In summary
- Bitcoin price rose 7% over the week, reaching $64,600, boosted by market optimism following Jerome Powell’s signals of a possible interest rate cut in September.
- Ethereum‘s price also rose 6% on the week, ending at $2,750, despite outflows from exchange-traded funds (ETFs).
- Solana saw a 10% increase over the week, reaching $153 per coin, and meme tokens like Dogwifhat and Floki also rose by 30%.
Illustration by Mitchell Preffer for Decrypt.
It was a fairly quiet week in the Cryptocurrency world… until Friday.
The exciting end to the week came with a surge in the price of Bitcoin, fueled by optimism in the cryptocurrency market after Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell gave his strongest signal yet that he will cut interest rates in September.
BTC price hit $64,600, according to CoinGecko, marking an increase of more than 7% on the week. Although it dropped to $63,500 over the weekend, it is still a level not seen since the beginning of the month.
Investors had been eagerly awaiting something interesting to say from the monetary policy heavyweight following the release of minutes from the US Federal Reserve’s July meeting, which also suggested an interest rate cut was on the horizon.
Interest rates in the US remain at their highest level in more than 20 years after the central bank raised them in 2022 to control inflation. Lower interest rates are expected to attract investors towards riskier assets such as cryptocurrencies.
Ethereum’s price also rose on the Fed news, even as investors continued to pull money out of newly approved exchange-traded funds (ETFs) trading on Wall Street. The price of the second-largest cryptocurrency ended the week at $2,750, after rising 6% in seven days.
To top it off, Bitcoin-loving independent candidate for US president Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Friday dropped out of the presidential race and said he would support Donald Trump, another crypto fan. However, the situation became more complicated when he claimed he was simply “suspending” his campaign and that his supporters could still vote for him in uncontested states.
The meticulousness unleashed chaos on the popular cryptocurrency betting site Polymarket, where users had been betting on the various possible outcomes for the November election.
Other major coins and tokens are also up. Solana saw a healthy surge on Friday. SOL is up nearly 10% for the week at $153 per coin, and meme tokens running on its Blockchain are also surging: Dogwifhat and Floki are two of the biggest gainers over seven days, both up 30%. Dogwifhat is trading at $1.84 and Floki at $0.00015.
In other crypto news, a Solana “meme token developer” smoked crack, faked his own death, and hung out with a stripper on stream — only to tell Decrypt the whole story.
And in less crazy crypto news, Grayscale launched a new cryptocurrency trust, giving investors exposure to Avalanche. The asset is now trading for $26.30, having surged 28%, making it this week’s gainer among the top 20 coins and tokens.
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