DOGE was down, and so were job opportunities. But bitcoin was not one of them. The largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization was recently trading at $28,622, up 2.6%, as investors considered a welcome respite in the hot job market but also remained cautious about the future following weeks of banking uncertainty.
There was little trading and volatility. On Monday, BTC fell below the $28,000 mark that it had largely surpassed over the previous two weeks, following reports that Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao was the subject of an international law enforcement request to detain him. (In an email to The Block, Binance denied the rumor.)
“Bitcoin is hovering near the top of its recent range as crypto traders wait to see how it will benefit from the current banking crisis,” said Edward Moya, who also noted that “the Bitcoin bear case” was growing.
Ether outperformed BTC on the day, trading above $1,900 for the first time since last August. At the same time, the second largest cryptocurrency by market value was up 5.5% from Monday.
Other major cryptocurrencies were mostly in the green, albeit in lighter shades. MATIC, the layer 2 platform Polygon’s token, and SOL, the Solana blockchain’s token, recently increased by 5.2% and 3.8%, respectively. DOGE, a popular meme coin, fell 0.7%. The drop came a day after Elon Musk’s Twitter replaced the social-media platform’s familiar blue bird logo at the top of its homepage with the cryptocurrency’s iconic Shiba Inu dog. DOGE is up 21% since the beginning of the week.
The CoinDesk Market Index, which measures the overall performance of crypto markets, was recently up more than 3%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq and S&P 500 both closed down about a half-percentage point in the United States.
However, gold, the traditional safe-haven asset, soared above $2,000, reaching its highest level since last March, following a report from the U.S. Labor Department’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) that showed job vacancies falling below 10 million for the first time in nearly two years, and a day after another report showed durable goods orders waning. The signs of economic decline, combined with ongoing inflation concerns, have created a favorable environment for more conservative assets, which have historically held their value in good and bad times.
“A weakening economy continues to drive safe-haven flows to gold,” wrote Moya of Oanda. “The JOLTS report bolstered the view that the economy is steadily deteriorating on its way to a recession.” He added that investors should keep an eye on bitcoin’s price as the week comes to a close on Good Friday, when the Labor Department releases nonfarm payroll figures. “If Friday’s NFP report shocks to the downside, we could see high-frequency trading systems and algos try to take advantage of any momentum opportunities,” Moya wrote.
