After hitting new high, ETH slips

European stock markets rose ahead of Joe Biden's inauguration at noon (EST) today. U.S. equities futures also went higher. Biden will be sworn in as the 46th American President in a ceremony at the Capitol, which has been cordoned off from the public via a heavily militarized makeover replete with checkpoints, barricades, barbed wire and 25,000 National Guard members.

Meanwhile, ballooning hopes that the new administration would embrace crypto were pricked on Tuesday when Biden’s nominee for the Treasury Department, former Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen, while testifying at a confirmation hearing in the Senate, tied crypto to terrorist financing and money laundering (The Daily Chain).

Responding, Morgan Creek’s Anthony Pompliano tweeted: “Yellen forgot to mention that the U.S. dollar is the choice currency of criminals around the world.”

After hitting a record high yesterday, Ethereum has decided to take it easy. As dawn unfurled, relief-sighs prepping for release, ETH peacefully transferred the power of its new record high price to a new universally acknowledged lower price level, of below $1,300; ETH lost 9% over 24 hours ending 7 a.m. Wednesday.

On Tuesday, ETH gained 15% en route to authoritatively surpassing its roughly three-year-old highwater mark, to reach just under $1,500 – and so that's the new peak price for the biggest crypto that’s not Bitcoin.

As for BTC, it was, at last check, just above $34,500, down 7% over the prior 24 hours.

According to on-chain data provider Santiment, per CoinGape, dormant Bitcoins were moving as the price surged above $40,000 but that noticeably changed in the wake of the correction, when these coins went quiet again.

"This shows that HODLers are not willing to liquidate yet, moving from profit-booking to HODLing," CoinGape said, noting that BTC trading volumes remain high.

Trading "pegged value" assets, like Wrapped Bitcoin, can seem like a fool's errand if that peg comes loose or swivels completely off.

The disadvantageous spread between, say, WBTC and actual BTC – well, it happens because of “slippage.” That’s the difference between the expected and executed price of a trade.

Stablecoins and tokenized assets are most vulnerable to slippage, particularly during highly volatile periods.

Saddle Finance, an automated market maker (AMM), has launched a new DeFi offering that purports to enable efficient, low-slip trading between value-pegged cryptos. Be it one dollar or one Bitcoin, whatever ‘tis to which an asset is pegged should hew to that asset as closely as possible. (BeInCrypto).

The AMM has been tailored to incentivize liquidity providers – and not run them over with withdrawal fees – and so Saddle has configured an exit toll that eventually linearly decays to zero.