI-related crypto tokens to consider include Fetch.AI (FET), Bittensor (TAO), and SleeplessAI (AI). 

Read more: Worldcoin price ploughs back nearly 35% of lost ground on speculation of GPT 5 launch