Altcoins
Bitcoin (BTC) Price Slips to $29,150 as XRP, DOGE, DOT, MATIC Lead Altcoin Fall
Cryptocurrencies were broadly lower after a sharp mid-afternoon sell-off on Tuesday, which shook up what had been a mostly quiet session.
Lead the CoinDesk Market Index (CMI) A 1.3% decline was recorded for altcoins such as Ripple (XRP), Dogecoin (DOGE), Polkadot (DOT), Polygon (MATIC), and Uniswap (UNI), each seeing losses of over 4%. in the last 24 hours. Overperforming were crypto majors Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH), both of which saw declines of less than 1%.
Perhaps touching cryptocurrencies was the cause of some macroeconomic nervousness, as this morning’s U.S. retail sales report for July came in much better than expected . The Atlanta Fed GDPNow Model – updated to include retail sales data – now forecasts rapid US GDP growth of 5% in the third quarter, hardly the kind of economy that would force the Fed to halt rate hikes of interest, or even to start thinking about rate cuts.
“Cryptoes are collapsing as the bond market sell-off resumes, pushing global bond yields higher as the risk of further central bank tightening increases,” said Ed Moya, senior market analyst at ‘OANDA, to CoinDesk. “It was expected that the end of the squeeze would be here and it now looks like that may not be the case.”
The Nasdaq, S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average each fell more than 1% on Thursday following the economic news, with the 10-year and 30-year U.S. Treasury yields each hitting new highs in 2023.
Although crypto appears to have at least somewhat stabilized in 2023, bear market conditions continue as prices and trading activity remain subdued. The Block earlier Thursday reported more departures at market maker GSR, including at executive level where CFO Jonathan Hugh left the company. “Our business operations and strategy have naturally evolved to respond to changing market conditions,” a GSR spokesperson said.