Altcoins light the way

As Bitcoin challenges stiff resistance from the $64,000 level, there are some massive moves undertaken by a bevy of altcoins across a range of categories and time horizons.

For starters, Artificial Superintelligence Network (FET) has surged 70% over the past month in step with a Nasdaq rally led by AI powerhouse Nvidia.

Popcat (POPCAT) just sprang up 30% in a day. It's a cat-based memecoin with a market capitalization of now $860 million, enough to make it CoinGecko's 88th-largest digital asset.

One token we have been following this week is Celestia (TIA). It's the 67th-biggest coin in terms of market cap and awash in hype over its first-ever mainnet upgrade ("Lemongrass") boasting of new levels of interoperability. TIA has gone from roughly $4 to more than $6 in the past week.

An even more impressive week has been turned in by Nervos Network's native asset, the "CKByte" (CKB), up a whopping 99% following a listing on one of South Korea's largest exchanges. Nervos is known for its Common Knowledge Base blockchain, touted as a kind of shared warehouse space for digital property. The CKB token is notorious for intermittently getting somewhat close to two cents for a few days and then slipping back to a penny.

One of the biggest one-day pops (besides POPCAT's) came courtesy of Core (CORE), a coin that sits at No. 79 on the CoinGecko chart. Core is a Bitcoin staking network with its sights set on the U.S. ETF market, per an executive who mapped out plans during an interview with Decrypt.

It's being presumed by the Core team that at some point in the next five years regulation of the U.S. crypto ETF landscape will be sorted.

CORE as of Thursday night had gained 15% in 24 hours.

Terraform Labs will wind down operations as part of a bankruptcy plan approved by a judge in the state of Delaware on Thursday. It officially closes the book on the saga of a crypto platform that momentarily rocketed to prominence on the back of an algorithmic stablecoin only to flame out spectacularly in 2022, ultimately taking numerous industry heavies, including FTX, down with it.

At the Sept. 19 bankruptcy hearing, per reporting by Reuters and Cointelegraph, Terraform floated possibly being able to pay no more than $442 million as part of a wind-down plan; and that its total losses were impossible to estimate. It’s unclear whether many of Terraform’s backers can ever expect to be made whole, Cointelegraph said.

Terraform’s bankruptcy proceeding follows a lawsuit that the SEC filed against the platform and its founder, Do Kwon, in 2023.

This past April, a judge found Terraform and Kwon liable for fraud and punished them with fines totalling $4.5 billion.

Kwon was arrested in Montenegro last year and awaits extradition to either the U.S. or South Korea to potentially face criminal charges.

The Dow crossed 42,000 for the first time ever on Thursday, suggesting much love for the Fed's jumbo rate cut.

Bitcoin stalled out at $63,860 in the early afternoon. That represented a three-week high. As of Thursday night, BTC was $62,840.

Treasury yield spreads are pointing away from recession and toward "game on" for risk assets, according to QCP Capital.

"Bitcoin bulls are targeting $64,000," Cointelegraph said. "BTC price strength is starting to match booming stocks."

September has been a historically bad month for the largest crypto.

Going back to 2013, BTC has endured an average loss of 4% during Month Nine.

October is usually strong. The average monthly return for BTC in October is +23%, according to CoinGlass.