First Mover Americas: BTC Loses $43K as Crypto Prices Slip

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Bitcoin drifted around the $42,500 level during the European morning after dipping below $43,000 during the Asian session. At the time of writing, BTC is trading around $42,580, down 2.25% in the last 24 hours. Bitcoin looks set to end the month roughly midway between its high of around $47,000, hit after the first spot BTC ETFs listed in the U.S., and the low of about $38,500, which it hit two weeks later. The CoinDesk 20 Index, which measures the performance of the top digital assets, is down 3.11%. Solana's SOL, Cardando's ADA and Avalanche's AVAX have been among the biggest decliners, down 6.7%, 5.4% and 6.2% respectively.

Indexes tracking NFTs have risen almost 10% in January. Meanwhile ether, the cryptocurrency in which many of them are denominated, has gained just over 2%. The gains stand out because NFT prices in ether initially did not keep up with the cryptocurrency's year-end advance. Traders, however, seem to have changed their minds as the hunt for utility, or real-world uses, is on. NFT-focused VC firm Animoca Brands' founder, Yat Siu, told CoinDesk in an interview that he attributed the rally to the newfound maturity and diversity of the sector. "The majority of the speculators in the NFT space have left, which strengthened the foundation as the remaining people are genuinely interested," he said.

Solana-based decentralized trading aggregator Jupiter will unveil its native token at 10.00 EST (15:00 UTC) with an initial circulating supply of 1.35 billion. With JUP-USD perpetuals trading at around 67 cents on Aveo this morning, the token could open with a market cap of around $700 million. Of the initial circulating supply of 1.35 billion, 1 billion coins are for airdrops, 50 million each for loans to market makers on centralized exchanges and liquidity pool needs, and 250 million for a launch pool. About 955,000 wallets that interacted with Jupiter before Nov. 2 are eligible for the airdrop, according to data source Airdrop Official.

- Omkar Godbole