Bitcoin Holds 4-Month High Above US$22,000, Crypto Market Cap Recovers Above US$1 Trillion

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Bitcoin traded little changed on Monday morning in Asia, holding above a four-month high of US$22,000 amid a broader rally over the weekend, helped by comments from a US Federal Reserve official backing a lower interest rate hike at the central banks’ meeting later this month. Ether was also little changed during a mixed morning for the top 10 unstable cryptocurrencies. Dogecoin led the gains, while Solana recorded the biggest loss.

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Fast facts

Bitcoin traded down 0.2% at US$22,722 in the 24 hours to 8am in Hong Kong, taking the last calendar week’s gains to 8.8%. The world’s largest cryptocurrency hit a four-month high of US$23,278 on Saturday morning and is now trading above where it was before the market crash following the crash of the Bahamas-based crypto exchange FTX.com.

Ether gained 0.1% to US$1,628, up 4.9% for the week, according to data from CoinMarketCap.

Dogecoin rose 4.2% to US$0.08, a gain of 2.5% for the week. The world’s first memecoin hit US$0.09 overnight to hit a five-week high.

Solana fell 1.6% to trade at US$24.24, but posted gains of 5.9% last week. The token’s gains over the weekend saw it climb several spots on CoinMarketCaps list of largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization and now sits in slot 10.

The 24-hour total crypto market capitalization fell 1.6% to US$1.03 trillion, while trading volume fell 16.1% to US$52.8 billion. The total crypto market cap hit US$1.05 trillion on Saturday, the highest since early November, or just before FTX collapsed.

US stocks rose on Friday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 1%, the S&P 500 index jumped 1.9% and the Nasdaq Composite Index closed up 2.7% to post a weekly gain of 0.6% in its third consecutive week of gains.

The Nasdaq was helped by strong performance from Netflix Inc. which jumped 8.5% to US$342.50 on better than expected subscriber numbers. Alphabet Inc., the parent company of search engine Google, rose 5.3% to US$98.02 after announcing it was laying off about 12,000 employees, or about 6% of its workforce.

US Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller said that, based on recent economic data, he supports an interest rate hike of just 25 basis points at the next central bank meeting, in comments prepared for delivery to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York on Friday.

Last month, the Fed raised interest rates by 50 basis points to between 4.25% and 4.5%, the highest in 15 years. The next Fed meeting is scheduled for Jan. 31 and Feb. 1, where analysts from CME Group predict a 99.8% chance of a 25 basis point hike.

Other major US earnings reports this week include Tesla, Microsoft and Visa. Members of the Federal Reserve will be in a so-called blackout period before meeting to decide the next move on interest rates at the end of the month. Other US economic indicators coming this week that could influence this decision include durable goods orders and consumer sentiment.

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