Bitcoin rose while Ether fell in Thursday afternoon trade in Asia, with declines across most of the other top 10 non-stablecoin cryptocurrencies by market capitalization. Solana’s SOL token was the biggest loser of the day. Asian equities were mixed, while U.S. stock futures strengthened in anticipation of April’s nonfarm payroll report. The U.S. dollar index fell, as woes at regional U.S. lenders PacWest and Western Alliance fueled market concerns of a banking crisis.
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Crypto
Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency, rose 0.11% to US$29,124 in the 24 hours to 4:30 p.m. in Hong Kong. Ether fell 0.19% to US$1,899.
“Bitcoin needs to close above US$32,000 to confirm an upward trend,” Tom Wan, a research analyst at 21.co, the parent company of 21Shares, an issuer of crypto exchange-traded products, wrote in an email to Forkast.
Solana’s SOL token fell 0.98% to US$21.93 as the day’s biggest loser, followed by Dogecoin that slipped 0.77% to US$0.0787.
The global crypto market capitalization decreased by 0.07% to US$1.19 trillion, while total crypto market volume fell 20.02% to US$34.25 billion.
NFT
In the non-fungible token (NFT) market, the Forkast 500 NFT index fell 0.4% to 3,645.72 points in the 24 hours to 4:30 p.m. in Hong Kong and declined 1.85% during the week.
24-hour NFT sales on the Ethereum network declined for a third consecutive day, falling 23.64% to US$13.9 million, despite a 47.40% surge in 24-hour sales for Azuki, the leading NFT collection on Ethereum. 24-hour sales for the Bored Ape Yacht Club declined 58.7% to US$872,793, according to CryptoSlam data.
Equities
Asian equities were mixed on Friday. The Shenzhen Component Index fell 0.82%, the Shanghai Composite lost 0.48%, while Japan’s Nikkei 225 inched up 0.12% and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index increased 0.5%.
Investors continued to assess the global monetary policy outlook after the U.S. Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank raised interest rates by 25 basis points this week.
U.S. stock futures strengthened as of 4:30 p.m. in Hong Kong. The tech-heavy Nasdaq-100 futures rose 0.43%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average futures strengthened 0.25% and the S&P 500 futures index gained 0.40%.
U.S. nonfarm payroll data will be released later Friday. The world’s largest economy is expected to have added 180,000 jobs in April, which would be the smallest gain since December 2020, but well above the 70,000-100,000 monthly job gain needed to sustain the growth of the working-age demographic.
The U.S. dollar fell 0.12% to 101.2 points, weighed down by recession fears and banking woes after shares of Los Angeles-based PacWest fell over 50% yesterday following a Bloomberg report that the lender was exploring a sale or other capital-raising moves in the wake of the recent collapse of other banks.
Shares of Western Alliance bank holding company also plummeted over 60% on Thursday after a report alleged that it is exploring a potential sale. The company’s shares started recovering today after Western Alliance denied the report.
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