Bitcoin rises after week of banking turbulence, Ether falls

Bitcoin rose in early morning trading in Asia to hold above $29,500 after a week of worries about more U.S. bank failures and a possible recession that some commentators say is generating renewed interest in the world’s biggest cryptocurrency as a safe haven. Ether edged lower but held above the $1,900 support. Most of the other top 10 non-stablecoin cryptos fell, with the exception of Solana, which saw an artificial intelligence (AI) improvement in its network. US stock futures fell in Asia after gains on Wall Street in regular Thursday trading on stronger earnings signals.

See related article: Coinbase Sues SEC to Clarify Crypto Rules

Fast facts

• Bitcoin rose 0.77% to $29,518 in the 24 hours to 09:00 a.m. in Hong Kong, according to CoinMarketCap data. The token is up 4.23% in the last seven days.
• Turmoil and fragility in the US banking system is helping Bitcoin into mainstream adoption and strengthening its role as a safe haven, according to US-based financial services firm Bernstein Private Wealth Management, cited by CNBC on Thursday.
• New York-based investment bank HC Wainwright also sees Bitcoin potentially entering a bull price cycle and initiated a “buy” rating on crypto exchange Coinbase on Wednesday, saying it will benefit from growth in the global digital asset economy.
• Ether fell 0.56% to $1,911 for a weekly loss of 1.98%.
• Solana rose 1.91% to $22.39 after the nonprofit Solana Foundation announced a USD 1 million fund Wednesday for projects exploring AI for the Solana blockchain. Solana Labs also created one plugin on OpenAI’s chatbot ChatGPT this week which reportedly allows users to check wallet balances, transfer tokens and purchase non-fungible tokens (NFT) through ChatGPT.
• The total crypto market capitalization rose 0.02% in the last 24 hours to $1.21 trillion. The total trading volume in the last 24 hours fell 22.81% to 51.66 billion USD.
• In the NFT market, the Forkast 500 NFT index fell 0.21% to 3,701.73 in the 24 hours to 9:00am in Hong Kong, down 6.55% for the week. The index is a proxy measure of the performance of the global NFT market and includes 500 eligible smart contracts. It is managed by CryptoSlam, a sister company of Forkast.News under the Forkast.Labs umbrella.
• The Forkast 500 is a representation of the market as a whole, but it also reflects traders and what they do or don’t do, and there is very low volume in the NFT markets right now, Yehudah Petscher, NFT strategist at Forkast Labs, said in an interview. Laundering remains a problem, he said.
• Still, good things are happening in the NFT area, with communities building and growing, Petscher said. “Also, the art is world class and there is an important thing happening in the NFT space where digital artists can now make a living selling their NFTs. Sotheby’s and Christie’s are now selling NFT art regularly,” he added .
• US stock futures were trading lower as of 9:00 a.m. in Hong Kong. Dow Jones Industrial Average futures and S&P 500 futures were both down 0.13%. The Nasdaq Composite Index fell 0.18 percent.
• The three indexes closed higher on Thursday as strong earnings at Meta Platforms, formerly Facebook, pushed the stock up nearly 14%, offsetting a poor first-quarter GDP report that came in at a 1.1% annual growth rate, and missed economists’ forecast of 2%, according to Reuters on Friday.
• Conversely, the report also showed a 4.2% increase in personal consumption, beating analysts’ expectations of 3.7%, indicating that inflation remains high despite soft GDP growth. Inflation in the US was 5% in March 2023.
• The Federal Reserve’s next move on interest rates will come on May 3. The Fed has been conducting a year-long policy of interest rate hikes with the goal of bringing annual inflation below 2%. US interest rates are currently between 4.75% and 5%, the highest since June 2006.
• Analysts at CME Group now expect a 14.6% chance the Fed will leave rates unchanged at its next meeting on May 3, while 85.4% predict a 25 basis point increase, up from 73.1% on Thursday.

See related article: Investment bank HC Wainwright says ‘crypto winter over’, rates Coinbase a ‘buy’