Bitcoin edges higher, Ether little changed; XRP, Polkadot post strong gains in mixed market

Bitcoin edged higher to the US$23,000 resistance line, while Ether traded little changed in mixed early morning trading in Asia on Tuesday. Most top 10 non-stablecoin cryptocurrencies were moving in a boxed range of 1%. XRP and Polkadot were the breakout exceptions with both gaining more than 5%.

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Fast facts

Bitcoin traded 0.9% higher at US$22,928 in the 24 hours to 8 a.m. in Hong Kong, bringing gains in the past calendar week to 8.2%. Ether dipped less than 0.1% to US$1,627, a rise of 3.2% for the week., according to data from CoinMarketCap.
XRP gained 5.9% to trade at US$0.42, a weekly gain of 9.8%, following the addition of a new function to the XRP Ledger network, known as CheckCashMakesTrustLine. There is also growing optimism from executives at Ripple Labs – the company whose payment network is powered by XRP – that the lawsuit filed against Ripple by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) will be resolved in the first half of this year.
The XRP bump also follows the unusual purchase of a non-fungible token (NFT) on the nascent XRPL NFT market. The NFT was created by developer Wietse Wind without images or metadata purely as a test on the network, but was bought regardless.
Polkadot jumped 5.9% to US$6.57, a weekly gain of 13.1%, following the successful start of the network’s XCM “cross-consensus messaging” version 3, which reportedly improves cross-chain communication and lays the groundwork for NFTs on the network.
The total crypto market capitalization over the 24 hours gained 1.5% to US$1.05 trillion, while trading volume rose 6.6 % to US$56.3 billion.
U.S. equities rose on Monday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.8%, the S&P 500 Index climbed 1.2% and the Nasdaq Composite Index closed 2% higher as it recorded back-to-back gains of over 2%.
The gains in the tech-heavy Nasdaq were helped by strong performances from firms like tech-giant Apple Inc., which gained 2.4% to US$141.11 and chipmaker NVIDIA Inc., which rose 7.6% to US$191.93.
Several major earnings reports are expected this week from the likes of Tesla Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Visa Inc.
U.S. Federal Reserve members will be in a so-called blackout period before they meet to decide the next move on interest rates on Jan. 31 – Feb. 1, where analysts from CME Group predict a 99.8% chance of a raise of 25 basis points. Other U.S. economic indicators coming this week that may influence that decision include durable goods orders and consumer sentiment.