Continuing recent patterns, even the most modest crypto gains were met with waves of selling on Thursday, sending bitcoin back to $88,000 after a rally above $93,000 just hours earlier.
The bullish move began on Wednesday evening in the US after Nvidia (NVDA) calmed market nerves with positive results and an optimistic outlook. In addition to boosting battered cryptocurrencies, NVDA’s results sent the Nasdaq up more than 2%.
Stocks are also quickly reversing their gains: the Nasdaq is now up just 0.3%. Even the mighty Nvidia is trading unchanged after rising more than 5%.
Hurting sentiment at the macro level are persistent thoughts that the Federal Reserve, for now, appears willing not to cut interest rates at its December meeting. The September jobs report (released today instead of weeks ago due to the government shutdown) showed a much higher-than-expected figure: 119,000 jobs added that month.
Fellow hawkish leader Beth Hammack, president of the Cleveland Fed, was on the wires suggesting that not only was high inflation no reason to cut rates, but high stock prices were also a concern. Market veterans will hear echoes of Alan Greenspan’s “irrational exuberance” speech from 1996. Stocks continued to rise strongly for four more years.
Ethereum’s ether was hit harder than bitcoin now down almost 4% in the last hour, perhaps burdened by digital asset treasury FG Nexus selling a portion of its holdings to buy back some of its battered shares (more than 95% off its summer high).
A check of cryptocurrency-related stocks now finds big losses after initial gains. Michael Saylor Strategy (MSTR) is down another 4.7% and 62% year over year to 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%.
