The prices of major cryptocurrencies tended to be mixed on Friday (18/3/2022) morning Indonesian time, where investors were still digesting the sentiment from the United States (US) central bank interest rate hike.
Launching data from CoinMarketCap at 09:00 WIB, from cryptos traded in the red zone, there was Bitcoin which weakened 1.42% to a price level of US$ 40,555.84/coin or equivalent to Rp. 579,948,512/koin (assuming an exchange rate of Rp. 14,300/US$).
Furthermore, the XRP digital coin (token) fell 0.39% to US$ 0.7902/coin (Rp 11,300/coin), Terra fell 2.76% to US$ 85.65/coin (Rp 1,224,795/coin) , Solana fell 2.5% to US$ 86.49/coin (Rp 1,236,807/coin), and Cardano fell 0.32% to US$ 0.8347/coin (Rp 11,936).
Meanwhile, of the cryptocurrencies traded in the green zone, Ethereum rose 0.6% to a level of US$ 2,785.02/coin or Rp. 39,825,786/coin, BNB increased 0.87% to US$ 387.75/coin (Rp. 5,544,825/coin), Avalanche jumped 6.72% to US$ 80.82/coin (Rp 1,155,726/coin), and two stablecoin tokens namely Tether and USD Coin.
Here’s the movement of the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization today.
After briefly touching the US$ 41,000 level yesterday, Bitcoin this morning tends to stay around the US$ 40,000 level, in the midst of leading several alternative tokens (altcoins).
Not only Bitcoin, the largest altcoin token, namely Ethereum, also tends to stay around the US$ 2,700 level.
The rise in altcoins over the past few days suggests a greater risk appetite among crypto traders.
This happened amidst the still bright global stock market, although in the Asia-Pacific region this morning tends to be mixed, after the Chinese government pledged its support for the Chinese stock market on Wednesday.
On the macro front, analysts expect limited gains for the US dollar, which could be a positive sentiment for Bitcoin in the short term.
“The US dollar has appreciated since Russia began its military aggression against Ukraine, which is not surprising given that the greenback has a track record of appreciating in response to geopolitical events,” MRB Partners, a global investment research firm wrote in a research report.
“However, this strengthening is generally followed by a consolidation phase,” added MRB Partners.
Investors in crypto tend to be less worried about the Fed’s benchmark interest rate hike, because they have been anticipating it for a long time and the rate hike is in line with their expectations.
For information, the US central bank (Federal Reserve / The Fed) has raised interest rates by 25 basis points (bp) on Wednesday US time in line with market expectations.
The Fed also forecast aggressive plans for further rate hikes while cutting its economic growth forecast for this year.
“People are getting more comfortable with the fact that interest rates are finally going up. This has been talked about by [Fed] Chair (Jerome) Powell since early December,” Michael James, managing director of equity trading at Wedbush Securities, told Reuters.