Bitcoin started by trading at US$22,000 level and dropped to US$21,000 before the release of the US CPI data. After the release, most cryptocurrencies rallied. Bitcoin hit its highest peak since August on Thursday. BTC traded at the US$25,250 level.
However, BTC could not sustain the gains and fell back to the US$23,000 level after the PPI data release, which was higher than expected, raising concerns among investors and traders over the inflation.
Whenever there is a fear of inflation, BTC falls as it does not like it. Investors run short of funds to spend when interest rates go up. Hence BTC falls. Despite the decline, BTC is up by more than 72% from its cycle’s lowest point in January.
Compared to the BTC’s all-time high, it is nearly 65% down. However, on Saturday BTC bounced back to the US$24,600 level. If the initiative continues, we might see it touch US$25,000 again the coming week.
The second largest cryptocurrency, Ethereum, has also traded in line with BTC this week. Ethereum touched above the US$1,700 level on Thursday and fell to US$1,600 post the PPI’s data release. On Saturday, ETH again is trying to attempt to break above the US$1700 level trading very close to it. Ethereum has gained more than 86% from its lowest point at US$893 in June last year. However, it was down by 66% from it’s all-time high of US$4,899 in October 2021. There is also a drop in ETH available ahead of the Shanghai availability on exchanges.
On the other hand, XRP also rallied due to the ongoing SEC-Ripple lawsuit, and though it could not last there, the rally soon subsided. Polygon outperformed BTC on Friday, and ETH gained a decent amount ahead of the zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine or zkEVM launch. In an interesting turn of events, the launch of Ordinals, Bitcoin’s own NFT collection, has increased its popularity. It allows users to transfer and receive individual Satoshis. A report from Glassnode noted that the Ordinals NFTs had contributed to a short-term upside in the Bitcoin network’s usage, bringing many new active users with non-zero addresses onto the network.
The German tech giant Siemens is the latest player in the digital securities space, following the issuance of a $65 million bond with a one-year maturity on the Polygon blockchain.
Coming to the price action, among the top 100 cryptos by market cap, here are the best and worst-performing cryptos over the past week:
Top 5 crypto gainers during the week:
1. Filecoin rose by 50%
2. Internet Computer rose by 43%
3. Astar rose by 37%
4. Klaytn rose by 36%
5. Flow rose by 36%
Top 5 crypto losers this week:
1. PAX Gold is down by 0.39%
2. USD Coin is down by 0.02%
3. UNUS SED LEO is down by 0.33%
4. Tether is down by 0.01%
(The author, Edul Patel, is CEO and Co-founder of Mudrex, a global crypto-investing platform)
