Bitcoin Regains $29.2K; Altcoins Wobble As BoJ Mull Policy Twist
By Laxmikant Khanvilkar
Leading virtual digital assets (VDA) have turned wobbly during early Friday morning in Asia after a report that the Bank of Japan was mulling a change to its yield curve control policy.
Bitcoin (BTC) ticked lower in initial hours, but has regained its lost posture to some extent. It was recently quoting down 0.27% versus 24 hours earlier to $29,269. The largest cryptocurrency by the market capitalisation spent most of Thursday’s session absorbing after effects from the much anticipated 25 basis point interest rate hikes by the U.S. central bank and then the European Central Bank (ECB). It has also maintained its resilience amid macroeconomic challenges that previously weighed on cryptos.
Ether (ETH), the Ethereum blockchain’s cryptocurrency, followed similar path and was recently changing hands at $1,861.53, down 0.46% from the previous day.
Other major cryptos by market cap were in negative territory. Popular memecoin DOGE and MATIC, the token of smart contracts platform Polygon, were recently off 2% and 2.2%, respectively. Stellar Lumens’ XLM token, which rose by double-digits the previous day, was up a more modest 1.8%.
The global crypto market cap, eased 0.20% to $1.18 tn, over the last 24-hours. Simultaneously, the total crypto market volume rose 17.50% to $25.88 bn. The total volume in DeFi is currently $2.62 bn and all stablecoins $23.84 bn, representing 10.14% and 92.14% respectively, of the total crypto market 24-hour volume. Bitcoin’s dominance eased 0.09% to 48.18%.
IC15 index, the barometer of top fifteen tokens, edged lower 0.31% to 38,833.
Experts have highlighted the relatively low trade volume and retail investor participation as a precursor to recent short lived rallies would revert back to mean. This means, markets will soon enter consolidation phase and no more dramatic rally in Bitcoin until next year’s halving.
Elsewhere, U.S. equity indexes fell with the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite and S&P 500 off 0.5% and 0.6%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average’s also declined 0.7% to snap its longest winning streak in more than three decades.
You need to login in order to Like