ETH flexes muscles

In a fear-soaked environment, Bitcoin kept calm, carried on and smacked head first into a wall spray-painted with "Long live $58K resistance!"

Ethereum, on the other hand, is sailing, catching an early December gale. ETH rose as much as 8% earlier today and for a moment seemed bent on $5K. A very do-able up move, and not much else, stands between the second-largest crypto and its all-time high of $4,880, reached Nov. 10.

Since hitting its ATH of about $69K (on that same day), BTC has shed about 18%. In the past week, ETH has risen 8% while one of its biggest rivals, Cardano, lost as much; and another big ETH competitor, Solana, is flat over seven days.

Meanwhile, Terra's LUNA reached an ATH of nearly $60 yesterday. The algorithmic stablecoin project is making an attention-grabbing run at Swift's antiquated global banking services turf, an Australian Kraken executive told Forkast.News. Terra’s token has gained more than 800% since July.

Dogecoin rival Shiba Inu rocketed more than 40% during some stretches of Tuesday but has come in for a landing.

As of Wednesday, at 7:15 a.m. (EST), SHIB had shed 12.6% over 24 hours.

It's still up over the past week.

Turning quickly to seven-day time frames and sticking with downward dogs, Crypto.com Coin (CRO) has dropped by 17.5% in that span. However, right now, CRO is starting to suddenly green up on some news that it bought a pair of small exchanges, including one literally called Small Exchange.

A noteworthy biweekly loser: Litecoin (-8.4%). What, LTC, did you really think your sucking wind of late would go unnoticed? But our hat goes off to the No. 15 coin for its recently secured alliance with Regal Cinemas (AMBCrypto). Ridiculously priced popcorn will be even that much easier to devour knowing LTC was the means of exchange. LTC actually just popped 0.03% between 6:45 a.m. and 7:45 a.m. (EST).

You call that a correction? Since reaching its ATH earlier this month, BTC has fallen 18%.

But before you can scream "oh no, BTC's just plunged through the ice and into a bear market pond!" take notice that November's dip was the weakest correction of 2021, overshadowed by the 53.4% meltdown between April and July (Cointelegraph). The most recent correction in September was the second-deepest, reaching 37% from April’s ATH.

Bears eked out a negligible victory as the calendar turned. But the bulls are greeting December like Scrooge, refreshed from a nightmare-laden slumber and caught up in the spirit of the season, as well as lively chatter of still-in-play Santa Claus rally scenarios.

The top U.S. financial industry regulator needs more time to figure out whether spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds make sense. One of the world's largest money managers has decided it’s not waiting around. Fidelity Investments, a 401(k)-fund gargantuan with more than $4 trillion in total assets under management, is set to launch a spot BTC ETF – in Canada.

Fidelity's clients are said to be demanding it. The SEC has neither provided a green light for spot BTC ETFs, nor any sort of potential timetable for as to when permission might come. And so, Fidelity, with headquarters in Boston, has decided dawdling was not an option with the SEC unable to provide any clarity.