Bitcoin flat below US$26,000 as rate hike woes cool down​

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Bitcoin edged up on Monday morning in Asia but remained below US$26,000. Ether also stayed range-bound at around US$1,650.​
Bitcoin edged up on Monday morning in Asia but remained below the US$26,000 resistance level, giving up much of last week’s gains from a favorable court ruling on Grayscale’s spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund application. Ether also stayed range-bound at around US$1,650, while other top 10 non-stablecoin cryptocurrencies traded mixed, with XRP leading the winners and Dogecoin the losers. U.S. stock futures edged down Monday morning after Wall Street closed the week higher on a cool-off in the U.S. labor market that soothed the concerns for more interest rate hikes.

Bitcoin edged up 0.30% in the last 24 hours to US$25,958.25 as of 07:30 a.m. in Hong Kong and traded 0.46% lower for the week, according to CoinMarketCap data. The world’s leading cryptocurrency lost control of the US$26,000 support level on Friday and fluctuated around the mark over the weekend.

Bitcoin briefly reached a weekly high of over US$28,000 last Tuesday on a court ruling that required the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to review asset manager Grayscale’s Bitcoin ETF application, but soon gave up all the gains after the SEC delayed all pending ETF applications on Thursday.

“While investors might be looking at the Grayscale v. SEC developments, it feels like the recent price action is linked to activity from the FTX wallets, igniting fear of a potential dump as some (or all) of these assets would be liquidated into fiat for expenses, repaying investors,” said Justin d’Anethan, head of Asia-Pacific business development at Belgium-based crypto market maker Keyrock.

A Solana-based cold wallet owned by collapsed crypto exchange FTX transferred over US$10 million worth of cryptocurrencies, including LINK, SUSHI, LUNA and YFI, to Ethereum addresses from Aug. 31 to Sept. 2, according to Arkham Intelligence data cited by blockchain journalist Colin Wu.

Ether inched 0.17% higher to US$1,635.19 and was down 1.27% over the past seven days.

Most other top 10 non-stablecoin cryptocurrencies traded mixed over the past 24 hours and moved no higher than 1%. The exception was XRP, which led the winners by gaining 1.07% in the past 24 hours to US$0.5048, but remained 3.46% lower for the week.

Dogecoin led the losers, dropping 0.62% in the past 24 hours to US$0.06315 and stayed flat for the seven-day period.

Toncoin, the native token of Ton network, surged 23.86% in the past week, boosted by the network’s launch of its new smart contract programming language Tact on August 22.

The total crypto market capitalization dipped 0.09% to US$1.04 trillion. Trading volume dropped 10.77% to US$19.78 billion.