Crypto fully ablaze

Bitcoin staying above $50,000 (actually getting, briefly, to $52,000) on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning is one sign of a crypto conflagration and Dogecoin spiking 5% amidst the debut of new AMC Entertainment DOGE-denominated digital gift cards is another. As for Shiba Inu (SHIB) bursting 75% in 24 hours to crackle into the rankings of Top 20 coins by total market capitalization, it'll either be cause for alarm bells or a bellowing chorus of "Disco Inferno."

A quick glance at BTC revealed the largest of all coins taking cover on a ledge just below $51,500, having gained 3% in 24 hours as of 7:30 a.m. (EST).

DOGE rival SHIB has a whole mushroom-cloud aura surrounding it in recent days with a seven-day return in excess of 200%. Three other emerging altcoins, as The Daily Hodl noted, blew up in that time, those being Spell Token (SPELL), Secret (SCRT) and OMG Network (OMG), each recording gains of 100%+ over the past week as crypto  markets became fully ignited.

Axie Infinity (AXS), meanwhile, has soared 80% in that span, a period of time that's still being hailed as Uptober. Not every coin is on fire, though. Several altcoins, while having lit it up during the flaming first week of the tenth month, are now flickering out.

Sure, the overall crypto market cap now stands at nearly $2.2 trillion with a slew of big weekly gainers underscoring so-called 'Uptober' and with SHIB lighting it up. But a sober, steady gaze at the listings shows a 24-hour torch job for some of the biggest coins that are not named Bitcoin.

Ethereum, having gained 21% over the past week, fell overnight, slightly, by 1.7%. As of 7:45 a.m. (EST), ETH, second-largest coin by market cap, sat just shy of $3,400.

Cardano (ADA) is green over seven days, red overnight. ADA fell 4% in the past 24 hours.

So did Binance Coin (BNB). XRP shed 2%.

Among the Big Ten, Solana (SOL) turned in the largest 24-hour drop, falling 8.6%. Over the past week, SOL has gained 18%.

Bitcoin overcoming $50,000 has helped stoke a vast and startling swath of bonfires, creating a vivid reenactment of that time ace globe circumnavigator Ferdinand Magellan first sailed past Tierra del Fuego; but the $52,000 mark has in the past several hours become a strait too far.

By 5 a.m. (EST), BTC had surrendered $1,000 of value, falling below $51,000. A quick check of BTC at 9 a.m. had it firmly back above $51K.

SHIB, for what it's worth ($0.000023) still remains 40% off its all-time high reached in May.

Uptober rages on, BTC is back above $50K and several high-flyers are suddenly showing up on traders' radar screens.

Among the out-of-obscurity-leaping tokens gaining attention is Presearch (PRE), a blockchain-based decentralized search protocol. With a market-cap of less than $200 million, PRE barely cracks CoinGecko's Top 300 rankings. Despite gaining 90% in seven days to get to near $0.45, PRE is still 46% off its ATH.

The PRE rally comes post-announcement, of a partnership with CoinMarketCap, which, Cointelegraph said, will integrate data feeds directly into the Presearch search engine.

Another hottie (indeed, so hot it’s hard not to stare) is Axie. AXS hit a new high of near $156 on Monday, but in the past two days fell back toward $125. Native coin of a popular virtual world where cartoon creatures are bred to do battle, AXS itself could be considered a kind of non-fungible token breeding ground, and rising up in a space viewed as hyper-lucrative going forward. The network now says 12 million AXS have been staked.

In the next 12 months, according to a bullish WalletInvestor forecast, AXS could easily double in price (InvestorPlace).

Boldly confronting a cybersecurity threat that has craved more attention for going on two decades, some U.S. lawmakers want to fund a new study to identify the links between cryptocurrencies and their role in ransomware attacks.

The move comes almost 155 years to the day when the Reno brothers, John and Simeon, pulled off what is believed to be the first train robbery in U.S. history, one that at the time prompted the Ohio & Mississippi Railroad to do a deep dive into the role of cash and precious metals being contained in boxcars travelling across remote stretches of western territory, helping to give rise to the use of massive safes and private security agencies.

The Ransom Disclosure Act, co-sponsored by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), would require victims of ransomware attacks to  disclose information about ransom payments to the Department of Homeland Security so that DHS can better understand how to go about nabbing perpetrators.