Bitcoin Soars as Tokenised Stocks Lift Crypto Mood
At the crack of dawn on Monday, the price of one bitcoin was hovering at $81,000, up less than one percent from the previous day. Based on the data that is currently available, this increase is a direct result of Thursday’s decision by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to allow onchain trading of tokenised U.S. stocks. Among the main tokens, NEAR had the best performance, rising around 23% to just over $4. The change originated with NEAR Intents, an NEAR blockchain-based swap service that lets a wallet trade tokens between different chains without requiring the user to initially transfer funds.
The number of ZEC sent and received through the service has increased sixfold in the last seven days, thanks to integrations with major consumer wallets like ZODL and Vizor. NEAR’s own token has experienced a surge in value, reflecting the fact that it is now the routing layer for a highly-traded token on the market. In other news, ZEC saw a 3% boost to little over $1,500 and BNB a 2% increase to around $777. A 2% increase was seen by Ether and HYPE, while XRP, DOGE, SOL, and TRX all had gains of less than 1%.
The dominant sentiment was formed by equities. U.S. officials characterised conversations with China as “very successful” in preparation of a summit between Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping this week, driving technology stocks in South Korea and Taiwan to propel MSCI’s Asia Pacific measure up by about 1%. While the Nasdaq 100 contracts rose marginally more than the S&P 500 futures, the difference was less than 1%. For the fourth straight day, Brent crude fell, falling 2% to settle slightly above $101 a barrel. Inflation worries have been allayed by this pattern, which has been good for Treasury futures.
After the SEC approved onchain trading for tokenised U.S. stocks, there was a short squeeze, which led to the weekend rise in bitcoin prices, according to Jeff Mei. Aside from statements made by Federal Reserve officials, he doesn’t see much happening this week. “I’d expect more volatility in the last few weeks leading up to that event,” Mei said of the Fed’s late-October meeting, which leaves more than a month of speeches and a single inflation print to shift positioning before then.
