Crypto stressed out

With crypto markets at large getting pummeled into the ground, Tezos (XTZ) took to the sky.

The token connected with more eco-friendly NFT creation methods was spiking more than 30% over portions of yesterday and is one of the few green assets this morning, in a wild rebound following a week-long plunge. That decline came after a big rally at the start of September, when XTZ nearly doubled from $4 and change to just below $8.

Its all-time high, just above $8, came back in May. As of 8:15 a.m. (EST) XTZ was about $6.

Ren (REN), meanwhile, is also on the rise. The 106th-largest crypto, connected with DeFi-sweet-spot-hitting interoperability protocol, just rocketed 20%. REN is up 50% over the past month, gaining traction, Cointelegraph said, with the launch of a bridge to Arbitrum, the release of RenVM Greycore and increasing total value locked on RenVM.

Cryptocurrencies across the board are plummeting after the People’s Bank of China declared all crypto-related activities are illegal. But we knew that already. Anyhow, over 24 hours, Bitcoin fell 6%. Ethereum, during that same period, as of 8 a.m. (EST) had fallen 10%. Tables and charts are top-to-bottom bathed in crimson.

“The Chinese regulators have always been extreme in their views and these comments are not new,” Vijay Ayyar, head of Asia Pacific at digital currency exchange Luno, told CNBC. “They have said these things many times in the past. But the reaction is interesting purely because we are in a slightly nervous environment for crypto.”

How much tougher can the Chinese government get on crypto? What can officials there do that they have not already done? Better coordinate, as it turns out.

Earlier today, the People’s Bank of China officially announced new measures to stamp out crypto, including promoting stronger inter-departmental coordination (Cointelegraph). Ten Chinese state authorities, including the PBoC, the Cyberspace Administration of China and the Ministry of Public Security, have formed an alliance and communications mechanisms to further prevent crypto from taking hold in a country disinclined to cede so much as even a modicum of economic control.

China’s anti-crypto stance is well established. Local authorities have shut down miners and quashed crypto trading. Chinese regulators banned crypto exchanges from providing services in China. That was back in 2017. Not long after, Bitcoin reached $20,000 for the first time.

Rap icon Snoop Dogg turning out to be an NFT-promoting Twitter personality, Cozomo de’ Medici, wasn't that surprising of a reveal, considering his past connections to crypto. These ties are getting stronger by the day. Yesterday, he announced a partnership with The Sandbox, an upcoming Ethereum-based metaverse game that lets users customize and share experiences in a 3D world, and hang out with Snoop, provided you obtain the Snoop Dogg Private Party Pass, an NFT created by The Sandbox (Decrypt).

And In Case You Have Nothing Planned This Coming Weekend: Cardano Summit 2021 will take place Saturday and Sunday, virtually, in cities around the world. The organizations behind the blockchain network are billing the event as their most exciting event yet, owing to the anticipation surrounding Cardano’s latency-minimizing layer-2 scaling solution, Hydra, in development on the Alonzo hard fork. During the summit, according to ZyCrypto, Cardano plans to showcase the latest in Cardano developments and make some “industry-defining announcements.”