Bitcoin and Ether rose on Friday morning in Asia, along with nearly all other top 10 non-stablecoin cryptocurrencies. The exceptions were Cardano and Tron after Tron’s gains earlier in the week. The U.S. posted stronger-than-expected jobless claims as investors continue to monitor the country’s ongoing debt ceiling negotiations.
Bitcoin, Ether rise
Bitcoin rose 1.82% over the last 24 hours to US$26,431 at 9:30 a.m. in Hong Kong, according to data from CoinMarketCap. The world’s largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization was, however, down 1.53% over the past seven days.
Ether climbed 1.85% in the past 24 hours to US$1,800. It remained little changed over the past week..
“This week, Bitcoin briefly dipped below its two-week range between US$26,500 and US$27,000, now challenging the critical 200-weekly moving average at $26,275,” said Rachel Lin, chief executive officer of Singapore-based decentralized derivatives exchange Synfutures.
“A close below this weekly range could negatively impact Bitcoin and the broader crypto market, but a bounce from this level could signify a possible recovery,” Lin added.
Litecoin was the biggest gainer in the past day among the top 10 non-stablecoin cryptos. It rose 4.53% in the last 24 hours to US$87.4, but it logged a 4.09% loss for the week.
Tron recorded the largest weekly rise among the top 10 tokens, adding 9.38% for the week. However, it slid 0.17% in the past 24 hours to US$0.07684. Cardano’s ADA token dipped 0.22% in the past day and dropped 3.94% over the past week.
Meanwhile, the surge of interest in chipmaker Nvidia – whose Nasdaq stock closed 24% higher on Thursday given its strong first-quarter earnings results – has extended to the crypto space. Tokens related to artificial intelligence are showing significant gains.
FET — which has a market capitalization of US$193 million — is the native currency of AI-powered blockchain platform Fetch.ai. It gained 4.13% over the past 24 hours.
Similarly, SingularityNET, the native coin of the decentralized AI marketplace SingularityNET, rose 9% over the past day. Render Token, the native coin of GPU-based rendering platform Render Network, also added 3.31%.
Elsewhere, crypto exchange OKX announced Thursday that it has upgraded its app to serve retail investors in Hong Kong. The city’s new crypto trading framework is set to take effect on June 1.
OKX users in Hong Kong will soon be able to trade 16 major cryptos, including Bitcoin and Ether.