Cryptos decline on the back of Wall Street losses and Fed speculation

Bitcoin and Ether fell on Wednesday morning in Asia, along with other top 10 non-stablecoin cryptocurrencies by market capitalization. Polygon’s MATIC led the losers, while Cardano’s ADA also dipped on news Binance will axe perpetual contracts for the two tokens. Elsewhere, the Forkast 500 NFT index moved down, although changes in trading habits have market analysts predicting good times ahead. In the U.S., stock futures steadied after a rocky Tuesday. Stronger than expected sales data left investors fearing the Fed’s rate hiking cycle may continue. Ratings agency Fitch dampened investor sentiment further by suggesting it could downgrade a number of major U.S. banks.

Crypto down

Bitcoin fell 0.85% in the last 24 hours to US$29,169.14 as of 07:00 a.m. in Hong Kong, and logged a weekly gain of 1.99%, according to CoinMarketCap data. The world’s leading cryptocurrency has traded below US$30,000 since last Wednesday. 

Cryptos took a hit Tuesday as the three major U.S. exchanges posted losses. 

“It’s a tough day for many as both crypto and traditional finance are seeing red. We have seen this before, where cryptocurrency markets mirror what we see with the Nasdaq, down 1.14%,” said Caroline Bowler, chief executive officer of Australian exchange BTC Markets. 

“These data points are not helped by the lack of liquidity, as we sit in the doldrums so far in August,” she added. 

Bowler noted that Bitcoin has, however, been range bound for the last two months, sustaining one-year highs. 

“There is a lot more to come for this asset class,” said Bowler.

Meanwhile, Alex Kuptsikevich, senior market analyst at London-based online brokerage FxPro, was more bearish in his outlook. 

“Despite the intraday fluctuations, the daily candles close near their opening levels, indicating a lack of direction and conviction,” he Kuptsikevich. 

“This usually precedes a sharp move and for now, we see more downside risk, with a potential drop to $28K in the near term,” Kuptsikevich added.

Elsewhere, Ether lost 0.95% to US$1,826.79, falling 1.63% in the past seven days. Similarly, all other top 10 non-stablecoin cryptocurrencies were in decline with the losses led by Polygon’s MATIC. The token lost 6.72% to US$0.6338 on Wednesday morning, dropping 7.43% for the week.

Solana’ SOL dipped 5.08% to US$23.84 for a weekly loss of 1.08%. Cardano’s ADA token also dropped 3.13% to US$0.2817, logging a 5.95% weekly decline.

The ADA and MATIC losses came after Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by trade volume, announced it will delist perpetual contracts for the two cryptos from Thursday. 

In June, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) labeled both MATIC and ADA as financial securities in its lawsuits against Binance.US and Coinbase. Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao and Binance itself were charged with manipulating trading volumes on the platform and diverting customer funds.

On Monday, Binance filed a protective court order against the SEC seeking to limit the agency’s “overbroad” requests for information.

The total crypto market capitalization moved down 1.32% in the past 24 hours to US$1.16 trillion, while trading volume rose 3.48% to US$29.71 billion.

NFT sales price driving change

The indexes are proxy measures of the performance of the global NFT market. They are managed by CryptoSlam, a sister company of Forkast.News under the Forkast.Labs umbrella.

The main Forkast 500 NFT index edged down 0.05% in the past 24 hours to 2483.42 as of 08:30 a.m. in Hong Kong. However, the index still shows a 0.22% gain for the week. Forkast’s Ethereum, Polygon and Cardano NFT indexes logged gains, while the index for Solana dropped.

Total NFT trading volume rose 14.24% in the past 24 hours to over US$17.72 million, according to data from CryptoSlam. Volumes on the Ethereum, Polygon, Solana and Mythos blockchains all logged gains, while volume on ImmutableX and Bitcoin blockchain dipped.

“Something is changing in the NFT market. Traders are very active. While it’s not evident based on total sales, look at the increase in daily global transactions which is at an 18 month high,” said Yehudah Petscher, NFT Strategist at Forkast Labs. 

The number of global NFT transactions in the last 24 hours grew 2.74% to 590,215. That number is a 173.5% increase on the 215,768 transactions posted on Jan. 1.

“Average sales price is the key driver of this change, with the average NFT selling price of $26.81 yesterday reflecting a three year low last seen on Sep. 5, 2020 with a $15.44 average sale price,” Petscher explained. 

Among NFT collections, Ethereum-based DeGods topped the 24-hour sales volume ranking. The collection rose 28.70% to over US$2.17 million with the launch of its “Season 3” digital art collection on Sunday. 

“DMarket alone had over US$71,000 sales, many of which at under $1, and you’ll see similar sales in Gods Unchained. DraftKings and Sorare aren’t far off with sales of just a few dollars coming in by the second,” said Petscher. 

DMarket, a collection linked to Mythos network-based blockchain games, came in second in terms of sales volume. It rose 7.39% to US$959,782. Polygon-based DraftKings NFTs, from the fantasy sports platform of the same name, surged 52.86% to US$785,459.

Gods Unchained, from another blockchain-based card trading game, dipped 9.84% to US$616,225 but remained in CryptoSlam’s top five collections ranking.

(Updates to add NFT section)