Bitcoin and Ether were both gaining in Monday morning trading in Asia, as were all other top 10 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, excluding stablecoins. U.S. equities finished last week higher in their biggest days of gains since June as Wall Street gears up this week for the busiest week of earnings season so far.
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Fast facts
- Bitcoin rose 1.9% in the past 24 hours to trade at US$19,576 as of 8:30 a.m. in Hong Kong, while Ether gained 4.3% to trade at US$1,368, according to data from CoinMarketCap. Solana also posted strong gains, rising 4.6% to trade at US$29.33, while Cardano was up 2.7% to change hands at US$0.36.
- Polygon saw the greatest gains in CoinMarketCap’s top 10, rising 8.6% to US$0.90 following a week in which the network posted strong adoption data showing it is now hosting 53,000 decentralized apps on the network, an eightfold increase since the beginning of the year.
- U.S. equities posted their biggest day of gains since June on Friday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 2.5%, the S&P 500 jumped 2.4% and the Nasdaq Composite Index finished the day 2.4% higher.
- These gains follow San Francisco Federal Reserve President Mary Daly indicating that the Fed needs to start considering slowing down its recent pace of interest rate hikes, saying at a talk at the University of California Berkeley that the Fed does not want to over-tighten. Despite this, she added that she believes interest rates may rise as high as 5% in 2023, though the pace of gains may ease.
- The Fed has raised interest rates over 300 basis points from near zero in March to tackle runaway inflation, which was at 8.2% in September, near a forty-year high. The Fed has indicated it will continue its campaign of raising interest rates until inflation hits a target range of 2%.
- Many large U.S. firms have posted better-than-expected results in the earnings season so far, including banking giants Bank of America Corp. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc., and this week is expected to see a further 165 S&P 500 companies and 12 Dow components report their results.
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