Bitcoin Falls Below $26K; US Jobs Data Provide Mixed Cues
By Laxmikant Khanvilkar
The leading virtual digital assets (VDA) wavered during Monday Asia trade, with Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), turning slightly positive but staying near lower end of recent range, as the mixed U.S. jobs data suggest the Federal Reserve may hold interest rates steady.
Last week, all tokens wiped off gains after the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) delayed decisions on six applications for spot bitcoin ETFs including from BlackRock and Fidelity.
As the employment data supporting prospect for the Fed maintaining status, BTC, the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalisation, staged a mild recovery. It was recently trading at $25,934.90, up 0.34%. ETH, the second largest crypto in market value, added 0.16% over the last 24-hours to $1,635.79.
The CME FedWatch Tool suggest that the traders are fully expecting the U.S. Federal Reserve to remain on hold at its September meeting. The odds of a rate hike at the early November meeting remain at about a one-in-three chance.
Meanwhile, the broader crypto market mirrored the two leading assets’ move.
The global crypto market cap rose 0.17% to $1.04 tn, over the last 24-hours. On the other hand, the total crypto market volume slipped 9.10% to $19.82 bn. The total volume in DeFi is currently $1.85 bn and all stablecoins $18.4 bn, representing 9.35% and 92.85% respectively, of the total crypto market 24-hour volume. Bitcoin’s dominance increased 0.05% to 48.37%.
IC15 index, the barometer of top fifteen tokens, edged up 0.27% to 33,929.52.
Meanwhile, large BTC investors – “whales” in crypto terms – seemed undeterred by the recent weakness in price and substantially increased their holdings.
Data by crypto analytics firm IntoTheBlock shows that addresses holding at least 0.1% of the bitcoin supply – worth more than $500 million – increased their stash by a total of $1.5 billion in the last two weeks of August.
Despite the weak price action, the accumulation suggests that “institutional investors are getting optimistic in bitcoin as ETF decisions approach, said an analyst.
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