Continuing recent trends, even the most modest crypto gains encountered waves of selling on Thursday, sending bitcoin back to $88,000 after a rally above $93,000 a few hours earlier.
The rally began Wednesday evening in the United States after Nvidia (NVDA) calmed jittery markets with higher earnings and an optimistic outlook. In addition to boosting the struggling crypto, the NVDA results sent the Nasdaq up more than 2%.
Stocks are also quickly reversing their gains, with the Nasdaq now up just 0.3%. Even the mighty Nvidia is trading flat after rising more than 5%.
Persistent views that the Fed, for now, does not appear to be cutting interest rates at its December meeting are hurting sentiment at the macro level. The September jobs report (released today instead of a few weeks ago due to the government shutdown) showed a much stronger than expected 119,000 job creation that month.
Cleveland Fed President Beth Hammack, also a prominent hawk, suggested that not only was sustained inflation not a reason to cut rates, but high stock prices were also a concern. Market veterans will hear echoes of Alan Greenspan’s “irrational exuberance” speech in 1996. Stocks continued to rally sharply for four more years.
Ethereum Ether Taken Harder Than Bitcoin now down almost 4% in the past hour, perhaps weighed down by digital asset FG Nexus cash which sold some of its holdings to buy back some of its struggling shares (down more than 95% from its summer high).
A check of crypto-related stocks now reveals significant losses after opening gains. Michael Saylor Strategy (MSTR) is down another 4.7% and 62% year-over-year to hit a new 52-week low of $178. Exchanges Coinbase (COIN) and Gemini (GEMI) are down 4% and 5%, respectively, and stabecoin issuer Circle (CRCL) is down 3.5%.
