Bitcoin and Ether changed a little Tuesday morning in Asia, while 10 other top 10 non-stable cryptocurrencies traded mixed. Cardano’s ADA led gains following bullish comments from founder Charles Hoskinson. He predicted a price rise beyond Ether and Bitcoin. Solana’s SOL posted further losses, despite last week’s news of Solana Pay’s partnership with Shopify.
Analysts expect the generally bearish summer mood in the cryptocurrency market to pick up in the fall. Elsewhere, the Forkast 500 NFT index continued to fall, reflecting more bad news for the NFT industry.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced Monday that it charged Los Angeles-based media company Impact Theory LLC with securities violations related to its NFT offering. Meanwhile, U.S. stock futures were trading flat after Monday’s gains.
Gloom Summer
According to data from CoinMarketCap, Bitcoin was down 0.12% over the past 24 hours at US$ 26,050.51 as of 07:00 am in Hong Kong. The token is down 0.30% for the week. The world’s leading cryptocurrency reached a high of $26,198.58 in early morning trading before falling back. Ether also fell 0.40% to $1,650.23, a weekly loss of 0.99%.
Michaël van de Poppe, chief executive of Amsterdam-based cryptocurrency trading firm MN Trading, said via email that “it is possible that another sell-off is coming, but we have currently experienced the standard August-September correction, so it seems likely that we will not continue that fall for long and rather have an uptrend from now on.”
Van de Poppe’s comments were in line with a report from JPMorgan Chase & Co. that forecast “limited downside” for the cryptocurrency market as losses diminish. Analysts at the U.S. banking giant found a drop in the number of Bitcoin-linked futures contracts on exchanges that have yet to settle, a sign that the downward price movement is losing momentum.
Van de Poppe pointed to the upcoming Bitcoin halving event, which is expected to occur on April 16, 2024, as reason for optimism going into the fourth quarter of this year. The halving event will cause the amount of new Bitcoin issued every 10 minutes to halve, increasing its scarcity.
This is widely expected to produce an increase in the price of the token. He also highlighted this week’s U.S. release of employment data and the purchasing managers’ index as possible further increases for the Bitcoin price.
Van de Poppe said that the SEC’s decision on Bitcoin exchange-traded fund applications by investment heavyweights BlackRock, Fidelity and others will also have an influence,. Some of those decisions could come as soon as Saturday.
Cardano blockchain founder Charles Hoskinson, who appeared at the Denver-based Rare Evo conference on Saturday, estimated that ADA will overtake Bitcoin and Ethereum to become the world’s largest cryptocurrency. ADA is currently the seventh largest cryptocurrency in the world, with a market capitalization of $9.36 billion.
In the meantime, Solana’s SOL led the losers. It fell 1.35% to $20.50 for a weekly loss of 3.61%. Those losses came despite news that Solana Pay, a free-to-use payment protocol built on Solana’s blockchain, has partnered with Canada-based e-commerce platform Shopify to enable stable coin payments in USDC for online purchases without intermediary fees.
The token gained briefly on Aug. 24, the day of the Solana Pay announcement. It added 7% to $21.98 before pulling back.
Benjamin Stani, director of business development at Hong Kong-based digital asset broker Matrixport, said Solana’s integration with a conventional shopping app was a minor victory for the industry and would not have much effect on the markets.
By Audy Castañeda
