Major digital assets surged in an eventful week that included encouraging inflation data and the much anticipated Ethereum Shanghai upgrade. Once-shaken confidence in crypto markets rose, along with valuations and trading volumes.
Bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) have risen about 9% and 11%, respectively, over the past seven days, with much of the gains occurring over the latter few days.
In recent economic reports inflation was lower than expected and jobless claims were higher than expected. The Fed may have been hoping for such signs as reason to justify not raising interest rates again when the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) next meets in May.
Bond markets have begun to respond. The spread between two- and 10-year Treasury bonds, while still negative, has narrowed since early March.
Crypto markets’ biggest news was the completion of the Shanghai update, allowing ETH stakers to withdraw their ETH deposits. Ether has responded positively, increasing about 9% in price since the upgrade was completed.
Ether 04/14/23 (TradingView)
One of investors’ prevailing fears was that the potential unlocking of 18.2 million ETH would lead to selling pressure on the asset. However, markets have so far viewed the de- risking of ETH staking positively.
ETH’s price upswing has led to the asset chipping away at bitcoin dominance by market capitalization. Crypto market trading volume also rose, as ETH’s daily volume spiked to more than twice its 20-day moving average on Thursday. BTC volume breached its 20-day moving average each day this week, with the exception of Thursday
Both BTC and ETH breached the upper range of their Bollinger Bands this week, an indication of increased bullishness. The Bollinger Bands indicator is a technical tool that plots an asset's moving average and two standard deviations above and below. A breach of Bollinger Bands in either direction is considered to be a significant event, in this case a bullish one.
Some altcoins had a push higher this week as well. ARB, the native token for Ethereum layer 2 system Arbitrum, led the way – up 28% over the past seven days. Solana (SOL) and Immutable X's IMX also had strong weeks, rising 20% and 17%, respectively.
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Asset Performance (Messari)
Edited by James Rubin.
