BTC price at 29K as it recovers from Fed dip

Good morning. Here’s what happens:

Prices: Bank failures play a bigger role in dictating the price of bitcoin rather than interest rates.

Insight: Mad Lads was a bright spot for Solana NFTs, but transaction volume is now lagging behind. The price of the SOL token has remained stable.

Bitcoin Recovers After Fall After Interest Rate Rise

Bitcoin is slowly recovering after the US Federal Reserve raised interest rates by 25 basis points (bps). Initially, bitcoin was down 1% following the rate hike, but has since rallied 1.3% to $29,115. Ether, meanwhile, is up 1.6% at $1,908.

Banrion Capital’s chief strategist, Victoria Bills, points to the ongoing banking crisis in the US as another driver of crypto prices offsetting the Fed’s ongoing rate hikes.

“As panic and market reactivity increase, perceptions of banking sector failures could fuel the ongoing turmoil in regional banks,” Bills said on CoinDesk TV.

“The US banking crisis and the intense shift in US bank deposits to US money market funds is seen by crypto supporters as a vindication of the crypto ecosystem,” the report noted, with analysts claiming that the crisis “exposed the weaknesses of the traditional financial system given that bank maturity mismatches are susceptible to bank runs .”

No doubt all eyes will be on Friday’s US employment numbers to see how it affects the price of crypto. But there could be another bank failure before then, driving up the crypto price.

Mad Lads was a bright spot for Solana NFTs, but transaction volume is still lagging

MadLad’s NFT collection managed to “break the internet” in April with its coveted JPEGs on the blockchain, but Solana’s weekly NFT volume is in the red, compared to Ethereum, which remains well in the green.

Data from CryptoSlam shows that in the last week the number of sales on Solana has decreased 52.7%, while the number of transactions is down 16%.

Meanwhile, Ethereum’s calculations are up across the board.

But Solana’s buyers and sellers are both in the green when Madlads and other NFTs change hands. Buyers have increased by 40% in the last week, while sellers have increased by 31%.

Data from Nansen shows that the volume from Madlads has gone down slowly but steadily over the past month.

Nansen’s data shows that while the Madlads coin has had more market interest than any other pool in the past month (the only other NFT pool to surpass it in Solana’s history is Okay Bears), interest is waning.

But this waning interest is nothing out of the ordinary. A similar story can be found elsewhere.

Still, it could be good news for Solana investors and stakeholders. Despite the wind coming out of the sails of the Solana NFT collections, the price of SOL hasn’t moved much. It’s down just 2% in the past month and currently trades above $22, according to market data.

Some crypto observers are predicting that bitcoin’s rally so far this year could stall if Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell refrains from signaling a long-awaited break in the tightening cycle today. Banrion Capital Management Chief Investment Strategist Victoria Bills shared her crypto market analysis. Additionally, Solana Labs CEO and co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko discussed expectations for Solana Labs’ crypto-forward smartphone dubbed “Saga.” Sotheby’s head of digital art and NFT’s Michael Bouhanna and Oppenheimer senior analyst Owen Lau also joined the conversation.