Ethereum seemed to be making a break for it. “Exaaaaactly as predicted”, as crypto influencer “The Moon” would say. But then US Federal Reserve boss Jerome Powell had a few things to say about tapering and inflation.

Earlier, Stockhead reported that Ethereum (ETH) had reached “a key inflection point” against Bitcoin (BTC), with a breakout potentially pushing the whole market higher. And that appeared to be playing out. (It could still.)

At the time of writing, the entire market is up about three per cent since this time yesterday and has a total valuation of roughly US$2.79 trillion, according to CoinGecko data.

And this Coin360.com overview of the top coins is looking pretty green today…

Coin360.com

But to give you an idea of how quickly the crypto market so often turns, a cup of tea and a Tim Tam later and things showed quite a different story…

Coin360.com

Seems like Jerome Powell has different plans for the markets today. The US Federal Reserve chairman has now indicated that the central bank could be looking to speed up the tapering (scaling back) of its economy-boosting stimulus efforts.

Cue immediate dip in the markets, including crypto…

 

In an appearance before a US Senate committee, the Fed head reportedly said he thinks reducing the pace of monthly bond buys can move quicker than the US$15 billion-a-month schedule put forward earlier in November.

It’s not the news inflation-hedge-asset holders (such as gold and Bitcoin) necessarily wanted to hear, but it’s perhaps not totally unexpected, either.

Still, here’s a meme…

@cryptomemes24

 

Mooners and shakers

Moving on from the Fed’s “hawkish” vibe on tapering, let’s quickly focus on some of the main movers in the crypto market over the past several hours.

The no.2 crypto (that’s ETH) was leading the charge in the top 10 by market cap for most of the day, and was up more than nine per cent in the past 24 hours a short time ago.

Fellow layer 1 blue chip, Polkadot (DOT) was also well up on the daily, to the tune of about eight per cent.

Just outside the top 10, barking at the door, is the dog-meme coin that simply refuses to go away – Shiba Inu (SHIB).

It’s the second-best performer in the top 100 right now (+21%) on the back of its Kraken exchange listing. Guess every dog as its day (but this one’s having more than its fair share this year).

We’re not getting out of bed for anything less than double-digit gains outside the top 10 today. So with that in mind, other notable performers in the top 100 right now include: layer 1 protocols Terra (LUNA) +16%, and Tezos (XTZ) +11%; DeFi lending platform Aave (AAVE) +10%; and Bitcoin smart-contracts enabler Stacks (STX) +31%.

LUNA’s rally seems to be driven by the implementation of major upgrades on the Terra network, including the introduction of a token-burning, deflationary mechanism.

Further down the market cap lists, a couple of other notable coins surging today include: gaming-related coins Phantasma (SOUL) +25%, and the Aussie-founded RPG NFT battler Illuvium (ILV), +12%, which hit a fresh all-time high of US$1,911 about two hours ago, at the time of writing.

On the flip side, though, fellow strong gaming project Chain Guardians (CGG) is down 15%; and cross-chain crypto wallet extension XDEFI is 14% in the red.

 

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