Boosting the case for rate hikes, however, Friday's closely watched U.S. nonfarm payrolls (NFP) report showed employers maintained a strong pace of hiring in March, pointing to a still-resilient economy.
"There were some expectations of a potential miss on NFP on
Friday, and that's bolstered confidence coming into" the readout
of U.S. consumer price index data, said Joseph Edwards,
investment adviser at Enigma Securities.
Crypto investment products attracted $57 million in inflows last week - albeit on low volume - with most of the money focused on bitcoin, digital asset manager CoinShares said on Monday. This brings digital asset flows back into positive territory for the year, the report showed. "The market has done a great job at culling all leveraged participants in the past 18 months," said Matthew Dibb, chief investment officer at Astronaut Capital, a Singapore-based crypto asset manager. "If (bitcoin) can survive the week over $30,000, we are going higher." Ether , the second largest cryptocurrency, stood near last week's roughly eight-month peak of $1,942.50. It was last up 1.56% to $1,915.56. Crypto investors are eagerly anticipating a major revamp to the Ethereum blockchain on Wednesday that is set to allow them to gain access to more than $33 billion of ether currency. The software upgrade, dubbed Shapella, will let market players redeem their "staked ether" - coins they have deposited and locked up on the network over the past three years in return for interest. While Shapella is not likely to directly drive sell pressure on ether, volatility could be heightened around the event, Bank of America strategist Alkesh Shah said. <^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Bitcoin and gold outperform S&P 500 since banking turmoil ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^> (Reporting by Rae Wee in Singapore and Medha Singh in Bengaluru and Hannah Lang in Washington; Editing by Vidya Ranganathan, Jamie Freed, Devika Syamnath and Richard Chang)
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