Big coins bouncing

Anxiety over the five-day-old Omicron variant continues to fester around the globe. But it’s Cyber Monday so naturally crypto is suddenly awash in optimism. Bitcoin and Ethereum are both rallying.

With stocks returning to form and El Salvador buying the dip, BTC gained 6% in the past 24 hours. As of Monday, at 9:15 a.m. (EST), the largest crypto was surging to around $57,400, after falling to as low as $53,800.

Meanwhile, ETH gained 7%, getting to $4,360. The No. 2 digital asset is now essentially flat over the past seven days. The same sort of week-long leveling off can't be claimed among the smart contract platform's chief competitors. While Solana (SOL) did pop 10% overnight, it is still down 12% over the past week. Cardano (ADA) right now is 15.5% lower than it was seven days ago.

"Buzzy metaverse tokens," such as The Sandbox, are among today's biggest movers, as Decrypt noted. SAND had shot up by as much as 15% at one point earlier today.

Basic Attention Token (BAT) evaded a Black Friday bludgeoning, flouting the broader markets’ downturn trend, and going as high as $1.88 before plunging to $1.50. Then it bounced again. Sunday turned out to be a truly a banner day for the token tied to Brave, the browser connected with the content viewing model of the future.

BAT, per CoinGecko, reached $1.90 yesterday, an all-time high. BeInCrypto said BAT topped $2.

With a market capitalization of nearly $2.4 billion, BAT is now the 76th-largest crypto. As of 8 a.m. (EST), BAT was $1.59, some 16% off the ATH (as recorded by CoinGecko).

After Bitcoin slid 8% on Friday amidst a broader market pullback, El Salvador, bullish as ever, bought the dip, near $54K.

The cooling off of the largest crypto (and most other coins) came alongside reports of the newly discovered Omicron variant. Black Friday felt like March 2020 – suspicion, dread, terrible thoughts (is this the start of a crypto winter?)

As the first snowflakes began to fall outside this past weekend, we cozied up with some of our favorite crypto media sites where we spotted a flurry of technical and on-chain analysts making bullish predictions about Bitcoin.

By last night, the largest digital currency had rewarded discount buyers as it surged back to $57K.

"We just had our final capitulation volume," pseudonymous trader Smart Contracter tweeted Sunday. "BTC is due for a strong bounce up to $63,000."

Unabashed bounce-back forecasts (BTC, $70K, soon) were found in abundance on Sunday, from a usual lineup of table pounders, including on-chain analyst Willy Woo and Celsius CEO Alex Mashinsky.