Markets: Bitcoin holds above US$21,000 as crypto market cap briefly tops US$1 trillion

Bitcoin held above US$21,000 in Tuesday morning trading in Asia with the total cryptocurrency market capitalization also briefly breaching the US$1 trillion-dollar mark in the last 24 hours for the first time since mid-November. Ether also rose along with Polygon and Solana on the top 10 list of non-stablecoin cryptocurrencies. Dogecoin fell.

Fast facts

Bitcoin rose 1.4% to US$21,155 in the 24 hours to 8:45 a.m. in Hong Kong, an increase of 22.9% over the past calendar week. Ether gained 1.4% to US$1,571, trading up 18.5% over the past seven days, according to CoinMarketCap.
Polygon rose 4.2% to US$1.02 for the largest gains in Asia morning trading and a rise of 20.5% over the past week in the lead up to a hardfork on the network scheduled for Wednesday. With the hardfork, titled V0.3.1, the proof-of-stake network aims to reduce the severity of spikes in transaction prices and address chain reorganizations.
Solana rose 2.3% to change hands at US$23.31, a surge of 41.9% over the past week. Solana is the best performer on the list for 2023 so far, bouncing back after a severe sell-off in the collapse of the FTX crypto exchange and affiliated companies that had large holdings of the token.
Dogecoin fell 2.7% to US$0.08 for the largest losses in the list, but was still trading up 9.2% for the past week.
The total crypto market capitalization over the 24 hours dipped 1% to US$991 billion, while trading volume rose 15.8% to US$54.1 billion.
“We see the main driver behind this 20% BTC hike over the past week the fact that some macro fears are subsiding with positive economic data in the US, including lower inflation stats and strong job growth numbers,” Bradley Duke, co-chief executive at crypto investment firm, ETC Group, told Forkast in emailed statement.
“In Europe, the E.U. released unemployment stats which were the lowest in 23 years,” he added, “and China lifted many of the border restrictions. This shift in sentiment was reflected in the BTC futures market, with traders betting long four days in a row based on the Long-Short ratio.”
U.S. markets were closed on Monday for the Martin Luther King public holiday. They reopen again on Tuesday.
December’s U.S. Consumer Price Index (CPI) released last week showed that inflation rose 6.5% year-on-year, in line with expectations and lower than the 7.1% recorded in November. The drop was the biggest monthly decline since April 2020 and is raising expectations that inflation has peaked in the U.S.
Last month, the Fed raised interest rates by 50-basis points to between 4.25% and 4.5%, the highest in 15 years, to tackle inflation. The next Fed meeting is Jan. 31 to Feb. 1, with analysts at the CME Group predicting a 94.2% chance of an increase of 25 basis points given the most recent CPI data.