Last week was a relatively successful one in the crypto world. Although we did not experience massive gains, the price of BTC maintained a fairly stable range. Admittedly, the price of bitcoin in USD is lower than it was a week ago, but this drop is not extreme enough to panic. Nevertheless, there was a lot of interesting news last week, which we’ll briefly discuss in today’s crypto recap. So, what happened to crypto this week?
What happened to cryptocurrency this week?
But before we get to the news, let’s analyze Bitcoin and Ethereum prices and see which projects were the biggest crypto losers this week.
bitcoin price this week
The bitcoin price behaved in a relatively calm manner this week. The 7th BTC high was $23,678.10, while the 7th low was $21,754.13. Meanwhile, we can see a solid green candle in labor market data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Source: Tradingview, data retrieved on February 10, 2023
Today, the price of bitcoin (BTC) is $21,780.51, and the market cap is $420,007,235,627. The overall market dominance of Crypto King remains stable at 39.68%.
With respect to investor sentiment, it is still positive. The Fear and Greed Index is pointing to 48, indicating that traders are still showing signs of greed.
ethereum price usd this week
Ethereum price also remained stable this week. The 7th high for ETH was reached at $1,643.64, while the 7th low was $1,536.59. Similar to bitcoin, a significant green candle appeared on February 7th as a result of macroeconomic data.
Source: Tradingview, data retrieved on February 10, 2023
So, what is the current price of Ethereum? The price of ETH today is 1,536.59, and the market cap remains above $188,147,975,604 trillion. ETH dominance in the overall market is 17.57%.
This Week’s Biggest Crypto Gainers
While bitcoin and ethereum remained somewhat stable, with their prices moving in very narrow ranges, some altcoins did much better. The week’s top crypto gainers from the Top 100 were primarily AI-focused cryptocurrencies, which are coming heavily on the heels of ChatGPT’s recent success.
In the last seven days, the highest increase in prices was observed in case of the following projects:
SingularityNet (AGIX) – 101.29%. Graff (GRT) – 57.09% Baby Dog Coin (BabyDog) – 55.32% Clever (KLV) – 49.24% Fetch.ai (FET) – 46.32%
Altcoins that have gained more than 20% in value over the past week include Frax Share (FXS) and Lido DAO (LIDO). The latter project saw gains due to successfully deploying a testnet preparing Ethereum for the Shanghai update.
crypto news of the week
As we have already analyzed the state of the crypto market this week, let us now look at the most important news.
US labor market data positive, but Fed worried
Everyone in the financial markets was waiting for the US labor market data and the new Fed announcement. The former turned out to be extremely good. However, they do not soften the stance of the Federal Reserve. In January, US employment increased by 517,000. This is good news. At the same time, the unemployment rate fell from 3.5 percent to 3.4 percent, which is the lowest since 1969.
What can please the common man worries the Fed. The central bank expected labor market conditions to worsen enough to cool the markets and thus reduce inflation. As a sign of the strength of the economy, there are currently two jobs for every unemployed person. The new data thus strengthened the monetary authorities’ strategy of raising interest rates. The dollar strengthened again in response to the Fed’s recent announcement.
A Golden Cross Appears on the Bitcoin Chart
On the Bitcoin chart, a bullish signal – the golden cross – appeared for the first time in 510 days, or nearly 1.5 years. Historically, such a situation has signaled the start of a bull market.
For example, two months after this signal was generated during the last rally, the price of bitcoin began to rise and eventually reached an ATH above $69,000.
Throughout bitcoin’s history, the golden cross has already appeared five times: on October 28, 2015, April 23, 2019, February 18, 2020, May 20, 2020, and September 14, 2021. The chart below shows perfectly how the BTC price behaved afterwards. Formation of the Golden Cross.
Source: Tradingview, Data was retrieved on February 7, 2023
First ETH withdrawal from staking contract successful
The ability to withdraw Ethereum (ETH) from ETH 2.0 contracts is getting closer. Last week the developers deployed a new testnet called Zhejiang. This week the team implemented the Shanghai-Capella (Shapela) upgrade. According to the project, the first ETH withdrawal has already been completed.
Deploying a testnet allows developers to prepare for implementing the Shanghai upgrade. The second major update after The Merge changed the Ethereum consensus algorithm from Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake.
Institutions are backing away from cryptocurrencies
A CoinDesk analysis indicated that crypto startups raised just $548 million, compared to more than $6 billion in January 2022, despite a powerful rally for bitcoin and altcoins in January. The situation was mainly influenced by three factors:
The impact of the FTX failure on the fundraising of the industry has been huge – it has tightened funding procedures, and without proper ‘due diligence’ anyone giving money in a bull market is ten times more cautious. The rally of cryptocurrencies remains uncertain. Venture capital funding usually does not occur in a bear market ‘when it is cheap’ but when risky assets are already widely believed to have high return potential. Higher interest rates have made external financing a) more difficult b) more expensive, due to higher interest rates, which makes venture capitalists who are leveraging their business either unwilling to accept higher rates or wait until rates fall, making it cheaper to go into debt, increasing risk appetite (it is uncertain when this will happen). Too many VC funds are now in financial trouble due to funding unprofitable startups – others want to avoid repeating that mistake. Binance Stopping Transfers in USD: What’s Going On?
The world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance has announced a halt to all bank transfers in US dollars for its non-US customers starting February 8. However, the American branch of the exchange, Binance.US, assured that the halt does not affect local customers.
The mysterious announcement has caused a lot of FUD. Many suspect the exchange of having liquidity issues akin to a whale that has already collapsed, and is hiding the true picture of the situation from the community. However, this may be just speculation.
There was no official reason for the transfer suspension, but the company says it is working hard to resume service. Changpeng Zhao, the exchange’s CEO, explained in an interview that the issue affects only 0.01% of monthly active users, and the company considers it a poor user experience.
The company appears to be having problems with the banking system in the United States after its SWIFT transfer partner, Signature Bank, announced that as of February 1 it will only accept transactions involving the US banking sector and amounts above $10,000. will process. The exchange is currently looking for a new SWIFT provider.
Summary
This week has been relatively quiet for the crypto market. Of course, there was a lot of good and bad news, but bitcoin managed to stay above the support. However, we must remember that this market is extremely unpredictable and volatile. Cryptocurrency prices can fluctuate in either direction, and the trend can change from hour to hour. This is brilliantly illustrated by the AI-focused cryptocurrency, which on the heels of ChatGPT became the biggest gainer of the week. What will next week bring? We’ll have to wait and see.
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Tags: bitcoin crypto market crypto world cryptocurrency ethereum
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