Week #38: Cryptocurrencies with Recent Developments to Watch This Week

Dogecoin: Institutional Moves Spark a Rally

Dogecoin has been one of the standout gainers this week, climbing nearly 20% to reach its highest level in almost a month. Several fresh catalysts fueled this rally. A publicly traded Dogecoin treasury disclosed $125 million in DOGE purchases, signaling confidence in the meme coin’s staying power. At the same time, Rex-Osprey is set to launch a Dogecoin ETF in the U.S. on Friday, marking a new milestone in institutional access.

Historically, institutional adoption and ETF approvals have helped tokens reinforce relevance in their respective market cycles, but also can help to position them alongside blue-chip digital assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum, which have previously experienced similar developments. Analysts attribute DOGE’s recent boost to a combination of direct treasury purchases and its forthcoming ETF, where it outperformed most top-10 peers over the past week. Despite some influence from some broader market headwinds over the last 24 hours, it has experienced net gains of over 12.5% in the last week.

Shiba Inu: $LEASH V2 Migration Roadmap

Shiba Inu’s ecosystem team released a detailed migration roadmap for its $LEASH token, outlining a three-phase rollout into $LEASH V2. The plan emphasizes security, fairness, and protection for both self-custody holders and liquidity providers. Importantly, the migration uses a fixed ratio model with pre-stored tokens in a multisig wallet, meaning no new supply will be created. Leftover tokens after migration may be burned, potentially reducing circulating supply.

Migration will move through self-custody holders, liquidity providers on different protocols, and eventually cross-chain users with Chainlink CCIP support. Historically, token migrations that introduce stronger security and interoperability features tend to strengthen community trust and sometimes can potentially bring renewed momentum—especially when combined with ongoing growth in related projects like Shibarium, which has been seeing higher activity.

Polkadot: Supply Cap Approved

Polkadot’s DAO approved governance proposal 1710 to cap total supply at 2.1 billion tokens, ending the previous unlimited issuance model. The move received 81% community support and is designed to gradually reduce new issuance every two years, compared to the old system of 120 million tokens annually.

Token supply caps have historically played an important role in shaping investor perception, with scarcity models often viewed positively in long-term tokenomics. For DOT, the shift reflects the project’s maturation and focus on sustainable economics. While the market saw some short-term pullback in recent days, the governance outcome signals a meaningful structural change that could influence DOT’s positioning in the broader Layer-1 ecosystem.