A week of crypto turmoil: Bitcoin rises, Ethereum falls

A week of concerns about additional US bank failures and a potential recession is almost over. Remarkably, Bitcoin increased in Friday morning trade in Asia to hover above US$29,500. Therefore, some observers claim that new interest in the world’s largest cryptocurrency as a safe haven asset is emerging.

Simultaneously, Ethereum dipped slightly but remained above the $1,900 support level. In fact, the majority of the other top 10 non-stablecoin cryptos decreased. The exception is Solana, which benefited from an improvement in its network’s artificial intelligence (AI). After advances on Wall Street in regular Thursday trade due to additional good results signals, US equity futures declined in Asia.

According to data from CoinMarketCap, Bitcoin increased by 0.77% to US$29,518 in 24 hours. It led to 9:00 a.m. in Hong Kong. In the last seven days, the token jumped by 4.23%.

U.S.-based financial services company Bernstein Private Wealth Management released a financial report on Thursday. The report expressed the instability and fragility of the US banking system. The main report’s narrative showcased Bitcoin’s mainstream adoption and enhanced its reputation as a safe haven.

The New York-based investment firm H.C. Wainwright believes Bitcoin may enter a bull price cycle. Nonetheless, the bank stated that it would profit from expanding the global digital asset market. Wainwright initiated the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase on Wednesday.

Ether dropped 0.56% to $1,911, suffering a 1.98% weekly loss.

Other significant crypto activity

Wednesday also brought some news for the non-profit Solana Foundation. They announced a US$1 million fund for initiatives researching AI for the Solana blockchain. Following the positive wave, Solana increased by 1.91% to US$22.39. Besides, this week, Solana Labs apparently developed a plugin for OpenAI’s chatbot ChatGPT. Now, it enables users to transfer tokens, check wallet balances, and buy non-fungible tokens (NFT) through ChatGPT.

In the 24 hours leading up to 9:00 a.m. in Hong Kong, the Forkast 500 NFT index, which measures the NFT market, fell 0.21% to 3,701.73, dropping 6.55% for the week. The index, which comprises 500 qualified smart contracts, serves as a proxied indicator of the success of the worldwide NFT market. CryptoSlam, a subsidiary of Forkast, runs it. Labs and a sister company to Forkast.News.

On the last day, the overall market value of cryptocurrencies rose 0.02% to US$1.21 trillion. Over the previous 24 hours, the total trade volume decreased 22.81% to US$51.66 billion.