Crypto wrap: January Fed meet minutes pull Bitcoin back from six-month high

business-standard.com:

The last week was a mixed bag for cryptocurrency investors. Bitcoin touched a six-week high of $25,047 on Tuesday. But soon after the Federal Reserve released the minutes of its January meeting, the prices fell below $24,000.

The minutes said the members believe "ongoing" rate hikes will be necessary.

"Participants noted that inflation data received over the past three months showed a welcome reduction in the monthly pace of price increases but stressed that substantially more evidence of progress across a broader range of prices would be required to be confident that inflation was on a sustained downward path," the minutes said.

"After the meeting and underwhelming January minutes, Bitcoin fell further to the $23,600 level on Wednesday," said Alankar Saxena, CTO and co-founder of crypto management company Mudrex. On Friday, Bitcoin was trading at $23,851, according to coinmarketcap.

Ethereum, on the other hand, has proved itself as more resilient this year. It has been trading between $1,650 and $1,700 since the start of 2023. On Friday, it was trading at $1,649. The overall crypto market cap has also stayed above $1 trillion in the year. On Friday, it was $1.09 trillion.

Another takeaway from the market this week was the decoupling of the US markets and the crypto market.

"What is interesting to note is the short-term 'decoupling' between Bitcoin and S&P 500, as the much-touted narrative from last year of Bitcoin trading in sync with high-growth tech stocks seems to be losing steam. The correlation between Bitcoin and S&P 500 had shot up above 0.8 but is now down to around 0.3, suggesting that Bitcoin behaves like a unique asset class and can be considered for portfolio diversification," said Parth Chaturvedi, crypto