Cryptos Rise Despite Macro Headwinds

Crypto market capitalization touched $2 trillion as bullish momentum returned to the most thriving digital assets marketplace despite persisting macro headwinds. Friday’s stunning jobs data from the U.S. and Wednesday’s inflation readings are together expected to set the tone for the future of Fed’s monetary policy trajectory in the months to come.

The U.S. economy added 467k payrolls in the month of January 2022, much higher than the market forecasts of 150k. The annual inflation rate in the U.S is seen rising to 7.1 percent in January from 7 percent in December, which was the highest since June 1982.

Major central banks across the globe have taken the path to normalization of monetary policy, withdrawing from the heavily accommodative stance adopted with the onset of the unprecedented coronavirus pandemic.

Bitcoin is trading at $43,963.20 up 3.70 percent on a 24-hour basis and 14.63 percent on a weekly basis.

Ethereum is trading at $3,101.85 up 1 percent in the past 24-hours and 13 percent over a seven-day horizon.

6th-ranked XRP (XRP) has gained close to 13 percent overnight and 38 percent in the week. With the rally, XRP has surged past Cardano and Solana and is aiming for an entry to the top-5 league. Progress in the Ripple vs SEC case and expectations that it would be positive for XRP is also perhaps helping the rally.

10th ran-ed Avalanche (AVAX) has surged close to 9 percent overnight.

13th-ranked SHIBA INU (SHIB) has gained 20 percent in the past 24- hours and 52 percent in the past week and is placed a notch below the original meme coin Dogecoin (DOGE).

15th-ranked Polygon (MATIC) too has surged close to 10 percent overnight.

20th-ranked Litecoin (LTC) has surged 24 percent in the past week, aided by the 6 percent overnight rally.

Despite the overall surge of more than 2 percent in crypto market capitalization, Solana (SOL) is down 2.23 percent, Terra (LUNA) is down 1.71 percent, Polkadot (DOT) is down 2.01 percent, Cosmos (ATOM) is down 4.66 percent and Near protocol (NEAR) is down 4.72 percent.

In the category-wise market capitalization dominance, Smart Contracts aggregate to 28.24 percent; DeFi is at 7.18 percent; Centralized Exchanges add up to 5.12 percent; Web 3 sums up to 3.05 percent; Research grosses 2.66 percent; NFTs account for 2.37 percent; Memes command 2.02 percent; Scaling enjoys 1.67 percent; Metaverse commands 1.54 percent; Gaming amount to 1.47 percent; while Decentralized Exchanges follows with 1.43 percent market capitalization.

The remarkable rally in SHIBA INU (SHIB) coupled with the decent gains in Dogecoin (DOGE) have helped the meme category market capitalization to surge by 0.26 percent to 2.02 percent dominance, from 1.76 percent dominance on Friday.

Since Friday, the NFT category as well as Gaming category have added dominance by 0.11 percent, closely followed by Metaverse which has increased dominance by 0.08 percent.

During the same period, stablecoins ceded dominance by 1.04 percent, smart contracts decreased in dominance by 0.60 percent whereas DeFi recorded a 0.07 percent dip.

Viewed from the perspective of individual cryptocurrencies, the above shift in market dominance manifests as a 1 percent increase in Bitcoin’s dominance and a simultaneous erosion in Ethereum’s dominance by 0.6 percent and that of residual altcoins by 0.4 percent.

Global markets eagerly await the release of inflation data from the U.S. on Wednesday. The perceived spike in inflation would reignite the debate for the need for a meaningful inflation hedge. Whether Gold or Bitcoin can meaningfully aspire for the honor is the moot question ahead of the data release.

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