DOT blazes to new record high

Conceived as an "Ethereum Killer" and now a boiling hot cauldron of DeFi projects, the Polkadot blockchain is asserting dominance. The market capitalization of DOT, the native token of the Polkadot blockchain, has overtaken XRP as the fourth-largest crypto by market cap.

DOT early Friday reached its all-time high of about $14.80 before losing some ground. As of 8:45 a.m. (EST), DOT was roughly $13.50, representing a 24-hour pop of 12%.

Well, of course some investors are enchanted by the idea of having a stake in the future of scalable heterogeneous multi-chain technology, however ... Polkadot is more than that. In fact, many Asian traders view it as crypto’s canary in the coalmine (CoinDesk).

Litecoin has had a tough week. Charlie Lee’s Bitcoin spinoff, which turns ten in October, should be basking in its starring role playing the part of silver to BTC’s gold. But LTC has declined by 14% over the past seven days; BTC merely lost 3% over that period.

It’s possible that BTC will chew up even more scenery on the way to greater acclaim. LTC, however, has a long way to go if it's ever to be reunited with its all-time high of $360 reached in December of 2017.

After reaching near $186, LTC since Jan. 10 has assumed the role of falling knife.

On Thursday, the sixth-largest-by-market-cap crypto looked as if it had regained momentum. LTC was about $146 as of 8 a.m. Friday morning (EST), but losing ground (-2%) in just the span of one hour. Still, daily volume is exhibiting an intriguing uptick compared with prior months. And one analyst, Oscar Lee of Tradingview, recently proposed a price target of $800, pointing to bullish technical underpinnings and a strong Relative Strength Index (RSI) reminiscent of the late 2017 boom.

Startup Anchorage has become the first company to receive a federal charter from the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. Now green lit to launch the first federally chartered digital asset bank, Anchorage props open the door for traditional banks – that don’t handle crypto – to at least permissibly offer Anchorage’s services. Kraken and Avanti have both received state charters for digital banking services in Wyoming (CoinDesk).

Four big takeaways from CoinGecko's 2020 Annual Report:

* The market cap of the largest 30 cryptos grew by 308%.

* DeFi as a sector finished the year with a total market cap of $20.4 billion, a record high.

 * Trading volume of CEXs and DEXs increased in 2020 by 307% to $534 billion. CEXs accounted for most (93%) of that $403 billion increase.

* Bitcoin perpetual swaps volume reached a staggering $3.5 trillion last year.

A deeper dive on that last data point: Futures contracts without expiry, highly leveraged, BTC perpetual swaps are a force with which to be reckoned. Volume surged in November and December, coinciding with BTC reaching a series of all-time highs. Binance and Huobi combined for more than half of the $740 billion worth of trading volume experienced by the nine biggest derivative exchanges last month.

A footnote to this last part: BitMEX, beset by U.S. federal criminal charges filed against four of its founders, saw its share of BTC perpetual swap volume drop sharply, from 44% at the start of the year down to 9% by the end. And yet even BitMEX recorded $120 billion in volume just in November and December.

A 22-year-old TikTok astrologer named Maren Altman supposedly can predict Bitcoin movements (Reuters). Via charts that manifest in the heavens, Altman predicts favorable conditions aligning at the end of this month and continuing through early March. She warned her followers last week to watch out for a BTC correction on Jan. 11. That day, BTC crashed 21 percent to below $31,000, because Saturn crossed Mercury, just as she’d told all of her followers.