First Mover Asia: Bitcoin Recovers From Fed Dip

Good morning. Here’s what’s happening:

Prices: Bank failures are playing a larger role in dictating the price of bitcoin rather than interest rates.

Insights: Mad Lads was a bright spot for Solana NFTs, but transaction volume is now lagging. The price of the SOL token has held on.

Prices

Bitcoin Recovers From Post Rate Hike Dip

Good morning Asia.

Bitcoin is slowly recovering after the U.S. Federal Reserve raised interest rates by 25 basis points (bps). Initially, bitcoin was down 1% after the rate hike, but it has since recovered by 1.3% to $29,115. Ether, for its part, is up 1.6% to $1,908.

Banrion Capital’s Chief Strategist, Victoria Bills, points to the ongoing banking crisis in the U.S. as another driver of crypto prices that counterbalances the Fed’s ongoing interest rate hikes.

“As panic and market reactivity increase, perceptions of failure within the banking sector could lead to the ongoing turmoil in regional banks," Bills said on CoinDesk TV.

In April, J.P Morgan said in a report that the current banking crisis is a “vindication for the crypto ecosystem.”

“The U.S. banking crisis and the intense shift in U.S. bank deposits to U.S. money market funds are viewed by crypto supporters as a vindication of the crypto ecosystem,” the report noted, with analysts arguing that the crisis “exposed the weaknesses of the traditional financial system given bank’s maturity mismatch is susceptible to bank runs.”

No doubt all eyes will be on Friday’s U.S. employment numbers to see how it impacts the price of crypto. But there might be another bank failure before then, which drives up crypto’s price.

Insights

Mad Lads Was a Bright Spot for Solana NFTs, but Transaction Volume is Still Lagging

The MadLads NFT collection managed to "break the internet" in April with its sought-after JPEGs on the blockchain, yet Solana's weekly NFT volume is in the red, compared to Ethereum, which remains well in the green.

Data from CryptoSlam shows that over the past week, the number of sales on Solana is down 52.7%, while the number of transactions is down 16%.

Meanwhile, Ethereum’s metrics are up across the board.

But Solana’s buyers and sellers metrics are both in the green as Madlads and other NFTs change hands. Buyers are up 40% over the last week while sellers are up by 31%.

Data from Nansen shows that the volume from Madlads has been declining slowly but steadily over the last month.

Nansen’s data shows that while the Madlads mint has had more market interest than any other collection over the last month (the only other NFT collection to surpass it in Solana’s history is Okay Bears), that interest is fading.

But this fading interest isn’t anything out of the ordinary. A similar story can be found elsewhere.

Yet there might be one good piece of news for Solana investors and stakeholders. Despite the wind coming out of the sails of Solana NFT collections, the price of SOL hasn’t moved that much. It’s only down 2% over the last month and is currently trading at over $22, according to market data.

Important events.

MicroStrategy World 2023

Web Summit Rio 2023

4:15 p.m. HKT/SGT(8:15 UTC) European Central Bank Monetary Policy Decision Statement

CoinDesk TV

In case you missed it, here is the most recent episode of "First Mover" on CoinDesk TV:

Bitcoin Steady Ahead of Key Fed Decision; Solana Labs CEO on Crypto-Ready ‘Saga’ Smartphone

Some crypto observers predict bitcoin’s year-to-date rally might stall if Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell refrains from signaling a highly-anticipated pause to the tightening cycle today. Banrion Capital Management Chief Investment Strategist Victoria Bills shared her crypto markets analysis. Plus, Solana Labs CEO and co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko discussed expectations for Solana Labs’ crypto-forward smartphone called "Saga." Sotheby’s head of digital art and NFTs Michael Bouhanna and Oppenheimer senior analyst Owen Lau also joined the conversation.

Headlines

Curve Finance Deploys Native Stablecoin on Mainnet: The deployment marks a major milestone for the public release of Curve’s highly anticipated native stablecoin.

PEPE Meme Coin Liquidity Pool Becomes Most Active on Uniswap: The new token based on “pepe the frog” meme remains one of the most researched tokens for users of blockchain analytics firm Nansen and price tracker CoinGecko.

CoinDesk Validator ‘Zelda’ Successfully Exits Ethereum as Withdrawal Queue Shrinks to 9 Days: It took about 12 days for Zelda to fully exit the Ethereum blockchain. For any new staking withdrawal requests, the wait to get out has shrunk to nine days from 17 days.

Sui Mainnet Goes Live as Crypto Project Takes on Aptos and DeFi Giants: The much-awaited Aptos rival put its hundreds of million in VC funding to the test during its mainnet launch, and struggled with speed and decentralization.

Bitcoin Ordinals Surge to 3M Inscriptions, but Most Are Just Text: Over $8 million in fees have been paid to the network by inscription creators since their inception.