Bitcoin Erases Losses, Holds Near $29.3K as Nasdaq Gains Nearly 2%
Friday morning brought more welcome U.S. economic data, with the PCE Price Index – the Fed's preferred inflation gauge – dipping further in June.
As U.S. equity markets closed on Friday, bitcoin (BTC) was up slightly but continued to trade in a slim range.
The largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization was recently changing hands at $29,286, up 0.4% over the past 24 hours. That was also an increase from around $29,100 earlier in the day after the yield on the 10-year Japanese government bond rose a hefty 11 basis points to 0.55%.
Overnight, the Bank of Japan (BOJ) had announced a hawkish adjustment to its yield curve control (YCC) program, as CoinDesk previously reported, raising its cap on the 10-year Japanese government bond yield to 1% from 0.5%. The move came amid calls from the International Monetary Fund to begin normalizing that country's ultra-loose policy and could potentially affect global liquidity and risk assets including bitcoin.
ETH, SHIB, ADA
Ether (ETH), the second largest crypto in market value, followed a similar path on Friday and was changing hands at $1,872, an 0.7% gain over the past 24 hours. Other major altcoins tilted a little more to positive territory with popular memecoin SHIB among the brightest stories, recently climbing 6.6% from Thursday, same time. ADA, the token of smart contracts platform Cardano, was up 1.4%.
Inflation news
This morning's report on the PCE Price Index – the U.S. Federal Reserve's preferred inflation gauge – show prices up 3% year-over-year in June, shy of forecasts for 3.1% and down from 3.8% in May. The core rate fell to 4.1% against estimates for 4.2% and 4.6% previously.
There was little reaction in bitcoin following the backward looking data, but perhaps taking its cue from surging stocks – the Nasdaq closed up 1.9%, helped by a 6% rise in Intel (INTC) following a positive earnings report – the crypto managed an advance to the $29,500 level.
The broader CoinDesk Market Index (CMI) recently moved 0.7% higher for the day.
Gene Hoffman, CEO and president of blockchain and smart-contract platform Chia Network, expects bitcoin to continue trading sideways with a possible slight turn upward in August, a historically slow month in financial markets. "There's no real positive or negative push right now across the market," Hoffman told CoinDesk. "There's no real force to break things one side or the other."
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Sam Reynolds
Sam Reynolds is a senior reporter based in Taipei. Sam was part of the CoinDesk team that won the 2023 Gerald Loeb award in the breaking news category for coverage of FTX's collapse. Prior to CoinDesk, he was a reporter with Blockworks and a semiconductor analyst with IDC.
James Rubin
James Rubin was CoinDesk's Co-Managing Editor, Markets team based on the West Coast. He has written and edited for the Milken Institute, TheStreet.com and the Economist Intelligence Unit, among other organizations. He is also the co-author of the Urban Cyclist's Survival Guide. He owns a small amount of bitcoin.
Omkar Godbole
Omkar Godbole is a Co-Managing Editor on CoinDesk's Markets team based in Mumbai, holds a masters degree in Finance and a Chartered Market Technician (CMT) member. Omkar previously worked at FXStreet, writing research on currency markets and as fundamental analyst at currency and commodities desk at Mumbai-based brokerage houses. Omkar holds small amounts of bitcoin, ether, BitTorrent, tron and dot.
Stephen Alpher
Stephen is CoinDesk's managing editor for Markets. He previously served as managing editor at Seeking Alpha. A native of suburban Washington, D.C., Stephen went to the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, majoring in finance. He holds BTC above CoinDesk’s disclosure threshold of $1,000.