Bitcoin and Ether were up during Asia trading hours on Thursday afternoon as many markets in Asia returned from the Lunar New Year break. Cardano’s ADA led the rally among top 10 non-stablecoin cryptocurrencies by market capitalization.
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Fast facts
- Bitcoin was up 1.21% in the past 24 hours, to trade at US$23,005 by 4 p.m. in Hong Kong. Ether gained 3.31% to change hands at US$1,606, according to CoinMarketCap data.
- Bitcoin’s rally this week displayed some correlation to the Nasdaq-100, a tech-heavy index, which is on pace to have its best month since July 2022.
- Cardano surged 4.84% to trade at US$0.37, and Solana had the second biggest gain with a 4.69% jump to US$24.39.
- The global cryptocurrency market capitalization increased by 1.89% to US$1.05 trillion in the 24 hours to 4 p.m. in Hong Kong. The total crypto market trading volume increased by 9.25% to US$62.70 billion.
- Traders returned from the Lunar New Year holidays in various Asian markets, where equities were up despite Wall Street’s overnight slide. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index inched up by 2.19%, its highest close in almost two years.
- Japan’s Nikkei 225 slid by 0.12% while South Korea’s latest economic data showed its GDP fell by 0.4% in the last quarter of 2022 from the third quarter, marking the first time its economy had contracted in two and a half years.
- Members of the Fed are scheduled to meet next week to decide the next move on interest rates. Analysts from CME Group predict a 99.8% chance of an increase of 25 basis points.
(Update: adds Bitcoin correlation to tech stocks in the second bullet.)
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