Fat and happy

What's all this about NFTs missing out on the rally? Not true, as the Pudgy Penguins project has demonstrated. The size of the collection's market capitalization has surged from $60,000 last week to more than $100,000 as of yesterday with traders jockeying for airdrop allocations of the coming Solana-run PENGU token (Decrypt).

Speaking of digital assets worth six figures, check out Big Boy Bitcoin, tanned, rested and now flaunting yet another surf trip to exotic $100K. Cointelegraph pointed to Bitstamp data revealing a flickering daily candle — a Wednesday close of $101,200, as high as ever has been recorded — as torch-lighting the way toward potential new record highs, provided that spot BTC ETF inflows continue to keep up a torrid pace and local low marks in the low-to-mid $90K range drift further into the rear view. As of Thursday morning at 7:45 a.m., BTC was a hair below $101K on a 24-hour gain of 2.6%, according to CoinGecko.

Among the exceptional altcoin performers today is the 33rd-largest coin, a DeFi cornerstone, Aave (AAVE), up 37% in 24 hours to hit about $380. Another coin deserving a mention is Hyperliquid (HYPE). It shot up 26% in 24 hours. Two weeks ago, HYPE was airdropped to early adopters of Hyperliquid, a DEX/DeFi platform angling for transaction-speed supremacy. About four hours ago, HYPE hit an all-time high of $18.20. The token has a total market capitalization of roughly $6 billion, making it the 32nd-largest coin, ahead of AAVE.

There's nary a speck of red on the 24-hour cryptocurrency charts, save for one not-much-discussed digital ducat: Mantra (OM), a real-world asset (RWA) platform. OM is down 1.6% over the past 24 hours, as of Thursday at 8:14 a.m. (EST).

Turning to the world of assets considered to be real, Nasdaq futures are sliding in the pre-market session after the technology-stock-laden index closed yesterday above 20,000 for the first time ever.

Meanwhile, in macro news, the ECB cut rates by a quarter point, marking its fourth cut this year.

XRP's price has nearly quintupled since early November. Just in the past two weeks, the coin closely associated with Ripple has surged 70% to $2.41 at last glance earlier this morning. 

It was roughly a fortnight ago that reports first surfaced on Fox Business that Ripple, after months of getting ducks in a row and subjecting itself to scrutiny, was on the verge of securing a regulatory green light for a new stablecoin. This past Tuesday, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse announced formal approval had come from the New York State Department of Financial Services, paving the way for RLUSD, yet another dollar-pegged stablecoin for crypto users to consider alongside a litany of similar digital anchorweights. These would obviously include Tether (USDT), which has a market capitalization of $140 billion, and Circle's USDC ($40B), plus at least ten other USD proxies that can boast market caps of at least a few hundred million dollars.

Nevertheless, "approval of RLUSD is a game-changer for XRP," SeekingAlpha said, gaming out a future scenario in which RLUSD starts to gain market share, boosting growth of the XRP Ledger.

Ripple's new stablecoin was slated to launch by year's end. However, it could debut live as soon as today based on U.Today reporting regarding acceleration of preparatory steps. But there's a long game being played here, too, as it's estimated the total stablecoin market could one day exceed $2 trillion.