Total market gains 1.4%

Flouting risk-off vibrations, the $1.23 trillion total crypto market nailed a relatively impressive 1.4% gain over the past day.

Charts are green, with Stellar's XLM well out in front, having registered a 14.7% gain in 24 hours as of 8 a.m. (EST). The 21st-largest digital asset sits at about sixteen cents. XLM has gained 80% in the past month. The price increase is being fueled by an impressive surge (+69%) in trading volume, U.Today said.

Major coins for the most part met what amounted to a macro ice bucket challenge. Among the Big Ten, Solana recorded the biggest gain. SOL rose 6% in 24 hours.

Apparently, today marks the start of "Solana Ecosystem Week."

The Fed raised rates. Bitcoin held tight above $29,000. It's miserably hot. We're not even sure what day it is.

Late July has become a tiresome blur of smoke, haze and same-old songs. We do vaguely recall BTC reaching near $31,500 at some point earlier this month. A lifetime ago, it seems.

XRP's rally also has eroded. The fourth-largest digital asset is back above 70 cents but down 12% in the past seven days, according to CoinGecko. Ripple a fortnight ago scored a partial victory in its fight for the right to exist, a huge win that for a time appeared to be a blockbuster summer catalyst. But residual ambiguity surrounding what amounts to a partial defeat has sapped momentum.

The biggest weekly loser is INJ, native asset of Injective, a blockchain platform geared toward builders of decentralized applications (dApps); INJ declined 14% in that span, as of 7:22 a.m. (EST). However, INJ in the past 24 hours gained 4% to reach $8.25.

Only a handful of coins are blaring red. Toncoin (-3%) is one of them. TON is tied to The Open Network built by Telegram for its community.

Meanwhile, curiosity about "non-human biologics" is rapidly fading. The frightening tidbit of military-speak was uttered during a Congressional hearing yesterday that touched on reports of the U.S. government having secretly recovered spacecraft debris. But experts assure us it's not necessarily a reference to alien life forms.

Bulls appear content to sit tight, waiting out the tempered environment, casting crypto's fate to the arrival of a spot Bitcoin ETF to blow the top-hinged flap off the proverbial floodgate.

BTC as of 8:22 a.m. (EST) was inching to a state of leaning more toward $30K than $29K. Inflation fear abatement therapy pegged to various data plot points (used by the Fed in decision making) has helped to quietly goose crypto markets so far this summer (The Block).

We may be near the end of the tightening cycle, echoed a chorus of analysts. And while the U.S. economy as measured by GDP (growing at a pace of 2.4% on annualized basis) keeps doing better than the Fed anticipated, longer-term projections indicate the so-called "soft landing," while probable, is by no means in the bag.

Fed chair Jerome Powell underscored the inflation battle is proceeding along rather nicely, with data coming in below expectations. June’s year-over-year CPI number, for example, declined to 3%.

With this in mind, a September rate hike seems less likely, one economist told The Block.

Key inflation data arrives tomorrow morning. We're talking about the June PCE Price Index Excluding Food and Energy, also known as "core PCE," a number crunched by the Bureau of Economic Analysis and devoured/relished by the Fed.

The May PCE figure came out on June 30. It was 4.6%. That figure was 4.7% one month prior. Markets obviously are rooting for continued deceleration.