Bitcoin Ends Week Up 2%, PYTH Gains 15% on Binance Listing

Bitcoin and Ethereum are ending the week up slightly, having each gained about 2% and 1% respectively since yesterday.

At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading for $43,195.70, having reclaimed a foothold at $43,000 late last night. It’s trading 4.4% higher than it was a week ago, according to CoinGecko data. On Friday morning, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that the U.S. added 353,000 new jobs in January and the unemployment rate held at 3.7% for the third month in a row.

Bitcoin fell slightly right after the U.S. jobs report came out. That’s likely due to how a strong jobs report might impact the next Federal Open Market Committee in May.

Earlier this week, investors were hoping that Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell would provide some hint that the FOMC will drop rates after its next meeting. The Fed kept rates unchanged, which investors largely suspected would be the case. But Powell said during his announcement on Wednesday that it’s unlikely the FOMC will lower rates any time soon.

The strong jobs report now makes it even more unlikely that the FOMC will feel pressured to lower rates. In fact, the latest from the CME FedWatch Tool shows that 56% of investors are now expecting a rate cut in May rather than March.

Meanwhile, Bitcoin ETFs are ending the week with a combined market capitalization of nearly $30 billion, according to Coinglass data.

That’s $2 billion higher than the market cap was on Monday. Reports from European digital asset manager CoinShares say that all signs point to the rush to sell Grayscale Bitcoin Trust shares that was triggered by the fund being converted into a spot Bitcoin ETF has slowed down.

Sure enough, the outflows since Monday have been around 19,000 BTC, according to Coinglass. It’s a significant slow down when you consider that the trust has 54,000 less BTC than it did this time last week.

PYTH Listed on Binance

The PYTH token, native token of the Pyth Network for price oracles, has surged 16% on news that it’s been listed on Binance. Users can begin depositing PYTH tokens now and withdrawals will open up tomorrow, the exchange said in a blog post.

At the time of writing, PYTH is trading for $0.5072, a 15% gain from its price this time yesterday and 25% higher than it was a week ago, according to CoinGecko.

Price oracles provide real-time price information for asset prices. As it turns out, Pyth is the oracle used by Solana liquidity aggregator and decentralized exchange Jupiter, which earlier this week held an airdrop of its JUP token.

The JUP token gained 70% during the frenzy around its long-awaited airdrop.  As of late Friday morning, it was trading for $0.636—a 9% gain from this time yesterday.