Bitcoin rose on Thursday morning in Asia to trade in the US$26,500 range. The token logged its biggest one-day increase for the past six weeks on Wednesday, making up some of the losses from last week’s nosedive. Ether also moved up to challenge the US$1,700 resistance level, while all other top 10 non-stablecoin cryptocurrencies traded higher. The rise across cryptocurrencies mirrored a rally in the U.S. equity market on Thursday. S&P Global’s purchasing manager’s index for August showed a slowdown in the U.S. economy, mitigating inflation and rate hike concerns.
Solana’s SOL led the crypto winners after Solana Pay announced a partnership with Shopify to allow USDC payments on the e-commerce platform. The Forkast 500 NFT index fell as OpenSea’s decision to stop enforcing creator royalties continues to impact the market. Meanwhile, U.S. AI chipmaker Nvidia released a better-than-expected earnings report which drove a 6% rise in the firm’s shares and a boost for U.S. equities.
Cryptos benefit from Wall Street gains
Bitcoin rose 2.23% in the last 24 hours to US$26,510.04 as of 07:20 a.m. in Hong Kong, but lost 8.11% for the week, according to CoinMarketCap data. The world’s leading cryptocurrency reached a seven-day high of US$26,786.90 on Wednesday, a jump of over 3.7% from its daily low of US$25,806.99.
The rise in Bitcoin came on the back of a Wall Street rally. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite posted gains of more than 1% at close of trading Wednesday. That followed the release of S&P Global’s flash U.S. Composite PMI index — a measurement of economic activity in both the manufacturing and service sectors.
The index showed that economic growth in August was close to stalling. Investors were hopeful that a slowdown in consumer spending could lead the U.S. Federal Reserve to pause its cycle of interest rate increases — good news for the crypto market playing out in today’s price increases.
CoinGlass data showed total Bitcoin liquidations at US$39.08 million over the past 24 hours. That included US$9.65 million of long positions — positions where investors bet the cryptocurrency price will rise.
It was the first time since August 20 that liquidations on Bitcoin short positions — which totaled US$29.43 — surpassed long position liquidations, indicating an improvement in investor sentiment.
Like Bitcoin, Ether gained. It rose 3.04% to US$1,681.25 but was still down 7.06% over the past seven days.
Bitstamp, a Europe-based crypto exchange, revealed Wednesday it will stop providing Ether staking services to U.S. customers from September 25, citing “current regulatory dynamics” in the country. The exchange previously announced it would suspend trades of seven cryptocurrencies declared securities by the U.S. Securitees and Exchange Commission (SEC) from August 27.
All other top 10 non-stablecoin cryptocurrencies traded higher over the past 24 hours. Solana’s SOL token led the winners, jumping 5.35% to US$21.61. But it was still down 5.23% for the week.
Solana Pay, a free-to-use payment protocol built on the Solana blockchain, announced a partnership with Canada-based e-commerce platform Shopify on Wednesday. The partnership will allow Solana Pay users to use USDC stablecoin for online shopping without intermediary fees. The protocol will also consider adding other payment options such as SOL and BOND in the future, TechCrunch reported on Wednesday.
The total crypto market capitalization rebounded 2.53% to US$1.07 trillion. Trading volume rose 10.71% to US$35.37 billion.
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