Bitcoin is still hanging out on the sideline, desperately trying to impress the coach with some vigorous warm-up routines, meanwhile the new “Ethereum killer” Aptos enters the fray and is immediately poleaxed.

That imminent volatility crypto analysts have been banging on about this week? Yeahnah. Well, not at the time of writing anyway. Bitcoin seems fine to basically continue doing nothing.

“Uptober”? More like Crabtober at the moment. Where’s that “C’mon, do something” meme when you need it? (Here it is):

Will the second scenario there play out? Unless you desperately want to accumulate more at fire sale prices, then let’s hope not. But as boring as this broken-record statement is, it all hinges on the US Federal Reserve’s next inflation-combatting move.

Singaporean crypto asset trading firm QCP Capital thinks so.

“With little calendar events till the next FOMC in early November, crypto continuing to lag behind equities, and skews near flat, protective downside structures are the cheapest levels they have been since June,” the firm has been quoted here and there today.

Onto some daily price action.

 

Top 10 overview

With the overall crypto market cap at US$960 billion, down about 1% since this time yesterday, here’s the current state of play among top 10 tokens – according to CoinGecko.

That’s a pretty uninspiring 24-hour and weekly price-action chart for the crypto majors, so let’s look for some positivity to brighten things up a tad.

Here’s Bloomberg Intelligence’s chief commodity strategist Mike McGlone, with a reminder of Bitcoin’s diminishing-supply narrative.

And here’s something else – apparently Tesla didn’t sell any Bitcoin in Q3 this year. That’s positive… right?

Bringing the mood back down again for a sec, though, @ZeroHedge, aka John Wick, has taken time out from stabbing bad guys with a pencil and is pointing to possible further crypto market pain. That said, he’s only asking the question.

Here’s another question. If BTC were to plummet again from these levels down to something like US$14k or less, would you “back up the truck”, like Austrian fund manager Larry Lepard?

Coinhead knows what it would do, but won’t share lest it somehow be construed as financial advice.

 

Uppers and downers: 11–100: Aptos dumps

Sweeping a market-cap range of about US$7.23 billion to about US$399 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

• Celsius (CEL),(market cap: US$422 million) +5%

• Trust Wallet (TWT), (mc: US$464 million) +4%

• Aave (AAVE), (mc: US$1.18 billion) +2%

• Uniswap (UNI), (mc: US$5 billion) +2%

• Polkadot (DOT), (mc: US$7.2 million) +1%

 

DAILY SLUMPERS

• Aptos (APT), (market cap: US$921 million) -48%

• Casper (CSPR), (mc: US$429 million) -10%

• Frax Share (FXS), (mc: US$418 million) -7%

• EthereumPoW (ETHW), (mc: US$678 million) -7%

• Quant (QNT), (mc: US$2.9 billion) -5%

In terms of “mooning and shaking” coins today, Aptos is the headline “shakeout” act.

The highly anticipated newcomer to the increasingly crowded layer 1 blockchain race tanked in value overnight (AEDT) as it hit major crypto exchanges including Binance, Coinbase, FTX and Huobi.

According to CoinGecko data, APT debuted at about US$13.73, swiftly plunging more than 50% to US$6.73, and has seemed to find a level not much higher than that, presently, a shade above $7.

Founder Mo Shaikh and others have been in damage control following a lot of Crypto Twitter negativity regarding the project’s rocky start. The criticism has centred around supposedly a less-than-transparent token-model distribution structure, as well as a network with far lower transactional processing speed than had been expected at this stage.

Meanwhile, more than 100,000 participants in Aptos’ early testnet program are able to claim an APT airdrop. Judging by this tweet from airdrop guru Olimpio, below, it looks to have been a reasonably lucrative opportunity based on doing not much.

We missed the boat on that one, unfortunately, but it’s a reminder to keep one eye on the airdrop “free money” scene.

 

Around the blocks: another airdrop op?

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

And speaking of airdrops (see APT, further above), the excellent Olimpio Twitter account has one here that you might well be able to take advantage of, if you’re an OpenSea user and holder/trader of NFTs.

 

 

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