Bitcoin dips below US$26,000, crypto faces downward pressure
Bitcoin fell with most of the top 10 non-stablecoin cryptocurrencies in afternoon trading in Asia on Monday as traders remained cautious after Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell said at the Jackson Hole Symposium on Friday that tight monetary policy is necessary until inflation slows down significantly.
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Bitcoin hungover post-Jackson Hole weekend
Bitcoin lost 0.44% to US$25,915 in 24 hours to 4 p.m. in Hong Kong, bringing its weekly losses to 0.36%. The world’s biggest cryptocurrency’s market capitalization fell 0.41% to US$504.7 billion as its trading volume rose 40.10% in the past 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap data.
“The cryptocurrency market is witnessing a downward trend on Monday, with Bitcoin and most major alternative currencies trading in the red zone,” Rania Gule, market analyst at multi-asset brokerage firm XS.com, said in an emailed statement on Monday.
According to Gule, the drop in prices comes after Powell said in his keynote address at the Jackson Hole Symposium that the central bank is prepared to raise interest rates further, if necessary, adding that future decisions would be made with caution.
“Bitcoin prices have been trading within a tight range between US$25,752 and US$26,282 over the past few days. Meanwhile, technical indicators are approaching the overbought zone on both the short and medium-term scales, suggesting a potential upward reversal for Bitcoin,” Gule said.
“However, there won’t be a significant upward movement without a strong breach of the formidable resistance level at US$30,000 and a daily close above it. At the same time, the bearish sentiment still holds sway over Bitcoin and the digital currency market in the short term, with potential targets of US$25,500 and US$25,100, respectively,” Gule added.
Almost all top 10 non-stablecoin cryptocurrencies dropped in the past 24 hours, except Tron, which gained 0.11% to US$0.07732, and posted a 2.37% rise on the week.
BNB, the native token of world’s largest crypto exchange Binance, lost 0.32% to US$216, although it has gained 0.66% on the week. According to a Wall Street Journal report on Friday, Binance has removed sanctioned Russian banks from its peer-to-peer trading service, and has reportedly ceased processing transactions involving five blacklisted Russian banks.
The total crypto market capitalization dropped 0.62% to US$1.04 trillion while market volume gained 27.69% to US$18.86 billion in the past 24 hours.
NFT sales may remain low for rest of 2023
The main Forkast 500 NFT index edged up 0.18% to 2,245.24 in 24 hours to 7 p.m. in Hong Kong, dropping 3.54% in the past seven days. Forkast’s Ethereum and Polygon indexes logged losses while the Solana index gained in the past 24 hours.
At the same time, the total non-fungible token (NFT) sales volume gained 5.04% to US$10.15 million, according to CryptoSlam data. However, NFT transactions took an 11.84% dip while the number of NFT buyers declined 4.27%.
“Daily sales on Saturday and Sunday failed to cross US$10 million, bringing us down to daily lows we last saw in June of 2021. Weekly sales too fell to a 115-week low with just US$81 million in sales last week,” said Yehudah Petscher, NFT Strategist at Forkast Labs.
“We were heading in this direction anyway. It’s the slower time of the year and additionally weekends are slow,” Petscher explained.
This weekend, Ethereum-based Bored Ape Yacht Club celebrated the two-year anniversary of the Mutant Apes and hosted a party in Miami.
“This probably took a lot of traders out of action for the weekend, so we’ll see if this week and upcoming weekend bounce back. But I expect us to keep finding fresh new lows for the rest of the year,” he added.
(updates with NFT section.)