Cryptos Muted Ahead Of U.S. Jobs Data

Crypto markets continued its subdued tone shedding more than half a percent in the past 24 hours. Sentiment remained weak ahead of the release of the crucial jobs data from the U.S. on Friday. Earlier, data released from the U.S. on Thursday had shown private businesses creating more jobs than expected.

Sentiment remains impacted by the plunge in the shares of crypto-friendly Silvergate Capital Corp. The bank had on Thursday reported a sharp fall in crypto related deposits and also announced a 40 percent cut in its workforce.

The Dollar’s strength also weighed in on sentiment of Dollar-denominated crypto prices. The Dollar Index, a measure of the Dollar’s strength against 6 currencies firmed up 0.46 percent overnight to 105.52. This is in addition to the 0.76 percent gains the Dollar Index made on Thursday. The FOMC minutes released on Wednesday which indicated a longer than expected period of higher interest rates helped the Dollar’s rebound.

The overall crypto market capitalization dropped to $812 billion, from $820 billion a day earlier.

Bitcoin is trading at $16,750.23, down 0.53 percent on an overnight basis. BTC touched a high of $16,878.76 and a low of $16,738.07 in the past 24 hours. With a market cap of $323 billion, Bitcoin commands 39.7 percent of the overall crypto market.

Ethereum has shed 0.69 percent overnight to trade at $1,244.48. Ether ranged between $1,255.42 and $1,242.96 in the past 24 hours. Ether’s current market cap is $152 billion or 18.75 percent of the overall crypto market.

Among the top 100 cryptocurrencies, 23rd ranked Monero (XMR) is the best performer with an overnight rally of 2.1 percent.

36th ranked Lido DAO (LDO) is the greatest laggard with an overnight decline of more than 8 percent.

Meanwhile in what could be considered continuing FTX contagion effects, the Digital Currency Group has reportedly announced the closing of HQ Digital, its wealth management subsidiary. DCG is the crypto conglomerate that also owns crypto broker Genesis and asset manager Grayscale.

The U.S. Department of Justice has on Thursday announced the arrest of NFT developer Aurelien Michel in a multi-million-dollar international fraud scheme. A criminal complaint was unsealed charging the French national residing in the United Arab Emirates, of defrauding purchasers of “Mutant Ape Planet” NFTs, a type of digital asset, of more than $2.9 million in cryptocurrency. According to the allegation, Michel defrauded investors by making false representations of, amongst other things, giveaways, tokens with staking features, and merchandise collections. Once the NFTs were sold-out, Michel allegedly ceased communications and withdrew purchasers’ funds from the company’s cryptocurrency wallets, lining his pockets with nearly $3 million of investors’ money.

The CoinShares’ Digital Asset Fund Flows Yearly report on institutional investments reveals that inflows for 2022 aggregated to $433 million, the lowest since 2018 which recorded inflows of $233 million. Inflows were around $9.1 billion in 2021, $6.6 billion in 2020 and $715 million in 2019.

The Coinshares report also shows that in 2022, inflows of $287 million is attributed to Bitcoin, $108 million is in short-Bitcoin product, $121 million is in Solana assets and $209 million is in multi-asset products. Ethereum, however recorded a decline of $402 million. This compares with inflows of $5.9 billion into Bitcoin products, $1.8 billion into Ethereum products, $444 million into multi-asset products and $231 million into Solana products in 2021.

Switzerland tops the country-wise break up of inflows, with a share of $577 million, followed by the United States which recorded inflows of $376 million. Germany recorded inflows of $213 million, whereas Brazil followed with inflows of $137 million. However, the overall inflows suffered as the surge in these countries was negated by Sweden which recorded outflows of $446 million and Canada which recorded outflows of $436 million.

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