Good morning. Here’s what’s happening:
Prices: Bitcoin holds above $20K after slipping below the threshold earlier on Tuesday.
Insights: A recent speech by the head of Singapore’s central bank reflects a lack of understanding about cryptocurrencies.
Catch the latest episodes of CoinDesk TV for insightful interviews with crypto industry leaders and analysis. And sign up for First Mover, our daily newsletter putting the latest moves in crypto markets in context.
Prices
●Bitcoin (BTC): $20,009 −1.2%
●Ether (ETH): $1,562 +1.5%
●S&P 500 daily close: 3,986.16 −1.1%
●Gold: $1,735 per troy ounce +0.7%
●Ten-year Treasury yield daily close: 3.11% +0
Bitcoin, ether and gold prices are taken at approximately 4pm New York time. Bitcoin is the CoinDesk Bitcoin Price Index (XBX); Ether is the CoinDesk Ether Price Index (ETX); Gold is the COMEX spot price. Information about CoinDesk Indices can be found at coindesk.com/indices.
Bitcoin Regains $20K
By James Rubin
The job market remained hot. Investor tensions remained high.
Bitcoin responded in concert with other riskier assets by spending most of Tuesday on its heels before rallying later in the day.
The largest cryptocurrency by market value was recently changing hands over $20,000, down about 1% over the past 24 hours. BTC has been struggling to hold this psychologically important threshold as investors fret over continued U.S. Federal Reserve monetary hawkishness tied at least partly to a historically low unemployment rate.
“Risk aversion is firmly back in place, and that sent bitcoin below the $20,000 level,” Oanda Senior Market Analyst Edward Moya wrote in an email, noting that if the current “broad sell-off” of stocks “intensifies, bitcoin could be vulnerable.
“If the S&P declines by 3% over the next few days, that could be the catalyst to send bitcoin back toward the June lows,” Moya wrote.
Ether was recently trading near $1,600, a roughly 3% gain over the past 24 hours after the second-largest crypto in market value…
