“Crypto is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.” Forrest Gump’s younger brother said that. Bitcoin and crypto are showing some strength today, despite the Fed’s interest-rate-hiking tone.

So yeah, the US Federal Reserve raised interest rates by 75 basis points the other day, pretty much as expected. Although a hawkish Jerome Powell indicated no let up for the foreseeable, with the possibility of going even harder on its inflation fight in coming months.

At this point, wouldn’t mind if they just ripped the Band-Aid off with a 125bps hike or two and got it largely over with, already. That might at least give markets the chance to stage an earlier recovery, rather than this death-by-a-thousand-cuts bleed.

That said, today at least, the crypto market has managed to stem the flow of claret, showing some potential signs of life. (No guarantee it doesn’t tank harder once again by the time you move on to some other article, of course. Box of chocolates and all that.)

Currency transfer network XRP, in particular, is surging again, which we’ll take another look at it in a sec…

 

Top 10 overview

With the overall crypto market cap at US$982 billion and up about 4.8% since yesterday, here’s the current state of play among top 10 tokens – according to CoinGecko.

So pretty much the entire top 100 cryptos are flashing green today. Top guns Bitcoin and Ethereum are putting in some solid recovery, although the crypto market cap as a whole is still languishing below the US$ 1 trillion mark and has been in a bearish trend since at least mid August.

Ethereum is one of the strongest top 10 movers, up more than 6% over the past 24 hours at the time of writing, yet it’s still showing its sell-the-news scars post Merge, down 19% over the past week.

One big positive for the newly merged Proof-of-Stake network is that its annual token supply change has dropped from 3.79% to 0.20% post-Merge, according to data from ultrasound.money. Another way of looking at this is, Ethereum’s token issuance has fallen 95% since the Merge event, which ties in nicely to the narrative of ETH becoming a deflationary asset.

 

But how ’bout that XRP?

Ripple Labs’ XRP token, which was a tide-turning token that helped lift all crypto boats back in the Great Bull Run of 2017, is the clear daily winner – not just in the top 10 but top 100 coins. It’s currently busting out of a long-term lacklustre range and is up about 24% over the past 24 hours. In fact, it’s also up about 40% across 30 days.

Why? Well, as we’ve been covering again just lately, the legal stoush between Ripple Labs and the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which began in 2020, seems like it could finally be coming to an end sooner than originally anticipated.

A decision on whether XRP is a security is now reportedly expected some time in the coming month or three – at least before the end of the year.

Both Ripple and the SEC have called on a Federal Judge for a ruling and this has sparked some positive market sentiment from those interested in XRP.

That said, some traders are calling for some caution on this exuberance, predicting a lower-level entry-point opportunity yet.

 

Uppers and downers: 11–100

Sweeping a market-cap range of about US$7.46 billion to about US$386 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

• Chiliz (CHZ), (market cap: US$1.44 billion) +17%

• LEO Token (LEO), (mc: US$4.6 billion) +14%

• Chain (XCN), (mc: US$1.6 billion) +12%

• Stellar (XLM), (mc: US$3.1 billion) +11%

• Algorand (ALGO), (mc: US$2.6 billion) +11%

 

Well, if you’ve been following Coinhead, and specifically tuned into expert channeller of charting dark arts Carl Capolingua on August 24, then you might have been able to catch a good heads up on the Chiliz (CHZ) fan-token project. It’s up 46% over the past 14 days.

“Hands down the best chart in the Top 100,” Capolingua wrote at the time, also pointing to this little nugget of info:

“Chiliz does fan tokens for some of the biggest European football teams… season’s just kicked off, so getting a bit of attention at the moment!”

And he’s still bullish on it, too. Check out Carl’s hot-of-the-press calls in Luke Ryan from CoinJar’s latest “Three Ts” column.

Bitcoin, Ethereum, Stellar are also discussed. As is XRP:

“As old as the hills…good old Ripple. A pulse! This fledging short-term rally looks like it’s got some legs.”

 

DAILY SLUMPERS

• Terra Luna Classic (LUNC), (market cap: US$1.89 billion) -3%

• Lido DAO (LDO), (mc: US$1.15 billion) -1%

 

Around the blocks

A selection of randomness and pertinence that stuck with us on our morning moves through the Crypto Twitterverse…

JP Morgan CEO Jamie “I’m Publicly Saying Bitcoin’s a Fraud But My Firm Will Try to Make Money From it Anyway” Dimon is up to his old crypto-bashing tricks again. Here he is, having a classic swipe while sitting on a panel of big, total, utter, utter bankers at the House Financial Services Committee meeting.

And a bit more from that meeting…

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