The last day of April ended up being a red day as another round of gloomy economic data led investors to fall back on their profits. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) dropped 288.14 points (-1.17%) to close at 24,345.72. The NASDAQ Composite dropped 25.16 points (-0.28%) to close at 8,889.55, and the S&P 500 went down 27.08 (-0.92) to close at 2,912.43.
The U.S. Labor Department said that another 3.84 million Americans filled for unemployment assistance last week, bring the total to over 30 million. Stocks were also under pressure as the European Central Bank refrained from increasing its emergency asset purchase program.
As for the news within the crypto sphere, some of U.Today’s headlines include a price prediction for XRP, the CEO of BitMEX thanking the Chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, and Chainlink (LINK) and Tezos (XTZ) tying the knot.
XRP Price Prediction
Since yesterday’s rally, XRP is the first coin from the Top 3 to begin the correction process, dropping 2.17% in the last 24 hours. However, its rate has actually been on the plus side since last week, going up 14%.
Looking at the 4H chart, the current correction is not the start of a short-term bearish trend. XRP continues to trade above $0.21, which confirms pressure by the bulls. Furthermore, the lines of the Bollinger Bands are moving upwards. In short, buyers need ‘fuel’ to push the rate higher, and the most likely scenario is a consolidation between $0.2150-$0.22 within the next few days.
Since yesterday, the price of XRP brough through the resistance barrier of the two-day moving average EMA200, setting it near the April high of $0.236. While an upper trend breakthrough is possible, the pair might return to the green ascending corridor after the hype fades away.
BitMEX’s CEO Thanks U.S. Fed Chairman for Bitcoin (BTC) Price Spike
In a recent tweet Arthur Hayes, Founder and CEO of BitMEX, thanked U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell for Bitcoin’s recent price surge. On some exchanges, the price of Bitcoin (BTC) touched $9,500. Hayes also hinted at what is potentially considered the most depressing press conferences ever held by the Federal Reserve.
This is what happens with #bitcoin teams up with stonks. Thank you Chairman Powell. You keep hope alive! pic.twitter.com/2NqncI8E8c
— Arthur Hayes (@CryptoHayes) April 30, 2020
With the conclusion of a two-day conference on the Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee (FOMC), Chairman Powell stated that the United States is going through an unprecedented economic recession. Because of the uncertainty, the Federal Reserve decided to anchor its benchmark interest rate near zero and pledged to keep it there until the economy recovers. Furthermore, the policy measures will stay in effect until the return of fully employment and the inflation rate is at 2%.
Despite the remarks by the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Hayes believes that it may have caused an upsurge for BTC and demonstrated three active BTC derivative contracts on BitMEX. All three contracts were accompanied by significant trading volume.
Chainlink (LINK) and Tezos (XTZ) Tie the Knot
Two teams of Tezos (XTZ) developers, Cryptonomic and Smart Chain Arena, are joining forces to bring Chainlink (LINK) oracles to their network. According to a blog post published by Cryptonomic, this tie-up between the two ecosystems was funded by the Tezos Foundation.
Chainlink’s Co-Founder Sergey Nazarov said that he is looking forward to the collaboration:
We look forward to bringing Chainlink's oracle infrastructure to the Tezos ecosystem, supplying Tezos developers with high-quality data to power secure, truly reliable decentralized applications.
With the assistance of this middleware solution, Tezos will have access to off-chain data and integrate it into their applications. The authenticity will be verified by the oracle, which relies on a slew of validating patterns.
The integrated Tezos smart contract will be written in a Python-based language called SmartPy. Cryptonomic promises to keep the community updated about their progress.
Yuri Molchan
Arman Shirinyan
Alex Dovbnya
