Bitcoin closed the trading session almost unchanged on Thursday - at a level slightly above $20,000. At the time of writing, the cost of BTC is balanced at $19,983.
The day before, the first cryptocurrency was in strong demand in the Asian session, but later lost all its achievements amid a spectacular fall in US stock indices and the strengthening of the US dollar.
So, on Thursday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sank by 1.15%, the S&P 500 lost 1.02%, and the NASDAQ Composite fell by 0.68%.
The main reason for the negative on the US stock exchanges was the decision of OPEC+ to reduce quotas for oil production. Thus, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries agreed to reduce production by 2 million barrels per day in November in order to support falling prices. In the near future, investors are confident that this OPEC+ decision will push global inflation to a steady growth.
By the way, since the beginning of 2022, analysts have increasingly begun to emphasize the high level of correlation between the US securities market and virtual assets amid intense expectation by both of the consequences of the geopolitical conflict in eastern Europe and the next steps of the US Federal Reserve.
Earlier, analysts of the investment company Arcane Research have already stated that the correlation of BTC and technology securities has peaked since July 2020.
In addition, economists of the analytics platform TradingView said that the relationship of the cryptocurrency market with the US stock market in the last quarter reached 70%.
The current situation looks rather ironic, because since the advent of cryptocurrency, it has been positioned as the main means to protect against inflation and price volatility in traditional markets. However, in recent months, digital assets have increasingly correlated with stock markets, which makes one doubt the success of virtual coins.
On Thursday, analysts from the American investment company Ark Invest reported that, since spring, holders have accumulated a record amount of bitcoin, buying up an asset at a falling price. At the moment, they control about 13.7 million BTC – 71.5% of the total coin supply. This state of affairs, Ark Invest says, significantly eases the pressure on the main cryptocurrency.
No less optimistic forecasts regarding cryptocurrencies are also held by experts of the financial company DappRadar, who stated that in the third quarter of 2022, the digital asset market entered a long phase of consolidation.
The recovery of virtual coins, DappRadar is certain, began in September. At the same time, in the period from July to September, the value of digital currencies collapsed by 8.5%. The first signs of recovery appeared only at the end of last month. One of the most important events of this was the renewal of Ethereum.
So, on the morning of September 15, the Ethereum network successfully migrated from the Proof-of-Work (PoW) algorithm to Proof-of-Stake (PoS), which does not require mining. The migration happened as part of a major update of The Merge.
At the same time, in the first hours after the transition of ETN to the Proof-of-Stake algorithm, a powerful influx of altcoins to centralized exchanges was observed.
On the same day, the founder of the ETH network Vitalik Buterin confirmed its successful transition to PoS and the absence of failures or errors in the update process. By the way, earlier the Canadian-Russian programmer stated that the transition of the network to Proof-of-Stake will increase the popularity of digital assets for everyday payments by reducing the commission to 2 cents. According to Buterin, the popularity of crypto payments fell after 2018 amid high transaction fees.
To date, ETN continues to be the leader in the ranking of blockchains in terms of the number of deployed DeFi projects. The cost of funds in protocols placed on the basis of ETH by the end of September exceeded $ 48 billion.
The focus of crypto investors on Friday is the report on employment in the non-agricultural sector of the United States (NFP), which will help the Federal Reserve determine the future path of the country's monetary policy. According to preliminary forecasts of analysts, 250,000 jobs were created in the non-agricultural sector of America in September - less than in the previous month, but enough to continue the hard line of the US central bank.
By the way, the current decline in the cryptocurrency market is directly related to the monetary policy of the Fed.
So, recently, experts of the analytical company Kaiko reported that the volatility of BTC significantly depends on the results of meetings of members of the US central bank.
According to analysts from Kaiko, the high correlation of bitcoin with the Fed's decisions was recorded in the summer of 2021, which indicates that the cryptocurrency market has long been influenced by key macroeconomic indicators.
