Bitcoin dropped nearly 3% in afternoon trading in Asia. All other top 10 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, excluding stablecoins, declined following a two-day rally by most tokens.
See related article: Binance confirms equity in Elon Musk’s Twitter acquisition
Fast facts
-
Bitcoin lost 2.97% in the past 24 hours to trade at US$20,103 at 4 p.m. in Hong Kong, and Ether fell 4.03% to US$1,493, according to data from CoinMarketCap.
-
Dogecoin declined 4.99% to US$0.074, after the leading memecoin gained 25.84% over the past week on reports that Elon Musk’s US$44 billion purchase of Twitter was to be completed on Friday. Shortly before midday in Hong Kong, Musk tweeted “the bird is freed,” seemingly referencing the completion of the purchase.
-
Cardano led losses among top 10 cryptos, decreasing 6.54% to US$0.38, though it stood 12.55% higher for the previous seven days. XRP fell 3.06% to change hands at US$0.46, and Solana dropped 4.49% to US$30.22.
-
Asia equity markets fell following Wall Street’s mixed results overnight. The Hong Kong Hang Seng Index declined 3.66% to its lowest since 2009, with the Nikkei 225 sliding 0.88% in Tokyo. The Shanghai Composite Index closed 2.25% lower after the U.S. Under Secretary of Commerce Alan Estevez announced the U.S. “expects to have a deal done in the near term,” on limiting chip-related exports to China.
-
The Bank of Japan announced Friday it will maintain key short-term interest rates at -0.1%, but raised its inflation forecast for the end of 2022 from 2.3% to 2.9%, with Goldman Sachs similarly projecting that inflation in Japan will exceed 3% by the end of 2022 or at the beginning of 2023.
-
Australia announced that producer price inflation (PPI) increased from 1.4% in the second quarter to 1.9% in the third, marking the ninth consecutive quarter of gains for the measurement and its fastest pace since the third quarter of 2008. Italy’s PPI rose 2.8% from August to September, lower than a forecast of 3.6%. Central banks across Europe released preliminary, year-on-year GDP growth estimates for the third quarter of 2022, with France projecting 1%, Germany 1.2%, and Spain 3.8%.
See related article: SBF: FTX stablecoin, ‘Second Great Stablecoin War’ are coming
