Bitcoin prices bounced back from $23,000 in early morning trading in Asia on Wednesday. Ether and most of the other 10 non-volatile cryptocurrencies bounced back from yesterday’s losses, amid strong gains in U.S. equities in January and optimism that the U.S. economy is headed for a moderate contraction. Top memecoin Dogecoin led the pack, still reeling from reports on Monday that the longtime custodian and head of Twitter Inc. Elon Musk is looking to bring payment systems to the social media platform.
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Fast facts
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Bitcoin rose 1.3% to $23,133 in the 24 hours to 8 a.m. in Hong Kong, extending its gains over the past seven days to 2.2%. According to data from CoinMarketCap, Ether rose 1.2% to 1,586 US dollars and is up 1.9% for the week.
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Dogecoin rose 8.7% to open at US$0.09, a weekly increase of 14.3%. While Monday’s report focused on adding fiat payments to Twitter, Musk left the door open for it to be extended to cryptocurrency as well.
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Cardano rose 4.8% to $0.39, gaining 8.7% in the past seven days. Polygon climbed 2.1% to $1.11 for a strong weekly gain of 16.11%. Solana fell less than 0.1% to $23.94, the only index in the top 10, but still up 5.1% for the week.
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The cryptocurrency market cap increased by 1.4% to $1.05 trillion, with total trading volume down 17.1% to $47.26 billion.
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US stocks gained on Tuesday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 1.1%, the S&P 500 Index was up 1.5% and the Nasdaq Composite Index was up 1.7% on the day.
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Tuesday’s performance caps a strong first month of 2023 for equity markets. The S&P 500 gained 6.2% over the past 31 days for its best start to the year since 2019, while the Nasdaq rose 10.7% over the same period for its best January since 2001. here
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Markets rallied on strong earnings, with Exxon Mobil Corp and Pfizer Inc. both posting record gains on the back of rising oil prices and continued production of a Covid-19 vaccine.
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The US Federal Reserve decides on interest rates on Wednesday at 2:00 PM ET. Analysts at CME Group mostly expect the Fed to raise rates by 25 basis points, breaking the range of 50 to 75 basis points since March last year.
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The Fed’s aggressive rate hikes last year seem to have had the desired effect on reducing inflation. In December, the US consumer price index rose 6.5% year-on-year, down from 7.1% in November and the biggest monthly drop since April 2020.
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Earnings for tech leaders are coming this week, including Apple Inc., Amazon.com Inc., and Alphabet Inc., the parent company of search engine Google. Non-farm payrolls data also came out on Friday, another key inflation indicator.
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