Mooners and Shakers: Bitcoin and Ethereum stable while altcoins look poised to move
Bitcoin is cruising around USD 30,000, Ethereum just rose above USD 2,100 and several altcoins look like they are shaking on the launch pad, ready to explode. Welcome to a hopium-filled start to crypto week.
Before we go any further, let’s get some visual confirmation of said hopium, in the form of a greedy Crypto Fear & Greed Index…
Yep, just as we thought, not much has changed there. It’s a very vague level of science, of course, but if the needle moves into extreme greed territory, that’s when things tend to get overheated, and it might be time to listen to the good old Warren Buffett pearl of wisdom. You know the one.
Some breaking/broken news
• Hong Kong has confirmed its commitment to crypto at a major Web3 conference held in the region. In case you had any doubts that the major Asian financial hub is about to become a crypto powerhouse, the authorities there all but confirmed the plans.
Speaking at the Hong Kong Web3 Festival late last week, Finance Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po said regarding the regulation of the industry:
“I think everyone has learned from recent events that appropriate regulations are a must to create a sustainable development environment and a more ideal space for development.”
• United States Congress will host two major crypto hearings later this week. First, SEC Chief Garry Gensler will be grilled by the US House Committee on Financial Services on the subject of “Oversight of the Securities and Exchange Commission.” Gensler is known for his strict stance on the industry and believes all, or most, altcoins are unregistered securities.
The second hearing is related to draft laws related to stablecoins.
Top 10 overview
With the total crypto market capitalization at $1.33 trillion, up 0.6% since this time yesterday, here is the current status of the top 10 tokens – according to CoinGecko.
Layer 1 blockchains Ethereum and Cardano have led this latest rally in recent days, ever since the former successfully implemented its Shanghai and Capella network upgrades last week.
Staking has become a hot topic again, and although these two chains are in direct competition with each other, both increasingly rely on the narrative – for validating and securing their proof-of-stake networks and also to increase decentralization.
Meanwhile, just to prove the point, the floating derivative token STETH is still, ahem, staking its last claim to a long-term top 10 spot in the crypto market cap stakes.
And in the meantime… watch out, Crypto Twitter-housed chart watchers seem to be swinging altcoin bullish…
Overdraft and downdraft: 11–100
With a market cap of about $9.55 billion to about $439 million in the rest of the top 100, let’s find some of the biggest 24-hour winners and losers at press time. (Statistics accurate at time of publication, based on CoinGecko.com data.)
PUMPS
• Radix (XRD), (market value: USD 906 million) +16%
• Casper network (CSPR), (mc: USD 625 million) +15%
• Rocket pool (RPL), (mc: USD 1.14 billion) +14%
• Injectable (INJ), (mc: USD 744 million) +13%
• Baby Doge Coin (BABYDOGE), (mc: USD 573 million) +8%
SLUMPS
• OCD (OKB), (market value: USD 3.18 billion) -4%
• WOO network (WOO), (mc: USD 545 million) -3%
• Stacks (STX), (mc: USD 1.18 billion) -1%
• MultiverseX (EGLD), (mc: USD 1.09 billion) -1%
• Optimism (OP), (mc: USD 847 million) -1%
Around the blocks
Some relevance and randomness that stuck with us this morning is moving through the Crypto Twitterverse.
Yep, this pretty much sums up the current feeling we talked about earlier…
