Easing concerns over a massive potential sell event by defunct exchange Mt Gox offered Bitcoin some relief. But this was countered by strength in the dollar, which rose to an over two-week high as anticipation of more economic data kept traders largely biased towards the greenback.
Bitcoin fell 1.1% in the past 24 hours to $68,083.9 by 01:30 ET (05:30 GMT). The world’s largest cryptocurrency remained well within a $60,000 to $70,000 trading range established since mid-March.
Crypto markets were reeling from a string of hawkish comments from the Federal Reserve over the past two weeks, as several policymakers signaled that the bank needed more convincing that inflation was coming down.
This put upcoming U.S. economic readings squarely in focus. A revised reading on first-quarter U.S. gross domestic product data is due later on Thursday, with any signs of economic resilience giving the Fed more headroom to keep rates higher for longer.
More closely watched will be PCE price index data- the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge- which is due on Friday.
Traders were seen steadily pricing out expectations that the Fed will cut rates in September- which boosted the dollar and weighed on most risk-driven assets, including crypto.
High rates bode poorly for crypto, given that they diminish the appeal of speculative assets.
Still, recent data showed that crypto investment products saw a third consecutive week of inflows, with Ether seeing increased inflows on optimism over the U.S. approval of an exchange-traded fund that directly tracks the world’s second-largest token.
Ether fell 2.3% to $3,780.62 on Thursday, retreating further from recent two-month peaks as hype over the immediate approval of a spot Ether ETF died down.
While the Securities and Exchange Commission approved applications from major exchanges to list any potential spot ETF products, the regulator still needed to engage with applications from potential issuers of the products, meaning that a listing was still a long ways away.
Other altcoins fell amid jitters over interest rates. SOL and XRP fell 0.7% and 2.3%, respectively, while among meme tokens, SHIB and DOGE lost over 3% each.
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