Bitcoin Holds Above $28K As Investors Wait For New Productivity, Jobs Data
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Good morning. Here’s what happens:
Prices: What unrest? Bitcoin holds its perch above $28K. Other major cryptos mostly fall in weekend trading.
Insight: Decentralized-focused tokens surged during the quarter. Their gains came as US regulators zeroed in on centralized exchanges.
Prices
CoinDesk Market Index (CMI)
1208
-13.8 1.1%
Bitcoin (BTC)
$28,045
−377.2 1.3%
Ethereum (ETH)
$1788
-28.9 1.6%
S&P 500
4,109.31
+58.5 1.4%
Gold
$1,979
+9.6 0.5%
Nikkei 225
28,041.48
+258.5 0.9%
BTC/ETH prices per CoinDesk indices, as of 07:00 ET (11:00 UTC)
Bitcoin investors continue their watchful waiting
Will April bring showers or more sunshine for bitcoin?
The weekend offered few clues as the biggest cryptocurrency by market capitalization started the new month at late March levels as investors weighed recent events — bank failures, inflation and crypto-focused regulatory actions — that could push prices higher or drag them down.
BTC recently traded at $28,045, down 1.3% in the last 24 hours. It rallied roughly 21% in March, despite a tumultuous past two weeks in which markets fell at times but always seemed to spin back above the $28,000 mark.
“Bitcoin has remained resilient over the past week or so, resulting in a general improvement in market sentiment,” Joe DiPasquale, CEO of crypto-asset manager BitBull Capital, wrote in an email to CoinDesk.
DiPasquale noted that bitcoin was trading above its 200-day moving average, “historically a strong indicator of bullish price action.”
But he also reflected uncertainty about BTC’s path forward, calling the “$32K to $36K range…an area of interest on the upside while the $18K to $20K…a strong area on the downside.”
Ether was also up slightly from the previous day to change hands at $1,788, down 1.6% but well within its range of the past two weeks. Ethereum developers are now awaiting the Shanghai upgrade, which is scheduled to take place on April 12 and will mark Ethereum’s full transition to a proof-of-stake (PoS) network, which will enable ETH withdrawals. Other cryptos in the top 25 by market capitalization were mostly in the red.
ARB, the token of layer 2 blockchain Arbitrum, recently fell 7.4% to trade at $1.19. The decline came amid an uproar in the Arbitrum community over how the Arbitrum Foundation — a centralized company charged with promoting Arbitrum’s purported decentralized ecosystem — held a “ratification” vote over decisions it had already implemented, including sending nearly $1 billion in tokens to himself. On Sunday, the foundation said it would break up its controversial governance package in a series of separate votes, bowing to community pressure.
Popular meme coins DOGE and SHIB were recently reduced by 5.5% and 4.8% respectively. The CoinDesk Market Index, a measure of the crypto markets’ overall performance, was recently down 1.2%.
Stock markets ended an eventful, largely upbeat first quarter on a high with the tech-focused Nasdaq climbing 1.7% and the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) rising 1.2% and 1.4%, respectively.
This week, investors will have a fresh set of employment and productivity data to gauge whether the US economy continues to contract as recent signs have suggested, or if it is moving forward. The US Census Bureau will release February durable goods orders on Tuesday, with expectations for a 1% month-over-month decline, and on Friday, the US Labor Department will release March nonfarm payrolls, with expectations for an increase of 225,000 jobs, and monthly unemployment, which is expected to remain at today’s 3.6%. A hot job market has figured prominently in central bankers’ considerations of the ongoing strength of the economy, which historically leads to higher inflation readings.
In an interview with CoinDesk TV, Marc Chandler, Bannockburn Global Forex managing director and chief market strategist, said that “the economic stress that we saw earlier this month is returning.”
“This allows the market to focus on two things, which were before the banking stress,” he said, adding a caveat. “One is that the labor market remains quite robust. And inflation is too high for the Federal Reserve.”
Biggest winners
Biggest losers
Insight
A banner quarter for decentralized focused tokens
A growing fear that centralized crypto infrastructure will be the target of US regulators has driven tokens that provide decentralized alternatives to be some of the best performers over the past quarter.
[screenshot – decentralized tokens]
CoinMarketCap data shows that tokens for LidoDAO (LDO), dYdX (DYDX) and GMX (GMX) were some of the best performers over the past 90 days.
LDO surged in February when the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ordered Kraken to shut down its staking service and continued to rally when Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said a blanket ban on staking came along with a securities classification — a scarlet letter for any form for crypto. with American exposure.
As for DYDX and GMX, the demise of FTX gave the market a renewed interest in decentralized derivatives exchanges.
“FTX and Alameda, as far as we know, were incredibly centralized, controlled by a single person. These things metastasize because of human error,” Dan Gunsberg, creator of Solana-based derivatives exchange Hxro, told CoinDesk in December.
Like staking, there is also considerable regulatory interest in derivatives. Binance was recently sued by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and their derivatives trading desk was front-and-center in the case. Traders are looking for decentralized options, which they feel are outside the big guns of US regulators and outside the crypto war conflict zone.
But decentralized derivatives exchanges also have their problems. As CoinDesk recently reported, many are struggling with liquidity and a lack of available open interest means they cannot sustain large orders. While not all decentralized derivatives exchanges suffer from this problem, it casts some doubt on how well the idea scales.
While decentralization was a theme of the quarter’s top performers, the actual token that took the top spot was Conflux (CFX), up a whopping 1,622%, according to CoinMarketCap data.
It is not entirely clear what drives such a large gain. Sure, Conflux’s Blockchain SIM card has attracted some interest from investors, but right now it’s all theoretical and still in a trial phase. On-chain data shows that the number of transactions on the CFX chain is lower than it was a year ago.
But this is crypto. And sometimes there is no discernible data behind a token that pumps.
Important events.
09:00 HKT/SGT (1:00 UTC) Australia TD Securities Inflation (YoY/March)
15:55 HKT/SGT(7:55 UTC) Germany S&P Global/BME Manufacturing PMI (March)
22:00 HKT/SGT (14:00 UTC) US ISM Manufacturing PMI (March)
CoinDesk TV
In case you missed it, here’s the latest episode of “First Mover” on CoinDesk TV:
Bitcoin Falls as Fed’s Preferred Inflation Gauge Rises 0.3% in February; What’s next for Binance?
Bitcoin (BTC) hovered around $28,000 as the PCE price index rose 0.3 percent in February. Bannockburn Global Forex market strategist Marc Chandler shared his crypto market analysis. In addition, DappRadar’s head of research and analysis Pedro Herrera discussed DeFi’s performance and the increase in interest in Arbitrum in the first quarter.
Headings
Arbitrum’s first governance proposal gets messy with $1B ARB tokens at stake: The Arbitrum Foundation would step aside for community governance when issuing “special grants.”
Over 7,000 players successfully converged in Yuga Labs’ Otherside Metaverse ‘Second Trip’: Thousands of NFT holders joined the gamified experience last weekend, showing glimpses of what’s to come from the virtual world launching later this year.
TUSD Stablecoin Daily Trading Volume Exceeds $1B After Binance Boost: The increase follows Binance’s decision a week ago to eliminate the zero-fee trading discount on the platform except for the BTC-TUSD pair.
Investors are pouring money into crypto investments for the fourth month in a row: Assets under management for digital asset products climbed to $13.4 billion in March, up 60% from their 2022 low in November, according to CryptoCompare.
US authorities sold $216 million of seized Silk Road Bitcoin this month: The government will sell the remaining 41,490 BTC in four tranches this year.
