Expectations swell

Interested parties are sounding Bitcoin bullhorns. The air is dense with FOMO. At the same time, there's FUD. And when "fear of missing out" meets "fear/uncertainty/doubt" you get BTC up a measly 0.5% over the past week. 

Although the word on The Street from pundits and prognosticators is this: October is here and it's typically a green-tinted month but the truly monumental moves (e.g. BTC crosses $100K) may not happen until late in the year.

While the largest crypto has stalled out near $64,000, several mover/shaker types are warranting attention.

For instance, EigenLayer's native EIGEN (which is not a governance token but, rather, a "Universal Intersubjective Work Token") made its debut on big exchanges. In just the past several hours, EIGEN amassed a total valuation of $7 billion (fully diluted) as the token's actual market capitalization (when not diluted) reached $766 million; that's still enough to snag a comfortable spot (No. 106) on the outer-rim of the Top 100. The re-staking protocol has so far put 1.67B tokens into circulation, including 86M airdropped to users (CoinDesk).

Meanwhile, for old-school, classic-moonshot gaudiness, look no further than the feline sub-category of memecoin alley where right now there is a coin called Giko Cat (GIKO) up 150% in 24 hours. GIKO's market capitalization is not quite $50M, making it the 700th-largest digital asset.

One of the largest cat coins, Popcat (POPCAT), has a market cap of $1B. It's CoinGecko's 83rd-largest crypto. And POPCAT has gained 10% since yesterday at this time.

Meanwhile, No. 254 Simon's Cat, which can lay claim to having CAT as its symbol, boasts a strong month but has been slipping lately.

Bitcoin finding its way above $66,000 was not going to happen yesterday. As of Monday night, BTC found itself unable to hang on to $64,000. Even with fund flows turning relatively wildly positive, the largest crypto lost 4% in 24 hours. As of Tuesday, at 7:39 a.m. (EST), BTC strained to touch $63,800, which is the level trodden upon last week at this time.

As far as a finale to BTC's tedious jog-in-place challenge trending over the past six months or so, it might come in the form of the upcoming U.S. presidential election, the conclusion of which could play a role in creating conditions conducive for an upswing, said CleanSpark's Zach Bradford. "Elections brings certainty,” the mining company's CEO explained. “It’s less about who wins and more about it being over."

Bradford recently told some analysts at a big brokerage firm that his own analysis of the current bull cycle has BTC potentially peaking near $200,000 sometime in the next 18 months, The Block said.

Institutional investors have become increasingly receptive to digital assets as evidenced by Bitcoin ETFs garnering $1 billion worth of inflows over the past week. It's almost as if America's largest investors no longer fret over perceived negative factors such as political/regulatory uncertainty.

Back in May, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act (FIT 21) which has been hailed as one giant leap for digital money, if not all of mankind, in terms of edging toward clearer oversight for the industry. Key components of the bill, which has stalled in the Senate, could become law via their inclusion in a year-end spending deal, according to Rep. Tom Emmer, a Republican from Minnesota, speaking to Decrypt on Monday.

Even if a very special holiday season edition of "avoid a government shutdown" doesn’t result in a federal measure to establish a sensible, well-delineated framework, FIT 21 could very well pass in its entirety shortly thereafter.

“In the next year we’re going to see some movement," Rep. Emmer said.