Mooners and Shakers: Bitcoin Declines to $25k, But Filecoin and Other ‘Chinese Cryptocoins’ Rise
Bitcoin made its second last run just above USD 25,000, but was quickly sent packing again, keeping bulls and bears guessing. Meanwhile, move over AI and scaling – are Chinese coins the next crypto “narrative”?
We’ll take a look at what’s trending on that front soon. First, tracking market sentiment, courtesy of alternative.me’s Crypto Fear & Greed Index, then some price action from the crypto majors.
Sentiment remains high in the cryptoverse, despite A) rather tepid recent CPI data which is likely to indicate that the Fed’s rate hike is not going to change anytime soon, and B) tough talk and intervention from the US regulator SEC recently. week.
Top 10 overview
With the total crypto market cap at $1.17 trillion, pretty flat since this time yesterday, here’s the current state of affairs among the top 10 tokens – according to CoinGecko.
So yes, Bitcoin is down a bit from where it was semi-promising to go overnight to US$25k. That said, it’s hanging in there for now, still giving traders and analysts some hope of a continuation higher. If one door keeps slamming in the face, self-confidence is bound to decline, reflecting human psychology.
However, there is no shortage of optimistic chart-watchers floating around. For example, here’s the Twitter-popular Stockmoney Lizards with some highly speculative projections, comparing BTC’s current structural formation to a similar look back in 2019.
Bear rally, followed by chop, followed by bull run. Guess could happen again, remembering past performance is of course no guarantee of photocopying.
And here’s @thescalpingpro, aka Mags, also referencing historical BTC action to validate possible bullish bias.
However, US trader/analyst Justin Bennett stresses that comparisons with past bullish actions should be taken with a grain of salt, but not in those exact words.
“I think we will see higher prices from Bitcoin in the coming weeks,” he adds, “but tweeting about $50,000 this summer just because that’s what 2019 did is beyond lazy.”
Chinese coin tale…really?
You may have noticed that OKB has climbed back into the top 10 list of crypto market caps. It is just one of a group of tokens labeled as “Chinese coins” that have seen significant upward reactions in recent days.
OKB is the original symbol of the Seychelles-based crypto exchange OKX, but has Chinese origins and founders.
However, some of the most notable performers with strong ties to China have been Filecoin (FIL) +70% over seven days; VeChain (VET), NEO (NEO) and ConFlux (CFX), although there are others that fit loosely, if this tweet from Mechanism Capital VC founder Andrew Kang is any indication…
Not quite sure how he wedges Polkadot (DOT) into this narrative, and ETH, based on Vitalik Buterin’s dating history, also seems a bit of a stretch.
Yet, what is behind these pumps? It’s apparently all to do with some impending regulatory clarity in Hong Kong regarding Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASPs), some positivity there around crypto adoption, as well potential for “quantitative easing” in China as it reopens its economy after particularly long and brutal pandemic policies.
Wait, isn’t crypto banned in China? Well, yes, it still is, mostly. Crypto mining is absolutely still banned there and it is also illegal to use and buy crypto in China. That being said, holding digital assets is not illegal, for those who already had some in their crypto wallets.
Will China revolve around this? We see some hope for this here and there. Wouldn’t bet the farm on it.
Overdraft and downdraft: 11–100
With a market cap of about $11 billion to about $475 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.)
DAILY PUMPS
• Stacks (STX), (market cap: USD 838 million) +72%
• OKC (OCT), (mc: USD 536 million) +18%
• Filecoin (FIL), (mc: USD 3.4 billion) +17%
• NEO (NEO), (mc: USD 744 million) +9%
• VeChain (VET), (mc: USD 2.1 billion) +8%
DAILY SLUMPERS
• Lido DAO (LDO), (market cap: USD 2.5 billion) -10%
• Reproduce (RNDR), (mc: USD 515 million) -7%
• Frax Del (FXS), (mc: USD 794 million) -6%
• Optimism (OP), (mc: USD 565 million) -5%
• SingularityNET (AGIX), (mc: USD 486 million) -4%
Around the blocks
Some relevance and randomness that stuck with us this morning is moving through the Crypto Twitterverse.
