Biggest coins on the attack

Major coins are going on the offensive to start the second half of a month that some cryptowatchers are calling "Moonvember."

Bitcoin spent the weekend shaking off a bruising trek into $62,000 territory. By Sunday night, however, BTC was back near $66,000. Earlier this morning, BTC was roughly $65,600, having gained 1% in the past 24 hours as of 8:30 a.m. (EST).

Ethereum, meanwhile, regained its toehold in the region of $4,700, on a 2.2% gain in the past day.

Most altcoins were shading green as of early Monday, with Crypto.com’s CRO token going full-on gangbusters. A mobile-payments play, CRO has surged 17% in the past 24 hours. It is now the 20th-largest coin following a 125% increase over the past fortnight.

Additionally, in a strange and ironic rocket ride, StarLink (STARL), which theoretically is not to be confused with SpaceX's Starlink satellites, soared more than 100% over the weekend. This came after SpaceX, with which, again, the decentralized metaverse project STARL has nothing to do, launched 52 Starlink satellites. Seems some traders, playing a naturally assumed Musk/crypto connection off space news, coyly pumped the 159th-largest crypto, Cointelegraph said.

Consumer-driven-5G-deploying Helium network (HNT) recently became its own hotspot within the ranks of best-performing coins following an announced partnership with Dish Network. In the past 30 days, HNT has lifted 140%.

In the past 24 hours, however, the 44th-largest crypto asset declined by 5.6%. A quick check of HNT as of 9:15 a.m. (EST) showed it floating at about $49.50. HNT hit its all-time high of nearly $55 on Friday. It dropped 9.7% since then.

Not many traders apparently cared in the end that a VanEck bid to create an exchange-traded fund (ETF) tied to spot Bitcoin was thwarted by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Meanwhile, Bitcoin's long-anticipated Taproot upgrade might not move enthusiasm needles near-term. And yet it should not be merely shrugged off.

Yesterday's upgrade, which likely won't even reach 50% adoption among wallets for many months, if not years, to come, nevertheless "opens the door for developers to integrate new features that will improve privacy, scalability and security on the network," CoinDesk said.

Near-term excitement, possibly a best-Thanksgiving-ever jaunt to Grandmother’s for a monthly close above $70K – such a grandiose feast might well rest on the inflation picture. Calling macro wind shifts within biweekly bands is at best a fool's errand for even the most prescient analysts. Last week's crypto rally on high inflation is "a hint on where it’s headed as an asset class," Adam Button, currency analyst, ForexLive, told CoinDesk.

For now, though, BTC remains a "risk-on asset” as underscored by the fact that BTC, after spiking on inflation news, subsequently dropped just as sharply.

The financial markets are groping, blindly, perhaps blissfully, in confronting extreme inflation pressure, the likes of which has not been encountered in three decades, long before BTC was born; what now awaits the emerging digital asset, in terms of it actually cementing its status as a hedge, still has to play out.