Mooners and Shakers: Bitcoin on repeat in tight range; Cardano flips Solana

Correlated as it still is to the macro financial tide, Bitcoin has been for the most part moving sideways as the US stock markets take Monday off for Martin Luther King Jr Day.

Top 10 overview

With the overall crypto market cap down about 2% since this time on Sunday, here’s the state of play in the top 10 by market cap at the time of writing – according to CoinGecko data.

Having closed the week just above US$43,100 Bitcoin (BTC) is still ranging between US$40k to a bit above $44K, as it has been for the best part of two weeks.

As various analysts have been pointing out, the OG crypto has been chopping about on an ascending trendline. As you can see from Will Clemente’s tweet below, Bitcoin is heading closer to the end of a triangular pattern, which is usually about the point for a decisive move.

Which way? The bulls and bears seem pretty evenly split on Crypto Twitter, as has been the norm lately. But before making any investment moves (not financial advice), perhaps keep one eye on a potential headwind happening in America this week.

A US Congress subcommittee is due to meet on January 20 to discuss and assess the impact of crypto mining and cryptocurrencies on the environment. Sounds like it could be something that sways the market… or, of course, it could just end up being a total nuthinburger.

$BTC Should be an interesting week pic.twitter.com/uYxP3CFJSO

— Will (@WClementeIII) January 16, 2022

The clear daily top 10 crypto winner right now is Cardano (ADA), up about 6.3% at the time of writing, having flipped both Solana and USDC to reclaim its old top five spot. It’s also up about 30% over the past week.

One of the leading layer 1 protocols in the space, Cardano appears to be enjoying some long-awaited price recovery on the back of three narratives: scaling, its DeFi ecosystem and metaverse land buying.

Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson’s company Input Output Hong Kong, which is responsible for developing the blockchain, has made an announcement detailing how it will scale the project this year.

The plan is to increase the network’s capacity and throughput with various innovations and adjustments (including block size), all with the goal of improving efficiency and speed as Cardano expects a significant influx of users in 2022.

As for its DeFi news, Cardano’s first big DEX (decentralised exchange), known as SundaeSwap, has announced its launch for later this week.

📢The moment we've all been waiting for has finally come!

We're excited and proud to share that SundaeSwap and the ISO will be launching on the evening of Thursday, January 20th (EST)! 🍨

Check out the article below! 👇https://t.co/8oDYU6i3k9 pic.twitter.com/upgNZx2xH2

— Sundae Labs 🍨 (@SundaeSwap) January 15, 2022

And Cardano has a metaverse project that seems to be garnering some frothy buying attention. It’s called Pavia, and according to CoinDesk, more than 60 per cent of its land plots have now quickly sold with the rest going on sale later this quarter.

Judging by the latest listings on CNFT, Cardano’s leading NFT marketplace, the floor price for Pavia land seems to be about 550 ADA (roughly US$825) with listings as high as 30,000 ADA (US$45,000).

Winners and losers: 11–100

Sweeping a market-cap range of about US$22 billion to about US$1.1 billion in the rest of the top 100, let’s find some of the biggest 24-hour gainers and losers at press time.

DAILY PUMPERS (okay, that might be stretching it)

• BitTorrent (BTT), (mc: US$2.5b) +2%

• Monero (XMR), (mc: US$4b) +1%

• Litecoin (LTC), (mc: US$10.2b) +0.5%

DAILY SLUMPERS

• Wonderland (TIME), (mc: US$1.3b) -25%

• Pocket Network (POKT), (mc: US$1.5b) -14%

• Radix (RDX), (mc: US$2b) -13%

• Loopring (LRC), (market cap: US$1.5b) -11.5%

• Kadena (KDA), (mc: US$1.37b) -11%