Bitcoin BTC, Ether ETH Prices Open Asia’s Trading Week Flat

Good morning. Here’s what happens:

Prices: The Consensus 2023 festival brought developers and investors to Austin, closing Friday night with attendance records that defied expectations. But Bitcoin opens the trading week in Asia flat.

Insight: Crypto developers and other industry professionals attending Consensus remain optimistic about the industry’s future, but US regulatory missteps remain an obstacle, noted CoinDesk journalists from Consensus 2023.

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As the region opens the trading week, crypto’s main tokens are largely flat.

Bitcoin is up 0.7% at $29,404, while Ether is down 0.5% at $1,892.

“Bitcoin has held below $30,000, which is a key resistance level, but hasn’t had to test any major support yet,” Joe DiPasquale, CEO of BitBull Capital, told CoinDesk in a note. “For now, the market expects a 25bps rate hike in the FOMC this week, but we will likely see price volatility following the Fed’s post-release commentary.”

“The attempts to break $30,000 this week have failed to make a higher high, which should be worrying for the bulls,” DiPasquale also wrote in his note to CoinDesk. “In general, we would not be surprised to see the market leader test $25,000 in the coming days, especially after the FOMC.”

Meanwhile, other crypto majors were also flat, including Layer-1’s Solana and Avalanche – the latter saw its AVAX token fall 1.2%.

5 Consensus 2023 Takeaways

CoinDesk’s annual Consensus Conference concluded on Friday, and it was exciting and informative to hear all the fascinating discussions that arose from the many speakers and panels.

Members of CoinDesk’s editorial team gathered at Twitter Spaces as the event concluded to consider the big picture at Consensus 2023 and share their takeaways on critical issues that will shape how the industry continues to evolve.

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Nick Baker, CoinDesk Deputy Editor-in-Chief

Being a Consensus newbie this year, I’m like a small town blown away by how big and impressive this event has been. Here are a couple of my takeaways:

One, the level of optimism people have about crypto is very high, which is a surprise given how poor the regulatory outlook is. And I know there’s partly self-selection bias at work: People who are going to pay a lot of money to attend this event are going to be optimistic about the space. Still, this juxtaposition of existential questions and a lot of optimism is striking to me.

Second, the ones I know best are from traditional finance, and they’re also pretty bullish on the future of crypto and moving TradFi stuff into crypto or crypto-adjacent infrastructure. Now, of course, they have tried for years to show progress along those lines and have little to show for it. But they are not deterred. This point rhymes with my first point.

Ben Schiller, head of Consensus Magazine

Something that really struck me came from what Kate Brady, head of communications for Web3 at PepsiCo, said on stage. As you know, PepsiCo is a very common American brand. It is by no means part of the crypto industry, but it is looking to get into Web3. And one of the things she said on stage was that she was hampered in her work, and PepsiCo has been hampered in her work by the lack of regulatory clarity, and I thought that was interesting, because obviously this is something that the industry is saying a lot that we have to do. There are guidelines from Washington, DC, from legislators and from politicians. And we believe that that conversation or that issue only affects people in the relatively small world of crypto.

Read the full story here:

On the third day of Consensus 2023, “First Mover” guests included a16z Head of Crypto Policy Brian Quintenz, Yuga Labs CEO Daniel Alegre, Fidelity Digital Assets Research Analyst Jack Neureuter and Blockchain Australia Head Michael Bacina.

Bye-bye Bitcoin Bear: No investor or financial advisor has a crystal ball that can predict the movement of any asset, including bitcoin, with total certainty. But previous bitcoin halvings can provide clues about what we can potentially expect.