Crypto Market Daily Highlights – May 4

Key Insights:

• CoinMarketCap top 100 Waves (WAVES) leads the broader crypto market in a mixed morning session.
• XRP showed immunity to SEC motions, with the William Hinman 2018 Speech an SEC headache.
• Bitcoin (BTC) and the top 10 find morning support despite market sentiment towards Fed monetary policy and influence from the NASDAQ 100.

CoinMarketCap top 100, Waves (WAVES), leads the broader crypto majors, rallying by 9.7% over the last 24-hours.

Cardano (ADA) joins WAVES in positive territory, rallying by 4.46% over 24-hours to lead the crypto top 10.

While there were no clear key drivers to provide WAVES with direction, news of ADA whales resuming stacking delivered ADA support.

Regulatory risk remained an area of focus, with news updates from the SEC v Ripple case drawing interest.

Today’s main event will be the Fed monetary policy decision later today. At the time of writing, Bitcoin (BTC) and the broader market were in positive territory despite the NASDAQ 100 faltering ahead of the policy decision.

Cardano (ADA) Among the Front Runners on ADA Whale News

Over the past 24-hours, CoinmarketCap top 10, ADA, was up 4.6% to lead the top 10 majors by market cap.

On Tuesday, FX Empire reported ADA whales resuming ADA stacking. According to the report,

“Data from crypto analysis platform Santiment on May 3 highlighted that ADA whale addresses holding 1 to 10 million ADA have been accumulating their bags over these past five weeks.”

The report also noted,

“Apart from the growth in accumulation by whale entities, Cardano’s network growth seems to be supporting price rise in the near future provided the larger market remains stable. In a recent Twitter post, the firm behind Cardano blockchain, Input Output HK (IOHK), revealed 925 projects are behind built on top of the blockchain.”

The news was in line with IOHK updates from March when the team talked of “a continuing series of optimizations and increases to network capacity that are being made as #Cardano continues to scale in 2022 for future growth.”

The Securities and Exchange Commission Files Another Motion

On Tuesday, Ripple Lab lawyer Matthew Solomon opposed an SEC request,

“to file an additional brief in support of its assertions that internal documents related to a speech given by a former SEC official are protected from disclosure by the attorney-client privilege.”

Solomon noted that it would be at least the SEC’s sixth “filing in opposition to Defendants’ August 10, 2021 motion to compel.”

The latest request by the SEC highlighted how pivotal the Hinman documents are to the case.

While market risk sentiment, inflation, and central bank monetary policy continue to influence the appetite for cryptos, Ripple Lab CEO Brad Garlinghouse and others believe the SEC v Ripple case will impact the whole crypto industry.

Despite the updates from the case, XRP remains in the wilderness and well below $0.70.

At the time of writing, XRP was up 0.88% to $0.6100.

Bitcoin (BTC) Finds Support Ahead of Today’s Fed Policy Decision

At the time of writing, BTC was up 2.67% to $38,734. A mixed morning saw BTC rise to an early morning high of $39,145 before easing back.

Investor angst over the Fed’s monetary policy decision eased through the morning session. Negative sentiment towards Fed monetary policy had resulted in a stronger correlation between BTC and the NASDAQ 100 before this week’s decoupling.

At the time of writing, the NASDAQ 100 was down 1.50%.