This Week in Coins: Bitcoin Starts Week Strong But Drops Hard Amid Wall Street Panic

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Decrypt
08-03

It didn't take long for things to go pear-shaped. Bitcoin was closing in on its all-time high again on Monday after briefly touching $70,000 per coin on America's biggest crypto exchange, Coinbase.

But by Friday, it had dipped so, so low: Bitcoin has over the week dropped by more than 9% to $61,358—dipping as low as $60,704—according to CoinGecko.

The reason was in part down to a weak jobs report that sparked fears that the U.S. economy could be sliding into a recession, causing a Wall Street sell-off.

That, combined with tensions in the Middle East and prediction markets suggesting a slightly lower chance of Trump winning the election, pushed traders to get rid of their crypto investments, David Lawant, head of research at FalconX, told Decrypt.

This all came after a relatively optimistic meeting from the Federal Reserve on Wednesday, where the central bank's chair Jerome Powell suggested that a long-awaited cut to historically high interest rates could come by September.

The silver lining? Bitcoin mining difficult hit a new all-time high, meaning the network is stronger than ever.

Elsewhere, the price of Ethereum also dropped hard over the week, despite exchange-traded funds launching last month and proving popular with Wall Street.

The second-biggest coin by market cap has dropped by 8% in seven days and entered the weekend priced at $2,963.

Solana also had a rough week, down over 7% to $151. Indeed, essentially all of the top 100 cryptocurrencies by market cap were down over that span.

But hit the hardest have been the riskiest assets of them all: meme coins and tokens. Dogwifhat, the largest meme token running on Solana, has dropped the most by over 35% since this time a week ago. It's now priced at $1.68.  Meanwhile, Bonk is down by 22%.

Crypto policy was still the talk of the town with politicians, though. Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) formally introduced a bill to establish a national Bitcoin reserve. And Republican nominee and ex-president Donald Trump said the federal government could wipe out its $35 trillion in debt with Bitcoin.

But just how that would work was not made clear by the next potential leader of the U.S.

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Disclaimer: The content above is only the author's opinion which does not represent any position of Followin, and is not intended as, and shall not be understood or construed as, investment advice from Followin.
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