Bitcoin Moves Little on the Week Despite Debt Deal, Inflation Concerns

Bitcoin and ether took slightly divergent paths during the last full week of May. While ether rose 1.5%, bitcoin moved little to recently trade at about $26,700, a little below where it stood last Friday.

Ether’s year-to-date performance gap to bitcoin has narrowed to single digits with ETH gaining 52% YTD versus BTC’s 60% increase. Since May, the ETH/BTC ratio has increased 6.7%. Still both assets are in line to have their first losing month of 2023.

BTC and ETH’s seven-day performance ranked them sixth and 14th among cryptocurrencies with a market cap of $1 billion or more.

The weekly leaders were Render Token (RNDR) and Tron (TRX), up 21.9% and 7.6% respectively, while LDO and ALGO lagged, declining 8.5% and 9.3%

Investors have been focusing on President Joe Biden and U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s debt ceiling negotiations. While it’s widely expected that a deal will be reached ahead of the June 1 deadline, the two sides had yet to reach an agreement going into the Memorial Day weekend.

Markets were also weighing Friday’s Personal Consumption Expenditure (PCE) report showing U.S. prices rising more than expected in April. Core PCE, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, rose 0.4%, versus expectations of a 0.3% increase.

The unexpected increase reduces the likelihood that the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) will pause interest rate hikes during its June 14 meeting.

According to the CME Fedwatch tool, the probability that interest rates would remain at the current target rate of 5%-5.25% declined from 83% to 38% this week. The probability of a 25 basis point increase rose from 17% to 62%.

Drawdowns across multiple sectors

All six sectors in the CoinDesk Market Index fell this week, with the Smart Contract Platform sector declining the least (0.2%). The Culture and Entertainment sector had the roughest week, falling 4%.

Of the 156 individual assets across the base of CMI sectors, only 20 finished the week in positive territory. Another standout, albeit one with a market cap of less than $1 billion, was decentralized computation token ARPA, up 88%. ARPA is trading 167.2% higher on the month, and over 200% higher over the last 12 months.