Market wrap: bitcoin dips slightly, while ethereum edges higher

The cryptocurrency market traded marginally lower on Thursday, much like traditional assets. The CoinDesk Market Index, a broad-based index designed to measure the crypto market’s performance, is down 0.28%.

Here’s your Thursday evening market update.

Bitcoin and ethereum price action

• Bitcoin (BTC) is down far today — hovering around the psychologically important $20,000 market. The cryptocurrency has dipped below the $20,000 mark twice today — first around 3 pm WAT and second around 5 pm WAT.
• Ethereum (ETH) is up roughly 0.4% today, changing hands for $1.360 each. ETH has been relatively stable today without any wild swings in prices.

Tradfi

• U.S equities: United States stocks fell slightly on Thursday. The country’s top benchmarks, S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average, dipped 1.02% and 1.15%, respectively. U.S. investors are anticipating Friday’s labor market report to gauge the state of the economy ahead of the Federal Reserve’s meeting early next month.
• European equities closed Thursday trading session lower, with prominent index Europe Stoxx 600 down 0.5%. This follows reports that manufacturing activities in the Eurozone dropped to a 27-month low in September.
• The S&P Global’s Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI), a measure of factory output, came in at 48.4 in September vs. 49.6 in August. This further cements expert predictions of a recession in Europe within a year.
• African equities were mostly down on Thursday. Nigerian, South African and Kenyan stocks were down 3.23%, 1.05% and 1.87%, respectively.

Altcoin price update

• Binance’s BNB coin has dipped by 1.74% to approximately $289.2.
• Chainlink’s LINK token is down roughly 2.5% to $7.7
• MATIC coin of the Polygon network is down 1.8% to $0.84
• Ripple’s XRP coin is up 2.19% to approximately $0.5