Good morning. Here’s what’s happening:

Prices: Bitcoin traded above $21,000 for a fourth consecutive day.

Insights: Why are tokens for metaverse majors rallying when the platforms are struggling to keep users engaged?

Prices

CoinDesk Market Index (CMI)

1,017.20

+8.4 ▲ 0.8%

Bitcoin (BTC)

$21,215

+250.5 ▲ 1.2%

Ethereum (ETH)

$1,573

+23.8 ▲ 1.5%

S&P 500 daily close

3,990.97

−8.1 ▼ 0.2%

Gold

$1,910

−2.7 ▼ 0.1%

Treasury Yield 10 Years

3.54%

▲ 0.0

BTC/ETH prices per CoinDesk Indices; gold is COMEX spot price. Prices as of about 4 p.m. ET

Bitcoin, Other Cryptos Trade Sideways

By James Rubin

For a fourth consecutive day, bitcoin liked the air above $21,000.

The largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization was recently trading at $21,215, up 1.2% over the past 24 hours but a marked improvement from its levels little more than a week ago. BTC's roughly 25% surge over the past seven days has come amid rising investor confidence that inflation is waning and the economy will land softly.

Ether was recently changing hands at 1,573, a 1.5% gain from Monday, the same time. ETH is up 20% during the past seven days. Other major cryptos were largely in the green with popular meme coin Shiba Inu recently jumping more than 12% and DOT, the token of the smart contract platform Polkadot rising more than 4%. The CoinDesk Market Index (CDI), an index measuring cryptos' performance, recently increased 0.97%.

"The fact that we are now flirting with $21,500 is amazing," JJ Kinahan, CEO of trading provider IG North America, told CoinDesk TV's "First Mover" program. "It correlates a little bit to the equity markets now, in that we're starting to see people put out a little more risk. Volatility has come off there."

Kinahan added: "We're going to get up to about the $22,500 level, before you really start to see resistance."

A day after the long, U.S. holiday weekend, equity markets were mixed with the tech heavy Nasdaq up ever so slightly, but the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 sinking, as investors weighed fourth-quarter declines in profits at financial service giants Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, which are among the first companies to report earnings.