Volatility made a familiar return to Bitcoin and the crypto market across the weekend. Volatility to the upside, that is.

Bitcoin began its run in the wee hours Saturday morning (AEDT) at around US$21k, pumping all the way up to near US$23.3k on Sunday morning. From there, it’s since pulled back a tad to where it’s trading around US$22,600.

What caused the pump? That’s not so simple to answer. But remember that the crypto market never really sleeps, so that while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq closed the week positively on Friday, it’s possible that crypto took that correlated ball and ran with it a little further up the touchline.

And, despite all the macroeconomic gloom that’s dominated the past year, and fears of global recession still in the mix, perhaps sentiment has begun to shift slightly on these factors. CPI prints in the US have been showing inflation may be on the downtrend and some are betting that the Fed will pivot before too long and send markets into a frothy sea of green once more.

That said, this columnist is still very much on the fence regarding the macro-influential state of play. Having received no financial advice on this and having no authority to offer any, it doesn’t seem like the worst place to sit for now ahead of what the Fed and other central bankers might have in store for us all next.

 

Bull trap?

But here’s what some others have been saying about the current crypto conditions.

Quite a few of the more bullish Twitter-based self-described crypto analysts have been poking fun at another said analyst, “il Capo of Crypto” for the following tweet, in which he described the crypto market’s recent form (before the weekend punp) as “the biggest bull trap I’ve ever seen”:

Dutch trader Michaël van de Poppe, for instance, who has said he thinks a continuation of the run towards US$25k “seems likely”, while not completely discounting a pullback to around US$19.5k.

“Plan B”, meanwhile, who has built quite a reputation on being bullish, is in full believe mode, it seems.

We’ve also looked over at Crypto Ed, and we can see he’s on a similar part of the fence to us. He’s cautiously optimistic but is largely waiting around for the moment.

And here’s Ben Simpson from the Aussie crypto-education outfit Collective Shift with a well-considered take. While acknowledging the market seems divided on what happens next, he essentially believes a new market average has been formed.

 

Top 10 overview

With the overall crypto market cap at US$1.07 trillion, down about 1.6% since this time yesterday, here’s the current state of play among top 10 tokens – according to CoinGecko.

So then, a reasonable amount of green there to kick off the week, which is kinda beaut. But wait up, what’s this? Leading layer 2 Polygon (MATIC), which had been regularly trading places in and out of the 10 with Solana (SOL), has been usurped again.

By the crypto exchange OKB with a 13% pump. This isn’t the first time it’s happened for the Seychelles-headquartered (Chinese founded) OKX exchange. But it’s still a bit of a surprise. What’s going on there, then? Nope, sorry – there’s no major news we’re seeing that might explain that.

We did cover it earlier this month and perhaps some of that rationale is still pushing it forward – for example increased market share in the face of FTX’s implosion and increased utility into the realm of “liquid staking”.

 

Uppers and downers: 11–100

Sweeping a market-cap range of about US$8.9 billion to about US$402 million in the rest of the top 100, let’s find some of the biggest 24-hour gainers and losers at press time. (Stats accurate at time of publishing, based on CoinGecko.com data.)

DAILY PUMPERS

• Axie Infinity (AXS), (market cap: US$1.36 billion) +28%

• Fantom (FTM), (mc: US$967 million) +9%

• Osmosis (OSMO), (mc: US$483 million) +8%

• Flow (FLOW), (mc: US$1.2 billion) +7%

• Aptos (APT), (mc: US$2.14 billion) +7%

 

As far as the $AXS pump is concerned, like OKB, we’re not seeing a lot of news. It’s a bit of a strange one, actually, as Bitcoin.com reports that the NFT gaming project’s monthly player/user count is actually on the decline.

That said, let’s not forget, this thing was an absolute beast in the 2020/21 bull run, and really kicked off the initial froth for the Web3 gaming market. Like most established and building NFT gaming projects with tokens, it’s well down on its all-time high.

 

DAILY SLUMPERS

• Lido DAO (LDO), (market cap: US$1.85 billion) -10%

• Optimism (OP), (market cap: US$469 billion) -6%

• Frax Share (FXS), (mc: US$734 million) -5%

• Hedera (HBAR), (mc: US$1.76 billion) -5%

• Rocket Pool (RPL), (mc: US$659 million) -4%

 

Around the blocks

Some pertinence and randomness that stuck with us on our morning moves through the Crypto Twitterverse.

 

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