Markets: Bitcoin, Ether fall; Dogecoin gains as Elon Musk’s Twitter buyout moves ahead

Bitcoin’s recent price gains came to a halt in Friday morning trading in Asia though it remained above the US$20,000 support line. Data released on Thursday showed U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) beat expectations in Q3, a sign interest rates may continue to rise. Ether also fell, along with most other top 10 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, excluding stablecoins. Leading memecoin Dogecoin was the only one on that list to rise, amid the pending sale of social media platform Twitter Inc., to long-time Dogecoin advocate, Elon Musk.

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Fast facts

• Bitcoin dropped 2.3% to US$20,287 in the 24 hours to 8 a.m. in Hong Kong, while Ether lost 3.3% to US$1,514, according to data from CoinMarketCap. Cardano saw the biggest decline of 3.7% among the top 10 to US$0.38, matched by Polygon that also fell 3.7% to US$0.90.
  
• Dogecoin rose 5.9% to US$0.076, though it pulled back from a peak of US$0.084 overnight, its highest since mid-August. The world’s leading memecointoken has surged 29.4% over the past seven days as Musk’s US$44 billion deal to buy Twitter nears completion. Musk Tweeted on Thursday that Twitter cannot become a “free-for-all hellscape” but added that he wants the platform to become more supportive of a wider set of viewpoints.
  
• U.S. equities had a mixed day on Thursday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.6%, the S&P 500 Index lost 0.6%, and the Nasdaq Composite Index fell 1.6%.
  
• The U.S. Commerce Department on Thursday reported GDP rose 2.6% in the third quarter, beating expectations of 2.4% and following a decline in the previous two quarters, which by technical definition meant the economy was in a recession.
  
• While markets initially responded positively to the GDP number, Marcus Sotiriou, an analyst at the publicly listed digital asset broker GlobalBlock, told Forkast via email that was short-lived “as it infers that the Federal Reserve have been given the green light to carry on with their aggressive policy measures and continue to hike rates.”
  
• The Federal Reserve lifted interest rates from near zero in March to 3.25% now to slow inflation that was running near a 40-year high of 8.2% in September. The Fed had indicated it will continue this policy until inflation reaches a target range of 2%.

See related article: Bitcoin drops 3% as U.S. inflation rises 0.4% in September