The Bitcoin and crypto market volatility many expected this week has still yet to emerge as BTC crabs its way towards the weekend. Meanwhile, asset-management giant Fidelity hopes to give Ethereum a boost.

Let’s start with the crypto market mover in chief. It’s been a month of narrow trading ranging for the number one cryptocurrency and nothing’s changed overnight, despite many a Crypto Twitter commentator expecting a big move one way or another this week.

The week’s not over yet, but the “Uptober” narrative this time around is looking less and less likely by the hour. Here’s the latest data regarding Bitcoin’s monthly returns – currently 2.08% in the red, below.

Source: bitcoinmonthlyreturn.com

The hunt for green October is still on – there’s still a chance. That said, it isn’t looking overly promising with just 10 days left and perhaps no other potential market catalyst until the next Fed meeting on November 2.

There’s no doubt global macroeconomic uncertainty has hammered down volatility in the crypto market and has likely seen many an investor either park their funds in stablecoins or leave the space altogether. Perhaps the ranging, sideways price action for Bitcoin, though, points to the strength of the HODLers that remain.

Mike McGlone over at Bloomberg Intelligence seems to think so. Here he is, continuing his recent campaign of Bitcoin positivity and pointing to the asset “building a base around $19,000” as well as talking up its potential as a store of value in the face of further darkening economic skies.

 

Fidelity’s big Ethereum move

Here’s something positive today. Fidelity, a US$4.5 trillion asset-managing giant, is set to roll out an Ethereum custody and trading service for its institutional clients next week, via its crypto-focused arm Fidelity Digital Assets.

The offering will be available to Fidelity’s existing institutional clients who already trade or custody Bitcoin, which the firm first began providing services for in 2018.

“Institutional Ethereum capabilities are coming to the Fidelity Digital Assets platform on October 28, 2022,” reads the Fidelity Digital Assets email sent to its clients.

It follows the firm’s recent move to launch a crypto exchange with fellow financial fat cats Charles Schwab and Citadel Securities, and it also comes after Fidelity’s Digital Assets Account made the decision to let clients add Bitcoin to their 401(k) retirement savings plans.

Fidelity Digital Assets currently offers two exchange-traded crypto funds – one dedicated to the metaverse and the other to digital payments.

 

Onto some daily price action.

 

Top 10 overview

With the overall crypto market cap at US$948 billion, down roughly another 1% since this time yesterday, here’s the current state of play among top 10 tokens – according to CoinGecko.

Sea. Of. Red. No, the 24-hour wounds aren’t particularly deep, but it’s still not a very attractive looking chart for the crypto majors.

Despite recent bouts of positivity for XRP regarding the ongoing legal battle between Ripple Labs and the SEC, it, like Solana, is practically in the double-digit-downturn territory Cardano’s experiencing this week.

Perhaps all three can find some seller exhaustion soon, although right now they’re also the worst-performing coins in the top 10 over the past 24 hours.

Here’s something interesting regarding Cardano, though. Founder Charles Hoskinson has announced that fellow layer 1 blockchain project Algorand “is now on Cardano”.

This means that the two fundamentally different blockchains can now be connected, and that’s apparently thanks to a layer 2 solution known as Milkomeda A1 rollup that’s now gone live on the Algorand network.

Milkomeda is a blockchain interoperability provider that focuses on helping non-EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) blockchains connect and achieve EVM-based capabilities.

 

Uppers and downers: 11–100

Sweeping a market-cap range of about US$6.83 billion to about US$405 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

• Chain (XCN),(market cap: US$1.45 billion) +10%

• Lido DAO (LDO), (mc: US$1.05 billion) +8%

• Casper Network (CSPR), (mc: US$454 million) +7%

• Kava (KAVA), (mc: US$430 million) +6%

• EOS (EOS), (mc: US$1 billion) +4%

 

DAILY SLUMPERS

• Uniswap (UNI), (market cap: US$4.6 billion) -8%

• Ethereum Name Service (ENS), (mc: US$446 million) -7%

• Axie Infinity (AXS), (mc: US$490 million) -6%

• Polygon (MATIC), (mc: US$6 billion) -4%

• Radix (RDX), (mc: US$502 million) -4%

 

Around the blocks

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

Meanwhile, here’s hoping…

 

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