Powell’s Comments Expected to Influence Markets Amid Asia Tensions
On Federal Open Market Committee day in the U.S., the focus will be on comments from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, with a 97.6% chance of interest rates remaining unchanged.
Key points include:
- Market sentiment is cautious due to reduced container traffic from China and geopolitical tensions between India and Pakistan.
- Spot gold declined over 1.7% as traders reacted positively to a potential U.S.-China trade deal.
- Cryptocurrency prices have risen; Bitcoin increased by 3% in the past 24 hours, while the broader crypto market rose 2.57%.
- New Hampshire became the first state to permit public fund investments in crypto.
- BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF has attracted more inflows than the largest gold ETF this year.
- Ethereum's Pectra upgrade went live, marking a significant change for the network.
- Ether has decreased about 47% against Bitcoin year-to-date, with the ETH/BTC ratio at 0.019.
Upcoming Events
- May 8: Sentencing of Alex Mashinsky, founder of Celsius Network.
- May 12: SEC Crypto Task Force Roundtable on tokenization.
- May 7: Federal Reserve interest-rate decision announcement.
- May 8: Bank of England interest-rate decision announcement.
- May 8: U.S. Department of Labor unemployment insurance data release.
Market Movements
- BTC: Up 2.11%, trading at $96,997.82.
- ETH: Up 3.31%, trading at $1,844.39.
- CoinDesk 20 index: Up 2.18% at 2,749.824.
- DXY: Up 0.31% at 99.54.
- Gold: Down 1.2% at $3,374.49/oz.
- S&P 500 closed -0.77% at 5,606.91.
Technical Analysis
- ETH exited a prolonged downtrend but has not confirmed a bullish breakout.
- The next key resistance level for ETH is $2,104.
Derivatives Positioning
- CME futures basis for BTC and ETH has retreated to 6% from 8%.
- Positive BTC perpetual funding rates; ETH funding rates near 10% indicate bullish bets.