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Bitcoin and Broader Crypto Prices Little-Changed in Eventful News Week
Litecoin was the largest gainer among large-cap cryptocurrencies.
Updated May 19, 2023, 8:01 p.m. Published May 19, 2023, 7:38 p.m.
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While there were some sizable intraday swings, there wasn’t a lot of change in bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) prices over the past seven days, with traders’ opinion of the week mostly tethered to their time horizons.
Bitcoin was higher by about 0.7% over the past seven days at $26,880, while ether was ahead 0.5% over the same time frame as its overall supply contracted by 24,000 tokens.
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The biggest winners of the week for those coins with a $1 billion market cap or more were Litecoin (LTC), and ether staking solution Lido (LDO), up 13% and 12%, respectively.
Litecoin’s performance was partially driven by the launch of its LTC-20 token standard, an upgrade that allows non-fungible tokens (NFT’s) to be attached to its blockchain. Now with a gain of 30% year-to-date, litecoin has drawn recent attention as possibly trading at a potential discount relative to fair value, given its market value to realized value (MVRV) Z score.
Laggards in large-cap crypto were Quant Network (QNT) and Cosmos (ATOM), falling 3.8% and 5.7%, respectively.
For those who trade bitcoin and ether intraday, there were some wide swings in price action as initial jobless claims, uncertainty around U.S. debt negotiations, and hawkish and then dovish comments from Federal Reserve officials knocked prices around.
To wit, a report Friday morning that GOP officials walked out of debt negotiations saw BTC prices quickly switch from rally to slump, and then back to modest rally again.
Alongside the negative impact of stalled debt negotiations was optimism on softer monetary policy following Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s comments that interest rates may not need to rise as much as previously expected. The CME Fedwatch tool is currently assigning a 79% probability to interest rates being unchanged at the next (June 14) FOMC meeting, down from 84% a week ago.
Coindesk Indices weekly highlights
In addition to movement among individual coins, CoinDesk Indices (CDI) data highlights both sector and asset specific movement on the week.
Within the Metaverse Industry Group, , and Decentraland (MANA) rose 17% and 9.9%, respectively. Both have less than a $1 billion market cap. Their performance helped make the Culture and Entertainment sector CDI’s highest performing sector on the week with a 5.2% advance.
Litecoin was the top performing asset within the CDI Currency Sector this week, its performance partly driven by the aforementioned launch of its LTC-20 token.
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