Bitcoin appears relatively stable at the time of writing – possibly coiling up for a move as the fateful “ides of March” US Federal Reserve FOMC meeting gets underway in Washington, DC.
The Fed is meeting for two days, so markets may not have the exact soundbite they’re waiting on until late on March 16.
There’s a general expectation that the Fed will raise interest rates by no more than 25 basis points – 25 per cent – in its first major inflation-combatting move of the year. (Beyond officially ending its bond-buying quantitative easing plan, that is.)
As well known YouTuber Crypto Zombie points out: “If it’s anything around 25 basis points, I don’t think it’s going to affect the markets too much. I think [the market] is pricing this in right now… I don’t think the FOMC meeting is going to have as big an effect on price as people think.”
Gold bug Peter Schiff meanwhile also seems to think the Fed rate hike will be largely “meaningless”…
Top 10 overview
With the overall crypto market cap at about US$1.82 trillion, up about 0.8% point from this time yesterday, here’s the current state of play among top 10 tokens – according to CoinGecko.
A few crypto Twittering types seem to be jumping on the “Bitcoin is ranging” narrative today. They’re not wrong, but maybe it’s their last chance to mention it before a potential FOMC-induced move of some sort tomorrow. (Unless Zombie and others are right and that turns out to be a largely “priced in” event.)
Uppers and downers: 11–100
Sweeping a market-cap range of about US$18.8 billion to about US$832 million in the rest of the top 100, let’s find some of the biggest 24-hour gainers and losers at press time.
DAILY PUMPERS
• Xido Finance (XIDO), (mc: US$844 million) +20%
• The Graph (GRT), (mc: US$2.55 billion) +18%
• Basic Attention Token (BAT), (mc: US$1.15 billion) +10%
• Elrond (EGLD), (mc: US$3.38 billion) +8%
• eCash (XEC), (mc: US$1.5 billion) +6%
DAILY SLUMPERS
• Humans.ai (HEART), (market cap: US$1.23 billion) -9%
• Zcash (ZEC), (mc: US$1.7b) -8%
• ECOMI (OMI), (mc: US$1.92b) -6%
• Radix (XRD), (mc: US$1.13b) -4%
• PancakeSwap (CAKE), (mc: US$1.5b) -3.5%
Uppers and downers: lower caps
Moving below the crypto unicorns (in some cases well below), here’s just a selection catching our eye…
DAILY PUMPERS
• PowerPool (CVP), (market cap: US$30m) +61%
• Banana (BANANA), (mc: US$87m) +57%
• Polkastarter (POLS), (mc: US$152m) +48%
• JasmyCoin (JASMY), (mc: US$85m) +42%
• Lido DAO (LDO), (mc: US$293m) +18%
DAILY SLUMPERS
• Inverse Finance (INV), (market cap: US$34 million) -20%
• Navcoin (NAV), (mc: US$10m) -20%
• MovieBloc (MBL), (mc: US$40m) -18%
• Syntropy (NOIA), (mc: US$52m) -14%
• Request (REQ), (mc: US$170m) -14%
Final words
Also in Washington, and apropos of not much to do with crypto – at least not directly – we give you the “speaker” of the United States House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi…