Bitcoin falls back to US$26,000, Ether nears ‘death cross’
Bitcoin, ether and most of the top ten non-stablecoins fell in Asia on Friday morning. At just above $26,000, bitcoin has recouped most of the gains sparked by Tuesday’s positive US court ruling for Grayscale Investments in the bitcoin ETF case against the SEC. US stock futures were little changed after a mixed session on Thursday. The Personal Consumption Expenditure (PCE) index rose as consumers continued to spend. Investors expect today’s US payroll report for August to provide more insight into upcoming interest rate policy.
cryptos falls as SEC delays further ETF decisions
Bitcoin is down 4.42% to $26,042.84 in the last 24 hours as of 07:00 in Hong Kong. According to data from CoinMarketCap, the token is down 0.26% this week.
Bitcoin’s value fell along with most other top ten non-stablecoin cryptocurrencies. The declines followed the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s announcement on Thursday that it would postpone seven Bitcoin exchange-traded spot fund applications until October. Applications from some of the world’s largest wealth managers, including BlackRock, WisdomTree and VanEck, are experiencing a delay.
Ether is down 3.15% in the past 24 hours to $1,648.76, down 0.33% weekly.
Ether market data shows that the token is on the way to forming a so-called “death cross” – a sign of the bearish outlook in the ether options market. The cross that occurs when the short-term average falls below the long-term trend is generally a sign of more losses to come. According to TradingView, the short-term 50-day moving average currently stands at 1808.3, while the 200-day moving average stands at 1802.9.
Most of the other top ten non-stablecoin cryptos posted losses, with Solana’s SOL leading the losers. It fell 5.07% to $19.81, its lowest level in over six weeks. On Monday, Clockwork – a Solana-based automation network for smart contracts – switch off. Its founder, Nick Garfield, said he sees “limited commercial benefits” in the project.
Meanwhile, a US court has dismissed a class action lawsuit against a group of five companies, including decentralized trading platform Uniswap Labs. The plaintiffs claimed they were victims of a raid on cryptocurrency exchange Uniswap using fraudulent tokens and were entitled to compensation.
The court ruled that the defendants were not responsible for those losses. Presiding Judge Katherine Polk Failla said, “Due to the decentralized nature of the protocol, the identities of fraud token issuers are fundamentally unknown and unknowable.”
Crypto commentators are interpreting the verdict as a victory for decentralized finance with far-reaching implications for the industry.
“I believe that what happened in the case against Uniswap Labs could be the first step in clarifying the legal and regulatory environment for DeFi applications and could reduce investor concerns about sudden lawsuits and regulatory actions and make them more predictable ‘ wrote Samer Hasn, market analyst for online brokerage XS.com.
“On the other hand, this measure and other similar potential measures, if taken in the future, may affect investor confidence in these applications due to the inability to regulate and enforce the law for them,” added Hasn.
Total crypto market cap fell 3.46% to $1.05 trillion, while trading volume increased 16.61% to $37.31 billion.
