Cryptocurrencies continue to experience high volatility, generated by speculation about an imminent hike in interest rates by the Federal Reserve, which would take place in the coming days.

We are experiencing a rather contrasting week for the cryptocurrency market, since a large part of the crypto assets traded lower at the end of the week after having had a fairly optimistic start, continuing with the high volatilities that have occurred in recent weeks. Cryptocurrency market capitalization reached $1.8 trillion, while total cryptocurrency trading volume increased by around 18% to $106 billion.

The Federal Reserve (FED) will have a meeting on May 3 and 4, in which they are expected to make the decision to increase interest rates by 50 basis points, significantly increasing the cost of credits this year. Jerome Powell, president of the Federal Reserve, reiterated that the institution’s goal is to reduce inflation levels to 2%. However, currently the figure is three times higher, so the Fed will take a more aggressive stance to combat high inflation levels more quickly. In the event that interest rates are indeed raised, we could experience some negative effects both in the stock market and in the cryptocurrency market.

In other news, payment platform fintech giant Stripe has announced that it will now allow businesses to pay their users using cryptocurrencies. Payments with crypto assets can be made through the stablecoin USDC, which is issued by the cryptocurrency firm Circle and backed by US dollars. It is important to mention that Twitter will be the first company to integrate the new payment method, so starting Friday, the social network will allow a certain number of content creators to receive their earnings from its paid Ticketed Spaces and Super Follows features in USDC. The US government added Russian crypto mining company BitRiver to its sanctions list last Wednesday, as part of its strategy to prevent Russian companies from accessing the global financial network, following the invasion and conflict with Ukraine. The US government argues that this company is part of the technology sector of the Russian country, which is why it decided to take these measures. In response, the Bitcoin mining company described the sanctions imposed by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) as a measure to favor US companies. Bitcoin is close to $39,000 after making a new low for a little over a month. If it closes below $38,800, we could see it falling down to $36,600, where we can see a very important support level. BTC/USDT 1D (TradingView Chart). For its part, Ethereum is trading near $2,880 after bouncing near a support zone above $2,800. It will be important to see how the asset behaves today, since although it seems that the price of ETH has generated a rebound to continue with an upward movement, its positive correlation with Bitcoin puts this scenario in doubt. ETH/USDT 1D (TradingView Chart). The macroeconomic and geopolitical events that have a significant impact on the financial markets continue, which is why it is important as investors to be aware of the most recent news, as well as to generate adequate diversification to reduce the risk of our investments. Without further ado, we wish you an excellent start to the week.