ETF anticipation grips market

We’re five days into 2024. Crypto has rallied, retraced and rebounded. As of Friday, at 8:40 a.m. (EST), Bitcoin stood near $43,800 on a gain of 1.2% in the past 24 hours, according to CoinGecko.

BTC's seven-day chart exudes all the jagged charm of a grinning jack-o'-lantern. Over three months, the biggest crypto’s chart more closely resembles a striking cobra.

Anticipation is sky high for perceived-as-impending regulatory approval of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) tracking the spot price of the largest crypto, possibly representing a historic structural milestone with massive implications for the potential growth of digital money. No one seems to be able to agree on whether it'll actually happen – a particularly significant SEC deadline looms next week, amplifying speculation – or what it might actually mean in terms of BTC's price, which has already surged 160% in the past 12 months.

"Perhaps traders are in a wait-and-watch mode ahead of the expected decision," CoinDesk said.

After rising 60% in three months – on the back of ETF expectations – BTC might well pull back once the highly anticipated products begin to trade, some analysts theorize, CoinDesk said.

Look at the marketplace for BTC options. Based on how they are priced, traders would seem to be paring back their bullish bias. "Options skew" tracked by Amberdata show calls (bullish-leaning contracts, expiring in weeks/months ahead) are right now trading at a premium of about 2% versus puts (bearish bets); that premium on forward-looking bets had reached 8% as of the start of November. “The steady retreat is reflective of more measured bullish sentiment,” CoinDesk said.

Celestia's TIA token hit an all-time high of $17.13 in the wee hours of the morning. A pullback followed.

Accelerating is the ballyhoo surrounding Celestia's "modular" blockchain (as opposed to hard-to-scale "monolithic" chains), prompting a TIA staking push ahead of potential airdrops from projects developing on the scalability-centric network.

Celestia launched its mainnet in beta form back in October. TIA tokens were issued to nearly 600,000 users.

TIA started trading at around $2.30. It first touched $10 in early December. In the past month, TIA has gained 66%.

Since reaching its ATH earlier this morning, TIA has shed about 7%. TIA is the 42nd-largest token, per CoinGecko.

When we checked TIA at 9 a.m. (EST), it was $16 amidst heavier-than-usual volume.

Not to be confused with Solana's Saga phone is Saga the gaming concern which is about to launch its own blockchain protocol. A planned public airdrop of its SAGA token (outside the U.S.) has been confirmed by Saga cofounder Jin Kwon, setting off a buzz across the cryptosphere.

Enthusiasm runs particularly high in the Cosmos (ATOM) community. That's because a portion of Saga’s underlying technology was built with the Cosmos blockchain’s software development kit (SDK), as Decrypt explained.

Traders who'd staked at least 25 ATOM between April 2023 and October 2023 will be included in the airdrop. Saga also used Celestia tech in its build and thus is also including traders who had staked at least 23 TIA tokens between this past November and December.

Additionally, Saga will include certain wallets that staked some MATIC and AVAX across specific time frames.

Saga’s blockchain protocol is touted as allowing developers to launch “chainlets,” or essentially their own private blockchain spaces. Saga has been described as being in the "app-specific-blockchains-as-a-service" (ASBaaS) sector. Note: we're not sure whether ASBaaS is actually a sector, nor (assuming it is) whether it ever gets referred to as "Ass Bass."

Chainlets, considered "sovereign chains," are secured by Saga validators via Cosmos' Interchain Security, a kind of security-sharing cooperative.