Bitcoin Moves Higher, Ether Breaks US$2000, US Stocks Rise on Weak Inflation Readings
Bitcoin moved higher in the US$30,000 band in Friday morning trade in Asia amid strong gains among the 10 non-stablecoin cryptocurrencies. Ethereum led the gainers after blockchain’s Shanghai hard fork this week, jumping nearly 10% and breaching the $2,000 mark for the first time since August 2022. US stocks rose overnight on weaker readings in the US producer price index (PPI) and jobless claims, which increasing optimism that the Federal Reserve may soon end its year-long cycle of raising interest rates to curb inflation.
Bitcoin rose 2.54% to US$30,769 in the 24 hours to 09:00 a.m. in Hong Kong for a weekly gain of 9.47%, according to CoinMarketCap data. The leading cryptocurrency has gained 83% so far this year as it looked to rediscover a role as a hedge against inflation and recession, and looks set to test $31,000 as it moved within a couple of hundred dollars of that ceiling in trade later in the morning in Asia. .
Bitcoin also found support after the London Stock Exchange Group plc. on Thursday said it had partnered with GFO-X — Britain’s first regulated and centrally cleared digital asset derivatives trading venue — to offer the country’s first trading and clearing services for Bitcoin index derivatives, according to Reuters on Friday.
Ethereum jumped 9.97% to $2,100, adding 11.66% for the week following the network’s Shanghai upgrade, which allows investors to withdraw their Ether for the first time. Etheruem holders have so far withdrawn about 215,000 staked Ether, while another 961,000 withdrawals are pending, according to data from Token Unlocks, representing about 6% of total staked Ether.
Earlier speculation that the Shanghai upgrade could lead to a flood of sales and lower the price of the token is not about to pan out, Chen Zhuling, co-founder and CEO of crypto betting platform RockX, said in an interview on Thursday. Even if Ether is unstaked, it doesn’t necessarily mean people are going to sell them, because they can also use it for other DeFi investments, he said.
Dogecoin jumped 6.25% to $0.0885 to hold a weekly gain of 2.79%, according to multi-asset trading platform eToro announced on Thursday partnered with Elon Musk’s Twitter to enable cryptocurrency and stock trading on the world’s leading social media platform.
Cardano rose 4.54% to $0.4264, up 11.00% for the week. Cardano Foundation launched the alpha phase of Aiken on Thursday, an open-source smart contract language and toolchain that aims to facilitate smart contract development on the Cardano blockchain, according to the company.
The total crypto market capitalization rose 3.85% in the last 24 hours to $1.28 trillion. Total trading volume in the last 24 hours decreased 0.05% to $48.58 billion.
In the non-fungible token (NFT) market, the Forkast 500 NFT index added 0.82% to 4,017.62 in the 24 hours to 09:00 in Hong Kong, up 0.32% 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.
US stocks closed higher on Thursday after economic data pointed to a slowdown in inflation. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 1.14%, the S&P 500 rose 1.33%, and the Nasdaq Composite Index rose 1.99%.
US PPI in March rose, but at a pace of 2.7%, or less than the 3% expected to mark the smallest increase since January 2021, according to Reuters on Thursday. U.S. weekly jobless claims also pointed to a slowing economy at 239,000, higher than analysts’ expectations of 235,000, according to a Bloomberg report.
Investor sentiment was also boosted by an unexpected rise in China exports in March, which jumped 14.8% from a year earlier, well ahead of expectations for a 7% decline, according to Reuters.
US interest rates are currently between 4.75% and 5%, the highest since June 2006, and analysts at CME Group now see a 33.5% chance that the Fed will not raise rates at its next meeting on May 3, while 66 .5% predict a 25 basis point rate hike, down from 70.4% on Thursday.
US stock futures traded mixed from 09.00 in Hong Kong. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.09 percent. S&P 500 futures rose 0.05%. The Nasdaq Composite Index rose 0.02 percent.
