Bitcoin and Ether prices strengthened in Wednesday afternoon trade, along with all other top 10 non-stablecoin cryptocurrencies by market capitalization. Cardano led gains at 6.91%, followed by Dogecoin at 5.21%, though prices of top 10 tokens remain subdued on the week.
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Fast facts
- Bitcoin rose 1.58% to US$22,124 in the 24 hours to 4 p.m. in Hong Kong, but lost 4.74% on the week. Ethereum climbed 2.79% to change hands at US$1,548, after losing 7.74% in the last seven days, according to CoinMarketCap data.
- Cardano led gains among top 10 cryptos, rising 6.91% to US$0.3842, but posted a weekly loss of 3.88%. Dogecoin gained 5.21% to US$0.08604 after losing 6.75% on the week.
- The global crypto market cap rose 2.24% on the day to US$1.03 trillion, with trading volumes increasing 9.8% to US$58.21 billion.
- BNB, the native token of world’s largest crypto exchange Binance, gained 1.24% to US$297, after losing 10.36% over the last seven days. The rise comes after Binance’s chief executive Changpeng Zhao said there is an increasing need for non-U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoins as regulatory pressures in the U.S. intensifies.
- Asian equity markets declined on Wednesday as traders took in U.S. inflation data and comments from central banks on higher interest rates. The U.S. Labor Department reported on Tuesday a year-on-year increase of 6.4% in the January consumer price index, higher than the expected 6.2%. But inflation in the world’s biggest economy cooled from a 40-year high of 9.1% in June 2022, and has been slowing over the last few months.
- “There has been a shift as markets are now betting on a longer period of higher interest rates as they begin to take heed of the message from the U.S. Federal Reserve officials that there’s still a way to cool inflation in the face of a robust labor market,” Nigel Green, chief executive of financial advisory firm deVere Group, said.
- Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index slipped 1.65% on Wednesday and the Shenzhen Component Index dropped 0.25%, while the Shanghai Composite declined 0.39%.
- Japan’s Nikkei 225 dropped 0.37% while India’s Sensex index at the Bombay Stock Exchange dipped 0.15% at 1.36 p.m. local time.
- See related article: Digital asset industry comes under fire at hearing by U.S. Senate on ‘Crypto Crash’