Bitcoin gained in Thursday morning trading in Asia, with the world’s largest cryptocurrency holding above support at US$19,000. Ether, second on the list of top 10 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, excluding stablecoins, also gained. Other coins on the top 10 moving higher included Solana, XRP and Tron. Cardano fell.
See related article: Binance to hard fork BNB Smart Chain amid heated debate around decentralization
Fast facts
- Bitcoin gained 0.6% in the past 24 hours to trade at US$19,156 as of 8 a.m. in Hong Kong. Ether rose 1.2% to US$1,294, according to data from CoinMarketCap.
- Tron gained 0.2% to trade at US$0.06, Solana rose 1.3% to US$31.16 and XRP was up 0.6% to US$0.48. Cardano saw the heaviest losses, trading down 2.5% to change hands at US$0.38.
- BNB was little changed, dropping 0.2% to trade at US$270.96. This comes after the BNB Smart Chain (BSC) successfully underwent a hardfork at around 5 p.m. Hong Kong on Wednesday. The network was forked to address a software weakness that led to a US$100 million hack on Oct. 6. The blockchain that hosts the BNB token is operated by Binance Global Inc., the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange.
- U.S. equities ended the day lower on Wednesday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Nasdaq Composite Index both lost 0.1% while the S&P 500 Index fell 0.3%. This marks a six-day losing streak for the S&P and the Nasdaq.
- These losses come amid the release of the minutes from the Federal Open Markets Committee’s (FOMC) September meeting where officials expressed surprise at the consistent level of inflation and expected interest rates to remain elevated until inflation starts to subside. The Fed raised interest rates by 75 basis points in that meeting to bring them to 3%.
- Investors now await the release of the Consumer Price Index on Thursday, which will show inflation levels for September. The most recent CPI data showed inflation was running at 8.3% for the 12 months to August. The Fed is aiming to bring inflation to a target rate of 2%.
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