Bitcoin up on bank uro, price speculation; Ether dives
Bitcoin rallied on Monday morning in Asia on the first trading day of May to hold above the US$29,000 mark as concerns about the US banking system resurfaced and amid bullish price forecasts for the token. Ether fell below $1,900, up 5% in April. Most other top 10 non-stablecoin cryptocurrencies traded lower, although Binance’s BNB rallied after the world’s largest crypto exchange added the Sui blockchain to its Launchpool. Litecoin led the losers. US stock futures traded flat to lower in Asia ahead of the Fed rate decision this week. All three major US stock indexes registered gains for April.
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Crypto
Bitcoin rose 0.48% to US$29,309 in the 24 hours to 09:00 a.m. in Hong Kong, according to CoinMarketCap data, for a weekly gain of 5.32%, after rising as high as US$29,952 on Sunday.
The world’s largest cryptocurrency tested the lower US$27,000 line several times in April, but gained more than 4% for the month for the longest streak of monthly gains since March 2021. This could herald a surge in 2023 that could send Bitcoin to US$105,000, according to an analyst report from Bloomberg on Sunday.
Bitcoin may attract investment from global bond investors due to negative real interest rates and real yields, according to Jamie Coutts, a senior market structure analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence.
Ether fell 0.81% to $1,884, but traded 0.34% higher for the week. The world’s second largest cryptocurrency gained over 5% for the month of April.
Binance’s BNB jumped 5.56% to $339.09, registering a weekly gain of 2.05%. Binance introduced the Sui blockchain’s SUI token to its Launchpool on Monday, allowing Binance users to stake BNB and TrueUSD (TUSD) to power the newly launched SUI, whose price jumped over 20% in the past 24 hours.
BNB also got a boost from Binance’s return to Japan. Sakura Exchange BitCoin (SEBC), a regulated crypto exchange platform in Japan that was acquired by Binance in November 2022, will end its domestic services by the end of May and start a new service under the name “Binance Japan” from June 2023, according to a statement from SEBC on Friday.
Litecoin led the losers, falling 2.33% to US$88.67 but adding 1.56% for the week.
The total crypto market capitalization increased by 0.09% in the last 24 hours to $1.20 trillion. The total trading volume in the last 24 hours rose 33.36% to 32.79 billion USD.
NFT
In the non-fungible token (NFT) market, the Forkast 500 NFT index rose 0.37% to 3,757.67 in the 24 hours to 9:00 AM in Hong Kong, but was 0.55% lower 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.
Mad Lads, a Solana-based NFT first minted on April 21, recorded the largest seven-day market-wide sales volume of over $7.63 million, beating Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC)’s $7.04 million, according to data from CryptoSlam. The floor price of NFT was 63.75 SOL at 09:30 in Hong Kong, almost 10 times higher than the first token minted at 6.9 SOL.
BAYC, one of the largest NFT collections by market cap, has also seen an increase in sales volume in the last 24 hours, up 170.22% to $1.05 million, the largest volume in the entire NFT market.
Stock
U.S. stock futures traded flat to lower at 9 a.m. in Hong Kong. Dow Jones Industrial Average futures were down 0.03 percent. S&P 500 futures and the Nasdaq Composite Index both fell 0.04%.
The three indexes closed higher last Friday on strong earnings from Intel Corp. and Exxon Mobil Corp., and recorded gains for both the week and the month of April, according to Reuters on Saturday.
However, the stock gains last week were overshadowed by concerns for the banking industry. Shares of US-based First Republic Bank plunged 43.20% on Friday after the lender reported a 40.8% drop in deposits, or about $100 billion, since the start of the year. Regulators are preparing to take over and sell the troubled bank, with several major financial institutions submitting bids, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, citing people familiar with the matter.
Meanwhile in China, the world’s second-largest economy, the purchasing managers’ index of manufacturing for April unexpectedly fell to 49.2 on the month, missing expectations for a rise of 51.4, pointing to slower growth in the country, according to Reuters on Monday.
The Federal Reserve’s next move on interest rates will come on May 3. The Fed has repeatedly raised interest rates over the past year to bring inflation down to the 2% target range. With US inflation still around 5%, analysts at CME Group now expect an 85.5% chance the Fed will raise interest rates by 25 basis points this week.
US interest rates are currently between 4.75% and 5%, the highest since June 2006.
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