First Mover Asia: Bitcoin Rocks Above $24.1K After Mixed FOMC Minutes

Bitcoin declines as it surges above $24.1k after FOMC minutes

Agitated but not shaken, crypto markets fell a little, rose a little but stayed in the red on Thursday after the Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) released unencouraging minutes.

Bitcoin recently traded at $24,164, down 1% in the last 24 hours. The largest cryptocurrency by market cap fell nearly $23,600 immediately after the FOMC report, which found slowing growth – a boon for investors hoping for more dovish monetary policy from the Federal Reserve – but also data suggesting inflation and the prospects of a hard recession remain real, cheering money hawks.

“Everyone is wary of what’s to come later this year,” Jake Boyle, chief commercial officer at crypto brokerage Caleb and Brown, told CoinDesk TV. “As of this writing it looks like the stance has become more conservative as 25 basis points has less impact than 50 but it is important for us all to remember that they are still rising which means the solution clearly not there.”

Boyle added, “Coupled with the regulatory uncertainty that the crypto space seems to be experiencing these days, it would be fair for us to assume that there will be further volatility and unexpected announcements later this year.”

Ether recently changed hands at $1,641, down 1.1% from the same time on Tuesday. However, CoinDesk analyst Glenn Williams noted that BTC and ETH diverged on another front, with investors sending Bitcoin to exchanges and removing Ether from them. The moves have signaled bearish sentiment for Bitcoin and bullish action for Ether, a departure from their usual correlation. Separately, on Tuesday, Layer 2 scaling system Arbitrum outperformed Ethereum in daily transactions, reinforcing Arbitrum’s dominance as the leading Layer 2 rollup.

Other major cryptos have been mixed, with some ticking up a bit but others slightly in the green, although APT, the token of Layer 1 platform Aptos, is up more than 6% recently.

Stocks fell amid the same inflation and recession fears that have plagued markets for the past few days, as did the S&P 500, which has a tech-heavy component and fell 0.2% for its fourth straight daily decline, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq and Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) is also slightly down.

Crypto news ranged from upbeat to reminders of crypto’s nearly 15-month storm and stress. Investment banking giant JPMorgan said in a research note that crypto exchange Coinbase is well-positioned to post a notable year-over-year improvement in EBITDA, citing lender Voyager Digital and its executives over cryptocurrency fraudulent marketing.

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 “the slightly better-than-predicted earnings reported by Coinbase could indicate that we are entering the final innings of a crypto winter are”.

“Interest in the digital asset market has clearly increased over the past few months, as evidenced by a rally that surprised many observers. Part of this has to do with market psychology – everyone has been so incredibly bearish that the obvious counter trade should be bullish. Coinbase was also able to increase its overall market share due to the aftermath of major crypto marketplaces like FTX.”

Georgiades was particularly optimistic about the prospects for cryptos in Asia: “There is a lot of speculation that buyers in Asia will start to increasingly resort to crypto in the foreseeable future. Even if the Fed remains hawkish in the coming months, what’s happening in other parts of the world on monetary easing could be enough to offset what’s happening in the United States.”

But he cautiously added that “there could still be deep pullbacks in bitcoin and crypto,” even as “the fodder for a sustained rally appears to be there.”

Hundreds of Fake ChatGPT Tokens Lure Crypto Investors; Majority issued on BNB chain

This story first appeared on CoinDesk on February 21.

Nefarious market participants are attempting to capitalize on the ongoing ChatGPT craze in tech circles by issuing fake tokens branded after the artificial intelligence chatbot, despite having no official affiliation with the tool.

Hundreds of such tokens have been issued over the past few weeks. Of these, 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 issues follow software giant Microsoft’s move to integrate OpenAI’s chatbots for search services into Microsoft’s web browsers.

While OpenAI is the creator of ChatGPT, Microsoft’s own chatbot is a custom tool and is meant to be an improvement over the publicly available ChatGPT.

However, scammers don’t waste a chance to monetize the hype. Several BingChatGPTs have been issued, fueled with liquidity and seeing thousands of dollars in trading volume – despite warning signs.

“PeckShield has discovered dozens of newly created #BingChatGPT tokens, 3 of which appear to be #Honeypots and 2 have a high sales tax,” blockchain security firm PeckShield said in a tweet on Monday.