Bitcoin sinks as rallies above $24.1K after FOMC minutes
Stirred but not shaken, crypto markets fell slightly on Thursday, rose slightly but remained in the red after the US central bank’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) released some bleak minutes.
Bitcoin was recently trading at $24,164, down 1% in the last 24 hours. The largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization fell nearly $23,600 immediately after the FOMC report, which noted slowing growth — a boon for investors hoping for more accommodative monetary policy from the Federal Reserve — but also data suggesting that inflation and the prospect of a severe recession have remained pleasant monetary hawks.
“Everyone is wary of what’s to come in this year,” Jake Boyle, chief trading officer of crypto brokerage Caleb and Brown, told CoinDesk TV. “At this point, it seems the position has become more conservative on the basis that 25 basis points has less impact than 50, but it’s essential that we all remember that this continues to increase, which means that the solution is clearly not there.”
Boyle added, “Coupled with the regulatory uncertainty the crypto space seems to have these days, it would be fair for us to assume that there will be more volatility and unexpected announcements over the course of this year.”
Ether recently changed hands at $1,641, down 1.1% from the same time on Tuesday. Still, CoinDesk analyst Glenn Williams noted that BTC and ETH are diverging on a different front, with investors sending bitcoins to exchanges and deleting ether. The moves signaled bearish sentiment for bitcoin and bullish sentiment for ether, a departure from their usual correlation. Separately, on Tuesday, Layer 2 scaling system Arbitrum overtook Ethereum in daily transactions, increasing Arbitrum’s dominance as the top Layer 2 rollup.
Other major cryptos were mixed with some a bit up but others slightly in the green, although APT, the Aptos Layer 1 platform token, recently climbed more than 6%.
Stocks fell amid the same inflationary and recessionary fears that have plagued markets in recent days with the tech-heavy S&P 500 down 0.2%, its fourth consecutive daily decline, and the Nasdaq and the technology-oriented Dow Jones. The industrial average (DJIA) also fell slightly.
Crypto news ranged from bullish to reminders of the nearly 15 months of crypto sturm and drang. Investment banking giant JPMorgan said in a research report that crypto exchange Coinbase is well positioned to deliver notable year-over-year EBITDA improvement. lender Voyager Digital and its executives for deceptive marketing of cryptocurrency.
In an email to CoinDesk, Anthony Georgiades, co-founder of Pastel Network, a decentralized blockchain for non-fungible tokens, cryptocurrencies, and Web3 technology, wrote optimistically that “slightly better-than-expected earnings reported by Coinbase might suggest we’ve entered the final innings of a winter crypto”.
“Clearly there has been more interest in the digital asset market in recent months, as evidenced by a rally that took many observers by surprise. world was so incredibly bearish that the obvious counter – the trade had to be bullish.Coinbase was also able to increase its overall market share thanks to the fallout from major crypto markets like FTX.
Georgiades was particularly optimistic about the prospects for cryptos in Asia: “There is a lot of speculation that buyers in Asia are starting to return to crypto in increasing quantities. As a result, the strength of the digital asset market may very well continue. for the foreseeable future.Even if the Fed remains hawkish for the coming months, what is happening in other parts of the world on monetary easing might be enough to offset what is happening in the United States.
But he cautiously added that “there could be some deep setbacks in Bitcoin and crypto ahead,” even though “the fodder for a sustained rally appears to be there.”
Hundreds of Fake ChatGPT Tokens Lure Crypto Investors; Majority issued on the BNB channel
This story first appeared on February 21 on CoinDesk.
Nefarious market players are trying to cash in on the current ChatGPT craze in tech circles by issuing fake tokens bearing the branding of the AI chatbot, despite having no official association with the tool.
Hundreds of these tokens have been issued over the past few weeks. Of this number, 132 different tokens were issued on BNB Chain, 25 tokens on Ethereum and 10 separate tokens on other blockchains such as Solana, Arbitrum, OKChain and Cronos.
These fake broadcasts follow software giant Microsoft’s decision to integrate OpenAI’s chatbots for Microsoft’s Internet browser research services.
Although OpenAI is the creator of ChatGPT, Microsoft’s own chatbot is a bespoke tool and would be an improvement over publicly available ChatGPT.
However, the scammers do not waste a chance to monetize on the hype. Several “BingChatGPTs” have been issued, seeded with cash and are seeing thousands of dollars in trading volumes – despite the red flags.
“PeckShield has detected dozens of newly minted #BingChatGPT tokens, 3 of which appear to be #honeypots and 2 have high sales tax,” blockchain security firm PeckShield said in a tweet on Monday.
“2 of them have already fallen by more than -99%. The 0xb583 deployer has already created dozens of tokens with a pump and dump pattern,” PeckShield added, referring to the wallet address of the nefarious issuer of these tokens.
In cryptocurrency, honeypots are smart contracts that claim to disclose their funds to an arbitrary user, on the condition that the user sends additional funds to them.
On the other hand, sales tax refers to the intentional amount of money taken by an illicit smart contract when a related token is sold – amounts typically above 50%, meaning that a user selling $100 d a token only receives $50, with the remaining “taxed” amount going to the developer of that smart contact.
As of Tuesday’s writing, there are over 170 ChatGPT-branded tokens issued on decentralized exchanges such as Uniswap and PancakeSwap, according to data from DEXTools.
The most popular has a market cap of over $250 million, with over 300 unique holders and $600,000 in liquidity and is issued on Ethereum. A separate BNB Chain version has $246,000 in liquidity and a market capitalization of $24 million.
The trading volumes on these bogus tokens – and scams in some cases – are a glimpse of the crypto-punting dream alive and well.
Coinbase released its fourth quarter results after the bell on Tuesday, beating expectations, but usage continues to decline. Pastel co-founder Anthony Georgiades shared his analysis of the crypto markets. Additionally, ConsenSys Director of Global Regulatory Affairs Bill Hughes shared his vision for the future of US crypto regulation. And, SingularityDAO CEO Marcello Mari explores the far reaches of the collision of Web3 and artificial intelligence for CoinDesk’s “BUIDL Week.”