Bitcoin and Ether prices rose in Tuesday morning trading in Asia, along with all the non-stablecoin top ten cryptocurrencies. Litecoin led the gainers, while XRP, Dogecoin and Polygon also posted increases of between 2% and 3%.
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Fast facts
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Bitcoin rose 0.4% to US$16,686 in the 24 hours to 8 a.m. in Hong Kong, while Ethereum gained 1.2% to trade at US$1,214, according to CoinMarketCap.
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Litecoin rose 5.6% to trade at a two week high of US$74.84 after the Litecoin Foundation, the organization behind the cryptocurrency, announced on Sunday that the network saw a record of more than 39 million transactions in 2022. The token is up about 6% over the last calendar week.
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Polygon’s Matic token rose 2.8% to change hands at US$0.78, as data from crypto whale tracker WhaleStats found that the token was one of the top 10 purchased coins by the 500 biggest Ether whales over the New Year’s period. However, Matic is still down about 3.7% for the week. The WhaleStats list included memecoin Shiba Inu token and Web3 sports-based token Chiliz.
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Dogecoin rose 1.7% to trade at US$0.071. The gains follow the Dogecoin Foundation, the group responsible for the development of the network, announcing an allocation of 5 million Doge (US$358,000) to a fund for core Dogecoin developers. The coin has more ground to make up as its still off about 5% for the week.
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Solana added 12.8% to trade at US$11.26. Sitting just outside CoinMarketCap’s top ten list, these gains come as Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin tweeted support for the network on Friday, saying he “hope[s] the community gets its fair chance to thrive.” The token has now made up most of its losses over the last seven days.
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U.S. equity markets were closed on Monday due to the New Year holiday, and will open again for trading on Tuesday. Investors await the release of the minutes from the U.S. Federal Reserve’s December meeting for further guidance on the Fed’s view on inflation and interest rate policy.
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The Fed raised rates by the expected 50-basis points in December, bringing benchmark rates to between 4.25% and 4.5% — the highest level in 15 years. It also warned of more increases to come in 2023 as it makes tackling inflation its priority. The latest U.S. consumer price index showed that inflation was up 7.1% in November compared to last year, though a decline from readings of 7.7% in October and 8.2% in September.
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U.S. stock and bond markets had one of the worst years on record in 2022, with the S&P 500 losing 19.4%, as the Fed cranked up interest rates to slow the pace of inflation.
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