Bitcoin felt it had the all clear for a bold move up past US$45k today, only to then cop a humiliating, face-slapping $2,500 rejection. Guess it misread the signals.

At the time of writing, the orange one is playing out a tense battle on the charts and inside your portfolio, trying to stake its claim on US$43k as a new base of support.

In reality, a rejection wasn’t unexpected – not by the full-time chart watchers we’ve been following, anyway. In fact, a retest or two while establishing support somewhere around US$42-$43k might be what’s shaping up here for the moment. At least that’s the hope.

Dutch trader Michaël van de Poppe this afternoon was describing Bitcoin as facing some “crucial resistance” around that US$45k level.

Break that red box on his chart and Van de Poppe thinks we’re heading to all-time highs. He did hint, however, that a further correction would likely see altcoins bleed out pretty badly.

Well then, as usual, no pressure, Bitcoin…

 

Top 10 overview

With the overall crypto market cap down about 1.6% over the past 24 hours, here’s the state of play in the top 10 by market cap right now – according to CoinGecko data.

Source: Coingecko.com

We’ve spoken about Bitcoin, Ethereum’s in similar territory, while Solana, Polkadot and Terra are all taking a few shots to the midriff.

But what’s going on with XRP and why’s it currently bucking the daily trend with a 6% gain?

Confidence has been building for quite a while now about a positive outcome for XRP developer Ripple Labs’ much-publicised court battle with the dastardly US Securities and Exchange Commission.

This is a disagreement (based around the SEC’s belief XRP was issued as an unregistered security) which has been playing out since September 2020 and is taking longer to resolve than the filming and editing of Better Call Saul season 6. If only this guy could help out with the Ripple defence… pretty sure one way or another it’d all be over a lot sooner.

That said, judging by this tweet and accompanying Reuters story, it appears some key evidence that could work in Ripple Labs’ favour is set to be revealed. Maybe Jimmy McGill’s on the case after all…

 

Winners and losers: 11–100

Sweeping a market-cap range of about US$20.8 billion to about US$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

• IoTex (IOTX), (market cap: US$1b) +20%

• Leo Token (LEO), (mc: US$4.65b) +15.5%

• Radix (XRD), (mc: US$1.99b) +14%

• Kadena (KDA), (mc: US$1.4b) +8%

• Tezos (XTZ), (mc: US$3.8b) +6.5%

 

DAILY SLUMPERS

• Arweave (AR), (market cap: US$1.8b) -12%

• Shiba Inu (SHIB), (mc: US$16.75b) -11%

• Quant (QNT), (mc: US$1.88b) -11%

• Helium (HNT), (mc: US$2.8b) -10%

• JUNO (JUNO), (mc: US$1.1b) -9.5%

 

Lower-cap winners and losers

Moving below the crypto unicorns (in some cases well below), here’s just a selection catching our eye…

DAILY PUMPERS

• Dinger Token (DINGER), (market cap: US$17.3m) +124%

• ApolloX (APX), (mc: US$46.5m) +46%

• Smooth Love Potion (SLP), (mc: US$676m) +30%

• Revain (REV), (mc: US$3.8m) +20%

• Popsicle Finance (ICE), (mc: US$10m) +19%

 

DAILY SLUMPERS

• QI DAO (QI), (market cap: US$40m) -42%

• Tomb Shares (TSHARE), (mc: US$266m) -30%

• Paint Swap (BRUSH), (mc: US$23.6m) -24%

• Star Atlas (ATLAS), (mc: US$112.6m) -18%

• Step Finance (STEP), (mc: US$30.6m) -18%

 

Final words

American multinational financial services and banking giant Wells Fargo has told its investors that it believes crypto is “early, but not too early” when it comes to the asset class’s investment stage.

The institution also noted in a report from its Global Investment Strategy Team that crypto appears to be nearing a “hyper-inflection point” of global adoption, comparable to what the internet went through in the mid-to-late 1990s.

“We believe that cryptocurrencies are viable investments today,” reads the report, “even though they remain in the early stages of their investment evolution.”

Source: Wells Fargo “Understanding Cryptocurrency” report

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