It’s a tense opening to a potentially pivotal week in stonks and crypto as the US Fed’s FOMC meeting looms midweek. At the time of writing, all eyes are on Wall Street’s kick off.

And it’s off to a cagey, somewhat lacklustre start, not presently giving too much away… although the S&P 500 (-0.2%) is now ticking a bit lower as we type, while the US dollar (DXY: +0.5%) keeps flexing.

The crypto market is still very much on edge, judging by the Fear & Greed Index and the general feeling we’re getting from a good many Crypto Twitter accounts. By the time you read this, of course, a sentiment-driven direction may be clearer.

 

Top 10 overview

With the overall crypto market cap at roughly US$1.83 trillion, up about 1.6% since this time yesterday, here’s the current state of play among top 10 tokens – according to CoinGecko.

Aside from perhaps Ethereum (ETH) and definitely Terra‘s LUNA token, some major layer 1 protocols appear to be experiencing a bit of a lull/dip right now.

That said, Solana (SOL) is holding up reasonably well, to be fair, considering the FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) surrounding its network outage across the weekend – the protocol’s seventh major incident of that nature this year.

As for Polkadot (DOT) and Avalanche (AVAX), however, these fellow Ethereum rivals have slipped further down the chart, while Terra’s stablecoin UST busts in to the top 10.

Bitcoin (BTC) meanwhile is very much the health barometer for the entire market – and that’s certainly not changing any time soon. As is firmly established by virtually every chart watcher now, BTC is tied to the performance of the US stock market, which has been skating on pretty thin ice all year.

Still, as US analyst and Bitcoin Magazine contributor Dylan LeClair infers in the tweet below, Bitcoin is an asset for HODLers.

The canniest of traders riding Bitcoin’s volatility probably do okay out of it now and then, too. But this columnist is guessing the HODL narrative will remain strong, no matter what rate hiking the Fed throws at the markets this year.

 

XRP trades up, for a change

Meanwhile, the XRP Army is likely having a brighter day (+3.3%) so far after a pretty shocking April (-28%) for the popular/polarising payments-disrupting protocol.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission’s lawsuit against XRP creator Ripple Labs is ongoing, which is based around the SEC’s stance that Ripple conducted illegal securities sales via XRP.

Recent hearings in the case, though, seem to be indicating that Ripple is faring quite well. Perhaps a settlement could be reached some time soon, if rumours are true.

The bullish case for Ripple/XRP and its potential adoption by the traditional banking system was a major catalyst for one of the biggest bullruns the crypto industry has seen, back in 2017. Not saying that history will repeat, of course.

 

Sweeping a market-cap range of about US$17.7 billion to about US$918 million in the rest of the top 100, let’s find some of the biggest 24-hour gainers and losers at press time.

DAILY PUMPERS

• Fantom (FTM), (market cap: US$1.97 billion) 10%

• OKB (OKB), (mc: US$5 billion) +6%

• Helium (HNT), (mc: US$1.39 billion) +4%

• Bonded LUNA (BLUNA), (mc: US$7 billion) +3.5%

• Lido DAO (LDO), (mc: US$953 million) +3%

 

DAILY SLUMPERS 

• Cronos (CRO), (mc: US$7.3 billion) -10%

• ApeCoin (APE), (mc: US$4.3 billion) -8%

• NEXO (NEXO), (mc: US$1.24 billion) -5%

• Chain (XCN), (mc: US$1.4 million) -4%

• Hedera (HBAR), (mc: US$2.84 billion) -4%

 

Uppers and downers: lower caps

Moving below the crypto unicorns (in some cases well below), here’s just a selection catching our eye…

DAILY PUMPERS

• Pluton (PLU), (market cap: US$26 million) +138%

• Magic (MAGIC), (mc: US$64m) +35%

• Nym (NYM), (mc: US$57m) +32%

• Pocket Network (POKT), (mc: US$517m) +28%

• Cult DAO (CULT), (mc: US$64m) +27%

 

DAILY SLUMPERS

• Meerkat Shares (MSHARE), (mc: US$67m) -32%

• MMFinance (MMF), (mc: US$100m) -16%

• Victoria VR (VR), (mc: US$99m) -11%

• REVV (REVV), (mc: US$34m) -10%

• Kyber Network Crystal (KNC), (mc: US$427m) -9%

 

Around the blocks

Lastly, while Warren “All You Can Eat” Buffett may not want to purchase all the BTC in the world for $25, Bitcoin “GigaChad” Michael Saylor has made it abundantly clear, once again, that he’s buyer.

 

Read MoreBitcoinCryptocurrency

You might be interested in