Bitcoin fell Friday morning in Asia, trading below support at US$27,000 in a lackluster start to June after posting its first monthly loss of the year in May. Ether fell back below US$1,900 and most other top 10 non-stablecoin cryptocurrencies traded flat to lower. Cardano led the losers, while Litecoin found buying support as the token’s third halving event draws near. U.S. equity futures rose following gains in regular trading Thursday after the debt ceiling bill passed the House of Representatives and now goes to the Senate. Manufacturing data showed an easing in the pace of inflation, tempering concerns about more interest rate hikes ahead. On the down side, analysts expect the U.S. to issue as much as US$1 trillion in treasury bills this year to replenish its cash, which could suck liquidity from risk assets such as cryptocurrencies.
Crypto
Bitcoin fell 1.17% over the last 24 hours to US$26,878 at 07:10 a.m. in Hong Kong, but held onto a weekly gain of 1.53%, according to data from CoinMarketCap. The leading cryptocurrency dropped around 7% in May, but is still up 62% for the year so far.
Ether inched down 0.19% to trade at US$1,866, with a weekly gain of 3.20%.
Most other top 10 non-stablecoin cryptocurrencies traded flat to lower in the past 24 hours, while Litecoin bucked that trend to gain 5.11% to US$94.41, up 9.98% for the week. The token’s third halving event is set for Aug. 2, which would reduce supply of the token.
Litecoin’s on-chain activities picked up in May, according to blockchain data tracker IntoTheBlock on Tuesday, which noted almost 8.5 million Litecoin addresses with a balance by the end of May, compared to 7.09 million addresses by the end of March.
Cardano’s ADA led the losers in the top 10 non-stablecoin tokens, falling 2.35% to US$0.3659, but still managing a weekly gain of 2.03%.
The market cap of Tether’s USDT stablecoin hit an all-time high of US$83.60 billion early Friday morning in Asia, up more than 26% from the start of the year.
“(USDT’s rise was) undoubtedly linked to the banking woes in the US and the demise of BUSD from Binance; seems like investors are putting their faith – and money – with Tether, so far,” said Justin d’Anethan, head of APAC business development at Belgium-based crypto market maker Keyrock.
The total market cap of cryptocurrencies dropped 0.64% in the past 24 hours to US$1.13 trillion, while the 24-hour market volume fell 7.79% to US$30.28 billion.
(Updates first section to show U.S. equity futures rose.)