First Mover Asia: All Eyes on Aptos; Cryptos Trade Down Even as Stocks Rise

Good morning. Here’s what’s happening:

Prices: Bitcoin and other cryptos slightly languish as traditional financial markets point upward.

Insights: Crypto investors and others have scrutinizing Aptos.

Prices

● CoinDesk Market Index (CMI): 942.68 −1.4%

● Bitcoin (BTC): $19,306 −1.1%

● Ether (ETH): $1,306 −2.0%

● S&P 500 daily close: 3,719.98 +1.1%

● Gold: $1,658 per troy ounce +0.5%

● Ten-year Treasury yield daily close: 4.00% −0.02

Bitcoin, ether and gold prices are taken at approximately 4pm New York time. Bitcoin is the CoinDesk Bitcoin Price Index (XBX); Ether is the CoinDesk Ether Price Index (ETX); Gold is the COMEX spot price. Information about CoinDesk Indices can be found at coindesk.com/indices.

Bitcoin and Other Cryptos Fall

By James Rubin

Bitcoin sputtered even as it continued to flutter above $19,000 throughout Tuesday trading.

The largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization was recently trading at just over $19,300, down 1.1% in the last 24 hours. Ether followed a slightly more troublesome path, falling briefly below its recent $1,300 support before recovering later in the day. The second largest crypto in market value was recently changing hands just above $1,300, off 2% from Monday, same time.

Other major cryptos with market caps over $1 billion spent much of the day donning various shades of red with XRP and ADA recently down about 3%. UNI was up over 2%. The CoinDesk Market Index, a broad-based market index that measures the performance of a basket of cryptocurrencies, fell by 0.35% over the past 24 hours.

«Crypto is locked into consolidation mode and that will continue until investors are convinced of the risks of the Fed over-tightening and sending the economy into a severe recession are gone,» Edward Moya, senior market analyst for foreign exchange market maker Oanda wrote in an email.

Crypto prices countered equity markets, which rose for a second consecutive day with the tech-heavy Nasdaq, S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) all climbing about a percentage point amid encouraging third quarter earnings reports from several global brands, including Goldman Sachs, which said profits had dropped but surpassed targets. The investment bank has ramped up its interest in crypto over the past year.

In late-breaking crypto news venture capital giant Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) said that it is not on board with the founder’s vision to break up MakerDAO, one of crypto’s largest decentralized finance protocols, into smaller units. And three trade groups representing a wide swath of the crypto industry filed an amicus brief supporting a Grayscale Investments lawsuit against the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for rejecting the firm’s proposal for a spot bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded fund.

Is bitcoin correlated with stocks?

Evidence Tuesday, as CoinDesk reported, suggests the assets’ close proximity throughout much of 2022 has diminished lately. According to IntoTheBlock, a crypto data and analysis firm, the 30-day correlation between bitcoin and the S&P 500 has fallen to 0.04 – basically nothing because a correlation near 0 suggests no price linkage whatsoever.

“It’s still too early to call for the end of the highly correlated regime, but investors are likely to get a better feel for this following the Microsoft, Google, Apple and Amazon earnings release next week,” said Lucas Outumuro, head of research at IntoTheBlock.

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