Tailwind kicks up

The total crypto market cap has touched $2.9 trillion following a 24-hour gain of 0.4% as of 8 a.m. (EST). Bitcoin has a firm grasp of $85,000.

Charts took on a green-tinted complexion yesterday with the Fed signaling monetary easing is in the cards for later this year, and as reports circulated that a closely watched enforcement case apparently has finally concluded.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is dropping its lawsuit against Ripple, according to Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of Ripple, the ledger technology company associated with XRP, which is the token that the SEC insisted, for the better part of the past four years, was an unregistered security unlawfully sold to the public. Ripple won a partial victory in 2023 when a judge ruled that sales of XRP to retail investors via exchanges did not constitute a breach of U.S. securities laws. That part of the ruling was considered at the time to be landmark. In a second instance, though, XRP sales (directly to institutional investors) was considered an unregistered security offering. Not content with its own partial win, the SEC appealed the retail prong of the split-decision.

Now the federal regulatory agency, under new leadership and taking up a distinctly pro-crypto mantle, is dropping the appeal, according to Garlinghouse.

As of Thursday, at 8:45 a.m. (EST), XRP was about $2.50, up 6.4% in the past 24 hours. Prior to Garlinghouse's reveal, which came during his appearance at a crypto industry gathering in New York on Wednesday morning, XRP was about $2.30. At one point yesterday afternoon, the third-largest digital asset had climbed to nearly $2.60.

The nixing of the SEC appeal represents the “final exclamation point that these XRP tokens are considered digital commodities,” said crypto attorney/industry advocate John Deaton. "Not securities."

Ethereum dipped back below the key $2K mark even as some mighty tailwinds kicked up yesterday. As of this morning, the second-largest crypto was $1,993. ETH fell 0.4% in 24 hours. It remains up about 5% on the week.

Several bigger-cap altcoins are in the same boat as ETH, that is, down slightly today but green over the past seven days. In this camp are AVAX, DOT and OM.

We have spotted a particularly sore loser, Entangle, which touts itself as a "programmable interoperability layer." And while the project may indeed one day serve as a linchpin connecting blockchains with real-world data, ushering in a limitless Web3 economy, Entangle's native NTGL as of just a little while ago was testing the outermost boundaries of investor patience.

Now, NTGL still has a market cap in the neighborhood of $1.5 billion, making it the 69th-largest coin, per CoinGecko. But it's been quite a ghastly run.

Compared to one year ago at this time, NTGL has shed 99.9% of its value. It fell 14% in the past day, clinging to $0.002. What a difference 12 months makes. It was on the first day of spring last year that NTGL hit its all-time high of $2.82. NTGL is actually +4% in the past week.

Stocks rallied and Bitcoin found its way to $86K after Fed Chair Jerome Powell handed the markets a flashlight in the form of a clearly stated projection for two rate cuts this calendar year.

The Fed also confirmed it will, starting next month, lower the cap on monthly redemptions of Treasury securities, from $25B to $5B, as the central bank slows the pace of the decline of its holdings, marking a reduction of a tightening policy, as was expected.

That the Fed's benchmark borrowing rate (in the range of 4.25% to 4.5%) was left unchanged reflects a growing sense of economic uncertainty in light of President Trump's tariff policies.

Holding steady lets policymakers see how the administration’s policy changes — tariffs, as well as its immigration crackdown and federal workforce cuts — ultimately affects the U.S. economy, Powell said.

Earlier today, the Bank of England said it would keep its benchmark rate at 4.5% (as markets expected it would) while issuing a murky weather advisory. Since the BOE's Monetary Policy Committee last met, "global trade policy uncertainty has intensified," the bank said in a statement.