Bitcoin rises above US$27,000, Litecoin leads gains

Bit­coin and Ether gained in Fri­day after­noon trade in Asia along with all oth­er top 10 non-sta­ble­coin cryp­tocur­ren­cies, fol­low­ing suc­cess­ful nego­ti­a­tions on rais­ing the U.S. debt ceil­ing that inject­ed opti­mism into mar­kets. Lite­coin was the biggest gain­er in 24 hours. Asian and Euro­pean bours­es strength­ened on Fri­day and U.S. stock futures gained.

See relat­ed arti­cle: What’s hold­ing back DeFi and keep­ing the mass­es away

Bitcoin gains, First Digital issues new stablecoin

Bit­coin, world’s largest cryp­tocur­ren­cy, rose 1.08% to US$27,076 in 24 hours to 4 p.m. in Hong Kong, bring­ing its week­ly gains to 2.08%, accord­ing to Coin­Mar­ket­Cap data. 

Ether, the sec­ond biggest cryp­tocur­ren­cy in the world, gained 1.78% to US$1,886 in 24 hours, after ris­ing 3.85% in the last sev­en days. 

Lite­coin was the biggest gain­er among top 10 cryp­tos, climb­ing 2.25% to US$94.48 in 24 hours, and strength­en­ing 8.35% on the week. It rose on stronger buy­ing sup­port from its third halv­ing event that is set for Aug. 2, which would reduce sup­ply of the token. 

Litecoin’s on-chain activ­i­ties increased in May, accord­ing to blockchain data track­er IntoThe­Block on Tues­day, which not­ed almost 8.5 mil­lion Lite­coin address­es with a bal­ance by the end of May, com­pared to 7.09 mil­lion address­es by the end of March.

“The U.S. debt ceil­ing issue appears to be resolved and the Fed­er­al Reserve could pos­si­bly look to pause, if not end, their rate hik­ing cycle,” Markus Thie­len, Head of Research & Strat­e­gy at dig­i­tal asset ser­vice plat­form Matrix­port, said in a note on Friday. 

“The main wor­ry that investors might be fac­ing could be their under­weight, and they would need to chase the upside. This is why we could see risk assets – U.S. tech stocks, cryp­to – ral­ly fur­ther in 2023,” Thie­len said.

The glob­al cryp­to mar­ket cap­i­tal­iza­tion strength­ened 1.21% to US$1.14 tril­lion, while the total cryp­to mar­ket vol­ume lost 5.75% to US$29.94 bil­lion in the last 24 hours. 

Hong Kong-based con­sul­tan­cy First Dig­i­tal, has intro­duced a new sta­ble­coin pegged to the U.S. dol­lar, First Dig­i­tal USD (FDUSD), it said in a state­ment on June 1, the same day that Hong Kong’s new licens­ing regime for vir­tu­al asset ser­vice providers took effect.

Issued by FD121 Lim­it­ed, a sub­sidiary of the trust com­pa­ny and under the brand name First Dig­i­tal Labs, the sta­ble­coin is intend­ed to be backed on a 1:1 basis by one U.S. dol­lar or asset of equiv­a­lent fair val­ue, held in accounts of reg­u­lat­ed finan­cial insti­tu­tions in Asia, the state­ment said. 

NFT sales surge

In non-fun­gi­ble tokens, the Forkast 500 NFT index dropped 1.05% to 3364.53 in 24 hours to 6.50 p.m. in Hong Kong, but has gained 0.27% in the last sev­en days. 

Over the same peri­od, the Forkast ETH NFT Com­pos­ite lost 0.2%, and is down 0.01% on the week. 

Ethereum NFT sales rose 6.41% in 24 hours to US$24.33 mil­lion, accord­ing to Cryp­toSlam data. Azu­ki record­ed the high­est sales vol­ume among NFTs in the Ethereum blockchain, ris­ing 1.06% to US$3.76 mil­lion, fol­lowed by Bored Ape Yacht Club that increased 1.18% to US$3.58 million.

NFT sales on the Bit­coin net­work gained 204.53% in 24 hours to US$7.29 million. 

Japan’s All Nip­pon Air­ways, or ANA Group, has launched an NFT plat­form – ANA GranWhale NFT Mar­ket­Place – for trad­ing art and pho­to­graph col­lectibles through its meta­verse sub­sidiary ANA NEO.

“Chi­na is com­ing into NFTs and cryp­to, and Rus­sia will use cryp­to to set­tle pay­ments across bor­ders. These two major announce­ments are bring­ing excite­ment back to the NFT and cryp­to mar­kets and lead many to believe that these alone can turn the mar­ket around,” accord­ing to Yehu­dah Petsch­er, an NFT strate­gist at Forkast Labs.

“Col­lec­tors are eying high-priced NFTs ahead of a poten­tial incom­ing pump from Chi­nese investors look­ing to snatch NFT grails like Cryp­toP­unks, BAYC and Azu­ki,” he added. 

Asian equities rise, U.S. futures gain

Asian stock mar­kets gained on Fri­day as investors breathed relief after the U.S. Sen­ate passed a bill late Thurs­day evening that sus­pend­ed the world’s biggest economy’s debt lim­it through Jan­u­ary 1, 2025. The 11th-hour deal ends the threat of a first-ever U.S. default.

The Shang­hai Com­pos­ite gained 0.79% and the Shen­zhen Com­po­nent Index rose 1.5%. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index climbed 4.02% and Japan’s Nikkei 225 strength­ened 1.21%. 

Major U.S. stock futures gained as of 7.35 p.m. in Hong Kong. The tech-heavy Nas­daq-100 futures climbed 0.6%, the S&P 500 futures index rose 0.53%, and the Dow Jones Indus­tri­al Aver­age futures strength­ened 0.52%. 

Euro­pean bours­es also strength­ened on Fri­day fol­low­ing gains in Asia and Wall Street, after U.S. law­mak­ers passed the bill to raise the debt ceil­ing. The bench­mark STOXX 600 rose 1% and Germany’s DAX 40 gained 1.12%. 

“Using the country’s debt as a polit­i­cal weapon, under­mines con­fi­dence of investors in the U.S. gov­ern­ment amid con­cerns about the government’s abil­i­ty to prop­er­ly man­age its finances,” Nigel Green, chief exec­u­tive of finan­cial advi­so­ry firm deVere Group, wrote to media orga­ni­za­tion News­max.    

“This loss of con­fi­dence will mean that it becomes more dif­fi­cult for the U.S. gov­ern­ment to bor­row mon­ey in the future, which could lead to high­er inter­est rates and weak­er eco­nom­ic growth,” Green said. 

The U.S. cen­tral bank is sched­uled to meet on June 14 to decide its next move on inter­est rates, which are now between 5% and 5.25%, the high­est since 2006. The CME Fed­Watch Tool now pre­dicts a 76% chance the Fed will keep rates unchanged in June, and a 24% chance for anoth­er 25-basis-point rate hike, down from 37.8% on Thursday.

U.S. jobs data that is sched­uled for release lat­er Fri­day could also shed clues on the Fed’s inter­est rate hike path.