It’s hump day and Bitcoin and the crypto market have run out of some puff. That’s okay, but which way is it heading next? That’s the question, and analysts are split, as per. Meanwhile, in a positive industry sign, Blockstream has raised US$125m to further its Bitcoin mining operations.

Canadian-headquartered firm Blockstream is one of the world’s biggest Bitcoin mining operations and this raise, led by Kingsway Capital, is notable because it’s another potential sign that the narrative is improving for an important part of the crypto ecosystem.

Bitcoin miners have come under a heavy weight of pressure during this bear market, causing many into a situation of forced selling to cover their infrastructure costs. But increasing BTC mining health, via various metrics including improved hashrate, has given at least some cause for renewed optimism that the worst of the bear market might be over.

That said, it’s widely understood that most small-mid Bitcoin miners’ break-even level for sustainable profitability is a level above US$25k. Not out of the woods yet, then.

But, as CoinDesk and others report, the Blockstream raise will focus on expanding mining capacity for “institutional-hosting customers”, which the company says is a BTC mining segment that has been “resilient” amid Bitcoin price volatility compared with smaller miners.

 

Top 10 overview

With the overall crypto market cap at US$1.08 trillion, down about 1% since this time yesterday, here’s the current state of play among top 10 tokens – according to CoinGecko.

It’s a sea of 24-hour red in the crypto majors today. Bitcoin and pals had to take a breather at some point. Up Only might be the name of a good crypto podcast, but it isn’t a thing otherwise.

The biggest daily pullbacks in the top 10 are Dogecoin and Solana. Can’t tell you with too much certainty why, although Cointelegraph‘s Nivesh Rustgi is pointing at a bearish divergence for the SOL token and apparent oversold conditions according to the market’s Relative Strength Index (RSI).

Meanwhile, regarding the market-moving crypto in chief (that’d be Bitcoin), let’s quickly tap into some various Twitter-based analysis from those who rarely take their eyes from the charts.

We can’t tell you who’s right with any certainty, but we’ll just leave these mixed thoughts here for now…

 

Uppers and downers: 11–100

Sweeping a market-cap range of about US$8.6 billion to about US$408 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

• Kava (KAVA), (market cap: US$422 billion) +9%

• BTSE Token (BTSE), (mc: US$459 million) +8%

• Quant (QNT), (mc: US$2.18 billion) +4%

• Rocket Pool (RPL), (mc: US$730 million) +4%

• BitDAO (BIT), (mc: US$672 million) +3%

 

Rocket Pool catches our eye today, mainly because of our most recent chat regarding the LSD sector (er, that’s Liquid Staking Derivatives) with the blokes over at Apollo Crypto – a leading Australian-based crypto-industry fund.

RPL is doing well overnight again, although the market leader in this segment is still Lido Finance (LDO).

 

DAILY SLUMPERS

• Axie Infinity (AXS), (market cap: US$1.27 billion) -10%

• GMX (GMX), (market cap: US$417 million) -9%

• Optimism (OP), (mc: US$429 million) -9%

• Flow (FLOW), (mc: US$1.12 billion) -9%

• Decentraland (MANA), (mc: US$1.2 billion) -9%

 

Around the blocks

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

El Salvador’s Bitcoin-loving president Nayib Bukele has fired up against mainstream media outlets, after his country managed to prove doubters wrong and pay off US$800 million in debt…

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