Bitcoin rose Tuesday morning in Asia to hold over US$30,000, helped by British bank Standard Chartered Plc which predicts the token will hit US$120,000 by the end of 2024. Ether and most 10 other non-stable cryptocurrencies also rose, along with Polygon. Matic token spearheads the rally. U.S. equity futures also gained in the Asian time zone on Tuesday after Federal Reserve officials said the bank’s monetary tightening cycle was coming to an end.
Crypto
Bitcoin gained 0.79% in the past 24 hours to hit US$30,392 at 07:40 AM in Hong Kong. The world’s largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization has been fluctuating around the US$30,000 line recently, but prices softened late last week on mixed signals about the likelihood of fund approval. bitcoin cash exchange traded. The token is still sitting on a weekly loss of 2.35%, according to data from CoinMarketCap.
However, some optimism returned to Bitcoin’s price outlook after Standard Chartered Bank predicted in a Monday report that the token would reach US$50,000 by the end of 2023 and US$120,000 by the end of 2023. the following year, according to Reuters on Tuesday.
With Bitcoin’s next halving event taking place next April, Bitcoin’s dwindling supply could push prices up and, in turn, prompt miners to hoard the token, according to the Standard Chartered report. “Increasing miners’ profitability per BTC (bitcoin) mined means they can sell less while maintaining cash inflows, reducing the net supply of BTC, and driving up BTC prices,” according to the report.
Another price boost: Cryptocurrency-related investment products saw net inflows of US$136 million in the week ending July 7, marking the third consecutive week of inflows and correcting completely the previous nine weeks of releases, according to European cryptocurrency investment firm CoinShares on Monday.
“Bitcoin remains at the center of investors’ minds, with inflows totaling $133 million last week, while short bitcoin recorded outflows of $1.8 million, its 11th consecutive week, once again demonstrating more than investors prefer the asset over altcoins at present,” CoinShares wrote in the report. .
Ether was up 1.00% to hit US$1,880, but like bitcoin its prices are falling and it is still down 3.80% for the week.
Most of the other top 10 non-stable cryptocurrencies saw gains in the last 24 hours, with the exception of Dogecoin and Solana’s SOL, which both fell, but the declines were less than 0.5%. .
Polygon’s Matic led the winners, jumping 6.97% to US$0.7356 and adding 3.33% for the week. “Some on-chain positive signs for the 12th-ranked market cap asset include rebounding network growth, diminishing supply on exchanges and weak profit taking,” said crypto data tracker Santiment in a tweet on Tuesday morning, adding that the token is on a “mini run”.
Matic’s recent surge comes as Polygon Labs unveiled its Polygon 2.0 roadmap on June 30, promising to become the “value layer of the internet” and on Friday appointed the firm’s former legal director, Marc Boiron, as the new general manager.
However, the token has had a tough run in 2023, down around 2%, and has a lot of catching up to do against peers such as Solana, which is up 115% so far this year. Polkadot gained 18% over the same period
The total crypto market capitalization increased by 0.81% in the past 24 hours to US$1.18 trillion, while trading volume jumped by 70.03% to US$33.54 billion. U.S. dollars.
NFT volumes slip amid low price floor
Indices are indirect measures of the performance of the global NFT market. They are operated by CryptoSlam, a sister company of Forkast.News under the Forkast.Labs umbrella.
The main Forkast 500 NFT index plunged 0.20% in the 24 hours at 10:00 a.m. in Hong Kong to 2,745.16. Forkast’s Solana, Polygon, and Cardano NFT market indices also fell, while Ethereum’s index rose.
Total NFT transaction volume fell 9.41% to $25.36 million, according to data from Cryptoslam. Ethereum blockchain volume fell 2.39% to $15.67 million, while Bitcoin volume fell 39.97% to $4.22 million.
“Essentially a red day or even a day for collections as far as price floors go,” said Yehudah Petscher, NFT strategist at Forkast Labs, the parent company of Forkast.News. “Traders seem to be running out of cash and most accept the idea that the NFT market will continue to decline.”
Per collection, Ethereum-based Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFT collection transaction volume topped the list, increasing slightly by 2.96% to $2.16 million, according to data from CryptoSlam. Bitcoin-based $FRAM BRC-20 NFTs and uncategorized ordinal listings ranked second and third.
BAYC and Mutant Ape Yacht Club floor prices have risen slightly over the past 24 hours, while Azuki and Captainz are down around 1%. All four NFT collections have seen their price floors fall by 20% to 60% over the past month, according to data from NFT analytics platform WGMI.io.
Blur Blend, the NFT lending platform of the Blur.io NFT Marketplace, has started support Azuki Elementals and Elemental Beans on Tuesday. Both NFT Collections are spin-offs of Chiru Labs’ Azuki, which have been criticized by some holders for being too similar to the original Azuki Collection.
“Azuki Elementals and Elemental Beanz were both added to Blur’s Blend loan protocol, and both saw their prices drop as traders eventually sold out to exit breeding collections,” Petscher said. “Maybe they fear further drops in the price floor with gamified trading.”
No more rate hikes?
U.S. stock futures were trading higher at 12:50 a.m. in Hong Kong, following gains in the three major U.S. indices in regular trading on Monday.
U.S. stocks received a boost from comments from several Federal Reserve officials on Monday, indicating that while further interest rate hikes are needed to rein in inflation, the Fed’s monetary tightening cycle is nearing its end. end, Reuters reported on Tuesday.
“I think the funds rate will need to rise a bit more from where it is now and then stay there for a while as we accumulate more information on how the economy is doing,” he said on Monday. Cleveland Federal Reserve Chair Loretta J. Mester. . The Fed was “closer to the end of our tightening phase than the beginning,” she added.
Most of Asia’s major equity indices benefited from Wall Street’s optimism, with China’s Shanghai Composite, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng, South Korea’s Kospi and Japan’s Nikkei all advancing on Tuesday.
However, Citigroup lowered the outlook for U.S. stocks to neutral on Monday on expectations of a pullback in growth stocks and a recession in the fourth quarter of the year, according to Reuters on Monday.
The US Consumer Price Index (CPI) for June is released on Wednesday, providing the latest information on the pace of inflation in the United States. Financial giants including BlackRock, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Citigroup are also expected to report second-quarter results this week.
The Federal Reserve will meet on July 26 to make its next decision on interest rates, which are now between 5% and 5.25%, the CME tool FedWatch predicts a 92.4% chance for an increase in interest rates. rate by 25 basis points this month, and a 7.6% chance for the Fed to leave the rate unchanged.
In China, the People’s Bank of China and the National Financial Regulatory Administration said in a joint statement on Monday that they would take steps to stabilize the country’s real estate sector, including encouraging financial institutions to extend outstanding loans from real estate companies through negotiations. The signal was welcomed by investors and sent real estate developer stocks higher, according to Bloomberg on Tuesday.
(Updates with the equity section.)