Wall Street returned to trading overnight and it was a bit of a bummer, frankly. Bitcoin and the crypto market have slumped a little along with it. Meanwhile, China might be, just quietly, supporting the Hong Kong crypto hub push.

After a little break to celebrate George Washington and Abe Lincoln, but probably not so much Trump and Biden, Wall Street’s major indexes closed about 2% in the red, with traders apparently spooked by outlooks posted by Walmart and Home Depot.

In other news, though, as we noted yesterday, this week it’s been reported that Hong Kong regulators are proposing to relax crypto laws in its region with some support for retail crypto-trading looking possible.

And, according to Bloomberg, it appears China might be on board with this. Chinese officials have apparently been spotted mingling at recent Hong Kong crypto events, exchanging business cards and WeChat accounts.

“The encounters have been friendly, with officials checking on developments, asking for reports and in some cases making follow-up calls,” revealed an unnamed source.

Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) has already made the decision to allow investors with US$1 million or more to buy and trade crypto assets, beginning June 1. Letting regular schmos into the party is on the table but is a pending decision.

In any case, it’s something to cling to on a red day in the market. And speaking of clinging to a narrative, here’s the Twitter-popular analyst tedtalksmacro, spying some vague correlation between Bitcoin and Chinese stocks, which he notes are “heading into a bull market”.

 

Top 10 overview

With the overall crypto market cap at US$1.16 trillion, down about 2%  since this time yesterday, here’s the current state of play among top 10 tokens – according to CoinGecko.

Bitcoin (BTC) is hanging in there above US$24k for now. It’s failure to breach the US$25k level, and the 200 weekly moving average about $100 or so above that, however, has caused some concern among analysts, along with the overnight US stock markets dip.

Others, however, are sticking to their plans and belief that it’s still a good time to accumulate. Dutchman Michaël van de Poppe has been noting shallower corrections for Bitcoin and altcoins, and wouldn’t be surprised to see a little dip here before a run to about US$35-$40k. (Er, before another harsh correction back down to current levels. He’s gearing up for a right roller coaster in H1, then.)

Meanwhile, one of the biggest daily losers in the crypto majors today is Polygon’s MATIC token, after a recent run of very good form.

Part of the reason for the heavy drop is an announcement Polygon Labs has made to cut about 20% of its staff, totalling around 100 employees.

 

 

Uppers and downers: 11–100

Sweeping a market-cap range of about US$11.8 billion to about US$497 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

• Conflux (CFX), (market cap: US$705 million) +15%

• 1INCH (1INCH), (mc: US$544 million) +13%

• WEMIX (WEMIX), (mc: US$631 million) +9%

• SingularityNET (AGIX), (mc: US$501 million) +7%

• Stacks (STX), (mc: US$854 million) +2%

 

DAILY SLUMPERS

• OKC (OKT), (market cap: US$539 million) -9%

• Curve DAO (CRV), (mc: US$867 million) -9%

• NEO (NEO), (mc: US$934 million) -9%

• Mina Protocol (MINA), (mc: US$819 million) -8%

• Arweave (AR), (mc: US$851 million) -8%

 

Ankr and Fetch.ai surge

Looking a bit further down the market caps list, there are at least  couple of notable performers today.

Web3 infrastructure and liquid staking protocol Ankr (ANKR) is currently surging more than 30% over the past 24 hours, on the back of a partnership announcement with Microsoft. Not small.

Here’s Ankr’s Josh Neuroth (who chatted with us last year about the project) with the tweet.

And then there’s AI crypto protocol Fetch.ai, with a partnership announcement of its own. It’s collaborating with electronics giant Bosch to develop Web3 and AI tech. The FET token is up about 4% at the time of writing – okay, not as big a “surge” as Ankr’s.

 

Around the blocks

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

Here’s some airdrop-based positivity on a negative day…

… countered by this, from American computer scientist Eliezer Yudkowsky, who, on a Bankless podcast appearance warned that, basically, AI is going to murder pretty much all of us within about the next 15 years.

Maybe we should stop worrying about the price of Bitcoin, then.

 

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