Bitcoin prices broke above US$23,000 again during trading in Asia on Wednesday morning. Ether and most of the other top 10 non-stablecoin cryptocurrencies also rebounded from yesterday’s losses amid a strong rally in US stocks in January and optimism that the US economy is headed for a soft landing. Best Memecoin Dogecoin led the pack, still riding high on Monday’s report that the longtime advocate and head of Twitter Inc. Elon Musk wants to introduce 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, bringing its gains to 2.2% over the past seven days. Ether added 1.2% to $1,586 and is up 1.9% on the week, according to data from CoinMarketCap.
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Dogecoin rose 8.7% to change hands at $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 expand to include cryptocurrencies.
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Cardano rose 4.8% to $0.39, a gain of 8.7% over 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 token to slip in the top 10, but is still up 5.1% on the week.
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Crypto market capitalization rose 1.4% to US$1.05 trillion, while total trading volume fell 17.1% to US$47.26 billion.
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US stocks rallied on Tuesday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 1.1%, the S&P 500 Index gained 1.5% and the Nasdaq Composite Index ended the day up 1.7%.
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Tuesday’s performance caps off 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 jumped 10.7% over the same period for its best January since 2001.
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Markets rose on strong earnings, with Exxon Mobil Corp and Pfizer Inc achieved a record profit thanks to the jump in oil prices and the continuation of the production of the vaccine against Covid-19.
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The US Federal Reserve decides on interest rates on Wednesday at 2pm ET. CME Group analysts overwhelmingly expect the Fed to raise rates by 25 basis points, ending a streak of 50 and 75 basis point hikes since last March.
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The Fed’s aggressive rate hikes last year appear to be having the desired effect of slowing inflation. In December, the US consumer price index rose 6.5% on an annual basis, which was significantly higher than 7.1% in November and the biggest monthly decline since April 2020.
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Earnings from tech leaders are coming in this week, including Apple Inc., Amazon.com Inc. and Alphabet Inc., the parent company of the Google search engine. Data on wages for non-agricultural activities, which is another key indicator of inflation, was also published on Friday.
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