Crypto market in a holding pattern

Perhaps investors and traders are remaining cautious about the macroeconomic landscape in the US of A right now.

Either that, or the memecoin froth is reaching exhaustion and the market’s feeling jaded. (For the record, though, we’re still seeing the odd ridiculous memecoin spring up out of nowhere and absolutely rocket.)

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Bitcoin has dipped back below $US27,000 again, in this instance not following a surge overnight from Wall Street, in which major indices all closed in the green.

The latter, notes Eddy “Market Highlights” Sunarto, can be put down to “hopes that the debt ceiling crisis would be resolved as early as this weekend”.

The crypto market, however, is open 24/7 for trading and perhaps reacted to the news that the latest US jobs data had come in and was not particularly favourable for the Fed interest-rate-hike pause narrative.

The jobless claims are lower than expected this time around, which might be good for allaying a few recession fears, but holders of a few too many risk assets might not be particularly enjoying the news, if they’re banking on the Fed pivoting or pausing at its next Federal Open Market Committee meeting, that is.

Meanwhile, the Fed Reserve board is mulling over whether it should skip a meeting in June, Eddy reports, but that doesn’t necessarily mean Jerome Powell and pals will be done raising rates, according to somebody who might know – Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic.

“A pause could be a skip or it could be a hold,” Bostic said, according to Bloomberg.

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Top 10 overview

With the overall crypto market cap at $US1.17 trillion at noon on Friday (AEST), down about 1.5 per cent since the same time Thursday, here’s the state of play among top 10 tokens – according to CoinGecko.

Not the most exciting chart to look at today, overall. A couple of things to note, however: Polygon (MATIC) has once again supplanted Solana (SOL) in the top 10 cryptos by market cap. And XRP has made further decent gains over the past 24 hours.

That might have something to do with the fact Ripple (the creator of the XRP token) has acquired Swiss-based crypto custody provider Metaco in a $US250 million deal, according to reports.

Ripple’s aim with the acquisition is to see it gain a further foothold into the growing, global institutional crypto-custody market.

The deal comes amid Ripple’s long-winding lawsuit defence against the SEC, the US regulatory body accusing the blockchain firm of securities violations.

Uppers and downers

Some of the biggest 24-hour gainers and losers at noon Friday (AEST). Stats accurate based on CoinGecko.com data.

PUMPERS (11-100 market cap position)

• XRP (XRP), (market cap: $US23.8 billion) +3.8 per cent
• Bitget Token (BGB), (mc: $US668 million) +3.7 per cent
• Render (RNDR), (mc: $US846 million) +1.3 per cent
• Flare (FLR), (mc: $U449 million) +1.1 per cent
• Injective (INJ), (mc: $US530 million) +0.9 per cent

PUMPERS (lower, lower caps)

• WaultSwap (WEX), (market cap: $US31 million) +142.3 per cent
• AirSwap (AST), (mc: $US31 million) +58.4 per cent
• Hi Finance [OLD] (MFT), (mc: $U34 million) +32.7 per cent
• Conic (CNC), (mc: $US23 million) +32.6 per cent
• SmartDex (SDEX), (mc: $20 million) + 24.8 per cent

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SLUMPERS (11-100 market cap position)

• Lido DAO (LDO), (market cap: $US1.87 billion) -8.4 per cent
• Axie Infinity (AXS), (mc: $US810 million) -6.2 per cent
• Optimism (OP), (mc: $US574 million) -5.3 per cent
• Fantom (FTM), (mc: $US1 billion) -4.7 per cent
• Sui (SUI), (mc: $US599 million) -4.5 per cent

SLUMPERS (lower, lower caps)

• XIDO Finance (XIDO) (market cap: $US60 million) -22.1 per cent
• Milady Meme Coin (LADYS), (mc: $69 million) -21.1 per cent
• Turbo (TURBO), (mc: $US42 million) -15.3 per cent
• Bob Token (BOB), (mc: $US38 million) -15.3 per cent
• Vibing (VBG), (mc: $US66 million) -14.6 per cent

Around the blocks: Bitcoin 2023 kicks off

Some pertinence and randomness that stuck with us on our morning moves through the Crypto Twitterverse.

The big Bitcoin 2023 conference is on – the industry’s biggest annual event, which goes down in Miami, Florida each year.

However, unfortunately what has gone down (along with the price of BTC today) is the amount of attendees.

The estimation is about 15,000 this time around, as opposed to 35,000 last year.

This CoinDesk article is putting that slump in attendance down to lower enthusiasm due to the ongoing “crypto winter”.

Is crypto still in a “winter”, though?

Bitcoin is still up around 65 per cent so far this year. In any case, conference organisers are clearly hoping the event ignites a market spark.

“Bitcoin winter is heating up in Miami,” reads a banner on the conference website.

This content first appeared on stockhead.com.au

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