Critical stretch looms

The whole wide, wobbly world of risk-asset investing begins a new week on green alert.

Wall Street is bracing for Fed comments and key chunks of economic data which will be peppered into the stew throughout this week. Stock futures turned positive; markets seemed potentially poised to dart higher.

Crypto markets stabilized with at least one large digital asset, Litecoin, rising 0.7% over 24 hours as of Monday at 7:43 a.m. (EST). Altcoin stalwart Hedera Hashgraph (HBAR) increased 0.8%.

Stellar (XLM) had a decent run over the weekend, reaching 13 cents last night after flirting with 11 cents during Friday's sell-off. XLM actually popped by 0.7% in the past one hour.

Most other coins are in the red.

Crypto could see some catalysts this week. A ruling in a legal case involving Grayscale's bid to launch a spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) could come in the days ahead just as regulators appear set to decide on BlackRock's bid to launch a spot BTC product as well.

An ETF industry proponent, Nate Geraci, is looking out at the rest of August and envisioning a few potential plot twists ahead, including a best-case scenario in which Grayscale wins its case and a BlackRock product is subsequently approved.

Bitcoin crawled above $26,000 as of 8 a.m. (EST) today. What a week. Last Monday, the largest crypto sat on the cusp of a return trip to above $30,000. Thursday brought a sharp plummet. As of Saturday, BTC was $25,850. But BTC held steady for the rest of the weekend, shuffling sideways in thin liquidity and as futures bets piled up on both sides of the equation. BTC has declined 11% in the past seven days.

Meanwhile, in the wake of a bug-infested layer-2 network launch, Shiba Inu continues to see its native SHIB slide. The second-most famous canine-related memecoin has lost 23% in the past week. Dogecoin, by comparison, is only down 16% in that span while Ethereum is down 9%.

XRP endured a double whammy at the tail end of last week with crypto at large falling out of bed and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission signaling in a courtroom that it plans to fight XRP to its death.

Appeals-process-related developments have been flying in a case involving the SEC and ledger technology company Ripple, and the fate of XRP, the digital asset associated with Ripple. This past weekend saw the paper trail go cold and the price of XRP rebound from below fifty cents to above fifty cents.

About three years ago, the SEC sued Ripple and its top executives, alleging XRP was an unregistered security illegally sold to the public. Last month, a federal judge ruled XRP was not a security when viewed in the context of retail investors buying/selling it on exchanges, although the judge at the same time ruled XRP was a security when sold directly to institutional investors, a split-decision now being appealed in fast-forward fashion by the federal regulator. Or, rather, the SEC is asking the judge for the permission to file a special kind of an appeal. Ripple is expected by Sept. 1 to ask the judge to deny the request.

In its recent motion for an "interlocutory appeal," one made before the entire dispute is completely concluded, the SEC seems to have shifted its focus toward arguing that digital assets do not have an inherent value and are nothing more than computer code, as opposed to investment contracts (i.e., securities) beholden to specific legal doctrine defining said instruments.

Pundits and pro-Ripple legal voices are now spotlighting SEC language essentially conceding that XRP is not a security.

XRP got as high as nearly 55 cents on Sunday but at last check was closer to 53 cents on a 4% decline in the past 24 hours.

Meanwhile, Ripple's Private Ledger project, positioned as tool for empowering countries to launch their own central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), reportedly has thus far enlisted a global gang of eight: Russia, the Republic of Palau, Montenegro, Japan, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Uruguay, New Zealand and Hong Kong.