Bitcoin and Ether prices fell on Friday morning in Asia, along with all the other top 10 nonstable cryptocurrencies amid reports from US-based cryptocurrency bank Silvergate Capital Corp. could be the next corporate victim of the fall of FTX. Polkadot led the losses. US stocks rose on Thursday after a week of fluctuations on mixed comments from the Federal Reserve on interest rates and data suggesting inflation is well entrenched in the economy.
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Fast facts
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Bitcoin fell 3.22% over the past 24 hours to $22,827 at 09:30 a.m. in Hong Kong, according to data from CoinMarketCap, extending its weekly loss to 4.78%. Ether fell 3.19% to $1,602, for a seven-day drop of 3.33%.
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Both tokens were down as much as 5% later in the Asian morning. Despite the drop, both are still up around 40% year-to-date.
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Polkadot led losers among major cryptocurrencies, falling 6.00% to $6.08 and losing 14.63% over the past seven days. The token has been trending down for two weeks, though the Polkadot community remains active, leading daily development on Github, according to the Github tracker. Github test Thursday.
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Silvergate said Thursday in a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that the company is evaluating “its ability to continue as a going concern,” causing a drop of more than 50% in the price of its shares. A host of crypto exchanges and platforms have severed ties with the bank.
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As a member bank of the Federal Reserve, Silvergate positioned itself as a gate between traditional finance and cryptocurrency. The bank was hit hard by the FTX collapse and reported a $1 billion loss for the fourth quarter of 2022. It laid off 40% of its staff in January.
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Total crypto market capitalization fell 1.02% over the past 24 hours to $1.07 trillion. And the total volume of operations in the last 24 hours fell by 12.30% to 42.650 million dollars.
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US stocks closed higher on Thursday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 1.05%, the S&P 500 rose 0.76% and the Nasdaq Composite Index rose 0.73%.
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Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic indicated Thursday that he supports an interest rate hike of 25 basis points in March, alleviating some recent concerns that the Fed could raise 50 points. This helped push stocks higher, but the market is caught in cross currents, as Fed Governor Christopher Waller said on the same day that recent data suggests the fight against inflation is far from over.
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Data from the US Department of Labor on Thursday showed that initial jobless claims fell in the week ending February 25, while labor costs rose, indicating that inflation has not been controlled by the Fed rate hikes thus far.
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The Fed set US interest rates at between 4.5% and 4.75% in February, the highest since October 2007. CME Group analysts expect a 72.3% chance the Fed will raise rates another 25 basis points this month. They also predict a 27.7% chance of a 50 basis point rise, down from 29.9% on Thursday.
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US service industry data is expected on Friday and several other Fed officials will speak on the same day, which may add more mixed messages to markets. Separately, China will begin this weekend its so-called “Two Sessions,” the most important political meetings of the year to set economic policy in the world’s second-largest economy.
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