Bitcoin Trades Above USD 28,000, Dogecoin Leads Gains Among Top 10 Cryptos

Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, managed to trade above USD 28,000 on Tuesday afternoon in Asia. Ether and most other top 10 non-stablecoin cryptocurrencies also rose, with Dogecoin gaining the most. Asian markets were mixed after weak US factory data and renewed worries over recession and inflation after the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and their allies (OPEC+) unexpectedly cut oil production.

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Fast facts

• Bitcoin rose 0.26% to US$28,029 in the 24 hours to 16:00 on Tuesday in Hong Kong, bringing its weekly gains to 3.97%, according to CoinMarketCap data. Ether rose 0.96% to $1,812, gaining 5.09% in the past seven days.

• Dogecoin was the top gainer among the top 10 cryptos, rising 26.1% in the last 24 hours to $0.09845, and gaining 35.72% for the week. Memecoin’s price rise comes after Elon Musk, CEO of social media platform Twitter and a fan of the token, changed Twitter’s blue bird icon to a Japanese Shiba Inu, the same breed of dog featured on Dogecoin.

• XRP fell the most on the day, down 3.07% to $0.4979, but rallied 2.85% on the week. Ripple Labs, whose crypto payment platform is powered by XRP, could get a favorable ruling in a lawsuit filed against it by the US Securities and Exchange Commission for allegedly selling $1.3 billion in unregistered securities.

• Global crypto market capitalization rose 0.77% to $1.17 trillion, while total crypto market volume strengthened 41.98% to $49.31 billion over the past 24 hours.

• Asian stock markets were mixed on Tuesday after weak US production data and concerns over inflation and economic growth after OPEC+ cut oil production by more than 1 million barrels per day. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index lost 0.66%, while Japan’s Nikkei 225 rose 0.35%. The Shanghai Composite rose 0.49% and the Shenzhen Component Index fell 0.25%.

• The Discard 500 NFT index fell 1.05% on the day to 4,014 points, giving a weekly gain of 0.17%. 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 administered by Discard Labs data branch, CryptoSlam.

• European stock markets opened higher on Tuesday, as the benchmark STOXX 600 index rose nearly 0.35% and Germany’s DAX 40 rose 0.57% by . 11 local time, after data revealed that inflation in the eurozone slowed more than expected in February.

• Robert Holzmann, a board member of the European Central Bank (ECB), has said that the ECB may raise interest rates by another half point if the crisis in the banking sector does not worsen, according to a Bloomberg report.

• “If in May things haven’t really gotten more dire, I think we can afford another 50 basis points, and especially, if no social agreement emerges to curb inflation, we’ll have to do more to produce it,” Holzmann said.

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