It’s a critical day in the markets as the influential US Federal Reserve reveals its latest fiscal-policy plans. Let’s take a (tentative) look at what’s happening in crypto as Fed chief Jerome Powell clears his throat…

 

Top 10 and market-cap overview

At the time of writing, the entire cryptocurrency market cap is up 4.9 per cent compared with this time yesterday.

Having been a sea of red shortly before the Fed’s FOMC (Federal Open Market Committee) meeting, we now have a pretty green scene in the top 10 by market cap right now, with most coins there currently boasting 4-5 per cent gains in the past 24 hours.

Solana (SOL), having endured a bad start to its week related to network-clogging issues, is faring the best in the top 10, up 15% just now.

Dogecoin (DOGE) looks like it might be about to drop back out of the top 10 any second now, though. It’s posting a 1.3% gain at the moment, but Avalanche (AVAX) is nipping at its heels (see further below).

Coin360.com

With nerves high ahead of today’s Fed meeting, most laser-focused crypto eyes were on Bitcoin (BTC), as the main crypto health barometer, and to a slightly lesser extent Ethereum (ETH).

As things stand right now, they’re both up about 4.5% since this time yesterday and the market looks hopeful after the Fed announced fairly unsurprising tapering and interest-rate hike plans. Unsurprising to those watching these things closely, that is…

Whether this positivity continues, or is as short-lived as a random dog-meme pump… we’ll just have to wait and see.

 

Winners and losers: 11–100

In the rest of the top 100, which is currently a market-cap range of about US$22 billion to US$1 billion, let’s find the top five daily gainers and losers right now. (All subject to rapid change, of course, as reactions to the Fed meeting continue to evolve.)

DAILY PUMPERS

• Ecomi (OMI), (market cap: US$1.6b) +28%

• Avalanche (AVAX), (mc: US$23.2b) +23%

• Elrond (EGLD), (mc: US$5.3b) +15.78%

• Polygon (MATIC), (mc: US$14.1b)  +14%

• Near Protocol (NEAR) (US$5.8b) +8%

The AVAX surge probably has something to do with the Bank of America describing the smart-contract platform as a viable alternative to Ethereum (ETH). That, and the fact the stablecoin USDC has now been integrated into Avalanche’s DeFi ecosystem.

Ecomi’s pump, meanwhile, comes on the back of the NFT/digital collectibles ecosystem integrating further with the gas-fee-avoiding layer 2 Ethereum protocol Immutable X (IMX).

DAILY SLUMPERS

• Loopring (LRC), (market cap: US$2.5b) -7.5%

• Tezos (XTZ), (mc: US$3.6b) -6%

• BitTorrent (BTT) (mc: US$2.5b) -5.5%

• Chiliz (CHZ) (mc:US$1.4b) -5.2%

• Cosmos (ATOM) (mc: US$5.8b) -5%

 

Lower-cap winners and losers

Moving below the crypto unicorns, then (in some cases well below), let’s find some standout price action in both directions…

DAILY PUMPERS

• Ramp (RAMP), (market cap: US$81m) +21%

• Chain Guardians (CGG), (mc: US$48.2m) +16%

• Nuls (NULS), (mc: US$87.7m) +14%

• Trader Joe (JOE), (mc: US$310m) +12%

• Yield Guild Games (YGG), (mc: US$472m) +11.5%

Sometimes described as “the PayPal for crypto”, part of the reason Ramp is having a particularly good day is because it’s just raised US$52.7 million in a Series A funding round, led by Balderton Capital.

 

DAILY DUMPERS

• Meme (MEME) (market cap: US$578,000) -63%

• Banana (BANANA) (mc: US$3.3m) -53%

• Mobius (MOBI) (mc: US$83.3m) -24%

• Unibright (UBT) (mc: US$196m) -21%

• Achain (ACT) (mc: US$4.3m) -18%

 

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