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Just before Asia's equity markets opened on Friday, Bitcoin showed minimal reaction to the latest macroeconomic developments. However, major altcoins, which experienced a decline during U.S. trading hours, stabilized, though mostly in negative territory.

Bitcoin, the leading cryptocurrency in terms of market capitalization, had been hovering just below $29,200 in recent trading, showing little change over the past 24 hours. Over the past 11 days, BTC had been trading within the range of $29,000 to $29,500, indicating a remarkable resilience to external factors that previously had significant effects on its price and continued to influence other risky assets.

Ether, the second most valuable cryptocurrency by market capitalization, exhibited a comparable trading pattern, reaching $1,834, reflecting a modest 0.4% increase from the same time on Wednesday. Meanwhile, other cryptocurrencies stabilized after experiencing a more significant decline late on Thursday, leaving investors concerned about the escalating global yields, driven by the Bank of England's decision to raise interest rates by a quarter point, reigniting fears of increased monetary strictness in Europe. Additionally, discouraging U.S. job data further suggested that inflation would continue to be a challenging issue.

ADA, SOL, and MATIC, the tokens representing smart contract platforms Cardano, Solana, and Polygon, respectively, have all experienced a recent decline of over 2.5%. Furthermore, UNI, the native cryptocurrency of the decentralized exchange Uniswap, continued its downward trend, dropping by more than 1.3%.

The CoinDesk Market Index, which gauges the performance of the cryptocurrency markets, has recently surged by 0.52%.

"I suspect that we will trend sideways for a good long while, perhaps for the next several months or even well into next year," Bob Baxley, a core contributor to DeFi infrastructure provider Maverick Protocol, wrote in an email to CoinDesk. "There isn’t enough fresh capital flowing into the space at the moment for a meaningful rally."

However, Baxley expressed optimism, stating that the changing conditions would result in "an inflow of both users and new capital."

"I say this because Ethereum is seeing its foundations become sturdier and its applications more sophisticated and increasingly friendly for users," he wrote.

In the meantime, U.S. stock markets experienced a slight decline as bond yields increased, indicating a reduced interest in riskier assets among investors. The S&P 500 and the tech-focused Nasdaq Composite both concluded the session with marginal drops of 0.3% and 0.1%, respectively.

Brent Xu, the CEO and co-founder of Web3 bond-market platform Umee, expressed in an email to CoinDesk that crypto prices are not likely to experience a significant surge in the long term, "until the macro environment softens more," which includes a halt to the interest rate hikes that have been a prominent aspect of central banking policy for over 16 months.

"We are certainly close to peak rates, though we could have another hike or two ahead of us depending on how sticky inflation actually is," Xu wrote. "I’m not convinced inflation is falling as fast as many are hoping. In short, we have a long way to go before we enter the optimistic phase of the cycle.”

Xu added: "We experienced such a meteoric surge..., especially with Bitcoin, that I don’t know how these levels can be sustained, let alone surpassed in a meaningful way. We’re left with money already in the digital asset ecosystem just getting recycled through various coins over and again, as has happened in previous down markets."

Source Coindesk