Bitcoin goes up, Bitcoin goes down… Bitcoin goes sideways and rebuilds for another crack at the $US40K resistance. It’s another rollercoaster day in crypto, but not all the altcoins are blindly following the orange OG digital asset today.

Gaming projects bossing it

The narrative around strong crypto gaming projects appears to be gathering steam by the day and it’s being reflected in the charts and the price action. If you’ve been paying close attention to this section, you’ll be more than aware of the run play-to-earn NFT auto-battler Axie Infinity (AXS) has been on lately.

A few hours ago, AXS raised the bat, cracking its half century with an another all-time high. It’s currently at US$52.10, up 41.9% in the past 24 hours, and 1,362% over the past month.

It’s not all about cricket analogies and Axie, though. My Neighbor Alice (ALICE) is also knocking it out of the park today – up 37.8% in the past 24 hours but still down 66% from its all-time high. This multi-player farm-building game is buzzing right now with land-sale lottery action and will be launching on gaming-platform giant Steam in January, although there are rumours of an early access release much sooner than that.

Aavegotchi (GHST) is another notable gaming project hitting a boss level today (+23.5%). This one straddles the world of DeFi and collectable NFTs and is inspired by the weird but wildly popular digital pet game Tamagotchi created in the mid ’90s.

Wax (WAXP), Smooth Love Potion (SLP) and The Sandbox (SAND) were all enjoying high single-percentage daily gains at the time of writing. Australian NFT auto-battler Illuvium (ILV), meanwhile, hit an all-time high of US$160.17 several hours ago and is currently bang on US$158.

And, just as a footnote to this section, news just in on a brand-new gaming project, which launched its community token today – Yield Guild Games (YGG). It’s another play-to-earn project to watch, but also one to possibly be wary of from an investment point of view, seeing as its entire launch offering of 25 million tokens was bought by just 32 whales.

Fear & Greed Index

Another quick look at the popular crypto sentiment aggregator today shows that, while it’s still giving us Fear, the dial has moved up quite a bit from yesterday, when it was at 26.

Is sentiment finally shifting to a more positive feeling of classic cryptoverse hopium? The indicator seems to say yes and it feels that way from scanning Crypto Twitter. Best not get carried away just yet, though. Or at all, for that matter.

The top two

At the time of writing, the entire crypto market cap is actually breaking about even compared with this time yesterday, and is hovering above $US1.55 trillion.

Ethereum (ETH) is just chilling at US$2,274, down 0.9% on yesterday. Maybe ETHiopia can do something at the Tokyo Olympics today. Or maybe news of founder Vitalik Buterin’s acting side hustle will affect the price for another strange, not-particularly-fundamental reason.

Or just forget all that nonsense and wait for Ethereum’s hyped, fee-burning, deflationary-dealing protocol upgrade to launch in a week’s time on August 4.

Bitcoin did crack the US$40K mark, reaching $40,347, but was quickly rejected and now sits at US$38,306. Is this a concern? The $40K zone is heavy historical resistance, so it’s certainly no surprise.

Go-to Dutch trader and crypto analyst Michaël van de Poppe was looking for a higher low for Bitcoin to come down and retest and provide solid support for it to then break higher again beyond the resistance. He’s eyeing off US$34,500 to US$35,800, but also around US$32,500.

He’s certainly been one of the more bullish analysts around lately…

Bullish bits and bad news bears

A few news bites to leave you with for the moment. Three positive, three negative, for balance.

• The government of Kazakhstan is reportedly preparing to allow banks in its country to process crypto payments. (Insert favourite Borat catchphrase here.)

• US Senator Elizabeth Warren has written another letter, expressing concern to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen about DeFi, stablecoins and more. Pity she can’t just do it over a beer.

• Mastercard has launched a cryptocurrency startup accelerator called Start Path, aiming to provide technical and financial assistance to promising early-stage crypto projects.

• Brazilian authorities have seized US$33 million linked to a money-laundering investigation involving cryptocurrency exchanges in Brazil, according to reports.

• US investment bank Goldman Sachs has filed an application with the US Securities and Exchange Commission for a DeFi ETF (exchange traded fund). More institutional fun.

• The International Monetary Fund has warned that some of the consequences of a country adopting Bitcoin as a national currency “could be dire”. Got that, El Salvador?