During trading on Monday morning in Asia, the value of Bitcoin and Ether experienced a slight decrease. This was also the case for all other cryptocurrencies in the top 10 that were not stablecoins, with the exception of Litecoin.
Investors are bracing themselves for another increase in interest rates on Wednesday while awaiting the release of a key inflation indicator on Tuesday, which is the consumer price index for November.
Quick information
- According to CoinMarketCap, Bitcoin was trading at US$17,106 after a loss of 0.1% in the previous 24 hours up until 8 a.m. in Hong Kong, while Ether was trading at US$1,264 after a loss of 0.2%. Among the top 10 cryptocurrencies that are not stablecoins, Litecoin was the only token to go up in value, increasing by 0.4% to reach US$76.64.
- The largest losses were seen by Memecoin Dogecoin, which fell 3.7% to US$0.09, followed by Polkadot, which fell by 2% to US$5.17.
- In Hong Kong on Monday morning, the total cryptocurrency market cap had decreased by 0.5% to $850 billion, while recording a 24-hour market trading volume of $24.7 billion, which was a 4.5% increase from the previous day.
- On Friday, equity markets in the United States finished the trading day in the red. The S&P 500 Index and the Nasdaq Composite Index both experienced losses of 0.7%, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average experienced a loss of 0.9%, bringing the total loss for the week to 2.8% and making it the worst trading week for the market since September.
- According to the most recent report on the producer price index, which was released on Friday by the United States Department of Labor, wholesale prices in the United States rose by 0.3% in November, and they are now 7.4% higher than they were one year ago. Prices have remained high in spite of the Federal Reserve’s efforts to curb inflation through a series of rate hikes. Many economists had predicted a 0.2% increase for the month, but the actual number was higher.
- The next two-day meeting of the Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) begins on Tuesday, December 13, and a rate hike of 50 basis points is anticipated to be discussed. This would be 25 basis points less than the average of the previous four consecutive rate raises.
- Since March, the Federal Reserve has raised interest rates in an effort to reduce the rate of inflation. These rates have increased from almost zero to a 15-year high of 3.75% to 4%, and the Fed has indicated that they may end up being higher than 5%. The goal of the central bank is to keep inflation within a range that falls between 2% and 2%. In October, the consumer price index came in at 7.7%, a decrease from 8.2% in the previous month.
(The sixth point has been updated to reflect the fact that the Federal Reserve has raised interest rates by a total of four and not five times this year.)
Yahoofinance.com was cited as the source.
