Investing.com– The price of bitcoin fell on Friday, further away from the highs reached earlier in the week, as concerns about high long-term U.S. interest rates largely offset a key development in the approval of part of the United States of exchange-traded funds that directly replicate Ether.
While Bitcoin still made some gains during the week, it was back within a $60,000 to $70,000 trading range seen for more than two months. It also trimmed much of its weekly gains on Thursday and Friday.
fell 3.2% in the last 24 hours to $67,215.9 at 01:45 ET (05:45 GMT).
Ether Drops, Set for Stellar Week as SEC Approves Spot ETF Listing
The world's No. 2 token fell 1.2% to $3,748.97 amid some profit-taking.
But the token is up 21% over the past seven days, driven primarily by the Securities and Exchange Commission's approval of several major exchanges' applications to list a spot Ether ETF.
The SEC's applications for approval from Nasdaq, CBOE and NYSE to list ETFs that will directly track the price of Ether.
The move marked some progress toward eventually approving a spot ETF for trading, although the SEC now has to address requests from fund managers to list a spot ETF. The applicants include VanEck, ARK Investment Management and seven other issuers.
Rumors about the SEC approval had boosted Ether prices throughout the week, and the actual event sparked fleeting gains in the token.
Crypto Price Today: US Rate Fears Override All Optimism
But fears of long-term high U.S. interest rates were a key point of pressure on crypto markets, especially as hawkish signals from the Federal Reserve showed growing anxiety among policymakers about sticky inflation.
Several Fed members said inflation would likely take longer to reach the central bank's 2% annual target, while minutes from the bank's late April meeting showed some policymakers were even open to raising rates further. of interest.
This caused traders to heavily discount expectations of any rate cuts this year. Traders were seen pricing in a nearly equal chance of a rate cut or hold in September, around 46%, according to the .
High rates for longer periods bode poorly for cryptocurrencies, as the sector typically thrives in low-rate, high-liquidity markets. Most token prices fell due to this notion, and a rally in the dollar also put pressure on the markets.
and fell 5.7% and 0.5%, respectively. Meme and tokens fell 3.9 and 0.3%, respectively.
