Bitcoin and Ether were little changed in a muted morning of trading on Wednesday in Asia, as few top 10 non-stablecoin cryptocurrencies moved by more than 1% in either direction. Polkadot was one standout in the positive, while Solana saw the biggest loss after posting the largest gains in the list on Tuesday.
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Fast facts
- Bitcoin rose less than 0.1% to US$21,168 in the 24 hours to 8 a.m. in Hong Kong, an increase of 21.3% over the past calendar week. Ether edged up 0.4% to US$1,568 to bring its gains for the week to 17.3%, according to data from CoinMarketCap.
- Polkadot rose 2.7% to trade at US$5.96, a gain of 21.2% in the past week. Wednesday’s rise comes as the network upgraded its XCM “cross-consensus messaging” format to version 3, which reportedly improves cross-chain communication and lays the groundwork for non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on the network.
- Litecoin rose 1.5% to US$87.12, an increase of 7.7% over the past seven days. Solana fell by 2.9% to US$22.90, but was still trading up 41.4% over the past week.
- The total crypto market capitalization over the 24 hours rose less than 0.1% to US$991.9 billion, while trading volume fell 11.4% to US$48 billion.
- U.S. equities also had a mixed day on Tuesday, the first day of trading for the week after Monday’s Martin Luther King Jr. public holiday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 1.1%, the S&P 500 Index dropped 0.2% and the Nasdaq Composite Index closed up 0.1%.
- The Dow’s losses came amid poor earnings results on Tuesday from U.S. banking giant Goldman Sachs Group Inc., which helped end a four-day winning streak for the Dow as the bank’s shares dropped more than 6%. Goldman’s Q4 profits fell to US$1.19 billion, down 66% from US$3.81 billion a year ago and well below estimates.
- Other banks posted better-than-expected results, with Morgan Stanley & Co, LLC’s fourth-quarter revenue coming in at US$12.75 billion to beat expectations of US$12.54 billion. The shares rose almost 6%.
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