Weekly Crypto Analysis: U.S. Jobs Report Halts Crypto Gains While Exchange Tokens Outperform the Market

2023/02/06 14:48:20

The FOMC was a success for the crypto market but brought more questions than answers after a strong jobs report almost ruined the party. The U.S. added an incredible 517,000 new jobs in January alone, almost 200% more than expected. This infers that the economy is not cooling as the Fed wants it to, and rate hikes might continue for much longer.

Fed Chairman, Jerome Powell, has emphasized the need to tame inflation after it rallied to 9% last year, but this new report might be a roadblock to the timeframe.

Despite this, Bitcoin and Ether finished the week positively, with 2% and 3.99%, respectively. The two cryptocurrencies have also had their net position on exchange veer away from each other after a tightly correlated 2022. Bitcoin’s net position on exchange is decreasing, while Ethereum’s is increasing. However, many analysts stated that the jobs report did affect the crypto market negatively, halting further gains.

Bitcoin Exchange Net Positive Change | Source: Glassnode

Top Altcoin Gainers and Losers

Top Altcoin Gainers

SingularityNET (AGIX)➠ +121.84%

Render Token (RNDR) ➠ +40.17%

The Graph (GRT)➠ +42.10%

Top Altcoin Losers

Aptos (APT) ➠ -14.6%

Lido DAO (LDO)➠ -10.25%

Monero (XMR) ➠ -9.27%

Fear and Greed Index at 56, Market in Greed Territory

The crypto market remained in the greed zone for a second week. After an eventful week that saw the Fed and BoE take turns delivering economic reports, the crypto market improved. The next week is quieter, and unless something dramatic happens, the market will soar in this mode for the foreseeable future.

Fear & Greed Index | Source: Alternative

This Week’s Crypto News Highlights

London Emerges as the World’s Most Crypto-Ready City

A recent survey by Recap, a crypto accounting firm, revealed that London would be the most crypto-ready city in the world in 2023. The previous holder was Hong Kong, which has slid into seventh position according to the latest rankings.

The criteria used in the selection process involves countries with enough infrastructure to see crypto taxes, Bitcoin ATMs, jobs, and crypto events seamlessly flow into their systems.

The prime minister of the United Kingdom, Rishi Sunak, has also been fond of the crypto space and often mentions his plans to ensure the U.K. is one of the leading hubs of technology and innovation. Being a former finance minister, he knows better how these ideas will be realized.

Top Crypto-Ready Cities | Source: Recap

Dubai and New York City make up the top three cities, and some of the other cities on the list are Paris, Lisbon, Zug, and Singapore. Lagos is the only African city on the list and sits in an improved 14th place.

Sri Lanka Against Bitcoin Adoption; Rejects Draper’s Anti-Corruption Pitch

During a recent trip to Sri Lanka, American billionaire Tim Draper proposed using Bitcoin as a legal tender to combat the corruption that caused the island nation's hyperinflation. Central bank Governor Nandalal Weerasinghe, a significant Sri Lankan figure, thought that doing so would aggravate the nation's economic position.

Draper met with President Ranil Wickremesinghe and Weerasinghe during a break from his TV shoot in Sri Lanka to suggest Bitcoin as a practical solution for solving financial issues.

Draper raised a significant issue during the meeting that directly affects Sri Lanka:

“Have you seen Sri Lanka in the news? It’s known as the corruption capital. A country known for corruption will be able to keep perfect records with the adoption of Bitcoin.”

Weerasinghe thought that instead of introducing Bitcoin, Sri Lanka's fiat currency was essential for the island nation's independence in monetary policy and would promote effective inclusion and the distribution of electronic welfare payments.

Crypto Exchange Tokens Outperform the Market in the Past 7 Days

Crypto exchange tokens have managed to outperform the rest of the crypto market by a significant margin in the past week. Most tokens increased their price by over 5%, while some reached double-digit changes to the green side.

Binance's BNB token increased its price by 7.05%, Huobi Token gained 9.19%, while KuCoin's KCS gained 5.55% on the weekly. OKB token performed the best, recording gains of 19.40%.

Youtuber Baits MMA Fighter into Secretly Shilling Fake NFTs for $1k

While the assistance of various A-list celebrities accelerated the nonfungible token (NFT) bubble of 2021 and 2022, some advocated unvetted projects to fans without understanding if they were genuine or scams. In 2023, the practice will still be widely used as markets recover.

Dillon Danis, a mixed martial artist, was recently exposed by Youtuber, Coffeezilla. Danis tweeted a digital image with a website URL for the promotion that, in Coffeezilla's words, "actually spells out S.C.A.M." A little background check on the website would have shown that the website was recently built on February 1, 2023, which is a red flag when shilling an NFT project (The priority of new projects should not be an endorsement, but rather, community building).

Kim Kardashian was at the heart of a similar anti-touting violation after she shilled EthereumMax on Instagram, having collected $250,000.

Protocol Labs, Chainalysis, and Bittrex Add to Crypto Layoff Season

Amid the current crypto winter, several crypto companies have slashed staff this week while keeping "impactful" workers to get ready for a "longer downturn."

Between three cryptocurrency companies, Protocol Labs, a developer of open-source software, Chainalysis, and Bittrex, there have been at least 216 job cuts, resulting in losses of 89, 83, and 44 staff, respectively.

The employment cuts were revealed by Juan Benet, CEO of Protocol Labs, the organization that created Filecoin, in a blog post on February 3. He said the company had to concentrate its workforce "against the most impactful and business-critical projects."

Also, Richie Lai of Bittrex informed the company's staff via email on February 1 that job cuts were necessary to "maintain the long-term viability" of the business.

On February 2, the email was exposed via Twitter. Lai claimed that the leadership team had "worked vigorously" over the previous few months to cut costs and boost efficiencies, but the efforts had not yielded the "results necessary."

Chainanalsis, Coinbase, Crypto.com, and Huobi are four other crypto companies that have slashed their workforce because of the ongoing crypto winter.

Crypto Calendar: Events to Watch This Week

➺ 06/02/2023 - Internet Computer DeFi meetup

➺ 06/02/2023 - SOnm Gate.io listing

➺ 07/02/2023 - The SandBox Staking Pool Refills

➺ 07/02/2023 - Metaverser LBank listing

Bitcoin (BTC/USDT) Technical Analysis

Bitcoin is in a rising trend channel in the short term. This shows that investors, over time, have bought the currency at higher prices and indicates good development for the currency. The currency is approaching support at 22,800 points, which may give a positive reaction if the price bounces off of it. However, a break downwards through 22,800 points will be a negative signal.

A positive volume balance indicates that volume is high on days with rising prices and low on days with falling prices, which strengthens the currency outlook. RSI diverges negatively against the price, indicating a danger of a downward reaction. The currency is overall assessed as technically positive for the short term.

BTC/USDT Chart on the Daily Timeframe

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