Crypto back struttin' its stuff

It's not the most jaw-dropping 24-hour return you’ll ever see. But on the day before Thanksgiving, beleaguered Bitcoin is proceeding with its travel plans.

Earlier today, BTC, a banquet front of mind, embarking from near $56,000, rumbled down a side street toward a one-lane road leading to crypto's equivalent of Grandmother's house. You know the spot, that cozy cottage (above $57K, crucial resistance) over the river and through the woods. But, alas, BTC failed to turn up.

As of 7 a.m. (EST) on Wednesday, the largest crypto was $56,700. Nevertheless, that represents a 1.4% price rise since yesterday morning.

In that same span of hustle/bustle, most of the Big Ten coins are feasting; the table is now set with an abundance of healthy greens.

Noteworthily enough, Crypto.com Coin is having itself a pig out. Just a few hours ago, CRO hit a new all-time high of $0.93. It's up 20% overnight and up more than 100% in the past week, resulting in a $9 billion increase in market capitalization, this following a high-profile NBA arena naming rights deal being hailed as a marketing/PR masterstroke. The expenditure to be associated with the home of the L.A. Lakers is said to have cost $700 million (Bloomberg).

Transactions fees spiking, community members grumbling, no, it's not Ethereum that we're talking about. It's Avalanche.

To recap, the native token of the smart contracts blockchain hit an ATH near $145 on Sunday and endured gas fee hyperinflation on Monday. And then on Tuesday, Avalanche did as one would expect – it slid downhill.

AVAX as of Wednesday at 6:30 a.m. (EST) was $117, having lost 7.7% over 24 hours and 18.7% since Sunday's peak.

Raucous volatility came amidst some heated Twitter exchanges between prominent industry figures, with AVAX champion and Three Arrows Capital CEO Su Zhu slinging vulgarities at Ethereum, prompting that network's community to return fire (CryptoBriefing).

Across the U.S., Thanksgiving turkeys will be thawed, dressed and seasoned; and then baked, broiled, smoked, deep fried and pressure cooked.

On that last note, might Bitcoin be in for a somewhat similar fate?

Having pulled back as much as 20% since hitting its all-time high near $69K on Nov. 10, BTC confronts rising selling pressure possibly owing to the Mt. Gox situation (Forbes).

Mt. Gox? But that went belly up seven years ago? We were thinking the same thing! But suddenly there is growing concern in the crypto community over what is being called the final and binding resolution of the case of the implosion of the hacked and now-defunct exchange, a long and winding legal quagmire which involves a trustee, creditors and the more than 140,000 BTCs, worth more than $7 billion, that they are owed, and which soon, potentially, could hit the open market. These impending Mt. Gox payouts are adding to market fear (Cointelegraph).

For much of last week and through the weekend, Dogecoin (DOGE) and Shiba Inu (SHIB) both had market caps of around $30 billion. Watching them battle for Big Ten spots became a somewhat curious spectacle, considering their comical origins.

Although the "dogfight" got a little less interesting this week with their rivalry devolving into a matter of which one is 11th, which is 12th. 

Much more interesting, with so many meme coins unleashed, is this question: can any of these come-lately clones run even partially as wild?

• Dogelon Mars (ELON) is a meme crypto based on Elon Musk. It cracked, briefly, the Top 100 after it rocketed 3,800% in October. Much of the gains occurred in two days, at month's end, on news of two major exchange listings. ELON began the tenth month with a market cap of roughly $25 million. As the 12th month draws near, ELON is now $900 million, making it, per CoinGecko, the 140th-largest digital asset.
• Baby Doge Coin (BABYDOGE), created by a community of DOGE fans, soared in June and spent the summer pulling back. But when meme fever struck again, so did BABYDOGE. It's up 39% over the past 30 days. Baby Doge seeks to "impress his father" by being adorable and showing off superior transaction speeds, its breeders have explained, leaning into the quirky, ironic sensibility that itself traces back to 2013, when the doge meme first became a "thing" at the same time as crypto was taking off (and two engineers thought it would be funny to combine the two trends via their own fork of an existing Bitcoin fork, Litecoin).
• Super fluffy, snow white Samoyed dogs originated in Siberia to herd reindeer. Samoyedcoin (SAMO) was designed to be a fun, community-owned coin ostensibly to celebrate another adorable canine i.e. cash in on dog coin hype. Last month, SAMO surged nearly 3,000%, hitting an all-time high of $0.23 on Oct. 28. It has since shed 58%. SAMO's market cap now stands at roughly $290 million, making it the 276th-largest coin.
• Something called HOGE exists. It's the 427th-largest coin. HOGE rallied in the spring and again in October and has collapsed over the past two weeks.

As far as DOGE versus SHIB, DOGE, with a market cap as of Wednesday of $29 billion, is actually now No. 10; SHIB is No. 12. DOGE got some Musk tweet love this week, going from $0.21 on Monday up to $0.22 on Tuesday; DOGE seems to have more utility relative to SHIB, which for its part has more red flags (Motley Fool).

SHIB soared more than 800% in October. Answering to the call of "Dogecoin killer," SHIB hit an ATH and, to the chagrin of whistleblower-turned-crypto-critic Edward Snowden, jumped into the Big Ten, albeit only for a brief stint. After falling 50% in the past few weeks, SHIB’s market cap is about $23 billion, some $3 billion less than No. 11 coin, AVAX.