Bitcoin and ether traded steady on Friday, while altcoins dipped and memecoins surrendered gains. Losses for crypto-related stocks continued as Silvergate plunged 10%.
Bitcoin was trading around $16,770 at 10 a.m. EST, down by about 0.3%, according to TradingView data.
Ether traded about $1,250, dipping 0.1%, while altcoins like Ripple’s XRP and Polygon’s MATIC continued to trade lower, falling by 1.6% and 1.8%, respectively.
Dog-themed memecoins returned yesterday’s gains, with Dogecoin falling 2.4% and shiba inu declining 3.6%.
Crypto stocks and structured products
The S&P 500 traded higher, adding 0.8% by 10 a.m. EST. The Nasdaq 100 was up 0.7%.
Silvergate tanked again at the open, slipping 10.5% to trade around $11. The crypto-friendly bank announced job cuts and $8.1 billion in withdrawals in the fourth quarter yesterday. JPMorgan dealt the firm a fresh blow, downgrading the stock to neutral from overweight.
Moody’s also downgraded Silvergate’s long term deposit rating to Ba1. Sadia Nabi, VP for Financial Institutions at the ratings agency, said that significantly decreased deposits, losses from the sale of securities and the bank’s plan to lay off 40% of staff highlighted “significant operating challenges” that could affect profitability, funding and liquidity risk.
Coinbase was down 4.3% shortly after the open, continuing declines from yesterday. Cowen downgraded the stock on Thursday, with analysts citing dwindling trading volumes. Needham’s John Todaro argued that the volume declines have mostly been digested by the market by now.
Cathie Wood’s Ark Invest was unperturbed by the drop, with ARK Fintech Innovation ETF adding 144,463 shares of the exchange, while ARK Next Generation Internet ETF bought another 27,813 on Thursday on top of the over 158,000 shares it bought last week.
On the other hand, it let go of a total of 403,990 Silvergate shares.
Block added 1% to trade above $65. MicroStrategy fell below $150, dropping 4.5%.
Shares in Grayscale’s bitcoin trust (GBTC) were trading at a discount to the net asset value (NAV) of 45.06% on Thursday.
The asset manager announced a rebalancing of several funds, including the Grayscale Digital Large Cap Fund, Grayscale DeFi Fund and Grayscale Smart Contract Platform (excluding Ethereum) Fund. The large-cap fund increased its bitcoin and ether holdings. The changes in other funds versus the last quarter were relatively negligible.
Macro Matters
The U.S. economy added 223,000 new jobs in December, above the Dow Jones estimate of 153,000. Economists had predicted 200,000 new jobs. Last year was the second strongest year on record for job growth in the U.S. as the economy added around 4.5 million new jobs.
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Source: https://www.theblock.co/post/199785/bitcoin-ether-steady-as-crypto-stocks-continue-downtrend-with-silvergate-shedding-10?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss