Bitcoin Back Above $29,000, Ether Gains; Matic leads the winners

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Bitcoin and Ether both rose early Thursday morning in Asia, with most of the other top 10 non-stable cryptocurrencies mixed. Polygons Matic led the winners on network updates, while Ripples XRP fell. US stock futures fell, mirroring Wall Street’s declines on Wednesday. The Federal Reserve raised interest rates by the expected 25 basis points, but Fed Chairman Jerome Powell warned that inflation was still a threat, raising fears that further rate hikes are in the offing. in progress. U.S. lenders have fallen as investors remain unconvinced the industry is off the hook after a string of bank failures since March.

See related article: Fed raises rates by a quarter point, Bitcoin drops by 0.48%

Cryptographic Image: Envato Items

Bitcoin moved back above the US$29,000 resistance line, gaining 1.23% to US$29,032 within 24 hours as of 8:00 a.m. HK, according to data from CoinMarketCap. The world’s largest cryptocurrency has gained 2.12% in the past seven days and surpassed its 20-day moving average.

Bitcoin is up 75% year-to-date and Standard Chartered Bank has predicted it could hit US$60,000 this year, as US banking issues may convince some investors of the role of Bitcoin. bitcoin as a safe haven.

Ether, the second-largest token, gained 1.84% to US$1,905, up 2.06% for the week. The rest of the top 10 non-stable cryptocurrencies by market capitalization were mixed.

Polygons Matic led the winners, rising 2.99% to US$1.01 and increasing its weekly gains by 2.03%. On Wednesday, Polygon said it added updates to its network to improve the use of decentralized applications, or dApps.

Ripple fell 0.32% to US$0.4635.

Memecoins such as Dogecoin and Shiba Inu have also gained this year and Gordon Grant, co-head of trading at leading digital currency broker Genesis Trading, said failing banks could be a reason.

The rise of coins in the midst of an all-out banking crisis is not necessarily surprising. Amid unstable banking systems, individuals may question the validity of their deposits and even the meaning of money, Grant said in emailed comments.

If bank deposits can theoretically evaporate overnight, it shouldn’t be surprising that there’s a marginal propensity to put money into a token with no obvious use case other than the ability to sell at a higher price later.

The total crypto market capitalization increased by 1.14% in the past 24 hours to US$1.20 trillion, while trading volume increased by 19.42% to US$41.97 billion. U.S. dollars.

NFT

Indices are indirect measures of the performance of the global NFT market. They are operated by CryptoSlam, a sister company of Forkast.News under the Forkast.Labs umbrella.

In the non-fungible token (NFT) market, the Forkast 500 NFT Index fell 1.69% to 3,648.07 in the 24 hours at 8:00 a.m. in Hong Kong, down 1.65% for the week.

I think it’s gas related [fees]. It’s very high today and people were commenting on it while typing (or choosing not to hit because of it), said Yehudah Petscher, NFT strategist at Forkast Labs.

In other NFT developments, Wemade, the leading blockchain game maker in South Korea, launched the NFT Bored Ape Golf Club (BAGC) collection on its platform on Wednesday.

The golf-themed variant of the popular Bored Ape Yacht Club collection had 40,000 concurrent users during its presale period last year, according to Wemades’ press release. Wemade, established in 2000, offers several play-to-earn video games globally, including MIR4, and recorded over $83 million in sales in the fourth quarter of 2022.

And on Wednesday, US prosecutors issued a warning to NFT trading platforms by charging Nathaniel Chastain, the former OpenSea NFT Marketplace product manager, with money laundering and fraud in what they called the first-ever scheme. insider trading in digital assets.

Shares Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome H. Powell | Image: Getty Images

US stock futures fell at 8:00 a.m. in Hong Kong. Dow Jones Industrial Average futures lost 0.41%, the S&P 500 futures index fell 0.37% and Nasdaq-100 futures fell slightly 0.03%. All three indexes all closed lower in regular Wednesday trading.

The US Federal Reserve raised interest rates by an expected 25 basis points to between 5% and 5.25%, the highest level since 2006. The Fed has raised rates several times over the past year in an attempt to bring inflation back to its target range of 2%. The inflation rate in March was 5%, according to the US Bureau of Statistics.

In announcing the increase, central bank chairman Jerome Powell toned down expectations that the Fed is now ready to pause its rate-hike policy, saying the bank is ready to do more if a greater restriction of monetary policy is justified, during a press conference.

Nigel Green, chief executive of financial advisory firm deVere Group, said raising rates amid simmering uncertainty over the health of US banks is a mistake and could push the world’s largest economy into a longer-term recession.

First, the crisis within the US financial system is still not over. There remain serious and legitimate concerns that after a series of bank failures there could be more to come, Green said in an emailed statement.

Another indicator of inflation in the United States is expected this week when the employment figures for April are released on Friday.

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