Everything goes green

Consumer prices are not spiking. Nor are they plunging, or so suggests some newly released data – leaving stock and bond markets lurching about like some armless zombie horde.

Crypto, on the other hand, is a beeline painted green. Bitcoin darted up a leafy path marked "this way to $23K" on the back of a 4% gain over 24 hours.

As of 7:38 a.m. (EST), the largest digital asset, with a market cap of $440 billion, was inching toward $22,820.

In the same one-day period, Ethereum rose 5%. It seems well on the road to $1,600. The mother of all smart contracts platforms has its "Shanghai" upgrade set for mid-March, possibly kicking off a cycle of unlocked ETH begetting more staked ETH, presumably outside the U.S.

Speaking of upgrades, Cardano got one for Valentine's Day. Starting in tests staged late last night, the Cardano network added enhancements to cross-chain bridge functionality for DeFi applications building on the network, according to CoinDesk. In 24 hours, Cardano's native ADA surged 8.6% to $0.39. Sixteen months ago, and it can’t go unnoticed, ADA was $3.

The Big Ten coins are having a mid-week hootennay. No. 10 Polygon's MATIC also rose 8% in 24 hours – and did we mention No. 9 Dogecoin is climbing?

Elon Musk must have tweeted something last night ... ah yes, here it is, a meme involving his dog Floki posing as the new boss of Twitter.

Binance USD remains under regulatory scrutiny. Its dollar peg remains intact as does its place in the Big Ten – but there are some troubling trends surrounding its standing in the stablecoin world.

Call it a coincidence, but BUSD's market cap shrank by roughly $1 billion in recent days amidst a regulatory crackdown on it, its home and brand (Binance) and its issuer, Paxos, while, concurrently, BUSD’s most formidable rival, Tether, saw the total value of its USDT rise by nearly $1 billion.

Stablecoins like BUSD and USDT are cryptos pegged to the dollar and backed by reserves which are mostly, ostensibly, comprised of cash and treasuries; but these non-physical coins boast programmability and transferability, making them a backbone of a digital economy which often involves investors pairing trades against stablecoins on exchanges in the service of snapping up more volatile cryptos, as Decrypt explained: "BUSD’s losses may show that those seeking stablecoin liquidity are fleeing to the longtime king, Tether, to escape future regulatory crackdowns in the U.S."

Unlike Paxos and Circle – issuer of the second largest stablecoin, USDC – Tether is owned by the Hong Kong-based company, iFinex, also owner of Bitfinex.

On Monday, Tether created $1 billion worth of its USDT stablecoin on the Tron network. The tokens were minted for “next period issuance requests,” said Bitfinex’s/Tether’s CTO Paolo Ardoino.

USDT's market cap is closing in on $70 billion. It is the third-largest digital asset, per CoinGecko.

Circle's USDC is the fifth-largest coin overall and second-largest stablecoin; it has a $41 billion market cap. That actually represents a 9% drop from its recent high of $45 billion in mid-December.

The European Union launched a regulatory sandbox for innovating distributed ledger technologies (DLT).

Europe’s blockchain hothouse aims to "facilitate the cross-border dialogue with and between regulators and supervisors on the one hand, and companies or public authorities on the other hand," an official announcement said.

The EU is also exploring how DLT-based solutions could help eliminate intermediaries in securities trading.

The DLT sandbox will run until 2026 and annually support 20 projects involving blockchain applications for public and private sector use "to verify information and make services trustworthy." First call for applications is open until April 14, with a panel of academics selecting the first batch of projects (CoinDesk).

Also looking to cement crypto-hub status these days is the second-largest city in South Korea, Busan. The port city, according to Bitcoin.com, is facing demographic challenges insofar as more than one-fifth of its population is aged 65 or older. Busan officials believe that by embracing crypto they can attract technology startups.