Most cryptocurrencies rose during Friday’s trading as demand for risk assets rebounded, with investors largely ignoring the ongoing US government shutdown.

The shutdown — now in its third day — continues to raise concerns about a potential economic slowdown, inflation risks, and labor market weakness.

As a result of the shutdown, the Department of Labor has halted the release of key reports, including the September nonfarm payrolls.

The US Senate failed in a vote on Friday to end the shutdown, as partisan tensions between Republicans and Democrats deepened.

Data released Friday by the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) showed the services PMI falling by 2 percentage points to 50 last month, compared with expectations for only a slight drop to 51.8.

Ahead of the Federal Reserve’s October policy meeting, the probability of a rate cut currently stands at 96.7% according to the CME FedWatch tool.

Ethereum

On the trading side, Ethereum rose 0.6% to $4,526.2 on CoinMarketCap as of 20:43 GMT, with the cryptocurrency posting a weekly gain of 12.8%.

Gold prices rose during Friday’s trading amid a decline in the US dollar against most major currencies, as well as continued concerns over the US government shutdown. The precious metal reached a new record high and marked its seventh consecutive weekly gain.

The shutdown — which entered its third day on Friday — continues to fuel fears about an economic slowdown, inflation risks, and a weakening labor market.

As a result of this shutdown, the Department of Labor stopped publishing key reports such as the nonfarm payrolls for September.

Data released Friday by the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) showed the services PMI falling by 2 percentage points to 50 last month, compared with expectations for only a slight drop to 51.8.

Ahead of the Federal Reserve’s policy meeting in October, the probability of a rate cut currently stands at 96.7% according to the CME FedWatch tool.

Meanwhile, the US dollar index fell 0.1% to 97.7 points as of 20:14 GMT, recording a high of 97.9 and a low of 97.5.

On the trading side, spot gold surged 1.2% to $3,913.5 an ounce as of 20:15 GMT, with the metal posting a weekly gain of 2.6%.

China has made new progress in the high-level international race to achieve commercial nuclear fusion. China and the United States have been alternating breakthroughs in the pursuit of what is often called the “holy grail of clean energy.” With rising investments and political support from the world’s two largest economies, the pace of technological development has accelerated significantly.

Current nuclear power plants, which account for about 10% of the global energy mix, rely on nuclear fission — the splitting of atoms — to generate energy. Fusion, the process that powers the sun, combines atoms to release vast amounts of energy without the need for dangerous radioactive isotopes as fuel. Given its high energy yield and the absence of hazardous waste, nuclear fusion is widely viewed as the magic solution for the transition to clean energy.

Jamie Goodrich, senior advisor for technology analysis at the RAND Corporation, told IEEE Spectrum: “Fusion is the energy technology of the next generation. Whoever masters it will gain enormous advantages — economic, strategic, and in national security.”

But building an “artificial sun” on Earth remains an extraordinarily difficult task. The process requires extremely high temperatures that are both technically complex and costly to achieve and contain. To give an idea of the heat involved, China’s Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) this year set a new record by maintaining a plasma temperature of 100 million degrees Celsius.

Still, reaching such superheated conditions requires enormous amounts of energy, and fusion experiments often produce less energy than they consume. In 2022, scientists at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California achieved a historic milestone by producing net positive energy using laser technology — the first time globally in the field of nuclear fusion. Since then, NIF has repeated this success with progressively higher energy yields.

China has not yet achieved net positive energy output from its own fusion experiments, but this may soon change. The country is building a large-scale nuclear fusion reactor to compete with NIF in California. While NIF relies on lasers to create fusion conditions, China’s experiments have traditionally used giant magnetic reactors to confine plasma. However, experts believe that the new facility in Mianyang, Sichuan province, may be a laser-based project similar to NIF but on a much larger scale. There is also speculation that it could be a massive Z-pinch machine, a third type of fusion device based on electrical currents.

In either case, this new facility is expected to allow China to test two promising but different fusion approaches simultaneously — an enormously costly undertaking that few countries can afford. This makes it likely that Beijing will outpace its rivals in this race sooner or later.

Decker Eveleth, an analyst at the CNA research center, told IEEE Spectrum: “Even if China is not ahead right now, the speed of its project execution and its financial will to build these facilities on a massive scale are not in America’s favor.”

This week, Beijing unveiled an additional step in its nuclear fusion research by developing and successfully testing the largest radiation-resistant robot ever built for use in fusion facilities. The robot, equipped with three arms and capable of lifting up to 60 tons, is designed to perform maintenance in giant fusion plants. According to Nuclear Engineering International magazine, “the technologies mastered in developing the robot are expected to contribute to the operation of next-generation fusion reactors, both inside and outside China.”

US stock indexes rose at the start of Friday’s session, supported by strength in the technology sector, particularly artificial intelligence shares, despite the ongoing US government shutdown.

The shutdown, now in its third day, continues to raise concerns about economic slowdown, inflation risks, and labor market weakness. As a result, the Labor Department has halted the release of key economic reports, including the nonfarm payrolls report for September.

In trading, the Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 1% (443 points) to 46,966 points as of 15:43 GMT. The broader S&P 500 index climbed 0.4% (29 points) to 6,744 points, while the Nasdaq Composite gained 0.2% (38 points) to 22,882 points.