Bitcoin traded little changed Monday morning in Asia, holding above a four-month high of US$22,000 amid a broader rally over the weekend, helped by comments from a U.S. Federal Reserve official backing a smaller interest rate increase at the central bank’s meeting at the end of this month. Ether was also little changed in a mixed morning for the top 10 non-stablecoin cryptocurrencies. Dogecoin led gains, while Solana posted the biggest loss.
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Fast facts
- Bitcoin traded 0.2% lower at US$22,722 in the 24 hours to 8 a.m. in Hong Kong, bringing gains in the past calendar week to 8.8%. The world’s largest cryptocurrency reached a four-month high of US$23,278 on Saturday morning and is now trading above where it was before the market-wide slump that followed the collapse of Bahamas-based crypto exchange FTX.com.
- Ether gained 0.1% to US$1,628, a rise of 4.9% for the week., according to data from CoinMarketCap.
- Dogecoin rose 4.2% to US$0.08, a gain of 2.5% for the week. The world’s leading memecoin reached US$0.09 overnight to a five-week high.
- Solana fell 1.6% to trade at US$24.24, but held gains of 5.9% for the past week. The token’s gains over the weekend saw it climb several places on CoinMarketCap’s list of biggest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization and is now in slot 10.
- The total crypto market capitalization over the 24 hours dipped 1.6% to US$1.03 trillion, while trading volume fell 16.1 % to US$52.8 billion. The total crypto market cap reached US$1.05 trillion on Saturday, the highest since early November, or just before the collapse of FTX.
- U.S. equities rose on Friday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 1%, the S&P 500 Index jumped 1.9% and the Nasdaq Composite Index closed up 2.7% to post a weekly gain of 0.6% in its third consecutive week of gains.
- The Nasdaq was helped by the strong performance from Netflix Inc. which jumped 8.5% to US$ 342.50 off the back of better-than-expected subscriber numbers. Alphabet Inc., the parent company of search engine Google, rose 5.3% to US$98.02 after it announced it was laying off roughly 12,000 staff, or about 6% of its workforce.
- U.S. Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller said that based on recent economic data he supported raising interest rates by only 25 basis points at the central bank’s next meeting, in comments prepared for delivery at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York on Friday.
- Last month, the Fed raised interest rates by 50-basis points to between 4.25% and 4.5%, the highest in 15 years. The Fed is next scheduled to meet on Jan. 31 – Feb. 1, where analysts from CME Group predict a 99.8% chance of a raise of 25 basis points.
- Other major U.S. earnings reports this week include Tesla, Microsoft and Visa. Federal Reserve members will be in a so-called blackout period before they meet to decide the next move on interest rates at the end of the month. Other U.S. economic indicators coming this week that may influence that decision include durable goods orders and consumer sentiment.
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