Meme-coin duo leaps ahead

Dogecoin (DOGE), the biggest meme-based crypto, spiked 9.6% in the past day while the second biggest, Shiba Inu (SHIB), jumped 10% in the same span, as of Thursday at 7:30 a.m. (EST). Each had notched gains of as much as 13% as of only a few hours ago.

The semi-ironic duo now sits 12th and 13th in the rankings of most valuable digital assets in terms of their total market capitalizations, which in this case comes to roughly a combined $40 billion, or as much as the valuation assigned to Uber when it first raised capital in 2014.

Most Big Ten coins were solidly green over 24 hours. Solana (SOL) jumped 5% to get above $150, although the No. 5 crypto is still slightly down over seven days. Bitcoin and Ethereum both rose 1%.

With the overall crypto market shows signs of recovery, DOGE and SHIB putting up double-digit gains can be partly attributed to large token holders (“whales”) accumulating the two coins in recent days (Decrypt).

SHIB with its ludicrously enormous circulating supply rose fractions of a penny to $0.0003.

DOGE is seventeen cents.

Inflation data (meat +14%) got chewed up and spit out yesterday to mixed, muddied and for the most part muted effect in securities markets.

Even as the general public pounced on the U.S. Department of Labor's news release that year-over-year prices of consumer staples rose 7% – Bitcoin noticeably popped as headlines broke – there was a giant yawn on Wall Street with many equity traders having already priced in expectations.

Last year at this time, most economists forecast that in the ensuing 12 months annual consumer price index (CPI) would hover at +2%. Experts and policymakers had to play catch up for the rest of the year. Yesterday's snap-takeaway, that, in 2021, inflation grew at its fastest clip in almost 40 years – may have sparked a BTC surge. But, in the realm of risk-taking at large, many investors anticipated a steeper increase, which would have been viewed as a harbinger of even more hawkish monetary policy ahead, unleashing, in the end yesterday, what amounted to a collective sigh.

And while inflation increased 0.5 percent in December 2021 over the prior month, that rate was lower than the inflation rate increases registered in the two prior months.

What some are calling a Bitcoin relief rally could always turn out to be a cruel head fake. Or, alternatively, maybe it’s a signal of yet another new bullish phase ahead, at the expense of bears shorting lows in anticipation of lower lows which, so far this week, have failed to materialize.

Trader/pundit Crypto Ed excitedly ended a Twitter hiatus at about 3 a.m. (EST) tweeting out his optimism over significantly lower levels being gone, he says, for good. The stage was thereby set for a higher low construction, helping to solidify a BTC recovery (Cointelegraph).

China’s Blockchain Services Network (BSN) plans to create infrastructure to support non-fungible tokens (NFTs) in what is described as a major step toward a Chinese NFT industry that is not linked to cryptocurrencies, banned there (AMBCrypto).

Tellingly downplaying their ties to crypto, Tencent and Ant changed the name for NFTs on their platforms to "digital collectibles." Blockchain developers, content creators and retail platforms can monetize collectors’ whims but only in the primary market; once bought, the NFTs can't be resold, unlike their overseas counterparts that can be traded on platforms such as OpenSea, Solanart, and Binance, a Nikkei report said.

Still, NFT development in China is not only allowed, it's being encouraged, according to economics professor Rocky Xia, blockchain lab director at the Tsinghua X-lab.

"The government won't allow the country to fall behind in such technological development," he said.

However, companies will need to take extra precaution to avoid risks.