Cryptos Down As Macro And Micro Factors Hurt

Crypto market capitalization edged down early on Friday amidst caution ahead of the non-farm payrolls data due later in the day. Industry level developments including the exploit on the Ankr platform and recent public revelations and admissions by Sam Bankman-Fried, the former CEO of the FTX Group also dampened crypto market sentiment.

On the macro-economic front, the data on non-farm payrolls is expected to show the American economy added 200 thousand jobs in November. The strength of the labor market, as indicated by the data would dictate to a great extent the headroom available for further monetary policy tightening. Asian stock markets too declined mirroring this caution.

Meanwhile, in a major relief on the macroeconomic front, the PCE price index in the U.S. increased by 6 percent in October, versus 6.3 percent in the previous month. The Fed’s preferred inflation gauge recorded the lowest reading this year.

The Dollar Index (DXY) an important indicator of the Dollar’s relative strength, dropped to a three-month low of 104.38, before recovering to its current level of 104.55.

In another instance of security breach, BNB Chain-based protocol Ankr has been exploited in a multi-million-dollar hack. Hackers reportedly were able to exploit an unlimited minting bug. Ankr confirmed the exploit and said it was working with exchanges to immediately halt trading. It also assured that all underlying assets on Ankr Staking were safe and that all infrastructure services were unaffected.

Amidst all the macro-economic and industry specific developments, overall crypto market capitalization dropped to $854 billion, from $860 billion a day earlier.

Bitcoin is trading 0.80 percent lower after touching a high of $17,197.5 in the past 24 hours. BTC is holding on to gains of 3 percent in the past week.

Ethereum has also shed 0.30 percent overnight. Ether ranged between $1,291.69 and $1,267.71 in the past 24 hours. ETH too has made weekly gains of close to 8 percent.
Tether (USDT) traded between $1.00 and $0.9999 in the past 24 hours, significantly narrowing its earlier divergence from the $1 peg.

4th ranked BNB (BNB) dropped 3.6 percent in the past 24 hours and 1.9 percent in the past week. Reuters has in a recent tweet cited Binance CEO as saying that withdrawals have been paused after the Ankr hack.

5th ranked USDCoin (USDC) traded between $1 and $0.9996 in the past 24 hours.

7th ranked XRP (XRP) dropped 2.4 percent overnight and 3.8 percent in the past week.

8th ranked Dogecoin (DOGE) dropped 4 percent overnight but is still holding on to weekly gains of more than 15 percent.

9th ranked Cardano (ADA) edged down 0.36 percent, whereas 10th ranked Polygon (MATIC) edged up 0.77 percent in the past 24 hours.

Meanwhile, Department of Justice’s U.S. Trustee overseeing FTX’s bankruptcy case has filed a motion calling for the appointment of an examiner in what has been described as potentially the fastest big corporate failure in American history. The Trustee made a plea to appoint an independent fiduciary to investigate and to report on the debtors’ extraordinary collapse, the substantial and serious allegations of fraud, dishonesty, incompetence, misconduct, and mismanagement by the debtors, the circumstances surrounding the debtors’ collapse, the apparent conversion of exchange customers’ property, and whether colorable claims and causes of action exist to remedy losses.

Meanwhile, Bloomberg has reported that LedgerX, the solvent entity in the FTX empire would be sharing $250 million set aside for CFTC application, to repay creditors to the crumbled crypto firm. In another development related to the FTX saga, FTX Japan is reportedly planning to refund its customers.

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