Bitcoin, Ether, Litecoin Rise, BNB Stumbles; US stock futures flat ahead of Fed rate decision
Bitcoin and Ether both gained ground in early Wednesday morning trading in Asia, with most other top 10 non-stablecoin cryptocurrencies mixed. Litecoin was among the winners, while BNB was the biggest loser. U.S. stock futures traded little changed after a decline on Wall Street, driven by more selling of regional lenders’ shares following a string of bank failures since March, the latest being First Republic Bank over the weekend. The Federal Reserve is expected to raise interest rates on Wednesday, with investors looking for signs that more rate hikes are in the offing.
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Crypto
Bitcoin rose 2.13% to US$28,684 in the 24 hours to 8:00 a.m. in Hong Kong, according to CoinMarketCap data. The world’s largest cryptocurrency gained 1.36% in the last seven days. Ether rose 2.14% to $1,871, up 0.26% for the week.
“It makes a lot of sense that Bitcoin has now started to rise again on the back of concerns in the banking sector,” Standard Chartered Bank’s head of crypto research Geoffrey Kendrick said in an interview with Forkast, noting that Bitcoin was developed in 2008 at the time of the global financial crisis. “At the time, the banks were suffering and it made a lot of sense in terms of the need for a trustless, very liquid asset that was peer-to-peer and didn’t require any intermediaries.”
Kendrick said Bitcoin could move as high as US$60,000 by the end of this year. In a report in April, Kendrick said Bitcoin has the potential to reach $100,000 by the end of 2024.
Most of the other top 10 non-stablecoin cryptocurrencies by market capitalization were mixed, with Litecoin gaining 1.91% to $88.28. However, the token has gone down with a 3.1% loss in the last seven days.
Litecoin creator and former Google engineer Charlie Lee wrote on Twitter on Tuesday that the token’s next halving event is in 92 days and it has the potential to increase to 10% of Bitcoin’s value. Halving refers to a pre-programmed reduction in the rate at which new tokens are created, which reduces supply and can drive prices higher.
Litecoin, a decentralized peer-to-peer digital currency much like Bitcoin, set an all-time high of $412 in May 2021.
Binance’s native BNB token led losses among the top 10 tokens, falling 2.09% to $321.88 for a weekly decline of 4.86%. Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, has battled regulatory scrutiny in the US this year. It was investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission, and sued by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission for allegedly violating federal regulations.
Total crypto market capitalization rose 1.43% in the last 24 hours to $1.18 trillion, while trading volume fell 14.38% to $35.14 billion.
NFT
The indices are proxy measures of the performance of the global NFT market. They are managed by CryptoSlam, a sister company of Forkast.News under the Forkast.Labs umbrella.
In the non-fungible token (NFT) market, the Forkast 500 NFT index fell 2.1% to 3,663.99 in the 24 hours to 08:00 in Hong Kong, down 4.33% for the week.
However, new investments in NFTs appear to be coming through the Blend peer-to-peer lending protocol launched on Monday by Blur, the world’s largest NFT marketplace. The protocol has handled over 900 loans involving more than US$19.2 million in Ether since its launch, according to crypto data platform Dune Dashboard.
Blend allows users to post collateral to buy high-cost NFTs, which the developers say is the same principle as a mortgage to buy a house.
“Blur launched Blend which allows you to buy 15 ETH of NFTs with just 2 ETH as a down payment with interest,” said Brian Boisjoli, Product Manager at NFT industry data aggregator Cryptoslam. “It’s clear to me that this lending protocol will bring in more capital.”
Meanwhile, US sports magazine Sports Illustrated announced on Tuesday that it is launching an NFT ticketing platform built on the Polygon network in partnership with blockchain company Consensys. The platform, called “Box Office by SI Tickets”, will sell tickets to live sporting events that include exclusive offers and loyalty benefits.
Stock
US stock futures were mixed as of 08:00 in Hong Kong. Dow Jones Industrial Average futures rose 0.033%, and S&P 500 index futures rose 0.018%. Nasdaq 100 futures fell 0.047 percent.
The three indexes closed lower in regular Tuesday trading amid a selloff in regional U.S. banks on concerns about the fragility of the nation’s banking system.
Investors await the Federal Reserve’s next move on interest rates, which will come on May 3. The Fed has repeatedly raised interest rates over the past year to try to bring inflation down to the 2% target range.
With US inflation still around 5%, analysts at CME Group now expect an 86.7% chance the Fed will raise interest rates by 25 basis points this week. Interest rates in the world’s largest economy are currently between 4.75% and 5%, the highest since June 2006.
A few other key inflation and business indicators of the US economy will be released this week, including earnings from Apple, the world’s largest company by market capitalization, on Thursday and April jobs on Friday.
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