Bitcoin falls below US$23,000 as Fed says inflation remains stubborn. Most Top 10 Crypto Decline

Bitcoin fell back below $23,000 on Thursday morning in Asia, following overnight losses in US stock markets, amid comments from Federal Reserve officials that the battle to curb inflation is far from over. Ether fell along with most of the other top 10 non-stablecoin cryptocurrencies, with Polygon being the only one on the list to move higher.

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Fast facts

• Bitcoin fell 1.4% to $22,945 in the 24 hours to Ether lost 2.3% to $1,650, but is up 0.6% for the week, according to data from CoinMarketCap.

• Polygon rose 2.8% to $1.3, bringing its seven-day gain to 9.2% after expanding the token’s network. The Polygon DeGens campaign launched on Tuesday and features decentralized finance (DeFi) dApps on the Polygon blockchain. Non-fungible token (NFT) service. Premint added to support for Polygon on Wednesday, and the network announced on Tuesday that there were 1.64 million active wallets using Web3 social apps.

• The Shiba Inu token tumbled 4.4% to US$0.000001375 to post the biggest loss on CoinMarketCap’s list, but the Dogecoin copycat token is still up 14.7% in the past week.

• Crypto market capitalization fell 1.2% to $1.07 trillion in 24 hours, with total trading volume falling 3% to $58.69 billion.

• Henry Liu, CEO of British Virgin Islands-based crypto exchange BTSE, said the broader crypto market is still on a recovery trend after the sharp falls last year, pointing to 30%-plus gains in Bitcoin and Ether prices over the past month. “This trend could potentially continue in the near term, helping BTC to rise past the important psychological threshold of $25,000. Should this happen, a bull run could be in the offing,” he said in an email to Discard.

• US stocks fell on Wednesday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 0.6%, the S&P 500 fell 1.1% and the Nasdaq Composite Index closed up 1.7%.

• Macroeconomic trends remain a focus for crypto and equity investors. Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller said Wednesday that interest rates may need to rise to bring inflation under control in a speech at an agricultural conference at Arkansas State University. He did not say how much.

• New York Fed President John Williams said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal that interest rates may need to remain “restrictive” for a number of years to keep inflation at pre-pandemic levels, although he said he also agreed with the Fed’s recent decision to raise interest rates by just 25 basis points at its January meeting last week.

• Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell also said at the Economic Club of Washington this week that while the disinflation process had begun in the US economy, there was still much work to be done to bring inflation to an acceptable level.

• Analysts at CME Group predict a more than 90% chance the Fed will raise interest rates by another 25 basis points at its next meeting in March. US interest rates are currently at 4.5% to 4.75%, the highest in 15 years, and Fed officials have repeatedly indicated they may raise rates to as high as 5%.

• (Corrects the price of Bitcoin in the first point.)

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