Bitcoin traded below US$20,000 and Ether fell further in Monday afternoon trading in Asia. Solana fell, along with memecoins Dogecoin (DOGE) and Shiba Inu (SHIB), with SHIB dropping below Dai and Polygon by market capitalization.
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Fast facts
- Bitcoin traded down 0.83% in the past 24 hours at US$19,888 as of 4 p.m. in Hong Kong, after briefly recovering above the US$20,000 mark in the morning. Ethereum dropped 2.86% to US$1,454, according to data from CoinMarketCap.
- The two largest coins by market capitalization slumped over the weekend after U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said on Friday that higher interest rates will likely persist “for some time” due to concerns about inflation.
- Powell’s remarks “destroyed any hopes of a potential change in course regarding rate hikes,” Feroze Medora, Asia Pacific managing director for crypto exchange Gemini, said in an email.
- DOGE was down 3.19% in the past 24 hours. SHIB lost 2.96% in the prior 24 hours and was off 7.67% over the past seven days, sliding from the number 12 slot by market cap to 14.
- Solana was the biggest loser among CoinMarketCap’s top 10, logging a 3.83% 24-hour loss and a 12.82% seven-day decline.
- The inflation picture in Asia is mixed, with authorities in the region’s two biggest economies, China and Japan, remaining outliers as Beijing cut rates this month and Tokyo has stuck with its ultra-low rate policy. Elsewhere in Asia, monetary policy is more in line with the U.S. and Europe. South Korea and Indonesia raised rates last week, citing inflation concerns. India, Australia, the Philippines, Thailand and New Zealand all upped rates in August.
- Asia stocks tumbled, following on from the slump on Wall Street on Friday. The Nikkei 225 index closed down 2.66%, and South Korea’s Kospi index fell 2.18%. The Hong Kong Hang Seng index edged down 0.73%, while the Shanghai Composite index was little changed, up 0.14% at closing.
- “Whether this is just a temporary sell-off across markets remains to be seen but one thing is for sure — no one can tell just how short ‘temporary’ will be,” Medora said.
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