Cryptos were largely in the green, although trading was choppy; India crypto investors receive some upbeat news.
A late afternoon surge on Thursday carried bitcoin past $30,000, but the mood among cryptocurrency investors remained pessimistic.
The largest crypto by market capitalization was recently trading at about $30,600, a more than 2% gain over the previous 24 hours. Ether was changing hands at just above $1,800, up slightly for the same period. Most other major cryptos rose late with ADA recently rising nearly 6%, and APE up over 4%. Trading was choppy as investors continued to shy away from riskier assets – their behavior a product of inflationary and recessionary fears that have mushroomed steadily this year.
“Bitcoin will get its groove back once bearish sentiment on Wall Street improves, but that will likely take several more weeks,” Oanda Senior Markets Analyst Edward Moya wrote in an email.
Stocks rose as the tech-heavy Nasdaq jumped 2.6%, the S&P 500 climbed 1.8% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 1.2%. Gold, a traditional safe haven in down markets, increased by more than a percentage point, underscoring the current uncertainty among investors.
The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and allied countries said that they would boost the supply of oil by an unexpectedly large amount. The U.S. and other countries had been pressing the organization to loosen its current limits to help lower energy prices. The price of Brent crude oil, which is a widely watched measure of energy markets, rose to $118 per barrel, a more than 53% spike since the start of the year.
The looming prospect of recession continued to ripple through the technology sector on Thursday with Microsoft (MSFT) ratcheting back its earnings and sales projections for the current quarter. Amazon (AMZN) and Netflix (NFLX), among others, reported weak first-quarter financial results last month, noting the effects of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and unsettling macroeconomic conditions.
The crypto industry has also felt the impact of the current, dour economic mood with crypto exchange Coinbase announcing in a blog post by Chief People Officer L.J. Brock, that it would “extend our hiring pause for both new and backfill roles for the foreseeable future and rescind a number of accepted offers.” The move came a just hours after crypto exchange and custodian Gemini, the brainchild of billionaire twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, said it would lay off 10% of its workforce, approximately 100 employees.
The crypto industry is currently in a “contraction phase that is settling into a period of stasis,” also known as a “crypto winter,” the twins wrote in a blog post.
Oanda’s Moya noted that investors’ “risk appetite” will depend on “expectations” of what the U.S. central bank “will do beyond the summer.”
“Bitcoin is forming a base but most traders are still licking their wounds,” he wrote. “If bitcoin can recapture the $33,500 level, that is what is needed for technical buying to get triggered.”