Carbon credit protocols have had a difficult time in recent months but have been working to improve the way they operate; bitcoin outperformed other major cryptocurrencies in Thursday trading.

Most major cryptocurrencies tumbled even as stock prices rose in Thursday trading.

Bitcoin was recently trading at about $29,100, roughly flat over the previous 24 hours after the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization dropped well below $29,000 earlier in the day. Ether was off more than 8% over the same period and changing hands below $1,800. The second largest crypto by market cap has hovered above $1,900 for much of the past three weeks.

Other altcoins spent most of their Thursday day solidly in the red with SOL, CRO and APE each off at least 11% at certain points as investors continued their recent preference for BTC, considered the least risky of digital assets, amid ongoing concerns about high inflation and an economic downturn. Bitcoin’s market cap has recently spiked relative to other cryptocurrencies.

“It’s not surprise to me that people are pulling back from crypto,” JJ Kinahan, vice president and chief market strategist for trading platform Tastytrade, told CoinDesk TV’s First Mover program. “Bitcoin, probably the one [cryptocurrency] being the most established name among retail investors is the one that people trust to hold up.”

The Dow Jones Industrial Average of blue-chip stocks has had at least some reason to crow lately, rising for a fifth consecutive day. Other indices also soared as three major retail chains, Macy’s, Dollar General and Dollar Tree, reported favorable earnings, suggesting at least temporarily that consumers weren’t done shopping. Retail sales helped fuel the U.S. economic rebound that began slowing in recent months.

The tech-focused Nasdaq increased a strong 2.6% with Tesla (TSLA) and Amazon (AMZN) among the winners, and the S&P 500, climbed nearly 2% just two days after hitting bear market territory, a designation reached when an equities index plunges 20% from its most recent high.

Still, other recent news offered stark reminders of the global economy’s shaky balance. In China, President Xi Jinping said that the country’s economy was doing worse in some ways than during the earlier stages of the COVID pandemic. A government lockdown has slowed China’s growth and boosted unemployment rates. And investment giant Sequoia Capital offered a downbeat assessment of economic conditions and encouraged the early stage companies it has financed to focus on cutting costs and increasing profitability.

Crypto investors are likely to remain spooked by economic conditions and geopolitical turmoil, a number of analysts say. The Fear and Greed index rose slightly by early Thursday and remains in “extreme fear” territory, while the total market capitalization of the crypto market has declined.

“That the S&P is trying to break 4,000, while bitcoin’s trying to break $30,000 are both very important points, very correlated as to the confidence in the market and in bitcoin and assets overall,” Tastytrade’s Kinahan said.

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Bitcoin lost support at $30,000 as Chinese technology stocks sold off on Thursday amid earnings worries a day after hawkish comments from the U.S. Federal Reserve.

Waning sentiment around strong economic growth caused the second day of sell-offs in broader markets on Thursday morning. Asian markets slide following a day of red in U.S. equities, leading to sell-offs in bitcoin (BTC) and other major cryptocurrencies.

Bitcoin failed to regain support at $30,000 after falling below the level on Wednesday. The asset hovers over $29,000, with support at $27,000 should it lose current levels.

Weakness in bitcoin spread to crypto majors, with Solana’s SOL and Cardano’s ADA losing as much as 9% in the past 24 hours to lead losses. Traders likely risked-off from major cryptocurrencies anticipating a further drop in global markets.

Prices movements in cryptocurrencies have lately tracked those in the U.S., with bitcoin trading similar to a risky technology stock.
Ether (ETH) dipped 4%, Polkadot’s DOT fell 7%, while Dogecoin (DOGE) dropped 5%. Tron (TRX) gained a nominal 0.2%, while Polygon (MATIC) erased Wednesday’s gains with a 9% slump.

Crypto market capitalization decreased by 3% to under $1.3 billion. The slide tracked a slump in U.S. markets on Wednesday, which came as earnings reports from consumer firms Target (TGT) missed estimates, sending the giant retailer’s shares plunging more than 22% in the U.S. session.

Inflation is forcing consumers to spend more on food and less on discretionary items, as reported, with Walmart (WMT) cutting profit forecasts on Wednesday citing higher fuel and worker costs.

Weak earnings in the U.S. carried over to the Asian session led by weakness in Chinese technology stocks. India’s Sensex and the Asia Dow lost over 2.2%, while futures on European indices opened nearly 0.1% lower.

Chinese technology giant Tencent posted its lowest revenue gains since 2014, losing 8% in Thursday’s session. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Tech Index dropped 5.1% as analysts feared the ill effects of lockdowns and reduced spending could finally show up on earnings reports in Asia.

The weakness in global markets rose amid fears of lower spending in the coming years as the West ramps up interest rates and tightens monetary policies.

U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has pledged to keep tightening monetary conditions until inflation comes down, with some crypto analysts expecting a further correction in cryptocurrencies should current market conditions continue.

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Both candidates made crypto an important issue to attract younger voters, but it’s not yet clear if the winner, Yoon Suk-yeol, will introduce legislation fulfilling his promises; bitcoin and ether were both in the red.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine raged on over the weekend, and investors continued to watch events with trepidation .

At the time of publication, bitcoin was trading at about $37,800, off about 3% from where it started the weekend. Ether was trading at approximately $2,500, also down roughly 3% for the same period. Most other major altcoins were in the red.

Since Russia began its unprovoked attack, bitcon, has risen and dipped within the $37,000 to $45,000 price range that it entered in late January. “It’s been another range-bound, indecisive week for Bitcoin and the crypto markets where the market leader has failed to make any meaningful headway on the upside,” wrote Joe DiPasquale, the CEO of fund manager BitBull Capital, in a text to CoinDesk. He added: “The current price action is typical during bearish phases, as was seen in May, June and July, and often precedes strong price bottoms.”

Cryptos have largely followed the performance of equity markets, which have dropped significantly in recent months and turned particularly edgy as Ukraine turned into a tinderbox. The economic fallout has troubled a global economy that was already struggling to address logistical bottlenecks, workforce shortages for key positions, rising energy prices and wider inflationary concerns. A crypto executive order by the Biden Administration that sent bitcoin into the mid $40,000 range now seems way in the past.

U.S. gas prices rose to $4.33 per gallon late in the week, smashing the previous record of $4.08 set in 2008 during the Great Recession and nearly $1.50 higher than the price a year ago, according to the American Automobile Association (AAA). On Thursday, the U.S. Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that U.S. inflation had accelerated in February to a fresh four-decade high of 7.9%. Investors fear that sanctions against Russia, a major global supplier of oil, could send prices even higher.

Crytpo’s weekend performance followed another series of Ukraine horrors. Early Sunday, a Russian missile strike on a Ukraine military training center just 10 miles from the border to Poland killed 35 people, according to multiple reports, and threatened to spread the conflict beyond Ukraine borders. Earlier during the weekend, Russia said that it viewed efforts to supply Ukraine as “legitimate targets.” A U.S. journalist was killed on Sunday while reporting from a Kyiv suburb.

Meanwhile, the U.S. and other countries that have condemned the invasion have continued to look for ways to ratchet up their sanctions, and a growing list of major, global brands have said they will no longer do business in Russia.

“The teetering of crypto prices near a price point that led to lows over the last month is also related to uncertainty over the military actions between Russia and Ukraine,” DiPasquale said. “Just as equities markets have been vacillating, crypto markets have largely done the same.”

But DiPasquale said the U.S. central bank’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) decision Tuesday on interest rates would be “very interesting for markets.”

“Volatility is a certainty, but whether the market will rise or fall will depend on what the Fed comes out with,” he said.

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Mason Versluis, who goes by Crypto Mason on TikTok, began investing in crypto in 2017. Since then, he’s spent his time browsing the web for new projects that have the potential to go mainstream.

He bought hedera (HBAR), which could prove to be an ethereum competitor, when it was at $0.03. It has since gone up by about 1,200%. He bought ripple’s xrp at $0.17, and it’s since up 600%. And he bought the ethereum-based quant (QNT) at $28, which is up about 864%, according to screenshots of the transactions Insider viewed.

In the past five months, Versluis has had his eyes on cryptos tied to the metaverse, a sort of digital universe that allows people to interact in virtual worlds. And he said his interest had nothing to do with Facebook’s big metaverse splash and rebrand to Meta. What sparked his attention was a tweet about someone selling a virtual property in one of these digital worlds for $913,000.

Like blockchains, there are numerous metaverses, each operating slightly differently. And like cellphone games and video games, each metaverse looks and works differently. In one, you could purchase virtual real estate and build on your land. In another, you could slay dragons.

“It’s an online virtual world that you can exist in just like you exist in the physical world,” Versluis said. “You can meet other people. You can play games. You can shop.”

While Facebook’s announcement prompted the spike in mainstream interest around metaverses, the company and its highly centralized platform isn’t exactly favored by the crypto community, Versluis said.

“There’s, like, an adoption curve to these things. So Facebook’s awareness blast is the first step to mass adoption,” Versluis said.

People will be able to hop onto different metaverses they prefer. Some metaverses may even have interoperability, allowing users to merge two platforms, he added.

But whether you’re a gamer or not, the opportunities for investors in the metaverse are as diverse as in the crypto space. And Versluis said it was not something to be overlooked.

“They should be looking at this like the obvious new wave because if a trillion-dollar company like Facebook is taking a step that big, it’s very clear where the world is headed,” Versluis said. “So as an investor, you should be trying to capitalize on this new wave.”

Some of these metaverses are effectively built on well-known blockchains like ethereum. But they have their own tokens people can use as a native currency within the game. This means the value of a metaverse’s token can skyrocket if the virtual world gets popular enough.

Since many of these projects are in their early stages and don’t have mass adoption, investing remains highly risky and highly volatile. That’s why Versluis is sticking to projects that he’s seeing momentum in and those that have partnerships with big companies.

“The money being pumped in might be temporary because it has been a lot, so naturally things are going to correct,” Versluis said. “But in the long term, this is going to explode. I can say with personally 100% confidence that this is the future.”

In an interview with Insider, he shared the five cryptos he’s betting on that are tied to the metaverse.

Metaverse-linked cryptos

The first pick is Decentraland, which uses the token mana. The piece of digital land that sold for almost $913,000 was built within this ecosystem. And it’s one of the leading metaverses built on ethereum.

Decentraland is quite the opposite of Facebook’s metaverse because it’s run by the community, not a centralized company, Versluis said.

Within this digital world, you can shop in a marketplace, play games, and buy and build plots of land. And yes, you’ll need mana to transact. Mana was last trading at $2.74, according to CoinMarketCap, up about 1,042% year to date.

The next project is Metahero, which uses the hero token. This project isn’t building another metaverse but the hardware required to merge our world with the digital. Its key product is a large scanner that scans people and objects and creates a version of them for the digital world.

“So what they’re doing is trying to build the largest database, and this is going to help us continue to merge the physical and digital world. It’s essentially like a physical portal,” Versluis said.

Hero was last trading at $0.16, according to CoinMarketCap, up 2,062% year to date.

The next project is The Sandbox, a leading contender for the metaverse that’s ethereum-based. Its token is sand. According to its website, you can “play, create, own, and govern a virtual metaverse” that’s created by the community or its players.

Rather than holding this crypto, Versluis told Insider he had been trading it because he hadn’t done enough in-depth research to determine whether this would be a longer-term hold.

As of Wednesday, sand was last trading around $3, according to CoinMarketCap, but it’s up a whopping 8,233% year to date.

Steve Ehrlich, the CEO of Voyager Digital, also recently told Insider that “there’s definitely still further room to grow” in both Decentraland and Sandbox because of the metaverse opportunity.

The next contender Versluis is invested in is Hedera, which isn’t a metaverse or a blockchain but a hashgraph. Its crypto is hbar. He’s picked this project because it has a metaverse project being built on it known as Vccess, another metaverse that uses nonfungible tokens, rather than crypto.

Hedera’s platform is enterprise-driven, and its governing council includes global organizations such as Boeing, IBM, and Google. It’s not the favorite among the crypto community because of its lack of decentralized features relative to blockchains. But for traditional investors who are more familiar with stocks than blockchains, this may be a bit closer to home.

As of Wednesday, hbar was trading at $0.39, up 1,119% year to date.

Finally, Versluis said not to forget about ether because its blockchain hosts the two biggest metaverse contenders, Decentraland and The Sandbox.

@ Insider

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