Bitcoin is down 1.3% over the past week, finishing around $27,800. Ethereum lost 2.7% to $1760. Other leading altcoins from the top 10 showed mixed dynamics: from a decline of 8.2% (Polkadot) to a growth of 13.6% (XRP). Total crypto market capitalisation, according to CoinMarketCap, fell 1.4% to $1.16 trillion over the week.
Bitcoin had updated 9-month highs to around $28,900 but corrected in the second half of the week. As a result of another recalculation, bitcoin's mining difficulty rose by 7.56%. The figure renewed its all-time high at 46.84 T. The average hash rate was 335.23 EH/s. Correlated metrics have increased by more than 30% since the beginning of the year.
News background
Tether technical director Paolo Ardoino said the company has about $1.6 billion in excess reserves to support its stablecoin USDT. In his view, amid the banking crisis and global economic uncertainty, bitcoin may well surpass its previous record high of $68,000. The Fed's board of directors has once again rejected Custodia Bank's application for membership, indicating that the bank's business model does not meet the goals set out in the Federal Reserve Act.
JPMorgan bank said the US banking crisis has opened up opportunities to increase market share for some crypto exchanges by offering banking services to cryptocurrency firms and investors.
German securities processing giant Deutsche Wertpapier Service Bank AG (dwpbank), which manages 5.3 million customer accounts for various banks, has launched wpNex, a bitcoin trading platform. Nasdaq, the operator of the stock exchange of the same name, has announced plans to launch cryptocurrency storage services by the end of the second quarter of 2023.
