Bitcoin fell on Monday morning in Asia to trade below $26,300. Ether also fell and remained below the $1,600 mark. All other top 10 non-stable cryptocurrencies fell. Toncoin led the losers with a drop of more than 4% in the last 24 hours. The cryptocurrency pullback follows the US Federal Reserve's aggressive policy stance at its September meeting. Although it paused interest increases, the Federal Reserve signaled that another increase would come later in the year, and that rates would stay higher for longer than expected. US stock futures rose in early morning trading in Asia. All three major US indices closed lower on Friday after a week of losses.
Bitcoin below $26,300 and more falls expected
Bitcoin fell 1.22% in the last 24 hours to $26,252.57 as of 07:40 am in Hong Kong, according to CoinMarketCap data. The world's largest cryptocurrency posted a weekly loss of 0.91%. It was hovering around $26,500 over the weekend, but lost the support line early Monday morning.
โOverall, the trend is down and remains bearish,โ Markus Thielen, head of research and strategy at digital asset services platform Matrixport, wrote in a report on Monday.
As Bitcoin failed to break its 50-day moving average of 26,876 US dollarsfurther downward movement is expected.
โIf Bitcoin trades below $26,000, then the market could attempt another break lower,โ Thielen said. He added that โOctober tends to be seasonally bullish for Bitcoin, but we would remain cautious without a break above its 50-day MA.โ
Ether fell 0.86% to $1,579.12, trading 2.52% lower for the week. The world's second-largest cryptocurrency fell below the $1,600 support level for the first time since Thursday.
"We are most concerned about Ethereum, as weak fundamentals and lack of publicity surrounding the EIP-4844 update (which should arrive sometime in Q4 2023) could make the blockchain obsolete slowly," Thielen said.
"Ethereum's failure to break above $1,650 is of utmost concern, as a break lower could have major implications for altcoin sentiment," Thielen added.
EIP-4844also known as the Ethereum Cancun Upgrade, is a proposed Ethereum upgrade that aims to improve the speed and profitability of the Ethereum network.
The average fee on the Ethereum blockchain fell to around US$1.15 per transaction on Saturday, the lowest level since December 2022, according to blockchain intelligence firm Santiment.
โHistorically, we see utility start to increase as $ETH becomes more affordable to circulate. Higher earnings may lead to recovery of market capitalization levels,โ Santiment wrote in a Twitter post on Saturday.
All other top 10 non-stable cryptocurrencies recorded losses over the past 24 hours. Toncoin led the losers, falling 4.22% to $2.20 for a weekly loss of 3.98%. But the native Open Network token (TON) still recorded a monthly increase of more than 50%.
The total cryptocurrency market capitalization fell by 1.0% in the last 24 hours to $1.04 trillion, while trading volume increased by 8.42% to $17.64 billion.
