After some lackluster sessions following the much anticipated Ethereum Merge, Monday came as a breather for most of the top cryptos by market cap. While BTC and ETH could not recover from Sunday’s drop, Ripple (XRP) led the way up as investors cheered the outcome in SEC vs. Ripple case. However, Bitcoin (BTC) fell short of the $20,000 level despite gaining 0.65%. With the recent dip, BTC failed to visit $20,000 for the fourth time since 3 July.
Despite the slight uptick, the market is not out of the woods as volatility remains high. Meanwhile, investors are keeping a close watch on the US Federal Reserve’s meeting on interest rate hikes scheduled for 21 September as recession fears loom.
The total crypto market cap increased by $11.7 billion on Monday to $907.1 billion. However, with BTC and ETH hitting a new September low, the market capitalization is down by $54 billion in September.
The Fear and Greed Index
The Fear & Greed Index, a gauge of market sentiment, rose from 21/100 to 23/100 in yesterday’s session. While the index is still in the Extreme Fear zone, the modest increase can be attributed to BTC’s return to $19,500 after sliding steeper on Sunday. In recent weeks, the index has hovered close to the 20/100 level.
Top gainers and losers
The top gainers, according to the live data from CoinSwitch, are ApeCoin (APE), that leads the way up with a whopping 17.08% hike following ApeCoin unlocking rewards for launch contributors yesterday. It was followed by Algorand (ALGO) and Ethereum Name (ENS) with 14.60% and 10.37% gains, respectively.
Conversely, Chainlink (LINK) leads the way down with a loss of 0.34% in the last 24 hours, followed by Litecoin (LTC) with 0.42% loss and Polkadot (DOT), which dipped 0.38%.
