Bitcoin and Ether fell in Monday morning trading in Asia, along with most other top 10 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, excluding stablecoins. BNB added to gains after the token’s issuer and world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance Global Inc., confirmed its investment in Twitter Inc. on Friday.
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Fast facts
- Bitcoin fell 0.9% to US$20,631 in the 24 hours to 8 a.m. in Hong Kong, while Ether lost 1.8% to US$1,590, according to data from CoinMarketCap. Polkadot rose 0.2% to US$6.65, while Cardano dropped 3.4% to US$0.40 and XRP fell 2.5% to US$0.45.
- BNB gained 3.1% to US$313.76, bringing its gains for the past seven days to 13.6%. Binance confirmed Friday it will invest US$500 million as part of Tesla Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk’s US$44 billion takeover of the Twitter social media giant. “We aim to play a role in bringing social media and Web3 together in order to broaden the use and adoption of crypto and blockchain technology,” Changpeng Zhao, Binance founder and CEO, said in a statement shared with Forkast.
- Leading memecoin Dogecoin fell 3.5% to $0.1177 after a 95% surge over the week as longtime Doge advocate Musk acquired Twitter. Dogecoin jumped two positions to eighth on CoinMarketCap’s list of top 10 crypto, reaching $0.1494 on Sunday, its highest price since early May. Musk has floated the idea of increased cryptocurrency integration with the platform in the future, including possibly allowing users to pay the US$3 monthly fee for Twitter’s premium service, Twitter Blue, using Dogecoin.
- Copycat memecoin Shiba Inu token saw the biggest losses, falling 7.6% to $0.00001193. However, its 17.5% gain over the past seven days bumped it up two spots on CoinMarketCap’s list, overtaking Dai and Tron. Its US$0.00001488 price on Sunday was the highest since late August.
- U.S. equities posted strong gains on Friday. The S&P 500 Index rose 2.5% and the Nasdaq Composite Index finished up 2.9%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 2.6%, making it the fourth positive week in a row for the Dow, the first since November 2021.
- Markets were buoyed by the U.S. Labor Department’s Employment Cost Index released on Friday, which showed that labor costs rose 1.2% in Q3 from the 1.3% in the previous quarter, suggesting inflation may be peaking if it had not already done so, which would ease pressure on the U.S. Fed to keep raising interest rates in coming months. Market analysts are predicting an 80% chance of the Fed raising rates by 75-basis points at its next meeting in November.
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