As investor confidence continued to soar following U.K. bank Standard Chartered’s Monday forecast for a Bitcoin rise, Bitcoin increased on Wednesday morning in Asia to trade above US$30,500. The majority of the top 10 non-stablecoin cryptocurrencies saw increases while Ether traded unchanged, with Solana’s SOL token leading the winners. Prior to the announcement of June inflation statistics on Wednesday, U.S. equity futures increased in value in the Asia time zone.
Crypto
According to data from CoinMarketCap, Bitcoin increased 0.74% over the previous day to US$30,608 as of 7:30 a.m. in Hong Kong, although it still had a weekly loss of 0.63%.
Following Standard Chartered Bank’s Monday prediction that Bitcoin would reach US$50,000 by the end of 2023 and US$120,000 in 2024, the sentiment among cryptocurrency investors is still upbeat.
The evidence for a major increase in the price of Bitcoin in the near future is apparent, according to Bradley Duke, founder and chief strategy officer of crypto ETP provider ETC Group.
According to Duke, the supply side of the equation is still infamously fixed at 21 million bitcoins. However, the news flow at the moment indicates that the demand side is likely to rise sharply.
Given their track record of success, Blackrock filed for a spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) in the US, and it is believed that this application will be accepted. It will now be possible for the enormous amount of unmet demand for Bitcoin in the US and elsewhere to enter the market, and it only makes sense that the price of Bitcoin will rise proportionately as a result, according to Duke.
The Chicago Board Options Exchange (Cboe) also amended several of its own spot Bitcoin ETF proposals on Tuesday. With the American cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, it implemented surveillance-sharing arrangements. The action caused the share price of the latter to increase 9.78% on Tuesday.
According to Greg Moritz, co-founder of the cryptocurrency hedge fund AltTab Capital, several variables may also contribute to a potential Bitcoin rise in 2024. He mentioned that the “halving” of Bitcoin will take place in 2019. This is a planned event in which the rate at which new Bitcoin is created is halved, creating scarcity.
Ether fell 0.20% to US$1,877 in the meantime. The second-largest cryptocurrency, which is down 3.13% for the week, is still recovering from some of its losses, similar to Bitcoin.
Except for Ether, XRP, and TRX, all of the other top 10 non-stablecoin cryptocurrencies had price increases over the previous day. All three recorded slight drops of less than 0.35 percent.
The top gainer was Solana’s SOL, which increased 3.11% to US$22.05 and 13.67% for the week. The spike coincides with the expansion of the decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem, which is located in Solana. According to DeFi data tracker DefiLlama, the total locked value on the Solana platform has increased 8.3% since the beginning of July.
“SOL has increased by more than 15% over the past week. Although I still have my doubts about its potential to once again lead the smart-contract market, it appears that traders have a different perspective or are at least willing to wager that the coin is currently undervalued, according to Justin d’Anethan, head of APAC business development at Belgian crypto market maker Keyrock.
A so-called whale trader deposited more than 141,000 BNB tokens (about US$35 million) to cryptocurrency exchange Binance, according to a report published on Wednesday by blockchain analytics company Lookonchain. The action might be seen as an introduction to the Arkham (ARKM) token sale, which began early on Wednesday in Asia. Investors’ expectations have at least increased as a result of the transaction.
While trade volume fell 17.52% to US$27.46 billion during the past 24 hours, the total market value of cryptocurrencies increased 0.50% to US$1.19 trillion.
BAYC keeps losing ground
The indices serve as proxies for performance indicators for the worldwide NFT market. Forkast.News subsidiary CryptoSlam, which operates under the Forkast.Labs name, is in charge of them.
In the 24 hours leading up to 9:30 a.m. in Hong Kong, the primary Forkast 500 NFT index decreased 0.91% to 2,707. The market indices for Ethereum, Solana, and Polygon NFT on Forkast all decreased, while Cardano’s index increased.
On July 11, Parallel Avatars, an Ethereum-based NFT collection for the Web3 science fiction game Parallel, went live. It dominated the market by selling $1.50 million worth of goods the previous day. According to data from CryptoSlam, it was the third-largest collection by 24-hour volume.
With a 24-hour volume of US$985,500, Station3 Patron, another recently launched Ethereum NFT collection, came in fifth place.
The Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) collection’s sales volume plummeted 13.92% to US$850,425; it was no longer among the top 5 NFT collections. In the last 30 days, the floor price of the collection has decreased by 24%, according to NFT analytics platform WGMI.io.
The utility token of the BAYC ecosystem, ApeCoin, dropped to an all-time low of US$1.86 last Friday due to the pessimistic outlook for BAYC. According to data from CoinGecko, that represents a decrease of almost 50% since the beginning of the year.
Petscher wrote in a statement on Wednesday, “There’s not much on the horizon that may turn this market around, and instead, I envision prices sliding much more when traders realize last week’s recovery was fleeting. The conclusion of Blur’s second season’s rewards could mark a turning point, either putting a halt to widespread wash trading or ushering in brand-new incentives.
Elsewhere, A relationship between Line Next, an NFT division of social media platform Line Corp., and the Japanese gaming giant Sega Corporation was announced on Monday. The two businesses will create a blockchain-based game with NFTs and electronic payments using one of Sega’s famous gaming titles. Days after it was claimed that Sega was shutting down its Web3 gaming operations, the alliance was announced.
US equities rise ahead of the CPI data release.
In Hong Kong, U.S. stock futures were trading unchanged as of 11:50 a.m. S&P 500 and Nasdaq futures moved slightly higher, while Dow Jones Industrial Average futures declined. In regular Tuesday trading, all three of the main U.S. indices ended higher.
Investors are anticipating the release of the June consumer price index (CPI) for the United States on Wednesday. The latest information on the nation’s inflation position as well as the Federal Reserve’s upcoming monetary measures will be included in the report.
On Monday, a number of Fed representatives said that additional interest rate increases could be required to lower the annual inflation rate below 2%. Others, on the other hand, pointed out that the Fed’s cycle of monetary tightening is about to come to an end.
In June, analysts anticipate that the annual inflation rate in the United States will decrease to 3.03 percent from 4% in May.
On July 26, the Federal Reserve will meet to discuss how to proceed with interest rates, which are now between 5% and 5.25%. The CME FedWatch Tool forecasts a 92.4% possibility that the Fed will raise interest rates by 25 basis points this month and a 7.6% chance that the rate will remain constant.
On Thursday, the U.S. producer price index for June is scheduled to be made public. To start off the reporting season, American banking behemoths JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, and BlackRock will also reveal their second-quarter financial results later this week.
The major market indices traded in a range on Wednesday morning elsewhere. While Hong Kong’s Hang Seng and South Korea’s Kospi traded higher, the Shanghai Composite in China and the Nikkei in Japan both dipped slightly.
China’s new loans increased for the month of June, according to data released by the People’s Bank of China on Tuesday. There is now reason to believe that the economy will grow more quickly in the second half of the year.
