Crypto mood sours

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For a few short hours on Wednesday, around the middle part of the day, Bitcoin crossed $24,000 before creating its own sort of hump. It appeared on the charts as BTC descended clumsily to a dimly lit lodging area sub-$23K.

Still, when the bulls pushed BTC to nearly $24,300, some celebratory social media chirping ensued, as did a chorus of guarded sentiment urging investors to not get ahead of their skis.

Data from Jarvis Labs, per Cointelegraph, showed that larger entities have yet to return to active buying, although if and when they do, Jarvis added, that’ll be a positive sign this rally could have “significant momentum behind it."

Momentum did seem to be on crypto's side precisely as the dead-midweek mark arrived. Leave it to Elon Musk to furnish the ice water. According to financial statements released on Wednesday, Musk's electric vehicle maker has dumped the bulk of its BTC reserves.

Now there is at least one impressive positive move playing out today. It comes courtesy of Chain (XCN). Chain is a customizable, cloud blockchain infrastructure, and popular among financial services titans. Its native coin XCN is the 33rd-largest digital asset in terms of its market capitalization (about $2 billion).

Over 24 hours, as of 7:30 a.m. (EST), XCN had gained 5.4%. It's closing in on $0.094, down 50% since its all-time high reached this past May.

Monero (XMR), best-known and most private of so-called privacy coins, is the other green shoot among larger-cap coins. XMR is up 3.1% in the past day. At $150, XMR remains 72% off its ATH.

Tesla reducing its Bitcoin position by three-fourths, or $936 million, last quarter should not be taken as "some verdict” on the largest crypto, emphasized Elon Musk, the EV maker's controversial CEO.

The offload revelation came yesterday as BTC was surging as the U.S. dollar was falling. Relative to a basket of other major fiat currencies, the greenback relinquished 20-year highs. The runway was set for BTC to take off. Then Tesla’s sell-off reveal landed.

On-chain analytics firm Glassnode insisted that news of the Tesla dump hadn't been met with any "significant reshuffling of exchange balances from panic sellers" (or opportunistic dip-buyers) on the day.

During a conference call, Musk explained the sale was due to liquidity concerns. “We were uncertain as to when the Covid lockdowns in China would alleviate,” he said.

Still, crypto industry experts are largely unfazed by Tesla’s decision, according to reporting by Cointelegraph.

“We are certainly open to increasing our Bitcoin holdings in the future,” added Musk during yesterday's call.

The bad news: Exposed to troubled crypto lenders Babel and Celsius, the Asian exchange Zipmex yesterday froze customer withdrawals.

Today, however, some better news: Zipmex is outlining a plan to throw customers a life preserver, by reinstating withdrawals (and deposits, for that matter) through its Trade Wallet feature, according to Crypto Briefing.

Trading activities in this scenario would remain suspended as the company explores all available options for staying afloat.

Meanwhile, Vauld, the crypto lender backed by Peter Thiel, and which two weeks ago suspended customer withdrawals, has just filed for an "application for a moratorium," giving it temporary protection from creditors based in Singapore.

CryptoDaily reports Vauld is now in talks with Nexo about a potential buyout.