Bitcoin, Ether fall as risk-aversion grows; Dogecoin gains on Twitter rebranding
Bitcoin fell on Tuesday morning in Asia along with most other leading cryptocurrencies as investors took a risk-off approach on speculation the U.S. regulator will appeal a decision in the Ripple court case and the view recent price gains on hopes for approval of a Bitcoin exchange-traded fund got ahead of itself. The Federal Reserve also announces its interest rate decision on Wednesday and while a hike is priced in, for some investors it’s another reason for caution. However, Dogecoin investors ignored these issues and the meme token gained after Twitter owner Elon Musk integrated its symbol into his Twitter bio on Monday as he rebrands the social media platform into “X”. Elsewhere, the Forkast 500 NFT index continued its slide and U.S. equity futures traded flat.
Losing steam
Bitcoin fell 2.92% over the last 24 hours to US$29,182 as of 07:35 a.m. in Hong Kong for a weekly loss of 3.14%, according to data from CoinMarketCap. The world’s largest cryptocurrency briefly traded below the US$29,000 mark on Monday evening for the first time in more than a month, or since June 21.
Ether dropped 1.98% to US$1,849 and moved down 3.25% for the week.
With the exception of Dogecoin, all other top 10 non-stablecoin cryptocurrencies logged losses, with Solana’s SOL leading the decliners with a 5.31% drop to US$23.46. It has slumped 12.78% over the past seven days.
The price drops come as the bullish sentiment in the crypto market was offset by worries that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) might file an appeal against the court ruling in the Ripple case, said Justin d’Anethan, head of APAC business development at Belgium-based crypto market-maker Keyrock.
“Rumours about CZ and the Binance [exchange] team potentially inflating some of their volumes,” added to the caution, said d’Anethan. “With investors always looking forward, the potential risks need to be accounted for and priced in.”
The Wall Street Journal on Monday reported Changpeng Zhao, chief executive officer of the world’s largest crypto exchange Binance, hinted in an internal message that Binance affiliates conducted “wash trading” years ago, a practice where investors trade assets with themselves or an associate to inflate trading volumes and influence prices.
Dogecoin, meantime, gained 3.54% to US$0.07447 and moved up 6.66% for the week.
Twitter owner Elon Musk changed the blue bird logo of Twitter to X on Monday and switched his Twitter location to “𝕏Д, with “Д also being used as a symbol for Dogecoin, raising speculation the meme token will be integrated into the rebranded social media platform.
Amid the current selling pressure on most tokens, Matteo Greco, research analyst at Canada-based digital asset investment firm Fineqia International, sees signs for longer-term optimism.
“Despite a cautious attitude of investors in the short term, especially due to the rate hike expectations at the forthcoming FOMC meeting, the analysed metrics concerning BTC and ETH suggest a period of accumulation, with investors that are buying digital assets and holding for a long period looking for a price increase in the long run,” said Greco in email comments.
The total crypto market capitalization fell 2.48% in the past 24 hours to US$1.17 trillion, while trading volume rose 40.26% to US$35.5 billion.