BTC peaks, wobbles, rebounds

In a mid-morning frenzy yesterday, Coinbase recorded Bitcoin hitting a new record high above $69,000. The widely reported summit of a lifetime proved not only fleeting but fragile, as it was followed by a sharp pullback over the ensuing afternoon. Then investors were left to shudder with BTC flirting dangerously with sub-$60K levels, triggering the snap liquidation of $1 billion worth of leveraged bets across digital asset perpetual futures markets, CoinDesk said.

As of 7:14 a.m. (EST), BTC had stabilized, indeed steadily rebounding overnight to nearly $67K at one point earlier today. But, as 8 a.m. (EST) approached, BTC's grip on the $66K handle did not seem steady.

Meanwhile, Ethereum is solidly green. ETH gained 1.4% to reach $3,812, per CoinGecko.

Among Top 20 coins, Uniswap saw the biggest one-day increase. UNI surged 20% in 24 hours. A few days ago, the Uniswap community voted to reward UNI holders who stake and delegate their tokens, marking a landmark change viewed as a victory for decentralized decision-making. Amidst a DeFi sector resurgence, Uniswap's governance token has been sought after. UNI has gained an impressive 160% in the past month. It is $15, and the 15th-largest coin, per CoinGecko.

Cryptocurrency lived up to its reputation – fickle, tempestuous, resilient – reminding investors, particularly the come-lately crowd, that if it's twists and turns you crave then you've come to the right place.

Consider this: the total crypto market at one perilous juncture on Wednesday cratered by as much as 10% directly following Bitcoin's brief dalliance with history.

CoinGecko measured BTC having dropped 12% to $60,000 after nearing its record high. Per CoinGecko's aggregated global exchange data, the largest crypto's ATH remains $69,044, having been reached Nov. 10, 2021.

However, Coinbase yesterday at 10 a.m. (EST) charted BTC hitting $69,324.

When we just now checked our old, trusted go-to recordkeeper, the Coin360 heat map (lately more of an “amazing technicolor dream quilt”) we saw BTC was in the red, sitting at roughly $66,300. That was around 8:30 a.m. (EST).

Optimism has waned, somewhat, but still runs higher than ever before amidst enormous volume. And by all of that we of course mean OP, native token of the Optimism "Layer 2" platform.

Earlier this morning, OP hit $4.84. According to CoinGecko, that's a record high.

OP hasn't been immune from this week's volatility. It has been below $4 just within the past 24 hours. As of today, at 8:15 a.m. (EST), OP sat at $4.68, down slightly from the ATH, but up a staggering 1,000% from the all-time low reached in June of 2022.

Yesterday, as OP crossed above $4, a data purveyor, IntoTheBlock, revealed that, for the first time in history, all one million Optimism addresses were in a state of profitability (AMBCrypto).

Launched in 2019 atop Ethereum, Optimism has hitched its future to the bandwagon of roll-up technology which allows for the bundling of transaction data, reducing user fees, hence its ability to claim the title of "Ethereum scaling solution."

The OP token was launched in late May of 2022. It initially reached $1 but then quickly sank to a record low of $0.40 on June 18, 2022. Last year, OP went on two impressive winning streaks (tripling from $1 to $3); one of the streaks occurred around the start of 2023 and then OP rallied again at year's end. A sustained climb to above $4 took place late last month right around the time Optimism announced its fourth airdrop.

OP is now the 29th-largest digital asset with a market cap of $4.6 billion. It has gained 50% in the past 30 days; ETH has gained 65% in that same period. (BTC has gained 53%).

Lately, the Optimism network has seen increased developer activity following the June 2023 Bedrock upgrade, actually a hard fork, part of an effort to "increase modularity in the OP Stack, allowing developers to spin up their own networks," Cointelegraph said.

Although, if OP is surging, CryptoPotato points out, it may have more to do with rising speculation that the onset of altcoin season is at hand, and moreover that it has only just begun.