Bitcoin Moves Towards $24,000 as Risk Assets See Massive Surge Following US Fed Rate Hike

Bitcoin prices climbed today, reaching their highest in more than a week after headline figures showed the world's largest economy contracted during the second quarter. Bitcoin has surpassed the $23,000 (roughly Rs. 18.4 lakh) mark, following stocks higher after the US Federal Reserve raised interest rates but suggested the pace of hikes could slow. The value of Bitcoin witnessed a 3.54 percent rise in the last 24 hours with its price now closer to the $24,000 (roughly Rs. 19.2 lakh) mark across global exchanges while Indian exchange CoinSwitch Kuber values BTC at $24,240 (roughly Rs. 19.4 lakh), up by 2.69 percent in the past 24 hours.

On global exchanges like CoinMarketCap, Coinbase, and Binance the price of Bitcoin stands at $23,805 (roughly Rs. 19 lakh) while CoinGecko data shows that BTC's value is currently up by 3.3 percent week-to-day.

Ether, meanwhile, has been leading the market rally with a strong surge in its address activity. At the time of publishing, Ether is valued at $1,748 (roughly Rs. 1.4 lakh) on CoinSwitch Kuber while values on global exchanges see the crypto's value at $1,713 (roughly Rs. 1.37 lakh), where the cryptocurrency has actually moved up by 5.37 percent over the past 24 hours.

Ether's surge over the past few days sees the cryptocurrency's value turn to green by close to 9.6 percent when compared to its value last Friday, as per CoinGecko data.

Gadgets 360's cryptocurrency price tracker reveals that most major altcoins saw a major boost in values over the last 24 hours as the global crypto market capitalisation witnessed a 4.44 percent surge through Thursday and early Friday.

Uniswap, Solana, Polygon, Stellar, Avalanche, BNB, TRON, Cardano, and Chainlink all saw a major bump in price while Monero slipped by 3.34 percent in the last 24 hours.

Memecoins Shiba Inu and Dogecoin also followed the altcoin mix with some gains to show for. Dogecoin is currently valued at $0.07 (roughly Rs. 5.77) after adding some 4.85 percent in value over the last 24 hours, while, Shiba Inu is valued at $0.000012 (roughly Rs. 0.000974), up by 3.62 percent over the past day.

"At a macro level, the global crypto market has weathered the storm on one front, as the US Fed increased rates by 75 bps. Theoretically, this development could have resulted in sell-offs, but since this FED move was on expected lines, equities rallied across sectors and geographies alongside cryptos.

However, the US GDP growth unexpectedly contracted by 0.9 percent last quarter. Even though the numbers are better than 1.6% de-growth in Q1, this quarter's performance failed to meet the street expectations. A Reuters poll had forecast pegged GDP to rebound at 0.5%. The equity markets have remained flat, and crypto markets are still in the green amidst the consumption slowdown.

In India, the CRE8 Index was up by 6.20 percent, reflecting the global sentiments. As of 9:30 am IST, the Index Value — a sum of crypto asset values of all the crypto assets in the CRE8 Index — stood at Rs. 2,923.64. BTC and ETH were the top assets by market capitalisation.

From a weekly perspective, from July 22 to July 29, the CRE8 index was up by 3.08 percent, from Rs. 2,810 to Rs. 2,897," said Parth Chaturvedi, Crypto Ecosystem Lead at CoinSwitch, speaking to Gadgets 360.

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