Bitcoin drifted down 0.54% in Friday afternoon trading in Asia to sustain a price level above the US$19,000 support line, amid sweeping losses among the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, excluding stablecoins, led by Cardano’s ADA.

Fast facts

Bitcoin traded at US$19,045.18 at 4 p.m. in Hong Kong, while Ether fell 0.48% to US$1,286.01, the second-least substantial loss among the top 10 cryptos following Tron’s 0.07% drop to US$0.062, according to data from CoinMarketCap.

ADA, the biggest loser out of the top 10 crypto, dropped 4.47% to change hands at US$0.338 and Solana fell 4.36% to US$27.98. Dogecoin shaved off 1.78% to US$0.059 amid reports that Elon Musk, a long-standing proponent of the memecoin, may be subject to national security reviews over his purchase of Twitter, which he teased a possible Dogecoin integration in various instances.

XRP fell 3.87% to US$0.4441, even as the general counsel of Ripple Labs Inc., the firm whose payment network is powered by XRP, announced Friday that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission had turned over to them critical emails from former SEC Corporation Finance Division director Willam Hinman, in which he states that Ether is not a security.

Asia equity markets were mixed following Wall Street’s dip overnight. The Nikkei 225 dipped 0.43% in Tokyo, while the Hong Kong Hang Seng Index lost 0.42% and the Shanghai Composite Index closed largely unchanged 0.13% up.

In European markets, the reaction to the resignation of UK Prime Minister Liz Truss on Thursday afternoon has been highly mixed, with the FTSE100 falling in the hour following Truss’ resignation speech before rallying to close 0.05% down, then sharply dropping 0.79% by 10 a.m. Friday morning in London. The pan-European Stoxx600 lost 1.09% by the same time on Friday. In figures released today, Britain’s dire economic situation seemed to extend, with net government borrowing for September leaping to £19.25 billion (US$21.4 billion), £3.85 billion higher than projected. Retail sales dropped 1.4% over the period, also worse than the 0.3% expected.
Inflation measurements continued to rise on Friday as Japan posted a hike in core consumer prices to 3% for the year to September. Malaysia’s inflation for the same period was announced as 4.5%, and Hong Kong’s as 4.4.%, much higher than the 2% forecast.

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