Markets chilled

All investments and trading are risky and may result in the loss of capital. Cryptoassets are largely unregulated and are therefore not subject to protection.

Dogecoin (DOGE) gained some ground, an in-the-green outlier on another day when pretty much everything else ran red.

Elon Musk's pet memecoin shot above $0.17, and was, as of 7 a.m. (EST), the only digital asset in the Top 50 coins (ranked by market capitalization) to see gains over 24 hours; DOGE has gained 29% in the past 30 days and is viewed by some analysts as sprung from its technical trading pattern shackles and poised to take off toward 30 cents.

Musk and DOGE and Twitter and the SEC – they’re all intermingling, as if thrown into a pot of steaming hot gumbo, and boy what a feast: Musk, potentially in hot water with the SEC over tweets, files papers with the agency disclosing his stake in Twitter – formally positioned as a passive investment – only to amend the paperwork a day later to reveal he is actually active. And this then stokes further controversy surrounding an earlier tweet Musk posted about Twitter prior to his 13G disclosure (subsequently re-filed as a 13D).

“Musk’s investment could help push Twitter’s crypto initiatives forward and even see DOGE integration on the social media platform,” Cointelegraph said.

Meanwhile, among the Top 100 digital assets, fittingly, GMT, native asset of STEPN, a fitness-rewards platform, is the biggest mover, up 21%.

Bitcoin touched $47,000 to start off yesterday and never looked back. At that $47K mark. Too fixated was BTC on hurtling itself below $45K. And that's where crypto's Big Boy sat as of 7:30 a.m. (EST).

With a Goldilocks Relative Strength Index (RSI) metric buttressing the case for BTC being more oversold than overbought, there appears to be enough bullishness to hold $45K, AMBCrypto said.

BTC's failure to build on breakout momentum over the past two weeks might seem disappointing to some investors but "it probably shouldn’t,” said Craig Erlam, an analyst at Oanda, in a client note yesterday, per Barron's.

“We’re seeing consolidation across financial markets right now," he said. "BTC clearly isn't immune."

Meanwhile, a raft of DeFi assets got sunk. ThorChain (RUNE) and Synthetix (SNX) each saw double-digit losses over 24 hours.

RUNE, Decrypt said, is now "entering a dangerous zone with risk of further plunge."

Avalanche, Solana, Cardano, Terra and XRP are all running red with 24-hour losses ranging from -4% to -9%.

On Tuesday, a U.S. Federal Reserve Governor, Lael Brainard, speaking during a webinar put on by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, sent a chill down the markets’ collective spine, suggesting worsening inflation woes could prompt faster, tighter monetary policy.

The 10-year Treasury yield rose above 2.6%. European markets fell. The Stoxx 600, a pan-European equities index, declined 1.1% to start the trading session. Fresh Russia sanctions also are wracking nerves.

One day earlier, on Monday, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, in a letter to shareholders, sounded alarm bells about rates and how market participants have underestimated how high consumer goods prices could go, creating a vicious cycle.

Brainard’s utterances have her in the spotlight, again. In policymaking circles, she has become something of a rising star.

It was Facebook floating plans for a cryptocurrency a few years ago that initially prompted Brainard to take the lead of the Fed's initiative to seriously contemplate launching a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), according to CoinDesk.

Brainard last August announced the Boston Fed was examining different technology bases for a possible digital dollar and exploring how the U.S. central bank can take advantage.