Despite headwinds, Bitcoin steadfast

All investments and trading are risky and may result in the loss of capital. Cryptoassets are largely unregulated and are therefore not subject to protection.

Underscoring the wondrous whims of the crypto space, a couple of obscure altcoins are flying so fast we literally just ran out of breath trying to keep up with them.

Fitness-watch-synched "exercise-to-earn" app STEPN (GMT) shot from $0.01 last week to $0.44 on Sunday in a 4,000% move that the The Daily Hodl has called "mind-boggling." Although it doesn't completely defy explanation – last week, GMT was listed on Binance. The token has a $175 million market capitalization, putting it as CoinGecko's 274th-largest digital asset. GMT has corrected 35% to about $0.29 as of Tuesday at 7:50 a.m. (EST).

Meanwhile, Xido Finance (XIDO), which is the No. 97 coin, has gained 15% over the past 24 hours, a period in which most coins are in the red.

XIDO is an Automated Market Maker (AMM) with a limited supply and a sow-reap-repeat distribution model said to somehow be self-sustaining. At the start of this month, with Bitcoin cresting toward $45,000, XIDO was left for dead.

Its all-time low, $5.50, came on March 2. Since then, XIDO has gained 450%. XIDO's all-time high of $481 came this past June.

The Xido platform recently said its native token was BNB-pair-accessible on PancakeSwap (Coincu).

Chinese stocks, imploding – not exactly what world markets needed.

The Hang Seng China Enterprises Index (HSCEI) index has shed 16% in the past 5 days, much of those losses coming yesterday and earlier today.

China has been perceived on the world stage as being on the side of Russia in its attack on Ukraine, spooking investors fearing backlash against Chinese companies, although China's leaders are now publicly stating they are definitely not okay with the invasion.

Flora Li, Huobi Research Institute Director, told CoinDesk that this Chinese stock market volatility was largely driven by regulatory developments in China and the U.S., and is unrelated to broader macroeconomic factors – which is why it has not impacted the crypto market.

Even as European stocks and U.S. stock futures are losing ground, Bitcoin seems sturdy. Over 24 hours, as of Tuesday at 8:22 a.m. (EST), BTC was, per CoinGecko, $38,727, having lost one-fifth of one percentage point.

A European Union proposal that did not bode well for Bitcoin has been quashed.

Last week saw a late tack-on to a draft of the EU’s pending regulatory package for governing digital assets. It was a provision seeking to limit the use of cryptos powered by Proof-of-Work (PoW) computing, viewed as energy-use gluttony.

The European Parliament’s economic and monetary affairs committee yesterday voted to nix the provision, which would have required all cryptos to be subject to the EU’s “minimum environmental sustainability standards with respect to their consensus mechanism.” (CoinDesk).

From here, the fate of the proposed rules set, called Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA), rests with parliament going forth with formal negotiations that would involve the European Commission.