Crypto keeps chuggin' along

What a difference a week makes, 168 little hours, a lifetime ago – where do we begin?

Just in the past day, total crypto market capitalization reclaimed $2T. Bitcoin gained 1.5% in what is now a seven-day sojourn up 12%. Ethereum is +14% in that time. Profit-taking over the past few hours had trimmed back both biggies’ gains.

Still, BTC tried its darndest to reclaim the $45K level. And while it has so far been unsuccessful, "the overall market sentiment has shifted considerably," CryptoPotato said.

Ruling the Big Ten roost, on a weekly basis, is XRP. The sixth-largest crypto has surged 35% in the past seven days.

No. 13 Shiba Inu (SHIB) has surged 50% in that time. Polkadot (DOT) rose 10%; its canary network, Kusama (KSM), rose 20%.

Avalanche has regained all of the considerable ground it had surrendered since early last month. AVAX again is above $85, roughly where it sat on Jan. 8. The 12th-largest coin sank below $60 a fortnight ago.

BTC suddenly being $44,000 has not generated the same kind of hype as when it crashed below $34,000 although we just saw a headline blaring that the king of all crypto hit $45K. Actually, per GoinGecko, the most valuable digital coin started today near $45,300. That was at about 1:20 a.m. (EST). A few hours prior, CoinDesk's Asia coverage rightly focused on the $44K level having been cracked and the mark's relevant importance from a technician's perspective: BTC confirmed a break above its two-months-long downtrend.

Bitcoin shot up today after shooting up yesterday following a weekend of doing the same, okay, okay, we get it, the market seems to be breaking bullish … seemingly.

As the biggest crypto's price increased, on-chain data showed that spent short-term holder (STH) coins were done so at a profit (on an aggregated basis) for the first time since late November, according to Glassnode (CoinDesk).

Meanwhile, Sean Farrell, head of digital strategy at FSInsight, floated the possibility that BTC could reach $200,000 in the second half of this year.

Despite the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) ramping up efforts to regulate digital assets, the amount of money flowing into the crypto space there will continue to be robust, according to a recent KPMG fintech report (Cointelegraph).

Singapore, with its unicorn-friendly special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC) regime, attracted $1.5 billion worth of blockchain-related capital raises in 2021, cementing its status as a hothouse of crypto activity even as new consumer protections rain down.

Throwing clamps on what it refers to as "digital payment token" providers, the MAS in January barred DPTs from marketing their services in public areas. Interim guidelines, restrictive though they may seem, nevertheless do offer industry participants some sense of the rules of the road. The MAS has stressed that DPT service providers should "conduct themselves with the understanding that trading of DPTs is not suitable for the general public."