The crypto market posted gains on Tuesday, with Bitcoin rising to as high as $30,069 while Ether went just past $1,870. However, since then, as selling pressure rose, the downtrend can now be witnessed on Wednesday.
At the time of writing, BTC/USD has been trading at $29,818, and ETH is exchanging hands at $1,860. However, the total crypto market cap is still up by 1.8% to $1.23 trillion. Meanwhile, the Crypto and Fear Index continues to remain in the neutral zone with a score of 50 out of 100.
It’s actually Bitcoin’s first foray above $30,000 in the past more than two weeks, besides a very brief move above that level on Aug. 3. 30k is a critical threshold for Bitcoin, with 40k as the next significant level. If the largest cryptocurrency continues to move around its present range, it could create a solid base for future positive rallies.
As Bitcoin’s volatility continues to be at a record low, market attention is on the upcoming halving next year, along with industry-transforming events. Another big positive catalyst for this rally could be BlackRock’s highly anticipated spot Bitcoin ETF.
Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz said during his company’s earnings conference call on Tuesday that it’s not a question of “if” but “when” one of the eight currently outstanding applications for a spot Bitcoin ETF will receive regulatory approval, citing sources at BlackRock and Invesco. He further said the window for this approval is about six months.
Cathie Wood, the CEO of Ark Invest meanwhile, believes that if the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is “going to approve a bitcoin ETF, (it) will approve more than one at once.”
As for this week’s upward movement, it came after payments giant PayPal (PYPL) announced plans to issue a stablecoin in the coming days, marking the first time a major financial company is issuing its own stablecoin. As a result, users will be able to transfer PYUSD between PayPal and supported external digital wallets, use it to pay for goods and services, and convert any of PayPal’s supported cryptos to and from PYUSD.
Amidst this, the Fed announced it is starting a new program for overseeing banks’ crypto activity. This doesn’t change any rules for crypto banking, rather just defines how it intends to handle its oversight. The Fed has put dealings with the crypto sector under the new “novel activities supervision program,” in which specialized experts in digital assets will work alongside the regulator’s regular supervisors.
“The level and intensity of supervision will vary based on the level of engagement in novel activities by each supervised banking organization,” stated the regulator.
Additionally, long-dated government bond yields lowered sharply across the globe — the US 10-year Treasury yield is currently at 3.98%, down from the 2023 high of just shy of 4.20% last week — following far weaker-than-expected Chinese trade numbers for July.
In other economic news, Philadelphia Federal Reserve President Patrick Harker said that barring “alarming” new data, he’s fine with the central bank not hiking rates any further. However, the idea of considering any rate cuts is still a long way off.
On the macro front, Moody’s also downgraded the ratings of several small to mid-sized US banks and said it may also revise the credit ratings of some of the nation’s biggest lenders. This sparked concerns about the health of banks and initiated a slide in banks’ stocks.
HNT’s Strong Performance in August
While the broad crypto market turned green, HNT turned red. Down 4.2% in the past 24 hours, HNT is trading at $2.04 while managing $1.94 million in volume, a decrease of 0.30% from a day ago.
However, these losses for the $293.6 million market cap token are expected after it rallied about 43% in the first week of August. HNT’s price is also up 36% in the past two weeks and 55.2% in the past 30 days.
2023, however, hasn’t really been a stellar year for HNT, but rather just decent. The token did jump 130% in the first three weeks of January as the price went from about $1.50 to $3.45. The next two months remained volatile for HNT as the price dumped hard, 67%, from nearly $3.4 to $1.12. Then between late March and late June, the price traded in the range of $2 and $1.10 and has since been gradually trending upwards.
In the past year, HNT’s performance meanwhile has been negative 76.7%, and the coin is also down 96.3% from its $54.88 peak hit in Nov. 2021.
HNT is the native token of Helium, which was founded in 2012 by Amir Haleem, Shawn Fanning, and Sean Care. The project raised $38.8 million in an initial coin offering (ICO).
Helium is a decentralized blockchain-powered platform for the Internet of Things (IoT), which aims to not only make it easier to build connected devices but also…
Read More: Helium’s HNT Soars with a 43% Price Boost in Early August, Drawing Increased