Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, recovered to trade above US$28,000 on Tuesday afternoon in Asia. Ether and most other top 10 non-stablecoin cryptocurrencies also rose, with Dogecoin gaining the most. Asian markets were mixed following weak U.S. factory data and renewed concerns over recession and inflation after the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies (OPEC+) unexpectedly cut oil production.
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Fast facts
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Bitcoin rose 0.26% to US$28,029 in 24 hours to 4 p.m. on Tuesday in Hong Kong, bringing its weekly gains to 3.97%, according to CoinMarketCap data. Ether rose 0.96% to US$1,812 and strengthened 5.09% in the last seven days.
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Dogecoin gained the most among top 10 cryptos, rising 26.1% in the last 24 hours to US$0.09845, gaining 35.72% on the week. The memecoin’s price surge comes after Elon Musk, the chief executive of social media platform Twitter and a fan of the token, changed Twitter’s blue bird icon to a Japanese Shiba Inu, the same dog species featured on Dogecoin.
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XRP dropped the most on the day, by 3.07% to US$0.4979, but strengthened 2.85% on the week. Ripple Labs, whose crypto payment platform is powered by XRP, may get a favorable ruling in a lawsuit filed against it by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commision for allegedly selling US$1.3 billion in unregistered securities.
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The global crypto market capitalization rose 0.77% to US$1.17 trillion while total crypto market volume strengthened 41.98% to US$49.31 billion in the last 24 hours.
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Asian equity markets were mixed on Tuesday following weak U.S. manufacturing data and concerns over inflation and economic growth after OPEC+ cut oil production by over 1 million barrels per day. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index lost 0.66%, while Japan’s Nikkei 225 gained 0.35%. The Shanghai Composite rose 0.49% and the Shenzhen Component Index dropped 0.25%.
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The Forkast 500 NFT index slid 1.05% on the day to 4,014 points, making for a weekly gain of 0.17%. The index is a proxy measure of the performance of the global NFT market and includes 500 eligible smart contracts on any given day. It is managed by Forkast Labs data branch, CryptoSlam.
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European equity markets opened higher on Tuesday, as the benchmark STOXX 600 rose nearly 0.35% and Germany’s DAX 40 gained 0.57% by 11 a.m. local time, after data revealed that Eurozone producer price inflation slowed more than expected in February.
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Robert Holzmann, a governing council member of the European Central Bank (ECB), has said that the ECB may increase interest rates by another half-point if the banking sector crisis does not worsen, according to a Bloomberg report.
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“If things in May haven’t really become more terrible, I think we can afford another 50 basis points, and in particular, if no social agreement emerges to temper inflation we’ll have to do more to produce it,” Holzmann said.
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