First Mover Asia: Fed Fears and Pelosi Taiwan Trip Reverse Bitcoin’s Recent Gains

Good morning. Here’s what’s happening:

Prices: The Federal Reserve is nowhere near finished in its fight against inflation, while Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan puts a damper on investor sentiment. Suddenly, the market for risky assets from bitcoin to stocks is under pressure again.

Insights: Sam Reynolds takes stock of the once-thriving market for NFTs, now apparently suffering through its own soft patch.

Bitcoin trades lower on renewed macro fears as ether gets little relief from Merge optimism.

By Helene Braun

Top Federal Reserve officials on Tuesday reiterated plans to keep ratcheting interest rates higher to tamp down soaring inflation, and the comments proved enough to push prices for bitcoin and other risky assets lower.

Bitcoin (BTC) slid below $23,000, dropping for a fifth straight day, diminishing hopes embraced as recently as last week that a fresh rally might be in the offing.

The decline in bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies mimicked similar movements in global markets.

Speculation was mounting last week that the Fed would ease off its inflation-fighting campaign after a report showing that the economy had contracted for a second straight quarter, viewed by many traders as a sign of a recession (even though that’s not actually the definition.)

And on Tuesday, there was further evidence of that weakness: The U.S. Labor Department published its Jobs Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS), a report closely watched by Fed officials, showing that job openings fell by 605,000 in June, the largest monthly decline since April 2020, when the pandemic hit businesses.

However, the jobs markets remained strong, and there were still 1.8 jobs for every unemployed person in June, suggesting that the labor market is still at full employment – ostensibly giving the Fed the green light for another rate hike in September.

Mary Daly, president of the Federal Reserve’s San Francisco branch, said Tuesday that the U.S. central bank is “nowhere near” finished with its efforts to combat inflation, as reported by Bloomberg News. And just like that, the downward pressure was back on prices for risky assets.

Another factor in the bitcoin market was the reported visit by U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to Taiwan on Tuesday. Some traders were fearful that the trip could ratchet up tensions between China and the U.S. and have negative effects on global markets.

“This is going to bring some some tension in the market but I don’t believe that the market itself is gonna react too strong,” Daniel Muvdi, head of markets at Quantfury, said Tuesday on CoinDesk television’s First Mover program.

Ethereum (ETH) traded slightly higher during afternoon hours, up 2.19%, but the second-largest cryptocurrency continues to search for directionafter its “shadow fork” went into effect one week ago.

“The Merge narrative on ETH has been getting a little cloudier,” said Joshua Lim, head of derivatives at Genesis Trading. “The complications around a proof-of-work fork could create some market dislocations and the geopolitics of Pelosi’s Taiwan visit are weighing on price.” (Genesis is owned by Digital Currency Group, which also owns CoinDesk.)

By Sam Reynolds

Non Fungible Tokens (NFTs) had quite the dreary July as data from crypto aggregators show that most exchanges had a sharp downtrend in active traders and dollar volume.

According to DappRadar, OpenSea lost 35% of its dollar volume and 15% of its traders during the month of July. Overall, the world’s largest NFT exchange posted $517 million in volume during the last 30 days.

Nansen, another digital asset tracking service, reports that overall NFT volume on-month is down 17% to 448,000 ETH (or around $704 million).

Removing wash trading, infamous for inflating the NFT market, from the equation – thanks to Nansen’s wash trading filter – and the 30-day volume shoots up by over 2.5x.

“It’s not just the USD volume traded that has fallen. This is also the case for the number of buyers and sellers as well as the number of sales. These decreases come mainly from collectibles that have lost interest since the beginning of the year except for the ‘blue chip’ collections,” wrote NonFungible, an NFT analytics firm, in a recent report.

NonFungible believes that there’s a “centralization of the market” taking place around CryptoPunks, Meebits and Bored Ape Yacht Club, all owned by Yuga Labs.

The one exception appears to be Ethereum Name Service, which issues .eth domains for crypto wallets. As CoinDesk previously reported, there seems to be a mini-boom happening with tens of thousands of ENS registrations per day as opposed to thousands in May and June. Some analysts point to a mini gold rush for .eth domains like there were for .com domains in the late 90s and 2000s.

Hard to Support a Market for $1 Million JPGs

Despite claims otherwise from the NFT community, the market is having a tough time supporting valuations that made headlines at the height of the bull market.

When trying to value Three Arrows’ “Starry Night” wallet, which was targeting $100 million, CoinDesk reported that there wasn’t a universally accepted way to get a number for its current valuation. Results came back across a spectrum from $19.7 million to $1.6 million. If a portfolio of assets could have such a variance in pricing, or drop so precipitously, is it possible to expect investor interest to be maintained?

Where are GameFi’s Wings?

One observation in the NFT market in the last month has been the floundering of art NFTs while high-profile utility NFTs like ENS has found legs.

Surely GameFi NFTs must have momentum?

While Axie has seen an uptick in volume, per DappRadar’s data, another data point looks to throw some shade on the market.

According to a survey of 2,400 GameFi investors conducted by ChainPlay, there’s still some hesitation in the market; most have lost money.

According to the survey, 89% of crypto investors worldwide saw their GameFi profits decrease in the last six months. Some 62% of respondents lost more than 50% of their profits from GameFi.

More concerning for stakeholders, perhaps, is that ChainPlay’s survey shows 73% of the respondents shy away from GameFi investments because they are afraid of rug pulls and Ponzi schemes.

Stats like these help explain why investor sentiment in NFTs is waning.

In case you missed it, here is the most recent episode of “First Mover/” on CoinDesk TV:

This edition of First Mover Asia was edited and produced by Bradley Keoun.