Market Wrap: Bitcoin Rally Continues With Rise to $22,000

Bitcoin gradually gained momentum this week after a prolonged period of rangebound trading. It rallied to $22,000 on Friday morning New York-time before losing a little ground to close at $21,796, up 1.05%. Ether (ETH) traded as high as $1,238, up 0.32% as of 4:00 pm ET. 

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The bounceback comes as the US Labor Department released a better-than-expected June job report and showed newly added jobs reached 372,000 while the unemployment rate remained steady at 3.6%. 

“After it became clear that the short-term selling momentum ran out of steam, bitcoin has been stabilizing even as risk-aversion remains the dominant mindset on Wall Street,” Edward Moya, senior market analyst at currency trading firm OANDA, wrote in a Friday note. 

US equities dipped slightly on Friday with the S&P 500 closing down 0.08% to 3,899 and the DJIA off 0.15% at 31,339. Tech-focused Nasdaq fell by 0.09% to $156.56, after video game retailer GameStop fired its chief financial officer and began layoffs. 

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Key commodities ticked up Friday. Brent crude oil for September delivery rose 2.23% to $106.98 a barrel as of 3:32 pm ET, while gold’s price climbed up 0.09% to $1,741.20 per ounce. Natural gas, though, fell by 3.87% to $6.05 per 1,000 cubic feet, according to Wall Street Journal market data. 

Global markets remained steady, despite the shock of the assassination of Japan’s former prime minister Shinzo Abe, who was shot at a political event early Friday morning. Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 ended flat at 26,517.19, up 0.1%. The MSCI International ACWI Price Index dipped to $434.80, down 0.16% in the past 24 hours as of 3:35 pm ET. 

The US dollar barely budged against the Japanese yen — up 0.05% — and the euro rose to $1.018, up 0.2%. 

In the decentralized finance (DeFi) space, Uniswap’s token rose 1.79% to $5.8, while Aave’s token went up 2.16% to $71.72. MakerDAO’s token slid -0.51% to $974.17.

Top Stories

Crypto Lender Voyager’s Marketing Materials Under FDIC Scanner

• Following its bankruptcy filing this week, news emerged that crypto lender Voyager had changed phrasing on its website about customer funds being insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.
• The crypto lender claimed that customers would be able to access funds “after a reconciliation and fraud prevention process” is completed. 

Celsius Farmed Out Funds to DeFi Degen

• Celsius sent over $500 million to be managed by a prominent DeFi “whale” known as “0xB1.”
• Data shows the trader or group of traders ran the Ethereum wallet beginning with this prefix, which has sent and received between $1.33 billion and $1.95 billion over its existence.

Latest in Crypto Hiring: Binance.US Hires CFO To Help It Chart IPO Path

• Binance.US appointed Jasmine Lee to be its new chief financial officer. 
• Algorand Foundation added two executives this week, including one who spent more than 20 years at JPMorgan.

Going Forward

Markets are eyeing June’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) report release next week. Crypto exchange Bitfinex’s analysts are watching whether “a buoyant cryptocurrency market over the past 24 hours” will carry through to more buying interest in July. 

“An inherent resilience that cryptocurrency has displayed in recent weeks in the face of a wave of liquidations and solvency issues has come to the fore today as the market enters the green zone,” Bitfinex’s analysts told Blockworks in an email. “Hedge funds betting on wider contagion and market capitulation could be licking their wounds as bitcoin and [ether] both clock up impressive gains,” the analysts noted.  

“Bitcoin has been bolstered by an increased appetite for risk, as evidenced by a four-day winning streak in the US’s S&P 500 where battered technology stocks have also rebounded,” they added.

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