Bitcoin Treads Water Below USD 22,500, Ether Falls With Other Top 10 Cryptocurrencies

Cryptocurrencies started the working week in Asia in the red, with Bitcoin, Ether and the rest of the 10 non-stablecoin tokens trading lower on Monday morning. Concern remains evident over the fate of cryptobank Silvergate, which warned of financial problems last week. Several leading crypto platforms have cut ties with the bank. Those concerns overrode the bullish day for US stocks on Friday, as comments from Federal Reserve officials appeared to ease worries about sharper rate hikes ahead. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell is appearing before Congress this week to give more indications of current policy views at the central bank.

See related article: Circle joins Crypto.com, Coinbase to cut ties with controversial crypto bank Silvergate

Fast facts

• Bitcoin was down 0.45% in the last 24 hours to $22,465 as of at 9:30 a.m. in Hong Kong, according to CoinMarketCap data, bringing its seven-day loss to 4.33%. Ether fell 0.98% to $1,567, losing 4.15% in the past seven days.

• Solana fell 2.48% to $20.96 and is down 9.09% for the week. Solana Labs unveiled a plan to improve network upgrades last Wednesday, after a bug slowed transactions on Solana and forced the network to restart on February 26.

• XRP fell 2.35% to $0.37, for a weekly loss of 2.48%. Ripple, the crypto payment network powered by XRP, said last Friday that a recent decision by the US Supreme Court was in support of Ripple in its ongoing lawsuit with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), according to Reuters.

• Silvergate Bank discontinued the Silvergate Exchange Network (SEN) on Friday, a service that enabled customers to transact around the clock. Silvergate said Thursday it was evaluating its “ability to continue as a going concern,” which resulted in several crypto firms cutting ties with the beleaguered bank.

• The total crypto market cap has risen 0.33% in the last 24 hours to $1.03 trillion. Total trading volume in the last 24 hours rose 7.76% to USD 28.85 billion.

• US stocks closed up on Friday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 1.17%, the S&P 500 rose 1.61% and the Nasdaq Composite Index had the biggest gain of 1.97%.

• The rally in stock markets followed Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic commenting that he favors a 25 basis point rate hike when the Fed meets later this month, in line with market expectations. He also suggested that the series of interest rate hikes that started last year to tackle a rise in inflation may stop in the summer. However, both Bostic and Fed Governor Christopher Waller emphasized that the Fed will be guided by what the data shows about inflation.

• Investors are positioning for this week’s data release on the state of the US labor market and comments from Fed Chairman Jerome Powell when he appears before the Senate Banking Committee and the House Financial Services Committee on Tuesday and Wednesday.

• The Fed will make its next move on interest rates on March 22, with rates between 4.5% and 4.75%, the highest since October 2007. Analysts at CME Group expect a 73.0% chance the Fed will raise rates by another 25 basis points this month. They also predict a 27.0% chance of a 50 basis point increase, down from 27.7% last Friday.

See related article: Ethereum’s core developers are delaying the Shanghai hard fork until early April