On Tuesday morning in Asia, Bitcoin’s value briefly dropped below $30,000 before recovering. Other leading cryptocurrencies, such as Ether, also experienced declines, but Solana was hardest hit. However, Matic from Polygon managed to gain more than one percent at one point. The trading of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) slowed during this period, and U.S. stock futures showed little change following Monday’s gains. On Wednesday, investors anticipated a series of earnings reports, including those from major U.S. banks. Overall, the cryptocurrency market was quite volatile, and different coins displayed varying levels of performance, while NFT trading declined, and the stock market appeared to be in a wait-and-see mode ahead of upcoming earnings reports.
Drops in Bitcoin and Ether
The price of one Bitcoin dropped by 0.55% over the course of the previous 24 hours, bringing it down to US$30,160.39 as of 06:40 local time in Hong Kong.
According to the data provided by CryptoMarketCap, it experienced a decrease of 0.62% over the course of the week. The value of one token even fell as low as US$29,685.78 at one point during trading in the early morning of Tuesday in Asia.
Based on Alex Kuptsikevich, a senior market analyst at FxPro, the trend for Bitcoin’s price on a weekly timeframe shows the highs and lows going up while the close and open go down.
In the event that the current levels are unable to sustain a rally, there is a possibility of a correction to the region around $27,000; this is especially true if the risk-off sentiment becomes more pronounced later in the week.
Several spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) applications were submitted in June, resulting in increased investor interest in the world’s largest cryptocurrency, which is currently valued at $586 billion.
Notably, the largest asset manager in the world, BlackRock, also submitted one of these applications. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) officially accepted BlackRock, WisdomTree, VanEck, and others’ Bitcoin ETF applications for review on July 13.
According to CoinShares, Bitcoin received US$140 million in investments in crypto-focused funds over the past week, representing 99.9% of the total investments in such funds. Relying on the data from CoinShares, a total of $742 million has been invested in crypto funds over the past four weeks, representing the largest inflow since the fourth quarter of 2021.
Ether decreased by 1.07%, reaching $1,913.56, but has maintained a 2.03% increase over the past week. With the exception of Polygon’s Matic, which increased its weekly gains to 5.99%, the majority of the other prominent non-stablecoin cryptocurrencies were also in the red. During early trading, Matic climbed 0.37% to $0.781 and continued to rise throughout the morning.
On a different note, Polygon Labs announced a more secure, scalable, and frictionless version of its native token, Pol.
Solana suffered the largest decline among the top 10 cryptocurrencies, falling 3.26 percent to $26.74. Nonetheless, this could be attributed to profit-taking, as the token’s price increased by a remarkable 25.55% over the previous week.
In terms of the crypto market as a whole, the total market capitalization has decreased by 0.49% over the past 24 hours to $1.21 trillion. Positively, trading volume rose substantially by 42.52 percent to $35.54 billion.
The NFT market is experiencing a “substantial slowdown.”
Indexes that are managed by CryptoSlam, a subsidiary of Forkast.News that falls under the Forkast.Labs umbrella and functions as a sister company to Forkast.News, are used to measure how well the global NFT market is performing. To be more specific, the Forkast 500 NFT index had a drop of 0.27% in the previous twenty-four hours, bringing it to a value of 2,719.10 as of 7:45 in the morning in Hong Kong. The index has fallen by 0.43% over the course of the past week.
Yehudah Petscher, an NFT Strategist at Forkast Labs, the parent company of Forkast.News, commented on the situation by stating that the drop in the Forkast 500 NFT Index was due to a slow day of trading. Forkast Labs is the company that owns Forkast.News. He pointed out that trading in Ethereum had a significant drop, with only 14,006 total transactions recorded on Sunday.
This was the lowest number of transactions recorded in nearly two years, since July 24, 2021, when there were 13,560 transactions recorded. In addition, the number of unique buyers in the NFT market experienced a significant slowdown, falling below 10,000 for the first time in recent history.
Forkast’s non-fungible token (NFT) market indices all showed growth, with the exception of the Polygon index, which saw a decrease in value. These indices evaluate the performance of the Ethereum, Solana, and Cardano blockchains.
Data from CryptoSlam show that the total trading volume of NFTs in the previous 24 hours reached US$18.51 million, up 1.45% from the previous day’s volume. Specifically, the Ethereum-based art NFT collection known as Opepen Edition ranked highest in trading volume on CryptoSlam. Its price has increased by 2.93% in the past day, reaching US$782,290.
Yehudah Petscher referred to Opepen as a fascinating project because it combines easily digestible profile pictures with conceptual art. Forkast Labs was the company that created Opepen. Influencers and well-known entities from the Web3 ecosystem, such as OpenSea and Rarible, are actively participating by matching their profiles to their brands by using Opepen as their profile picture.
ImmutableX’s Gods Unchained Cards, a collection of non-fungible tokens used in the trading card game of the same name, came in second place in terms of trading volume over the course of a 24-hour period. Despite a 2.19% decrease in value, it still managed to reach US$675,685 in trading volume. This is despite the fact that the value decreased.
In other news, the quarterback for the Kansas City Chiefs and reigning NFL Super Bowl champion Patrick Mahomes announced on Twitter that he will launch his second line of NFTs inspired by his football career. Decrypt’s information indicates that the September launch date for these brand-new collectibles.
Gm and welcome to the @MuseumOfMahomes…
The countdown to kick-off starts now ⏰ #MuseumOfMahomes
https://t.co/mHxz0lDyRs pic.twitter.com/3mYq0M1DQX— Patrick Mahomes II (@PatrickMahomes) July 17, 2023
Futures for U.S. stocks barely changed, and markets in Asia went down.
U.S. stock futures were not moving significantly at 10:00 a.m. local time in Hong Kong, despite the fact that all three major U.S. indexes had closed Monday’s regular trading session with gains.
The news from China that its economy grew by 6.3% in the second quarter, which was lower than expected, had a negative impact on stock prices across the major Asian markets. At eleven o’clock in the morning local time in Hong Kong, the Shanghai Composite, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng, South Korea’s Kospi, and Japan’s Nikkei 225 were all exhibiting negative performance.
Investors are keeping a close eye on the upcoming earnings reports from financial institutions, with the likes of Morgan Stanley & Co. and Bank of America Corp. expected to release their results later in the day.
These results follow the upbeat quarterly reports that JPMorgan Chase & Co., Wells Fargo, and Citigroup published the week prior. In addition, earnings reports from Goldman Sachs Group, Netflix, Tesla, and United Airlines are scheduled to be released on Wednesday. These reports are expected to have an impact on the week ahead.
The belief that the Federal Reserve is getting closer to the end of its cycle of interest rate increases, according to a report by Trading Economics, was the primary factor in Wall Street’s successful performance on Monday. The most recent producer price index, which measures wholesale inflation and came in below analysts’ expectations last week, helped to support this sentiment. This index was released to measure prices at wholesalers.
Nevertheless, in spite of this viewpoint, it is anticipated that the Federal Reserve will most likely raise interest rates even further from their current range of 5% to 5.25%.
At an event held at New York University, Christopher Waller, a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, stated that two additional increases in interest rates of 25 basis points each are required this year to combat inflation.
On July 26, the Federal Reserve is going to hold a meeting to talk about the next step it will take regarding interest rates.
According to the CME FedWatch Tool, the probability that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates by 25 basis points is now estimated to be 97.3%, up from 96.1%.
