The crypto markets inched slightly higher this Thursday morning, adding a bit less than 1% to bring total market capitalisation up to US$1.04tn.
Bitcoin is changing hands at around US$21,700 after adding 1%, while Ethereum, as is standard at the moment, outpaced the market with a 3.2% upshot, bringing its price to US$1,670.
Ankr and Decred were the strongest performers out of the network tokens today, rising 11% and 9% respectively, while Cosmos’ 8% upshot made it the strongest out of the large caps.
Solana and Polkadot added over 3% while Avalanche, Polygon, Cardano and TRON moved in line with the market.
Privacy coin Zcash was a strong daily riser that saw its market cap cross above US$1bn following a 7% rally.
In the decentralised finance (DeFi) space, Lido and Curve outpaced the market, having both added over 5%, although total volumes across the wider DeFi space remained fairly stagnant.
In the news
Market sentiment seems to be turning against the crypto markets once again.
The Crypto Fear & Greed Index, which measures market behaviour using a range of data points, dipped into the “Extreme Fear” category for the first time in five weeks.
Coinbase is facing a class-action lawsuit alleging that the publicly listed digital asset exchange “does not properly employ standard practices to keep consumers’ accounts secure”.
The complaint was filed by George Kattula in the Atlanta, Georgia courts.
Stablecoin issuer Tether continues to ignore sanctions placed on Tornado Cash, despite many of its peers complying after the US Treasury effectively banned the crypto mixer due to fears of large-scale criminal conduct being performed on the protocol.
Tether’s chief technology officer, Paolo Ardoino, told The Wall Street Journal that the Hong Kong-based enterprise has not been asked to enforce the ban yet, though added that it “normally complies with requests from US authorities”.