Crypto roundup: Ethereum tries to get moon mission ignited… before the Fed talks tough on tapering

Ethereum seemed to be making a break for it. “Exaaaaactly as predicted”, as crypto influencer “The Moon” would say. But then US Federal Reserve boss Jerome Powell had a few things to say about tapering and inflation.

Earlier, Stockhead reported that Ethereum (ETH) had reached “a key inflection point” against Bitcoin (BTC), with a breakout potentially pushing the whole market higher. And that appeared to be playing out. (It could still.)

At the time of writing, the entire market is up about three per cent since this time yesterday and has a total valuation of roughly US$2.79 trillion, according to CoinGecko data.

And this Coin360.com overview of the top coins is looking pretty green today…

But to give you an idea of how quickly the crypto market so often turns, a cup of tea and a Tim Tam later and things showed quite a different story…

Seems like Jerome Powell has different plans for the markets today. The US Federal Reserve chairman has now indicated that the central bank could be looking to speed up the tapering (scaling back) of its economy-boosting stimulus efforts.

Cue immediate dip in the markets, including crypto…

And #bitcoin drops from $59K to $57K .. https://t.co/U9I4nJsTgS

— PlanB (@100trillionUSD) November 30, 2021

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell just suggested that we stop using the word “transitory” when speaking about inflation.

“I think it’s probably a good time to retire that word and try to explain more clearly what we mean.”

It was never transitory and everyone knew that.

— Pomp 🌪 (@APompliano) November 30, 2021

 

In an appearance before a US Senate committee, the Fed head reportedly said he thinks reducing the pace of monthly bond buys can move quicker than the US$15 billion-a-month schedule put forward earlier in November.

 

Mooners and shakers

Moving on from the Fed’s “hawkish” vibe on tapering, let’s quickly focus on some of the main movers in the crypto market over the past several hours.

The no.2 crypto (that’s ETH) was leading the charge in the top 10 by market cap for most of the day, and was up more than nine per cent in the past 24 hours a short time ago.

Fellow layer 1 blue chip, Polkadot (DOT) was also well up on the daily, to the tune of about eight per cent.

Just outside the top 10, barking at the door, is the dog-meme coin that simply refuses to go away – Shiba Inu (SHIB).

It’s the second-best performer in the top 100 right now (+21%) on the back of its Kraken exchange listing. Guess every dog as its day (but this one’s having more than its fair share this year).

We did it #ShibArmy – $shib lists on @krakenfx 🐙 🐶 🚀 https://t.co/iRuXX0iFpw

— 💎 Shiba Inu Army/Community 💎 (@ShibaAustralia) November 29, 2021

We’re not getting out of bed for anything less than double-digit gains outside the top 10 today. So with that in mind, other notable performers in the top 100 right now include: layer 1 protocols Terra (LUNA) +16%, and Tezos (XTZ) +11%; DeFi lending platform Aave (AAVE) +10%; and Bitcoin smart-contracts enabler Stacks (STX) +31%.

LUNA’s rally seems to be driven by the implementation of major upgrades on the Terra network, including the introduction of a token-burning, deflationary mechanism.

$LUNA will be top 5,here’s why;

1.Insane Tokenomics (Luna/Terra burn)
2.Great tech
3.Decentralized web 3 money narrative.
4.Charismatic/genius figure head!
5.Strong community- increasing momentum
6. Best VC support-all made insane returns
7.Lots of high caliber complex Projects

— Ran Neu Ner (Plan C) (@cryptomanran) November 28, 2021

Further down the market cap lists, a couple of other notable coins surging today include: gaming-related coins Phantasma (SOUL) +25%, and the Aussie-founded RPG NFT battler Illuvium (ILV), +12%, which hit a fresh all-time high of US$1,911 about two hours ago, at the time of writing.

On the flip side, though, fellow strong gaming project Chain Guardians (CGG) is down 15%; and cross-chain crypto wallet extension XDEFI is 14% in the red.