Bitcoin Wobbles Below $26K
By Laxmikant Khanvilkar
Leading virtual digital assets (VDAs) continue to gyrate in narrow range due to fairly thin investor participation ahead of the key event – the Federal Reserve decision on interest rate.
After the much awaited CPI number that met expectations, investors are now hoping to see the U.S. central bank suspend its more than year-long campaign of interest rate hikes. That should propel the markets to make their next move, analysts said.
For now, cryptocurrencies have taken the waning inflation in a positive stride. Bitcoin (BTC), the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalisation, was recently trading at $25,960, up 0.34% over the past 24 hours. BTC has been stagnant below $26,000 for much of the past four days as investors set aside angst about Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) lawsuits against crypto exchanges Binance and Coinbase, and awaited the latest inflation reading and Wednesday’s Federal Reserve interest rate decision.
Ether, the second largest crypto by market value, followed BTC’s lead, rising initially before returning some of its gains. ETH was recently changing hands at about $1,742, up 0.55%.
Among the 19 tokens mentioned in either the Binance or Coinbase suits, or both, ALG AND MATIC, the tokens of the Polygon and Algorand smart contracts blockchains, were recently up 0.3% and 0.8%, while AXIE, the native crypto of gaming platform Axie Infinity, fell slightly.
The global crypto market cap increased 0.12% to $1.06 tn, over the last 24-hours. The total crypto market volume, during this period soared 12.25% to $33.47 bn, of which the total volume in DeFi is currently $2.22 bn, or 6.63% of the total crypto market volume while that of stablecoins is $32.18 bn, or 96.16%. Bitcoin’s dominance is currently 47.67%, a decrease of 0.06% over the day.
IC15 index, the barometer of top fifteen tokens, edged up 0.1% to 36,518.
Meanwhile, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that the CPI had risen 4%, better than the projected 4.1% and then April’s 4.9%.
Those numbers buoyed major indices. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite and S&P 500 added 0.8% and 0.6%, respectively. The yield on U.S. 10-year Treasury rose to a still robust 3.8%.
Analysts are hoping for the continuation in the current environment of cooling energy prices and inflation readings. Any change in those macroeconomic indicators have potential to unsettled crypto assets.
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