Stiff resistance

Contrasting itself to legacy money management techniques, the memecoin SPX6900 (SPX) is not just a riff on the S&P 500 but supposedly a beacon of fresh thinking that challenges the status quo.

Within the crypto space, SPX sets itself apart in part by rocketing higher when most other Top 100 coins are in the red. Since last Thursday, SPX, 73rd-largest token, has surged by 44%. Yesterday, SPX reached a new all-time high of $1.73.

As for the rest of the digital asset realm, there's a dearth of positive movers, save for SPX and also WhiteBIT Coin (WBT), a coin connected with a large European exchange.

Checking in on the TradFi world as of 7:19 a.m. (EST), stock and crude oil futures were sliding while gold futures shot higher.

Since reacquainting itself with $110,000, Bitcoin has failed to muster any meaningful traction. BTC surrendered its $109K handle as of yesterday afternoon, despite a soft CPI number that suggested a rate cut could be in the cards and also despite seemingly diminished trade tensions between the U.S. and China. As of early this morning, the largest crypto had slipped below $108K. BTC has declined about 2% in the past 24 hours. That's according to CoinGecko as of 6:39 a.m. (EST).

Among Big Ten coins, XRP is sticking out for its soreness, down 3.6% in a daylong futility fest that saw the fourth-largest token slam into resistance at the $2.33 level not once, not twice but, yes, three times.

Having failed the other day to smash through its own critical blockade ($110K), BTC confronts a slippage situation with technically shrewd eyes turning to support levels stationed at a nearby fort. "As long as Bitcoin stays above $106K," said analyst-pundit Michaël van de Poppe, "then there's nothing to worry about."

So then why is gold rallying? The answer: growing tensions between the U.S. and Iran, reportedly.

Bitcoin-based stablecoin network Plasma (XPL) continues to pave the road to an eventual sale with locked-in deposits that'll be bridged to its mainnet. Pre-sale participants, as CoinDesk explained, earn the right to buy into the eventual XPL public sale based on how many units they’ve locked up.

Earlier this week, the stablecoin-centric-sidechain project garnered $500M worth of deposits — overshooting its subscription target by 10x — in just five minutes. And so yesterday, Plasma raised its total deposits' cap to $1B and hit that limit within about a half-hour, a testament to the apparent demand for stablecoin infrastructure and perhaps also owing to some nostalgia for ICO salad days of yesteryear.

Plasma has stressed that a $1B stablecoin deposit campaign should not be mistaken for a $1B raise. The public sale of $50M XPL (at a fully diluted valuation of $500M) has not yet begun and no official date has been set.

Stablecoins, typically USD-pegged, underpin the crypto industry, allowing traders to maneuver in and out of trades. The Senate is close to passing a bill, dubbed the GENIUS Act, that would establish a legal framework for issuing stablecoins.

"This whirlwind of excitement around stablecoins may explain why Plasma’s pre-sale vault filled up so quickly," Decrypt said, noting stablecoin issuer Circle's recent IPO and the continued mania surrounding those newly issued shares priced initially at $31.

At one point earlier this week, CRCL had more than quadrupled to nearly $140.

Plasma is the beneficiary of a similar mass hankering. Decrypt found one trader who was so eager to get on board the Plasma train that he paid 39.15 ETH worth $100K just to ensure his deposit ($10M of USDC) was executed before the vault filled.

That extra $100K came by way of a "priority fee," an optional feature that allows Ethereum users to pay as much as they want to incentivize validators to process their transaction more quickly.

Although, it's worth noting that Etherscan data suggests this trader totally overshot the going rate for the right to be pushy: the second-highest priority fee paid out by a depositor looking to circumvent congestion was only 4.5 ETH worth $11K.