Markets
Bitcoin (BTC) price drops amid cryptocurrency market crash
Cryptocurrency markets remained under pressure during U.S. trading hours on Thursday, continuing a pullback that began a day earlier when the Fed signaled it planned to cut rates only once this year.
The price of ether (ETH) led a mid-morning rebound after U.S. Securities and Exchange Chairman Gary Gensler — in testimony at a Senate hearing — he said he expected Spot ether ETFs will have received full approval from its agency by the end of the summer.
The news sent ether up 1%, but it proved to be a selling opportunity, with the price reversing more than 3% just an hour later. At the time of writing, Ether was trading at $3,440, down 5% over the past 24 hours. The widest CoinDesk 20 Index it was 4.9% lower over the same period.
The price of bitcoin also fell by almost 5%. (BTC)which was trading near a one-week low of $66,300.
Markets began falling Wednesday afternoon after the Federal Reserve intervened Results of the aggressive political meeting. The US central bank kept its benchmark Fed Funds rate range stable at 5.25%-5.50%, but surprised with its updated projections suggesting an expectation of a rate cut of just 25 basis points in 2024. Rate futures markets, meanwhile, had priced in two to three 25 basis point moves this year.
Not improving the macroeconomic mood for cryptocurrencies were Thursday morning’s US economic data, which suggests a continued weakening of both inflation and the economy. The May Producer Price Index (PPI) fell 0.2% versus expectations for a 0.1% increase. On a year-over-year basis, PPI was higher by 2.2% versus forecasts of 2.5%. There were also early jobless claims rising to nearly a one-year high of 242,000 versus expectations of 225,000.
“$66,000 seems like a balance,” said well-followed analyst Skew in a post by Xwho along with others are trying to reverse engineer a market that won’t sustainably rise despite lots of recent bullish news: improving inflation data, a Bitcoin-friendly presidential candidate in Donald Trump, ETH ETF spot approvals, and others risky asset markets. (i.e. US stocks) are hitting new all-time highs.