Bitcoin Continues to Rise, Ether Increases Ahead of Upgrade

Bitcoin resumed its climb above $28,000 in early morning trading in Asia on Monday, a support level it has hovered around for most of April after a strong start to the year, even amid higher interest rates, bank failures and concerns about a U.S. recession. other top 10 non-stablecoin cryptocurrencies gained, including Ether ahead of Wednesday’s upgrade to the Ethereum blockchain. Dogecoin rose. US stock futures were mixed after a three-day weekend.

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Fast facts

• Bitcoin rose 1.40% to US$28,343 in the 24 hours to 8:00 a.m. in Hong Kong, up 0.57% for the week or little changed, according to CoinMarketCap data.
• The world’s largest cryptocurrency has risen 70% so far this year and is holding steady around US$28,000 this month, even as stock markets have faced headwinds from higher interest rates to stem inflation, a string of bank failures and signs that the US economy may be on heading for a recession.
• Bitcoin could break through US$30,000 in the coming week, but the caveat is that a recession could be looming, said Kadan Stadelmann, CTO of blockchain infrastructure development firm Komodo.
• “Typically, we see risk on conditions as something that drives up the Bitcoin price. But over the last month with the banking crisis, we’ve actually seen that risk is positive for Bitcoin. Right now, the price action is telling us that the market is uncertain,” says Stadelmann.
• Ether rose 0.55% to $1,859, a gain of 3.62% for the week ahead of Wednesday’s Shanghai hard fork, also known as the Shapella upgrade, which will allow investors to withdraw their Ether for the first time.
• Most of the other top 10 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization showed moderate gains led by Dogecoin, which added 2.31% to $0.08328 for a weekly gain of 5.30%. The meme token surged last week when Elon Musk changed Twitter’s blue bird icon to the Dogecoin dog icon, breaking US$0.10 on April 4. It then lost steam when the Twitter icon changed back to the bird.
• Solana added 1.51% to USD 20.33, but showed a weekly decline of 1%. Polkadot rose 1.29% to $6.22, but lost a corresponding 0.87% in the past seven days.
• The total crypto market capitalization increased by 0.95% in the last 24 hours to $1.19 trillion. Total trading volume in the same period rose 8.19% to $29.46 billion.
• In the non-fungible token (NFT) market, the Forkast 500 NFT index rose 0.12% to 3,968.42 in the 24 hours to 08:00 in Hong Kong, losing 2.34% for the week. The index is a proxy measure of the performance of the global NFT market and includes 500 eligible smart contracts on a given day. It is managed by Forkast Labs’ computer arm, CryptoSlam.
• US stock futures traded mixed from 08:00 in Hong Kong. Dow Jones Industrial Average futures rose 0.14%, S&P 500 futures rose 0.091% and Nasdaq 100 index futures fell 0.10%.
• The US unemployment rate, released last Friday, fell to 3.5% in March compared to 3.6% in February. The U.S. saw 236,000 jobs created in March, slightly below expectations but still pointing to a strong labor market, according to TradingEconomics.
• However, several US indicators released earlier last week pointed to a cooling economy. Job openings fell to 9.9 million in February, the lowest since May 2021. The US manufacturing PMI in March also signaled a possible recession, falling to 46.3%, down from 47.7% in February.
• US interest rates are now between 4.75% and 5%, the highest since June 2006. Ahead of the Federal Reserve rate meeting on May 3, analysts at CME Group expect a 35.3% chance of no change, while 64, 7% expect a 25 basis point increase, up from 44.5% on Friday.
• This week brings more economic indicators in the US – the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ consumer and producer price index on Thursday, the monthly retail sales report expected on Friday, and the minutes of the meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee expected to come out on Tuesday.

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