Lofty achievement

From a recent low ebb of $2.6 trillion, the total size of the crypto market is back at the south rim of the $3 trillion mark. Although, the hike to this mesa formation on the chart is by no means stress free. While the largest coin, Bitcoin, with its market cap of $1.74T, sat near $87.8K as of Wednesday, at 9 a.m. (EST) after a slight (+0.6%) 24-hour gain, a few Top 30 coins are falling behind. Among these laggards are HYPE, OM and PI.

Memecoins as a category are winning the day/week. Memes favored or inspired by Elon Musk in particular are surging. And we are not just talking about DOGE, which has gained roughly 9% since Tuesday morning as it reacquaints with twenty cents. Dogelon Mars (ELON), 473rd-largest token, has gained 5.5% in 24 hours. ELON is up 24% in the past week.

The greenest memecoin on the week is Solana-bred, canine-themed Bonk (BONK), up 37% since last Wednesday. BONK is down 45% compared to last year at this time.

Balancing out the unsteady nature of dog coins is a surge of interest in stablecoins. Today came news that the supply of Circle's USDC stablecoin, merely hours ago, had crossed the $60B threshold, surpassing a previous record high of $55B in June of 2022.

Circle's milestone moment comes amidst a flurry of new dollar-pegged digital forays. Earlier today came reports that Fidelity plans to launch its own stablecoin. Yesterday we saw the Trump family DeFi business, World Liberty Financial, had launched a stablecoin, USD1.

Not all dog coins are off and running. CZ's Dog (BROCCOLI) shed 8% overnight. This is the 664th-largest coin. It was launched last month by some crypto community member who'd been inspired by the story of Broccoli, a Belgian Malinois pooch owned by Changpeng "CZ" Zhao, the founder and ex-CEO of Binance. CZ in an X post in mid-February revealed he had grown quite fond of this dog and in so doing dared the world to launch a memecoin based on it. And sure enough, a fountain of coins with the ticker BROCCOLI sprayed forth; some of them soared but most eventually crashed.

But CZ's Dog managed to stick around. It has a market cap of $52M. However, this BROCCOLI has been chopped by 80% since hitting $0.25 back on Feb. 14.

On Tuesday, Ripple Labs agreed to pay a $50 million fine to settle a lawsuit filed four years ago by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, alleging that the ledger technology company engaged in unregistered sales of XRP. This announcement by Ripple's top lawyer seemingly finally closes this matter, almost.

In 2023, a judge found that XRP is “not necessarily a security on its face,” that is, within the context of programmatic sales to unknown buyers on retail exchanges.

However, the judge at the same time did also find XRP was in violation of securities laws in the context of sales to institutional buyers. The SEC had sought a $2 billion penalty with respect to this finding, while appealing the part of the ruling that did not go in the agency's favor. For its violation, Ripple last summer was ordered by the judge to pay a $125M fine.

Yesterday, Stuart Alderoty, Ripple's chief legal officer, in a post on X, said “the SEC will keep $50M," per Decrypt.

Meanwhile, Ripple has agreed to drop its cross-appeal. Last week, Ripple's CEO Brad Garlinghouse revealed the SEC planned to drop its appeal.

The SEC’s retreat was expected following the November election of a pro-crypto U.S. president. Acting SEC Chair Mark Uyeda has backed away from several enforcement cases since he took the helm in January.

Alderoty said the final SEC decision to drop the case is still subject to a Commission vote. A Ripple spokesperson told Decrypt it may take several weeks for the case to be officially concluded once and for all.