Bitcoin, Ether continue to run up; Solana, Dogecoin Leads Winners; US stocks rise

Bitcoin and Ether continued their strong gains for the week to surge in Wednesday morning trade in Asia, with most of the 10 non-stablecoin cryptocurrencies logging advances over the past seven days. Solana and Dogecoin led the Wednesday gainers. The rise in cryptocurrencies followed a rally in US stocks on Tuesday as concerns about bank failures eased and February inflation data released on the same day was in line with expectations.

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Fast facts

• Bitcoin rose 2.10% in the last 24 hours to USD 24,789 at 09:00 a.m. in Hong Kong, according to CoinMarketCap data, for a weekly gain of 11.39%. The world’s largest cryptocurrency briefly breached the $26,000 ceiling on Tuesday night in Asia and is now up nearly 50% year-to-date.

• Ether gained 1.90% to $1,706, gaining 8.86% in the last seven days.

• Solana led the gainers in the top 10, adding 2.75% to $20.93 for a 3.12% gain for the week. The Solana Foundation introduced Ask Solana U on Tuesday, an AI-powered chat-like engine that aims to help Web3 developers on the Solana blockchain.

• Dogecoin gained 2.74% to USD 0.07478. The memecoin is up 0.85% in the seven-day period, but still down more than 7% since the beginning of March.

• XRP rose 0.54% higher to trade at $0.3735, but is the only top 10 non-stablecoin cryptocurrency with a weekly loss, down 2.20%. Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of Ripple Labs whose payment network is powered by XRP, tweeted on Monday that Ripple had some exposure to the failed Silicon Valley Bank. This was accompanied by a large flow of XRP transactions on the same day, according to crypto tracking Whale alert.

• Crypto exchange Binance’s BNB rose 0.51% to USD 309.51, for a weekly gain of 6.88%. The world’s largest crypto exchange said on Tuesday that it will stop deposits and withdrawals of British pounds by May this year, after its local fiat entry and exit partner said it was ending the service due to regulatory concerns.

• The total crypto market capitalization rose by 1.30% in the last 24 hours to $1.09 trillion. Total trading volume in the last 24 hours increased by 8.47% to 101.54 billion USD.

• US stocks closed higher on Tuesday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 1.06%, the S&P 500 rose 1.65% and the Nasdaq Composite Index had the biggest gain of 2.14%.

• Efforts by US regulators and President Joe Biden to calm markets appeared to have had the desired effect after the collapse of US banks over the weekend. First Republic Bank, which fell more than 60% on Monday and was briefly suspended from trading, returned nearly 27% on Tuesday, according to CNBC.

• Investors in US stocks and cryptocurrencies also received some reassurance from the US Labor Department’s February inflation report released on Tuesday, which showed the consumer price index (CPI) rose 0.6% on the month and 6% on the year, all in line with expectations. Although still above the Federal Reserve’s stated goal of keeping annual inflation below 2%, the data suggest that US inflation is moderating and could convince the Fed to ease rate hikes.

• After a series of rate hikes last year and into 2023, US interest rates are now between 4.5% and 4.75%, the highest since October 2007. Analysts at CME Group expect a 79.7% chance that the Fed will raise rates by 25 basis points this. month. The chance of no rate increase is 20.3%, down from 35% on Tuesday.

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