While Bitcoin was still sitting on some gains for the week, it was back within a $60,000 to $70,000 trading range seen for over two months. It also trimmed a bulk of its weekly gains on Thursday and Friday.
Bitcoin fell 3.2% in the past 24 hours to $67,215.9 by 01:45 ET (05:45 GMT).
World no.2 token Ether fell 1.2% to $3,748.97 amid some profit-taking.
But the token was trading up 21% over the past seven days, buoyed chiefly by the Securities and Exchange Commission’s approval of applications from several major exchanges to list a spot Ether ETF.
The SEC approval applications from the Nasdaq, CBOE and the NYSE to list ETFs that will directly track the price of Ether.
The step marked some progress towards the eventual approval of a spot ETF for trade, although the SEC has to now engage with applications from fund managers to list a spot ETF. Applicants include VanEck, ARK Investment Management and seven other issuers.
Rumblings of the SEC’s approval had boosted Ether prices through the week, with the actual event sparking fleeting gains in the token.
But fears of high for longer U.S. interest rates were a key point of pressure on crypto markets, especially as hawkish signals from the Federal Reserve showed increasing anxiety amid policymakers over sticky inflation.
A slew of Fed members said that inflation was likely to take longer to reach the central bank’s 2% annual target, while the minutes of the bank’s late-April meeting showed some policymakers were even open to raising interest rates further.
This saw traders largely price out expectations for any rate cuts this year. Traders were seen pricing in a nearly equal probability of rate cut or a hold in September, at around 46%, according to the CME Fedwatch tool.
High for longer rates bode poorly for crypto, given that the sector usually thrives in low-rate, high-liquidity markets. Most token prices fell on this notion, with a rebound in the dollar also pressuring markets.
Solana and XRP fell 5.7% and 0.5%, respectively. Meme tokens SHIB and DOGE fell 3.9 and 0.3%, respectively.
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