LUNA lights the way

Eerily familiar pandemic realities set off yet another round of securities market turbulence on a dark, bitterly cold Monday morning. Brightening crypto skies, however, is LUNA, the token connected with the speedy Terra blockchain.

LUNA hit an all-time high, of about $81, earlier today. It has more than doubled over the past month, sparked by a community-kindled token burn. Now ninth-largest crypto in terms of its total market capitalization, LUNA increased 5% over the past 24 hours as of Monday at 6:45 a.m. (EST).

Meanwhile, XRP, which is the seventh-largest coin, gained 3.5% to $0.85 over the past day with more than a few analysts floating bullish prophecies, much to the chagrin of bears now on the brink of being "rewashed out of their short positions," FX Street said.

Trend-watching traders will look for XRP to find its way back to the 200-day Simple Moving Average (SMA) price of $0.95.

A spasmodic slog sideways is not even close to resembling the start of a Santa Claus rally; but don't tell Bitcoin, bruised and super sensitive lately. Dropping 8% over the past seven days amidst rising Covid concerns, BTC seems satisfied to wallow in a $46K-$48K range.

Ethereum is, likewise, content to underwhelm, at least as of Monday morning. The No. 2 crypto fell 3% to $3,800. ETH has also shed 8% in the past week.

Still more grim news: a popular decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol was this past weekend exploited to the tune of $30 million.

A “compounding yield optimizer” built on the Fantom blockchain, Grim Finance is known for complex vault contract strategies. The hack was described as an “advanced attack,” with the perpetrator(s) exploiting the protocol’s vault contract through “reentrancy loops,” which allowed for fake deposits (Cointelegraph).

Blockchain gaming pioneer Axie Infinity (AXS) has lost 45% since hitting an ATH in early November. But its market capitalization remains a relatively robust $6 billion, making AXS the 28th-largest crypto. It still dominates the metaverse/play-to-earn altcoin space. But for how much longer?

The pseudonymous analyst "Guy," host of Coin Bureau, touts Gala Games (GALA) as best-positioned for the long haul, and as possibly poised to double its current market-cap of $3 billion (The Daily Hodl).

Axie Infinity is a blockchain-based game that lets users collect and breed creatures that come in the form of non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Start-ups around the world are wagering that NFTs will forever transform video games. But some existing industry members decry digital in-game commerce as something of an exploitive cash grab (CNBC).

Rooted in the belief that no single blockchain works best for every use case, Polkadot (DOT) developers spent five years creating a set of experimental service roads connecting parallel universes, networks dubbed parachains, the first five of which were just launched.

Polkadot is an underlying framework for connecting various blockchains; parachains are individual networks running in parallel. Access rights, to build on them, were auctioned off. Together these projects/protocols comprise an interoperable ecosystem, according to Polkadot’s founder, Gavin Wood, a co-founder of Ethereum.

The first five parachains are: Acala; Moonbeam; Parallel Finance; Astar and Clover. These cover a range of DeFi-type projects (e.g. investments, lending).

“The parachain model was created with the belief that the future of Web 3 will involve many different types of blockchains working together,” Wood told CoinDesk.

Covid. Crime. The high cost of living. Incoming New York City Mayor Eric Adams certainly has his hands full.

Turning the city around will be challenging enough. But Adams is also determined to turn the Big Apple into a "crypto laboratory."

With federal regulation still in the drawing board stage, New York State has moved forward with its BitLicense system which allows select businesses to traffic in virtual money. Nevertheless, the Empire State is considered one of the more challenging jurisdictions in which to conduct crypto business.

Mayor Adams will have the ear of influential legislators, explained Gary DeWaal, a former Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) enforcement lawyer. But, DeWaal told The Daily News, he can’t change the state’s regulatory environment around crypto.