First Mover Americas: Bitcoin Consolidates at $64K Before Next Push Higher

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CoinDesk 20 Index: 2,077 +0.3%

Bitcoin (BTC): $63,982 −0.0%

Ether (ETH): $2,745 −0.5%

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Bitcoin {{BTC}} traded near $64,000 early Monday, briefly hitting $65,000 over the weekend boosted by Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell's dovish remarks at the Jackson Hole symposium. On Friday, Powell signaled that an interest rate cut might be coming in September. Solana {{SOL}} showed relative strength among crypto majors, up 3% over the past 24 hours, shrugging off diminishing odds of a SOL-based spot ETF in the U.S. The broad-market benchmark CoinDesk 20 advanced 0.6% during the same period. The recovery of crypto prices was supported by a strong stablecoin expansion, with $1 billion of tokens minted at a 7-day average, 10x Research founder's Markus Thielen noted. "Technically speaking, it’s looking more and more like we are in a bullish consolidation ahead of the next big push higher," Joel Kruger, market strategist at LMAX group said in a Monday report. "This would translate to bitcoin making fresh record highs and ETH breaking out to another yearly high on its way to challenge its own record high from 2021."

Toncoin plummeted following the weekend arrest of Telegram CEO Pavel Durov. Durov's arrest stems from a warrant issued by France's OFIM, an office that works to prevent violence against minors, as part of a complaint into Telegram's lack of moderation and cooperation with law enforcement. Telegram said in a statement that it is compliant with all EU laws. TON was trading $5.6 early Monday, nearly 17% down since Durov's arrest. The network was originally started by Telegram before spinning out due to regulatory pressure.

Spot bitcoin ETFs booked $250 million inflows on Friday amid Powell's remarks. The inflows happened amid strong trading activity, with the eleven products notching over $3 billion in trading volume, the highest in more than a month. BlackRock's IBIT and Fidelity's FBTC led in inflows, while Grayscale's GBTC experienced outflows.

Chart of the Day

• Digital asset exchange-traded products saw $533 million of inflows last week, CoinShares' James Butterfill reported.
• That was the largest inflow in five weeks, underpinning the recovering investor sentiment since the August 5 crash.
• Bitcoin was the primary focus, seeing US$543m of inflows, with the majority of those inflows recorded on Friday, while Ethereum funds saw $36 million in net outflows during the week.

- Krisztian Sandor

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