Sinking, crypto seeks to regain footing

Basic Attention Token (BAT) reached its all-time high earlier today. BAT hit $1.81. At 8 a.m. (EST), the coin connected with Brave, the privacy-centric web browser, was about $1.50.

Instead of tracking users’ behavior and barraging them with targeted ads, Brave allows users to voluntarily view the ads they want, earning BAT for their effort. While the token’s rise (+15% over 24 hours) is hard to pin on any one event, there have been some recent updates from Brave (such as its integration with Solana) that would seem to justify today’s spike, Decrypt said.

Black Friday indeed. Crypto's total market capitalization has in the past day plunged from $2.8 trillion to $2.5 trillion.

Bitcoin fell 7%. It's below $55K. Ethereum declined 9%, barely holding on to its $4K handle. Other Big Ten coin are crashing as well.

Solana, Cardano and XRP are all down 10%.

Some media outlets are tying the crash to news of a new Covid variant spotted in South Africa.

A big-time bounce can't be ruled out, however.

BTC is offering a "Black Friday" deal with a sub-$55K price. Last year at this time, BTC similarly took a post-Thanksgiving nosedive in time for the biggest retail shopping day of the year. A strange sense of déjà vu pervades as crypto markets, on cue, present a buying opportunity (Cointelegraph). 

By the end of today, "Black Friday," a term that actually goes back to the long-forgotten gold market crash of 1869, crypto derivatives exchanges will have reconciled a few billion dollars' worth of Bitcoin options.

Skirmish lines for put/call wagering are set: $56K-$58K; yesterday, bullish bets were more prevalent versus the bearish ones.

BTC call (buy) options, connoting a bullish view, vastly dominated the Nov. 26 expiry, as of yesterday (Cointelegraph).

Bulls, as of Thanksgiving night, were keeping a close eye on $56,000 as a breakpoint. How's that working out? It's not.

Macro concerns mount. And regulatory headwinds are blowing in from all directions. At the highest levels of the U.S. government there is fear that the dollar could lose its reserve currency status and that a seismic crypto-related swoon could roil the financial system. Federal agencies are now angling for more power to crack down on the stablecoin market.