Bitcoin was trading above US$20,000 in Wednesday morning trading in Asia after struggling to break that resistance level for much of the past three weeks. The world’s largest cryptocurrency rose along with Ether and the rest of the crypto top 10 by market capitalization, with Dogecoin posting the most significant gains.
See related article: Markets: Bitcoin price rises above US$19,000, Ether and rest of crypto top 10 gain
Fast facts
- Bitcoin rose 3.6% in the past 24 hours to change hands at US$20,336 at 8 a.m. in Hong Kong, and Ether gained 2.9% to US$1,362, according to data from CoinMarketCap.
- Leading memecoin Dogecoin gained 9.2% to trade at US$0.065, following news that Tesla CEO Elon Musk is proceeding with his US$44 billion purchase of social media firm Twitter. Musk has been a long-time advocate for Dogecoin and has hinted in the past few months at increased integration of the cryptocurrency onto the platform.
- Shiba Inu Token, a copycat memecoin drawing from the popularity of Doge, was also up, gaining 4.2% to $0.00001163. XRP also gained 3.7% to US$0.48. Solana was up 3.5%, changing hands at US$34.12 while BNB jumped 3.2% to trade at US$296.
- U.S. equities posted strong back-to-back gains on Tuesday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 2.8%, the Nasdaq Composite Index finished the day 3.3% higher and the S&P 500 Index closed up 3.1%, bringing its weekly gains to 5.7% and marking the index’s biggest two-day rally since March 2020.
- The latest employment figures released on Tuesday show the number of job openings in the U.S. fell by 1.1 million to 10.05 million in August, the biggest fall in nearly two and half years. Despite being bad news for job seekers, investors may have taken this as a signal the Federal Reserve’s campaign of tackling inflation through rising interest rates is beginning to cool the economy.
- According to the Labor Department’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, there were 1.7 job openings for each unemployed person in August, down from 2 in July, but this figure still remains above its historical average. While this metric is a reflection of the strength of the economy, the Fed has indicated it plans to continue raising interest rates until inflation reaches a target range of 2%.
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