Bitcoin and Ether prices fell in Tuesday morning trading in Asia, along with the rest of the top 10 non-stablecoin cryptocurrencies as concerns about the stability of crypto exchanges and a possible global recession continued to weigh on markets. Dogecoin saw the biggest losses as Twitter Inc. boss and memecoin advocate Elon Musk looks likely to step down from the top job at the social media platform following a user poll.
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Fast facts
- Bitcoin fell 1.8% to US$16,456 in the 24 hours to 8 a.m. in Hong Kong, while Ether dropped 1.4% to US$1,168, according to CoinMarketCap. Bitcoin has lost almost 2% in the last seven days, while Ether is off more than 5%.
- The global crypto market cap fell 2.6% in the past 24 hours to US$790 billion, while the total trading volume jumped 47.3% to US$30.81 billion.
- Dogecoin slumped l9% to US$0.07161 following a Twitter poll in which 57% of over 17 million respondents said they think Musk should step down as chief executive. While Musk said he would abide by the results of the poll, he has since said there is no successor to him yet.
- Musk bought Twitter for US$44 billion and took on the top job about 50 days ago, but had maintained he saw the Twitter CEO role as temporary. Musk, also the CEO of electric car manufacturer Tesla Inc. and one of the world’s richest men, has advocated for leading memecoin Dogecoin. That included the idea of incorporating Dogecoin as a possible payment method on Twitter. Shiba Inu lost 4.8% to trade at US$$0.000008171.
- Ongoing concerns about the stability of the world’s largest crypto exchange Binance Global Inc. pushed down its BNB native token by 4.3% to US$240.61.
- Binance published a review of its reserves following the collapse of the FTX exchange last month, but the Mazars Group accounting firm that did the review has since halted work for crypto exchanges, adding to concerns about using such platforms as clients pulled billions of dollars of investments from Binance.
- “Centralized exchanges (CEXs) adopting “proof of reserves” is simply not enough to win back users,” Holger Arians, chief executive at Web3 solutions firm Banxa Holdings Inc. wrote in a recent opinion piece for Forkast. “While CEXs are convenient and boast a superior user experience, they should not be used to house long-term investments.”
- Cardano lost 5.2% to US$0.25 and Polygon fell by 5.1% to change hands at US$0.77.
- U.S. stocks closed lower on Monday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.5%, the S&P 500 Index lost 0.9% and the Nasdaq Composite Index finished the day down 1.5%.
- The U.S. Federal Reserve raised interest rates by the expected 50-basis points on Wednesday, bringing rates to between 4.25% and 4.5% — the highest level in 15 years. But Fed Chair Jerome Powell followed up with hawkish comments about more rate hikes ahead, adding to worries about a global recession.
- Tesla shares closed at US$149.87 on Monday, the first time the company’s stock price had fallen below US$150 in over two years. This comes as analysts say that Musk is too focused on Twitter. Tesla shares have lost 57.5% year to date, compared to the 19.9% lost on the S&P 500 and 32.6% on the Nasdaq.
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