Swingin' Bitcoin hangs near 23K

With vim, vigor and a pocketful of moonbeams, Bitcoin took aim at the $23,000 level, assertively holding serve over the previous day, trading around $22,930 as of 7 a.m. Friday (EST).

CoinDesk pegs $23,770 as BTC's all-time high. The largest, best-known crypto has gained 1% in the past 24 hours. And it has remained above its 50-hour moving average, a not-bearish signal.

Leading the holiday rush among altcoins is XRP which has risen 3% in the past 24 hours, and now resting merrily closer to sixty cents than to fifty.

Litecoin walked right past the $100 mark like a Premiership footballer at the Chinawhite nightclub circa 2003. LTC is raging, up 9% since yesterday this time.

Can this festive joy intensify – or will the cup runneth over? Chris Thomas, head of digital assets at Swissquote Bank, said the most recent BTC move seems like too much too soon. “I’m just waiting for a few big sellers to come back to the market and take profits,” he said (CoinDesk).

Cardano slid slightly Thursday-into-Friday following a week-long rally. Icicles aren’t exactly forming – ADA was just shy of seventeen cents as of the early morning (EST) – meanwhile, the future looks bright. Cardano is set up to run stride for stride with ETH 2.0 which by 2022 will have transformed Ethereum into a Proof-of-Stake protocol, similar to Cardano, as The Daily Chain noted.

All eyes are on DeFi enabler ETH and its scheduled scalability/functionality-enhancing enhancements (PoS, Plasma, and Sharding upgrades). And there's no room for failure, The Daily Chain said, if Ethereum expects to maintain its status as the go-to platform for DeFi and smart contract development. Otherwise, the door swings wide open for other platforms.

Such as Cardano.

Bitcoin has pivoted from being a digital means of transacting into a gold-like store of value in a world spiraling into fiat currency inflation; Ethereum is betting on being the beating heart of efforts to decentralize financial services like trading and lending. That leaves XRP to revolutionize digital payments.

In an effort to edify crypto greenhorns, InvestorPlace pointed to XRP as a poster-child for a comprehensible crypto, one that has value there for the measuring.

"Utility remains unproven," InvestorPlace said of the digital coin closely associated with Ripple. "But there is at least a case to be made here."

And it goes like this: If XRP becomes an integral part of the banking system, XRP could "significantly improve payment processing around the world."

Tens of trillions of dollars move worldwide every year.

That alone, InvestorPlace said, suggests that XRP should be worth more than $50 billion.

With Bitcoin mooning yesterday, Coinbase ended months of speculation about whether it intends go public – it does.

"The Form S-1 is expected to become effective after the SEC completes its review process, subject to market and other conditions,” the firm wrote in a one-minute-read blog post titled "Coinbase announces confidential submission of draft registration statement."

In October 2018, Coinbase was valued at $8 billion. The major crypto exchange is positioning itself as Wall Street’s most accessible bet on crypto, CoinDesk said.

No one will soon forget the day they learned that Bitcoin cracked $20K, and Coinbase said it was going public. Although we might let it slip from our memory that this was also the day pet supply e-retailer BarkBox merged with Northern Star Acquisition Corp., a special purpose acquisition company, in a deal worth $1.6 billion. Then again, perhaps the BARK SPAC will forever be remembered.