Ride gets a little bumpy

One week into an exhilarating post-election catapult ride, the Big Bopper of digital money has displayed some confounding upside volatility with $90K the new line to hold.

It was high noon on Wednesday as Bitcoin recorded yet another new record spot price of roughly $93,500, per CoinGecko. Roughly five hours later, BTC had shed 4%, settling for a nook near $89,300. One day earlier, Tuesday, Nov. 12, a similar pattern played out with BTC flirting briefly with $90K before retreating rather swiftly back down to $87K.

When we checked BTC early Thursday, it was pursuing $91K territory. With the Republicans locking down control of all three chambers of the U.S. federal government, the skids seem greased for meaningful crypto legislation and long-craved road-rules clarity.

The biggest crypto sure is feeling itself. BTC's dominance, having reached 61.3% of the total crypto market cap, is at its loftiest level since the spring of 2021.

Meanwhile, spot BTC ETFs have garnered some $2.5 billion in three trading days this week.

The tide is high but, man, hold on. Some big, popular coins not named Bitcoin were slipping yesterday. A few have recovered today. Others are either flat or still slacking.

For example, Ethereum, the second-largest crypto, slumped 3% in 24 hours to $3,172 as of 5 p.m. (EST) on Wednesday, according to CoinGecko. And XRP in that same window saw a decline of 4% to $0.6889.

The latter, which is the industry's seventh-largest coin, and the one associated with Ripple, reached $0.73 yesterday at midday right as Bitcoin was notching a fresh highwater mark. As of 6:25 a.m. (EST) today, XRP was back up, hovering near $0.70.

Among CoinGecko's Top 30 tokens getting gashed (down 5%-6% as of last night) were Aptos (APT), Polkadot (DOT) and Chainlink (LINK). Each remained in the red as of early Thursday.

As for ETH, recall that it touched close to $3,400, a near-term high, only two days ago. When we checked it this morning, ETH was $3,190, flat over 24 hours.

Quickly checking in on Peanut the Squirrel (PNUT), a week-and-a-half-old juggernaut memecoin if ever there was one (and there have been many), it hit an ATH of $2.44 late last night; it has since scurried backwards by more than 20%. Back under $2, PNUT nevertheless has come a long way from recent non-existence to become the industry's 63rd-largest digital asset, per CoinGecko.

Robinhood yesterday announced renewed support for a slew of altcoins that the trading app had previously ditched amidst a U.S. federal regulatory clampdown.

The homecoming was announced on a day when crypto's flagship asset was reaching its pinnacle and also with word spreading that Dan Gallagher, a top Robinhood legal officer, was possibly under consideration as SEC Chair Gary Gensler's replacement.

For some of these altcoins, including XRP, Solana and Cardano, the Robinhood news passed quietly. We mentioned XRP did some sliding on Wednesday. Solana (SOL) spent much of the day flat and the same went for Cardano (ADA).

Cardano was back in the green today. But we noticed a popular analyst, Benjamin Cowen, is sounding short-term alarms. According to The Daily Hodl, Cowen informed his 822,000 YouTube subscribers that ADA could turn relatively bearish on the weekly timeframe. That's because while BTC dominance possibly has topped out, there’s "room for it to go higher in December," Cowen adds.

In other words, with respect to ADA versus BTC, brace for volatility.

Meanwhile, there's one other asset that Robinhood put forth yesterday as a new offering: Pepe (PEPE). And it turns out that Coinbase, too, revealed yesterday that it's making the frog-based memecoin available.

Yesterday afternoon, PEPE reached an all-time high of $0.00002197 after doubling in the past week. It's now part of CoinGecko's Top 20. PEPE has gained 60% in the past 24 hours, versus a 1% gain for Dogecoin (DOGE) over that same time period.