A number of factors, including expectations that trade tensions between the United States and China may ease, contributed to Friday’s increases in cryptocurrencies, with Bitcoin and Ether leading the way.
According to CoinDesk data, Bitcoin increased 0.7% to $96,933 in the last day. It increased Thursday along with U.S. markets after Microsoft and Meta, two tech heavyweights, reported impressive results.
While XRP, Solana, and Cardano all saw slight declines in less than 1%, altcoins paired with Ether saw an increase of 0.8%.
Futures that followed the benchmark S&P 500 saw a 0.4% increase.
Cryptocurrencies, and Bitcoin in particular, are still heavily influenced by macroeconomic events like interest rates and trade policy, even though they have recently showed signs of decoupling from the stock market.
Signals that China is amenable to trade negotiations with the Trump administration have probably helped to drive up the price of Bitcoin.
Beijing stated on Friday that it was thinking about accepting a U.S. request to start tariff negotiations, if Washington demonstrates that it is prepared to do away with the 145% import tax that is now applied to Chinese goods.
The biggest corporate Bitcoin holder, MicroStrategy, announced late Thursday that it would keep adding to its holdings of the virtual currency despite its quarterly profitability falling short of forecasts. Considered a leveraged wager on Bitcoin, the business announced a new $21 billion stock sale to supplement the 553,555 already accumulated.
Analysts had predicted a loss of 11 cents per share for the first quarter, but the corporation reported a loss of $16.49 per share. However, investors probably weren’t surprised by it, and shares weren’t moved all that much. In premarket trading, MicroStrategy’s stock increased 1.6% to $387.52.
Crypto prices may be impacted by Friday’s U.S. April jobs data if it encourages the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates, which generally benefits riskier assets like cryptocurrencies.
When economic volatility or uncertainty increases, as it has in recent months due to the Trump administration’s demands for high tariffs, the price of cryptocurrencies usually declines. However, the price decline has been lessened thanks to consistent inflows into Bitcoin ETFs.
