Bitcoin poked its head above the US$30k parapets for a while overnight, slinking back below it again for the time being.

But still, a decent rise for a Wednesday sees the bull goose crypto currently changing hands near US$29,700 – about $600 better than this time yesterday and where it’s been languishing in Stagnant City for the best part of a month.

What caused the spike? That’s not immediately clear, but here are some recent positives to cling to right now:

• PayPal. Yesterday, the payments giant announced that it’s entered the crypto stablecoin market with the launch of its USD-pegged, New York Department of Financial Services regulated PYUSD. Excitement around the retail-adoption narrative ensued, given PayPal has something like 431 million users and is a payments rail on eBay.

• Spot Bitcoin ETF chatter is picking up again in the US, where numerous financial big guns, led by the likes of BlackRock, Vanguard and Ark Invest all have filings sitting in the SEC’s in-trays. Mike Novogratz’s Galaxy Digital is among those patiently waiting.

Actually, perhaps good ol’ Terra Luna-wolf-tatted Novo isn’t that patient, as he noted on an earnings call that he’s “ready to fight like cats and dogs for market share”.

The ex Wall Street player turned crypto moon bro also noted he thinks that, based on some apparent chatterings from BlackRock insiders, a Bitcoin ETF approval in the States is a matter of “when, not if” and will likely come about within “four to six months”.

Meanwhile, on the same front, Cathie Wood, CEO of Ark Invest (which also has a BTC ETF filing… I mean, who doesn’t at this point, #amirite?) is of the belief that if/when one of the filings is finally given the green light, multiple will be approved at pretty much the same time.

One for all, and all for one. Or something like that. Although probably with a slightly more corporate-self-profiteering bent than the musketeers.

• Base, Coinbase’s Ethereum Layer 2 scaling solution built using Optimism tech is causing some excitement here and there across the crypto industry. Why? According to Aussie crypto analyst Miles Deutscher here, “it’s designed to deliver the security and scalability of Ethereum at a fraction of the cost.”

• Hong Kong and China. This is a narrative that really fuels the crypto hopium pipe – the potential re-opening of China to crypto investors.

Seems like a remote chance, that, given China’s history as a crypto rug-pulling party pooper. But… Hong Kong has been making strides to welcome the crypto industry there, with support from some large banking entities.

In fact, in significant news that’s hit within the past week, Hong Kong has now issued the first licences for crypto exchanges, potentially opening up crypto trading to the Chinese mass market.

The licences were awarded to crypto exchanges HashKey and OSL, allowing them to serve retail customers in Hong Kong with Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) at this point.

Hashkey will also apparently be offering its customers the ability to trade the stablecoins USDT and USDC.

So, when will the Hong Kong market start aping in? That’s the question, isn’t it. We might need to parachute Mike Novogratz into Hong Kong, with Larry Fink or Michael Saylor lovingly strapped in behind him. Cathie Wood, too.

In short, more catalysts, please. PayPal was nice, but think we might need that BTC ETF narrative to really hit before the end of the year. October, anyone? Always a good time in the crypto market. August and September? Yeah, not so much.

 

Top 10 overview

With the overall crypto market cap at US$1.23 trillion, up 1.7% since this time yesterday, here’s the current state of play among top 10 tokens – according to CoinGecko.

Payments rail play XRP and Ethereum smart contracts base layer rival Solana have benefitted most in the majors from the intra-day crypto spike.

Regarding XRP, pro-Ripple lawyer John Deaton, who seems to have become the absolute go-to for XRP narrtive musings of late, has said he believes the token is on target to reach an all-time high if the Bitcoin bull market makes a comeback.

He admits here, however, that the latter factor is probably a necessary prerequisite for the subsequent gains of altcoins such as ETH and XRP to be realised. Like, duh… we could’ve told you that.

 

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)

• Rollbit Coin (RLB), (market cap: US$555 million) +71%

• Pepe (PEPE), (market cap: US$497 million) +7%

• Shiba Inu (SHIB), (market cap: US$5.6 billion) +6%

• Toncoin (TON), (market cap: US$4.4 billion) +6%

• Hedera (HBAR), (market cap: US$2.04 billion) +5%

 

SLUMPERS (11-100 market cap position)

• Mantle (MNT), (market cap: US$1.5 billion) -6%

• Optimism (OP), (market cap: US$1.2 billion) -5%

• Rocket Pool (RPL), (market cap: US$502 million) -4%

• Maker (MKR), (market cap: US$1.08 billion) -2%

• GMX (GMX), (market cap: US$447 million) -2%

 

Around the blocks

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

 

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