Anxiety abates
What's being bought and sold*
TOP TRENDING ASSETS
*Trading activity in the past 24 hours on the Uphold platform, as of 8 a.m. 15th April 2024.
The combined total of buy and sell percentages can exceed 100% due to customers who engage in both buying and selling the same asset within the 24-hour time frame.
Don’t invest in crypto unless you’re prepared to lose all the money you invest. This is a high-risk investment and you should not expect to be protected if something goes wrong.
What’s up
Bitcoin Rebounds After Weekend Mini-Crash
Iran attacked Israel on Saturday, escalating tensions in the Middle East and pushing jittery investors into the arms of so-called safe-haven assets. It was a volatile, geo-political-driven fainting spell which in the wider scheme of things or in an alternate universe might have benefited Bitcoin. But, man, was that ever not the case.
The largest crypto as of Friday night was near $71,000 but sank to below $63,000 by early Sunday, coinciding with disaster buffs around the world commemorating the 112th-anniversary of the RMS Titanic sideswiping an iceberg in the North Atlantic.
As of Monday morning, Bitcoin's spot price had recovered to $66K. But the entire situation remains highly combustible.
BTC still has some work to do arranging a return voyage to its recent high of $72K.
Total crypto assets are up 4% to $2.54 trillion in 24 hours.
Solana and Ethereum each bounced, notching high single-digit percentage gains in the past 24 hours, per CoinGecko.
A lone Big Ten digital asset, Toncoin, is up on the day (+10%) and on the week (+20%).
Over the weekend, an emblematic surge was observed in the spot price of PAX Gold. It’s a gold-backed digital asset created by New York-based Paxos. PAXG, 184th-largest coin in terms of market capitalization ($433M), hit $2,855.83 yesterday. That's an all-time high. PAXG has since shed 17%.
What's down
Tense Moments Send Coins Tumbling
At one stage during Saturday's sinkhole-event, Bitcoin fell almost 10%, even briefly tasting sub-$62K levels.
Ethereum reached as low as $2,936. At last check, Monday at 8:30 a.m. (EST), ETH was $3,244.
The recently birthed, super-hyped Ethena governance token, ENA, plunged over the weekend, going from nearly $1.50 to barely $1. It has since risen to $1.15. Ethena's ETH-steeped "synthetic dollar," USDe, flirted with $0.9962 during a few tense moments but the toe-dip into troubled waters proved merely fleeting. USDe's obviously crucial dollar-peg has since been regained.
Dogecoin, which enjoyed twenty-cent status as recently as Friday, tumbled to $0.14 during the weekend's lowest ebb. DOGE is down 21% over the past seven days.
Among Top 30 coins, across the past week, the worst-performer is Uniswap, which saw its valuation gutted by one-third. Ahead of crypto’s brutally volatile weekend, UNI was already under pressure, owing to regulatory scrutiny.
What's next
Institutional Crypto Demand In Asia Seemingly About To Be Unleashed
Hong Kong's regulator has approved spot BTC and ETH funds, according to some of the overly overjoyed money manager applicants posting on WeChat.
Alas, these firms (China Asset Management, Bosera Capital, others) appear to have jumped the starter's pistol. No official statement from the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) has been released; nor has the SFC posted a list of approved issuers. Some of the history-heralding posts by the managers have since been deleted.
Singapore-based QCP Capital told CoinDesk that crypto ETFs, if and when approved, should unlock some institutional demand in Asia. "We believe this will be bullish short term," QCP said.
Although the firm added there are "more important narratives and drivers such as macro events."
