Bitcoin, Ether Prices Fall; Asian shares, US stock futures fall ahead of key inflation data
Bitcoin and Ethereum prices fell on Wednesday afternoon in Asia, while other top 10 non-stablecoin cryptos traded mixed, with Polygon’s Matic leading the losers. Asian shares and US stock futures fell as investors braced for key inflation data in the US and China, amid limited progress in talks on the US debt ceiling.
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Bitcoin prices may extend decline
Bitcoin fell 0.43% to US$27,559 in the 24 hours to 16:00 in Hong Kong, bringing its weekly loss to 3.86%, according to CoinMarketCap data.
Bitcoin prices rallied despite the network surpassing 5 million Ordinals inscriptions on Tuesday, according to data from Dune Analytics. Launched on January 21, Bitcoin Ordinals is a protocol that allows digital assets to be written in satoshis (sats), the lowest Bitcoin value.
Ordinal inscriptions are compared to non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on Bitcoin. They allow users to batch create images, videos, text and even video games, which can take advantage of the network’s immutability.
Ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency after Bitcoin, also fell in 24 hours, down 0.6% to $1,839 and losing 1.43% for the week.
“Bitcoin’s value proposition is determined by transaction volumes and the mining of those transactions, while Ether’s comes from transaction validation, and additionally through the use of applications built on the Ethereum blockchain,” according to an S&P Global report published on May 9.
Polygon’s Matic token was the biggest loser in 24 hours, falling 2.16% to $0.8771 and down 10.24% over the past seven days, the biggest weekly loss among the top 10 cryptos.
XRP, Dogecoin and Tron rose on the day. While XRP and Dogecoin fell on the week, Tron’s TRX token increased week-on-week, making it the only top 10 non-stablecoin crypto to gain this week.
Global crypto market cap fell 0.21% to $1.14 trillion and total crypto market volume fell 26.17% to $30.72 billion in the last 24 hours.
Ethereum NFT sales pick up
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 NFT market, the Forkast 500 NFT Index fell 1.46% in the 24 hours to 16:30 in Hong Kong and fell 6.59% for the week.
24-hour NFT sales on Ethereum, the leading blockchain for NFTs, rose 16.56% to $18.5 million, driven by a 323.59% increase in the Azuki sale that generated over $2 million in sales for the blockchain. Sales for Bored Ape Yacht Club, the largest Ethereum-native NFT collection, also increased by 113.69% to $1.5 million in the last 24 hours.
Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, said on Tuesday that its NFT marketplace will soon add support for Bitcoin Ordinals subscriptions. The platform currently supports NFTs on BNB Chain, Ethereum and Polygon.
As for today’s most notable NFT sales, Maverick Position NFT #533 sold for US$421,319 while CryptoPunk #1630 sold for US$200,968, according to CryptoSlam data.
Shares mostly fall
Asian stocks were mostly lower on Wednesday, ahead of the latest US and Chinese inflation data. The Shanghai Composite fell 1.15% while the Shenzhen Component Index rose 0.14%. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index fell 0.53% and Japan’s Nikkei 225 fell 0.41%.
China’s consumer and producer price data, set for release on Thursday, are forecast to reflect slowing inflation in the Asian economic powerhouse.
US stock futures fell at 16:30 in Hong Kong, ahead of the release of the latest US consumer price index (CPI), a key inflation indicator that could influence the Federal Reserve’s next interest rate decision. The Fed is due to meet on June 14 to decide interest rates, which are now between 5% and 5.25%, the highest since 2006.
The S&P 500 futures index fell 0.13%, the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 futures lost 0.25% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average futures fell 0.11%.
The world’s largest economy will release its inflation report for April later on Wednesday. Economists predict that the headline CPI will come in at an annual rate of 5% for April, corresponding to March. US inflation has been declining every month since hitting a 40-year high of 9.1% in June 2022.
The U.S. dollar index rose 0.13% to 101.7 points on Wednesday, even as Congress made little progress toward avoiding a first-ever U.S. default. A new meeting is scheduled for Friday.
The euro was down 0.09% at $1.09 as investors await more speeches from European Central Bank policymakers later this week. The ECB’s fight against inflation is far from over and more action is still required, ECB President Christine Lagarde said in an interview with the Japanese newspaper Nikkei on Wednesday.
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