A day before Jerome Powell’s long-awaiting address at the Federal Reserve’s conclave in Wyoming, Bitcoin price idled in roughly the same place it has held for much of the week – comfortably above $25,000. At the time of writing, BTC is changing hands at $21,534.
BTC/USD 4-hour chart | Source: TradingView
Bitcoin Price Little Changed as Traders Await Powell Speech
The largest cryptocurrency by market value was recently trading at about $21,500, roughly flat over the past 24 hours as nervous investors continued their vigil for the U.S. central bank chair’s comments Friday that might hint at the Fed’s next interest rate hike. Several central bank governors talked to media outlets but offered few clues on whether the bank will continue its current hawkishness by approving another 75 basis point hike or ratchet back the rate to a more moderately aggressive 50 points.
📊 #Ethereum‘s price continues following tightly with the #SP500 as global uncertainties continue. The supply of $ETH on exchanges rose sharply just prior to the drop last week, and network growth has fallen back to 3-month low levels. Our full analysis: https://t.co/70kbsMS1DQ pic.twitter.com/q8TvXdViqW
— Santiment (@santimentfeed) August 25, 2022
Ether continued its recent pattern of outperforming bitcoin. The second-largest crypto in market capitalization was recently trading just below $1,700, up about a percentage point over the same period. Other major altcoins were mixed, with popular meme coins SHIB and CVC each recently rising more than 6% but EOS and KNC were off over 2% and 1%, respectively.
Ethereum Classic, the original blockchain from which the Ethereum mainnet is forked, rose 5% to US$37.10 ahead of “the Merge” where Ethereum will ditch the proof-of-work consensus mechanism for proof-of-stake. The “Bellatrix” upgrade, the final step before the Merge, is scheduled to activate on Sept. 6, followed by the Ethereum mainnet merge between Sept. 10 – 20, according to a recent blog post from the Ethereum foundation.
Still, cryptocurrencies related to NFT and the metaverse have underperformed over the past week, a result of sagging sentiment about the NFT market. The Flow network’s FLOW token, which can be used to build NFTs and dApps, slumped 20% during the past seven days. FLOW’s decline was the second largest during that period among 52 cryptocurrencies with a market cap of over $1 billion, according to crypto data and analysis firm Messari. Other NFT and metaverse-related tokens that have sunk include AXS, GALA, MANA, and GMT, which all fell between 14% and 20%.
“Skale Network had some major transactions occur on its network Thursday. 14 transactions exceeding 100k+ in value is the largest single-day amount of SKL transactions since April. Typically, this is a good sign if paired with big address accumulation”, Santiment reported.
U.S. investors will be closely watching Fed Chairman Jerome Powell’s keynote speech at the central bank’s annual economic symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming for an indication of how the Fed may adjust interest rates amid high inflation. The overall cryptocurrency market cap stands at $1,038 trillion, and Bitcoin’s dominance rate is 39.7%.
Read more:
- Bitcoin Price And Ether Trade Sideways A Day Before The Opening Of The Fed’s Economic Symposium
- Bitcoin Price Flirted With $25,000 While Ethereum Broke Through $2,000 Before Both Lost Steam