We’ll pick out a few analytical takes in a minute, but first, what’s making news so far today?

 

News in brief: Coinbase makes Euro strides

• Crypto exchange beast Coinbase has, according to it, been granted approval from the Bank of Spain to begin providing crypto services to Spanish citizens.

The exchange is targeting European expansion, with this latest approval coming after it secured VASP (Virtual Asset Service Provider) registrations in Italy, Ireland, and the Netherlands.

Note: the EU recently adopted the Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) regulation, providing crypto companies in Europe with some much needed clarity. (Are you taking note, USA and, erm… Australia?)

• Still on Coinbase, it’s also rumoured to have recently been circling FTX Europe’s assets to bolster its positioning in Europe, according to a Fortune article. That said, the article also clarifies that acquisition talks “never reached a late stage”.

• JP Morgan has labelled Ethereum’s performance, or at least its user activity, post 2022’s Shanghai upgrade as “disappointing”, per a new report by the Wall Street titan, highlighted by The Block.

Ethereum’s daily transactions, daily active addresses and total value locked (TVL) within Ethereum-based decentralised finance (DeFi) protocols have all declined since the network’s big 2022 upgrades, the firm’s analysts noted.

Ethereum devs and asset holders are now looking ahead to the snappily titled ‘protodanksharding’ EIP-4844 upgrade, for a hoped-for increase in Ethereum network activity. The JP Morgan analysts, however, note that “continued bearish crypto forces remain a headwind” in general.

Lark “Just a Dude Talking About Crypto on the Internet” Davis, however says: “Dudes, it is a bear market, chill.”

 

 

Trader talk

A 224k plus Twitter/X-followed trader who goes by the pseudonym Bluntz believes Bitcoin has likely entered a lower-high setup (bearish) after failing to push past US$27k-ish resistance last week.

The local bottom is not yet in, Bluntz believes, although it could be if it sinks just below US$24k.

Meanwhile, Dave the Wave (140k-odd followers on X) reckons the bull-goose crypto asset is on target for a bullish 2024, based on the idea that the monthly moving average convergence divergence (MACD) has pulled back into an underbought “buy zone” territory.

Then there’s this one, from Stockmoney Lizards, another popular chart posting trader type who tends to like a good ol’ zoom-out (with a US$200k Bitcoin prediction for 2025, no less).

 

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.

 

Uppers and downers

Some of the biggest 24-hour gainers and losers at press time. (Stats accurate at time of publishing, based on CoinGecko.com data.)

 PUMPERS (11-100 market cap position)

• WEMIX (WEMIX), (market cap: US$390 million) +12%

• CurveDAO (CRV), (market cap: US$451 million) +9%

• Kaspa (KAS), (market cap: US$991 million) +5%

• Aptos (APT), (market cap: US$1.25 billion) +3%

• Rollbit Coin (RLB), (market cap: US$364 million) +3%

 

SLUMPERS

• Radix (XRD), (market cap: US$629 million) -7%

• Toncoin (TON), (market cap: US$7.5 billion) -5%

• ImmutableX (IMX), (market cap: US$688 million) -5%

• Hedera (HBAR), (market cap: US$1.66 billion) -4%

• The Graph (GRT), (market cap: US$792 million) -3%

 

Around the blocks

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

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