For what it’s worth, Bitcoin price was trading around $21,000 after hitting a fresh seven-week high on Saturday. The largest cryptocurrency’s recent gains have pushed it over key price-charts levels, potentially signaling a crucial shift toward a more bullish trend. At the time of writing, BTC is changing hands at $20,860.
BTC/USD 4-hour chart | Source: TradingView
Bitcoin Price, Ether prices pull back after a weekend gain on sign U.S. inflation may be easing
Bitcoin and Ether fell in Monday morning trading in Asia as the cryptocurrency market gave up some of the gains made over the weekend on the back of U.S. job numbers on Friday, which indicated inflation might be easing in the world’s biggest economy. On Saturday, Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency, rose to a seven-week high of $21,446. But today, Bitcoin fell 1.7% to $20,924 in 24 hours.
Solana was the biggest loser in CoinMarketCap’s top 10 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, excluding stablecoins, falling 11% to $32.72. Dogecoin saw the second most significant loss of 7.9% to $0.11. The meme coin is seeing buying interest fade from Elon Musk’s $44 billion purchase of Twitter Inc., which had led to speculation that Musk, a Dogecoin fan, would incorporate the coin into the social media platform.
The FTX token, which pushed into headlines (and Twitter chatter) last week after CoinDesk reported just how significant of an asset it was on the trading firm Alameda Research’s balance sheet, came under additional pressure after Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao tweeted that the firm would sell its remaining holdings of FTT, a stake worth more than $500 million. The FTT price rebounded after the CEO Alameda, which like FTX, is a part of billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried’s empire, tweeted that it would happily buy FTT at $22 each. But by late Sunday, FTT had reversed course and was falling again, around $22.24, down 7.6% over the past 24 hours.
U.S. nonfarm payroll jobs grew by 261,000 while the employment rate increased to 3.7% in October, according to the Department of Labor released on Friday. Market estimates were for 205,000 job gains and an unemployment rate of 3.5%.
In the coming week, crypto traders will be focused on Tuesday’s midterm elections in the U.S., which might have significant implications for regulatory policy or economic decisions. Then on Thursday, the U.S. Labor Department is due to report the latest reading of the Consumer Price Index, expected to show that the primary inflation rate stayed at 8% or higher in October – still not too far from a four-decade high and indicates just how much work the Federal Reserve has to do to cool off the economy and bring the figure back down.
Investors took the higher-than-expected unemployment rate as a prompt to buy risk assets like crypto and stocks on the sign the economy may be cooling. Higher unemployment could ease pressure on the U.S. Federal Reserve to continue aggressive interest rate hikes to slow inflation, which is running at 40-year highs. Market analysts at CME Group now predict a 60% chance of a 50 basis-point hike at the Fed’s next meeting in December. The Fed has raised rates six times this year, including four hikes of 75 basis points, the latest being Nov. 2. U.S. interest rates are now at a 15-year high of 3.75% to 4% from near zero in March. The Fed has said it wants inflation back in a target range of 2%. It was running at 8.2% in September.
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