This week, the initial growth of the digital sector gave way to a correction, so most crypto assets lost their gained positions. BTC is now trading at 64200.00 (–0.7%), ETH is at 3130.00 (–0.5%), USDT is around 1.0000 ( 0.01%), BNB is around 608.00 ( 4.6%), and SOL is around 143.00 (–4.2%). The total market capitalization by the end of the week amounted to 2.37T dollars, and the share of BTC on it increased to 53.45%.

The market was in a state of uncertainty amid a change in investor sentiment. Previously, they were guided by the halving in the Bitcoin network, which increased attention to cryptocurrencies and supported the quotes. Now, this factor has disappeared, and monetary and regulatory policy may once again come to the fore. The next halving in the Bitcoin network took place on April 20 at block No. 840000 and reduced the reward to miners from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC, which should lead to a significant reduction in the production of new coins. Thus, the annual emission can reach 0.85% of the 21.0M BTC total. Experts disagree on the long-term impact of this event on the market. In particular, analysts at JPMorgan Chase & Co. believe that it is undergoing a significant correction due to sales of tokens by mining companies forced to reorient their business, while representatives of the CNBC channel expect significant growth in assets, and economists at Deutsche Bank AG expect a continued sideways movement. The immediate short-term consequence of the halving was a slight increase in quotations at the beginning of the week, further supported by the approval by the Hong Kong authorities of the launch of ETFs based on first and second world cryptocurrencies. The trading is expected to begin on April 30 involving three leading Chinese companies: Harvest Fund Management, Bosera Asset Management, and China Asset Management. Experts believe the measure will expand the possibilities of investing in digital assets, but the total volume of investments is unlikely to exceed 500.0M dollars.

The positive dynamics of the leading digital assets were short-lived and in the middle of the week, they corrected downwards amid the increasing likelihood of the US Fed maintaining high rates for a long time and regulatory news negative for the market. Thus, Reuters sources reported that the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) may postpone the launch of spot Ethereum-ETFs, expected in May, until the end of this year or longer. Investors are also disappointed by the latest US economic data. The Q1 gross domestic product (GDP) growth slowed from 3.4% to 1.6%, and inflation accelerated to 3.4%, which could cause stagflation in the American economy and force the regulator officials to keep the current tight monetary policy for a long time, which will strengthen the dollar and weaken alternative assets.

Unlike most leading cryptocurrencies, the BNB token has shown significant growth, which may be due to the launch of the so-called “copy trading” by the Binance exchange allowing traders to track and copy trades of leading crypto traders, who will receive 10.0% of the profitable trades of clients using their strategies.

Leading assets are now not receiving support from the Bitcoin network, and pressure from monetary and regulatory factors is increasing. Under these conditions, most cryptocurrencies may continue to consolidate or begin to decline.