Within a period of twenty-four hours, the price of bitcoin went down by 0.44%, bringing it to a level of $25,915 US dollars. This represents a weekly drop of 0.36%. According to data provided by CoinMarketCap, the market capitalization of the cryptocurrency experienced a decrease of 0.41%, bringing it to US$504.7 billion. On the other hand, the trading volume of the cryptocurrency increased by 40.10% in the last 24 hours.
On Monday, a market analyst working for the company XS.com, which is a multi-asset brokerage firm, named Rania Gule, highlighted the fact that the cryptocurrency market was observing a trend toward a decrease. The value of Bitcoin and a significant number of alternative cryptocurrencies were trading in negative territory. This shift was attributed to the statement that Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell made during the keynote address that he delivered at the Jackson Hole Symposium. In this statement, he mentioned the possibility of further interest rate hikes while emphasizing a cautious approach to making future decisions.
Gule emphasized that the fluctuation in the price of Bitcoin in recent days had been relatively contained within the range of US$25,752 to US$26,282. In addition, technical indicators were getting close to overbought levels on both the short-term and medium-term time scales, which indicated that there was the potential for Bitcoin to make an upward reversal.
“However, it is highly unlikely that there will be a significant upward movement unless there is a strong breakthrough of the significant resistance level at US$30,000, accompanied by a daily close above that threshold.” In the meantime, the predominant bearish sentiment continues to exert pressure on Bitcoin and the wider market for digital currencies in the near term. According to Gule, potential target levels to keep an eye on are in the neighborhood of US$25,500 and US$25,100.
The majority of the top 10 non-stablecoin cryptocurrencies have experienced price decreases over the past 24 hours, with the exception of Tron, which has managed to achieve a price increase of 0.11%, bringing it to US$0.07732. Tron also increased its value over the past week by 2.37%.
Although BNB, the native token of Binance, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world, experienced a loss of 0.32%, bringing its price down to US$216, it still managed to achieve an increase of 0.66% throughout the course of the week. According to a report that The Wall Street Journal published on Friday, Binance has taken steps to remove sanctioned Russian banks from its peer-to-peer trading service and has halted transactions involving five blacklisted Russian banks.
During the past twenty-four hours, the total market capitalization of cryptocurrencies experienced a decline of 0.62%, bringing the total to $1.04 trillion US dollars, while the trading volume experienced a notable increase of 27.69%, bringing the total to $18.86 billion US dollars.
A predicted decrease in sales of non-fungible tokens for the remainder of 2023
The performance of the global NFT market can be measured using the indexes that have been provided here. CryptoSlam, a subsidiary of Forkast.News that operates as part of the Forkast.Labs initiative, is in charge of their management.
Within a 24-hour period of time until 7 p.m. local time in Hong Kong, the primary Forkast 500 NFT index experienced a marginal increase of 0.18%, bringing the total value to 2,245.24. Nevertheless, this index experienced a decline of 3.54% over the course of the last week. Within the past day and a half, the Forkast Ethereum and Polygon indexes both experienced losses, but the Solana index experienced gains.
According to data provided by CryptoSlam, there was an increase of 5.04% in the overall sales volume of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), which came to a total of $10.15 million US dollars. Notwithstanding this, the number of transactions involving NFTs fell by 11.84%, and the number of NFT buyers fell by 4.27%.
“Over the weekend, it was hard for daily NFT sales to go over $10 million, which put us back to the low levels we saw in June 2021. The last week’s sales of $81 million were also the lowest in 115 weeks, said Yehudah Petscher, an NFT Strategist at Forkast Labs.
Petscher said, “This was kind of what I thought would happen. This time of year tends to be slower, and weekends usually have less going on.
This weekend, the Ethereum-based Bored Ape Yacht Club held a party in Miami to celebrate the Mutant Apes’ second birthday. “This could have kept many traders busy over the weekend and away from the market. We’ll have to see if things get better over the next week and weekend. Still, I think we’ll keep hitting new lows for the rest of the year.”
China’s new measures and Jerome Powell’s comments make stock markets around the world go up.
At the end of trading on Monday, the major stock markets in Asia were up because China had taken new steps to improve its capital markets. The second-largest economy in the world cut the stamp duty on stock trades in half, bringing it down to 0.05%. This is a change that hasn’t happened since 2008. Also, China lowered the margin requirements for buying securities from 100% to 80%.
The Shanghai Composite, the Shenzhen Component Index, the Nikkei 225 in Japan, the Hang Seng in Hong Kong, and the Kospi in South Korea all did well at the end of the day.
Kenny Wen, the head of investment strategy at the financial services company KGI Asia, commented, “While these policies could offer short-term assistance, investors remain concerned about China’s underlying issues, such as the property crisis and the decelerating economy.” The South China Morning Post wrote about this point of view in a story.
Even more recent predictions echo these worries. Nomura Holdings Inc. recently changed its prediction for China’s growth for the year from 5.1% to 4.6%. Morgan Stanley also changed its prediction for China’s growth in 2023 to 4.7%, and JPMorgan Chase & Co. changed it to 4.8%.
U.S. stock futures went up on Monday at 8 p.m. in Hong Kong. This was due to Federal Reserve Chair Powell’s speech at the Jackson Hole Economic Symposium the week before. Futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the S&P 500, and the Nasdaq 100 all moved up.
According to a research note from Singapore-based DBS, Powell’s speech in Jackson Hole was likely given in a cautious way to keep the market from getting too excited about the timing of possible rate cuts, not to signal that rates would be going up soon.
“Market indicators still point to the possibility of more rate hikes this year, but we don’t think that will happen,” DBS said. When we look ahead to next year, we agree with the idea that interest rates could go down by about 100 basis points in the second half of 2024. This forecast is for a time when growth will be much slower and inflation risks will be low.
In July, the Federal Reserve raised interest rates to a range of 5.25% to 5.50%. This was the highest level in 22 years.
During the afternoon trading hours in Europe, the stock markets went up. The benchmark STOXX 600 and Germany’s DAX 40 both moved in the right direction.
Christine Lagarde, the head of the European Central Bank, said Friday that the central bank is committed to keeping interest rates where they need to be until inflation reaches its target. Bloomberg reported that Lagarde said, “In the current situation, this means setting interest rates so that they are tight enough for as long as it takes to get inflation back to our medium-term target of 2%.”
