Bitcoin and major cryptocurrencies faced a minor setback during Monday’s Asian trading session as investors responded cautiously to statements made by Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell during the Jackson Hole Symposium. Powell’s remarks centered around the necessity of tight monetary policy until inflation experiences a significant slowdown.
Bitcoin’s Post-Symposium Performance
Bitcoin, the world’s leading cryptocurrency, witnessed a 0.44% decline, bringing its value to $25,915 in the 24-hour period leading up to 4 p.m. in Hong Kong. This dip contributed to a 0.36% loss over the course of the week. Bitcoin’s market capitalization experienced a decrease of 0.41%, settling at $504.7 billion. During the same period, trading volume surged by 40.10%, according to data from CoinMarketCap.
Market Analyst Rania Gule from XS.com remarked, “The cryptocurrency market is witnessing a downward trend on Monday, with Bitcoin and most major alternative currencies trading in the red zone.” Gule attributed the price drop to Powell’s announcement that the central bank is prepared to implement further interest rate hikes as necessary, while emphasizing a cautious approach to future decisions.
Bitcoin’s Technical Indicators and Outlook
Gule noted that Bitcoin had been trading within a relatively tight range of $25,752 to $26,282 in recent days. Despite nearing overbought territory on both short and medium-term scales, suggesting a potential upward reversal, significant momentum requires breaking the formidable resistance at $30,000 and securing a daily close above it. Gule also highlighted prevailing bearish sentiment, indicating potential targets at $25,500 and $25,100.
Altcoins Follow the Trend
Most of the top 10 non-stablecoin cryptocurrencies experienced declines in the past 24 hours. Notably, Tron emerged as an exception, gaining 0.11% to reach $0.07732. BNB, Binance’s native token, dropped by 0.32% to $216. Despite this dip, BNB managed to achieve a 0.66% increase throughout the week. A recent Wall Street Journal report detailed Binance’s removal of sanctioned Russian banks from its peer-to-peer trading service, a move that followed the suspension of transactions involving five blacklisted Russian banks.
Market-Wide Impact
The collective crypto market capitalization observed a 0.62% decrease, settling at $1.04 trillion. However, market volume demonstrated a 27.69% gain, reaching $18.86 billion within the 24-hour timeframe.
NFT Market Trends and Anticipations
The Forkast 500 NFT index saw a minor increase of 0.18%, reaching 2,245.24 within the 24-hour period, although it experienced a 3.54% decline over the past week. While Ethereum and Polygon indexes reflected losses, the Solana index demonstrated gains over the same timeframe.
Non-fungible token (NFT) sales volume rose by 5.04% to $10.15 million, as indicated by CryptoSlam data. Despite this increase, NFT transactions dropped by 11.84%, accompanied by a 4.27% decline in the number of NFT buyers.
Yehudah Petscher, NFT Strategist at Forkast Labs, explained, “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.”
Petscher attributed the decline to the current slower phase of the year, compounded by the impact of weekends on trading activity. While the weekend saw Ethereum-based Bored Ape Yacht Club celebrating the two-year anniversary of the Mutant Apes with a Miami party, Petscher predicted that fresh lows might continue for the remainder of the year.
