NFT marketplace goes off

NFT traders who've used the Blur marketplace over the past several months finished snagging some 300 million BLUR tokens. What a week they're having.

Seven days since the BLUR airdrop commenced, the token has doubled to $0.62. BLUR gained 30% in the past 24 hours. Some of the pump probably connects with news of Binance support. Alas, some droplets of red ink just spilled into the chart when looking at a one-hour period ending at 7:30 a.m. (EST). BLUR is the 77th-largest token, per CoinGecko.

Meanwhile, AI-related coins are surging alongside interest in the awesome, scary technology as well as the corporate governance soap opera surrounding OpenAI. And then add to that Elon Musk's plans to launch an AI startup, xAI, plus the reveal that X shareholders would get a 25% stake. This all spelled a rally in crypto’s sleeve of AI-themed projects. Momentum kicked in last weekend. But just in the past 24 hours, Fetch.ai (FET), for example, gained 9.7%. And Bittensor's TAO token also gained 9.7% in the same span.

The latter project, Bittensor, is a mining ecosystem hitched to a decentralized network of machine learning models. As for the former, Fetch.ai, it bills itself as platform for serving up/monetizing AI capabilities via a sprawling network of autonomous economic agents, as opposed to AI powers deployed by a handful of monopolies, i.e. Microsoft or Google.

Additionally noteworthy this Black Friday: the sweet green debut that Pyth's PYTH token has enjoyed. Built on Solana, Pyth is an oracle network lighting out to compete with Chainlink. An airdrop of 250 million PYTH tokens began on Nov. 20. PYTH, as of about 7 a.m. (EST), reached an all-time high of $0.548655, according to CoinGecko. Earlier this week, PYTH sank as low as $0.28.

Overall, crypto winds have shifted favorably in the past couple of days since Binance said it would pay the U.S. government $4.3 billion to settle charges related to inadequate internal compliance controls.

Last Friday, Bitcoin sat glumly on the precipice of not even being $36,000. At last check, as of 9 a.m. (EST), the most enormous crypto was about to cross $37,700.

ChainFlip, a cross-chain swap platform, is conquering all coin performers over the past 24 hours. It's only been one trading day but FLIP's quick trip from two dollars to nearly six dollars has the cryptosphere standing at attention.

Or are FLIP holders suddenly cowering? As of about 6 a.m. (EST), FLIP reached a record high of $5.94. In two hours since, FLIP shed 14%, per CoinGecko.

FLIP has a market capitalization of $90 million, making it CoinGecko's No. 336 token.

Wall Street sure envisions a forthcoming fresh chapter for crypto as it creeps out of the shadows and steps lively into the light.

J.P. Morgan researcher Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou said as much in a report published on Thanksgiving.

He described Binance’s settlement with the U.S. government as a net positive for the crypto industry – if only because a total collapse of the giant exchange now appears to be less likely, that is, relative to the pre-settlement, end-times period when catastrophic risk of systemic failure apparently lurked just off to the side on a serving table (next to the forgotten-about, untouched cranberry sauce).

Panigirtzoglou also pointed out something keenly significant for holders of shares of Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC).

In anticipation of the SEC possibly permitting GBTC to convert to an ETF, buyers in the secondary market have been snapping up shares at a discount to NAV. In the past 11 months, an estimated $2.7 billion has flowed into the OTC-market-traded trust vehicle (CoinDesk).

This means, as Panigirtzoglou has flagged, if GBTC does get converted – voilà – there could be a lightning-fast spike in outflows, as arbitrageurs take profits.

If this $2.7B completely exits the Bitcoin space, he said, "then such an outflow would of course put severe downward pressure on BTC prices."