Bitcoin, Ether little changed; Reject NFT 500 index fall

by James · March 6, 2023

Bitcoin and Ether traded little changed, but it looks like a downtrend day for most of the top 10 non-stablecoin cryptocurrencies in Tuesday morning trading in Asia. Litecoin led the losers, while Dogecoin rose, although the leading meme coin is still down for the previous week. Concerns about the solvency of US-based crypto bank Silvergate and the fallout from its potential failure continue to cloud the market. The new Forkast NFT 500 index fell. U.S. stocks had a mixed day on Monday as traders await Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s comments to the Senate Banking Committee on Tuesday for an insight into where interest rates are headed.

See related article: Kraken launches US crypto bank amid regulatory headwinds

Fast facts

Bitcoin is up 0.08% in the past 24 hours to $22,483 as of 9:30 a.m. in Hong Kong, according to CoinMarketCap data. The world’s largest cryptocurrency is still down 4.10% in the last seven days. Ether gained 0.22% to $1,571, but like Bitcoin remains a loser for the week, down 3.61%.
Dogecoin rose 1.61% to $0.0757, leading the gainers among the top 10 non-stablecoin cryptocurrencies. But the token still has a weekly loss of 7.60%, after Elon Musk, a prominent Dogecoin enthusiast, spoke on Twitter last Saturday that he had switched his interest from cryptocurrencies to artificial intelligence (AI).
XRP rose 0.72% to trade at $0.37. Ripple Labs Inc., the crypto payment network powered by XRP, is posting 69 job vacancies in its offices worldwide, mainly for software engineers, or a bet on expansion and growth despite the company’s conflict in the courts with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The case is expected to be decided in the middle of this year. XRP lost 1.87% in seven days, the smallest loss among the 10 non-stablecoin cryptocurrencies.
Litecoin led the losers on Tuesday morning, falling 1.42% to $88.63, for a weekly loss of 5.83%. Litecoin Foundation released an update last Friday to improve the security of Litecoin mining, which has appeared to be slow to attract crypto investors.
The concerns surrounding the crypto bank Silvergate have reached Washington. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a press conference Monday that President Joe Biden’s administration is aware of Silvergate’s situation, which is just the latest company “to experience significant problems” in the crypto industry, and the administration will continue to monitor developments .
Total crypto market cap was little changed over the past 24 hours, down 0.25% to $1.02 trillion. Total trading volume in the last 24 hours rose 22.65% to USD 15.36 billion.
Discard the NFT 500 index, which was published today, fell 0.02% to 4,305.75 in the past 24 hours to 08:30 Tuesday in Hong Kong. The Discard NFT 500 Index is a proxy measure of the performance of the global NFT market, and includes 500 eligible smart contracts on a given day.
Ethereum, the leading blockchain network for NFTs, saw sales increase by 38.93% to US$22.4 million, according to Cryptoslam.io data. However, the number of transactions in the chain fell by 21.8% to 124,728.
Sales on Solana, the second largest NFT blockchain, increased by 17.4% to US$3 million, while NFT sales on Polygon increased by more than 500% in 24 hours to US$2.38 million, placing the network at top 3.
At NFT collections, Ethereum-based CryptoPunks increased 218% in sales to $1.94 million. Otherdeed, another Ethereum-based NFT representing the virtual plots of land within the Otherside metaverse, saw a 223.5% increase in sales to $1.84 million.
Coinllectibles – the only polygon-based NFT collection in Cryptoslam’s top 3, which focuses on art and auctions, recorded USD 1.8 million in sales.
Alien World’s NFT collection has the highest number of owners with 4.51 million. Alien Worlds is a play-and-earn NFT game that runs on Ethereum. Play to earn the pin Axie Infinity has the second highest number of owners with 2.03 million.
US stocks closed largely flat on Monday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.12%, the S&P 500 gained 0.07% and the Nasdaq Composite Index fell 0.11%.
Investors are turning cautious as recent economic readings point to U.S. inflation being more entrenched than previously thought, while Fed officials have said steeper rate hikes or holding rates higher for longer may be needed if data continue to point to an overheated economy .
In addition, at its Two Sessions meeting on Sunday, China set a modest target of 5% GDP growth in 2023, lower than expectations and also reducing risk appetite among investors.
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell will address congressional committees on Tuesday and Wednesday this week, which investors will focus on for clues about where the central bank’s policy stands ahead of its meeting later this month to raise interest rates.
The Fed’s target range for interest rates is currently between 4.5% and 4.75%, the highest since October 2007. Analysts at CME Group expect a 68.6% chance that the Fed will raise interest rates by another 25 basis points this month. They also predict a 31.4% chance of a 50 basis point increase, up from 27.0% on Monday.