Morning Coinheads. Thank Fantom it’s Friday, even if some/many/most of us did have a day off in Straya yest. And speaking of Fantom (FTM), it’s up, like Aptos (APT), like several other top altcoins these past few days.
We’ll check in with some of those a bit further down.
As for the crypto pace-setter in chief, though – Bitcoin is still hanging in there, fluctuating around the US$23k level, still giving both bulls and bears a sniff. It’s basically one big gingery tease.
Seems like as good a time as any then to take a quick look at market sentiment. The good ol’ Crypto Fear & Greed Index – a popular tracker based on the following metrics: volatility (25%), market momentum (25%), social media (15%), surveys (15%), coin dominance – mainly Bitcoin (10%) and trends (10%).
“Neutral” might sound a bit meh, a bit confusing. But we’ll definitely take it right now. In fact, Neutral, tipping slightly into green citrus, is practically the crypto market frothing in excitement compared with where we’ve been recently – a sentiment horror show for several months.
Top 10 overview
With the overall crypto market cap at US$1.08 trillion, up about 1% since this time yesterday, here’s the current state of play among top 10 tokens – according to CoinGecko.
Well look at that – the highly popular layer 2 scaler Polygon (MATIC) has reclaimed it’s rightful (according to it, probably) position in the top 10 – ahead of Solana (SOL) and OKB.
Why is this interesting. It isn’t, massively. But you can’t keep a good Polygon down for too long. This project was a major climber last bull run and has been on a partnership spree for months.
Finding the next Polygon might be something to keep an eye on. Layer 2s, such as Arbitrum, Optimisim and various zk-rollups-related protocols might all be in the running for that title. That said, Polygon itself could still be a solid play. Not financial advi… ah, you know.
Back to BTC for half a sec, we quite like this little hypothesis from US chart obsessor Justin Bennett. A dash more hopium for the crypto crack pipe, anyway.
If #Bitcoin follows gold like it’s done before, we could have quite a bit higher to go.
Gold rallied ahead of $BTC during the last bull market and even pulled back before Bitcoin topped in April 2021.
We saw the same dynamic ahead of the July-October 2021 BTC rally.
— Justin Bennett (@JustinBennettFX) January 26, 2023
Uppers and downers: 11–100
Sweeping a market-cap range of about US$9 billion to about US$403 million in the rest of the top 100, let’s find some of the biggest 24-hour gainers and losers at press time. (Stats accurate at time of publishing, based on CoinGecko.com data.)
DAILY PUMPERS
• Fantom (FTM), (market cap: US$1.25 billion) +24%
• eCash (XEC), (mc: US$818 million) +23%
• BTSE Token (BTSE), (mc: US$503 million) +6%
• Aave (AAVE), (mc: US$1.26 billion) +5%
• VeChain (VET), (mc: US$1.72 billion) +4%
Fantom, eh? What’s the deal there? The mid-tier top 100 layer 1 blockchain is up 65% over the past week. There are several reasons for this, but the biggest overnight news for the project is this – an “interchain” communication announcement that pushes the Fantom cross-blockchain interoperability cause.
And that’s something every layer 1 is trying to meaningly solve, in order to connect blockchain ecosystems and further the true potential of universal, borderless, frictionless cryptocurrencies.
Fantom is collaborating with a firm called Axelar in order to achieve this.
Axelar provides interchain communication for #Fantom & its broader Web3 ecosystem! ⛓️
With @Axelarcore, Fantom users & builders benefit from secure, decentralized interoperability across 30+ chains
See how they’ll bring cross-chain swaps to @SpookySwap👇https://t.co/DWchpthfk6 pic.twitter.com/SSeAoVhDX8
— Fantom Foundation (@FantomFDN) January 24, 2023
Well, that’s one potential catalyst for the recent surge, anyway. The head of marketing at the Fantom Foundation has a few more…
So what’s the deal with #Fantom?
Here’s a few facts you may not know…
🧵Unraveling what’s in store for the future
— Juan Angel (@juanaxyz00) January 21, 2023
Meanwhile, it’s not on our daily pumpers list, but it’s worth noting another Ethereum rival’s performance this week – Aptos (APT). It’s up 138% over the past seven days, and 244% over 14.
Why? Partly because it’s one of the buzziest new entries into the increasingly crowded layer 1 smart-contract platform arms race. And partly because it’s developed by former Meta techies.
Also, the Binance exchange has been bigging it up for various reasons, including the announcement of an “Aptos World Tour” – multiple conferences and developer meetups, as well as NFTs becoming more popular on the Aptos chain… and Binance’s two new Aptos liquidity pools.
2/
Firstly, #Aptos hosted their first #AptosMoveMonday of 2023 on Jan 9th, roughly coinciding with the upward move in the price of $APT. Co-founders @moshaikhs and @AveryChing actively answered a number of questions and discussed many upcoming developments across the session.— Binance Research (@BinanceResearch) January 25, 2023
5/
Additionally, on Jan 20th, #Binance announced the opening of two new liquidity pools for Aptos, with $APT / #BTC and $APT / $USDT. @CoinMarketCap data shows that this (at least partially!) helped drive price (up ~56%) and trading volume (up 147% on a 5-day average) for $APT.— Binance Research (@BinanceResearch) January 25, 2023
Plenty happening, then. Also, erm, the Aptos founder, Mohammad Shaikh, looks like this:
Because… pic.twitter.com/FkTxmXeARK
— Lazy Lads – Aptos (@Lazy_LadsNFT) January 26, 2023
DAILY SLUMPERS
• Lido DAO (LDO), (market cap: US$1.91 billion) -7%
• Optimisim (OP), (market cap: US$475 million) -6%
• ImmutableX (IMX), (mc: US$530 million) -4%
• Cosmos Hub (ATOM), (mc: US$3.8 billion) -4%
• Quantum (QNT), (mc: US$2.17 billion) -3%
Around the blocks
Some pertinence and randomness that stuck with us on our morning moves through the Crypto Twitterverse.
The future is multi-chain 🤝 pic.twitter.com/1RHkEuAtNT
— Alan Carroll (@alancarroII) January 25, 2023
If you’re deep into Bitcoin this early, you’re not a normal person.
Full stop.
😂😂😂
— Joe Burnett (🔑)³ (@IIICapital) January 26, 2023
Yesterday, the US government filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google.
One month ago, Nancy Pelosi sold $3 million in $GOOGL stock. pic.twitter.com/QZg3wUf23M
— Watcher.Guru (@WatcherGuru) January 25, 2023
Source of article & source of the sellhttps://t.co/zvweRQyLo0 pic.twitter.com/Vx4KYKERMu
— Nancy Pelosi Stock Tracker ♟ (@PelosiTracker_) January 25, 2023
i’m not convinced kangaroos are real. they always look like cgi to me. pic.twitter.com/DRn7IVokCy
— Shibetoshi Nakamoto (@BillyM2k) January 26, 2023
Read More: Mooners and Shakers: Fantom surges as crypto opera plays on; Bitcoin strikes a steady