Bitcoin, Ether gains, but fails to erase last week’s losses

Bitcoin opened the week higher on Monday morning in Asia, but wrapped up below US$28,000 after a weekend slide. Ether and most of the other top 10 non-stablecoin cryptocurrencies rallied but still recorded losses over the past seven days from a correction that started after recent rallies. XRP led the gainers. US stock futures fell in Asia ahead of a slew of first-quarter results from major US companies in the coming week, with a forecast predicting a general decline in numbers.

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Fast facts

• Bitcoin rose 0.97% to $27,805 in the 24 hours to 9:00 a.m. in Hong Kong, but had a weekly loss of 6.90%, according to CoinMarketCap data. The world’s largest cryptocurrency fell to $27,169 on Saturday, its lowest since March 24. However, the token is still up 65% since the start of the year.
• Bitcoin’s price rise this year has led to some profits, Kasper Vandeloock, CEO of quantitative trading firm Musca Capital, said in an interview. He added that he expects more downward pressure on Bitcoin’s price because the US government plans to sell its holdings of 41,490 Bitcoin ($1.1 billion) this year.
• Bitcoin needs to find buying support at $27,500 to weaken the downtrend, according to John Isige, analyst at crypto trading platform Vauld.
• Ether rose 1.05% to $1,876, but like many other top 10 tokens, it’s on a seven-day losing streak, down 9.94%. The second-largest cryptocurrency has lost most of its gains since April 12, when the Ethereum blockchain completed the Shanghai hard fork.
• XRP led the gainers, rising 3.48% to $0.4823, but also down 5.84% for the week.
• The total crypto market capitalization increased by 0.16% in the last 24 hours to $1.17 trillion. The total trading volume in the last 24 hours fell by 6.30% to 29.41 billion USD.
• In the non-fungible token (NFT) market, the Forkast 500 NFT index fell 0.74% to 3,786.45 in the 24 hours to 9:00 a.m. in Hong Kong, down 6.47% 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 CryptoSlam, a sister company of Forkast.News under the Forkast.Labs umbrella.
• The hype for meme coins and low market capitalization NFTs, following the stagnation in larger NFT communities such as Bored Ape Yacht Club, has started new price patterns in cryptocurrencies and NFTs, increasing volatility, said Yohann Calpu, analyst at Discard Labs.
• US stock futures were trading lower as of 9:00 a.m. in Hong Kong. The Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 futures both fell 0.26%. The Nasdaq Composite Index fell 0.28 percent. The three indexes rose on Friday, but ended the week lower on a mixed outlook for the US economy.
• U.S. business activity in April expanded at the fastest pace in 11 months, according to a report from S&P Global Inc. on Friday, but other economic data last week pointed to a slowdown in the labor market, retail sales and manufacturing. US gross domestic product for the first quarter will be published on April 27, and will be another indicator of the state of the world’s largest economy.
• Amid this mixed picture, more than a third of S&P 500 companies will report first-quarter results this week, including Microsoft, Alphabet and Amazon. Financial data services provider Refinitiv expects the annual earnings of S&P 500 companies in the first quarter to fall by 4.7%, according to a report published on Friday.
• Adding even more to this confused brew, several Federal Reserve officials last week said they envisioned more rate hikes in 2023 as they are not convinced inflation is under control, raising concerns about a hard landing and possible recession for the American economy.
• US interest rates are currently between 4.75% and 5%, the highest since June 2006. Analysts at CME Group now see a 10.9% chance that the Fed will leave rates unchanged at its next meeting on May 3, while 89 .1% predict a 25 basis point increase, up from 82.1% on Friday.

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