Image: AI-generated via Midjourney.
Bitcoin fell 1.3% in the hour leading up to 9:30 p.m. in Hong Kong, to trade at US$27,369 following the U.S. jobs report release. The world’s largest economy added 336,000 new jobs in September, far exceeding preliminary expectations of 170,000 and fueling concerns that interest rates will remain high over a longer period of time.
Bitcoin has been trading under US$30,000 since July after surging past the mark behind the series of Bitcoin spot exchange-traded fund applications from some of the world’s largest asset managers, including BlackRock and Fidelity.
Hopes that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission would greenlight a spot Bitcoin ETF have been further boosted by Grayscale Invesment’s legal victory in August. The court sided with the firm in challenging the SEC’s rejection of the fund manager’s application to convert its Bitcoin fund into an ETF.
But this week, Ethereum-based financial products stole the show.
Bitwise’s Ether Futures ETFs launched on Monday, along with seven other Ether ETFs from companies including Valkyrie, VanEck, ProShares and VolShares. Ether briefly rose to a weekly high of US$1,736 on Monday, before losing the US$1,700 psychological mark on the same day. The world’s second largest cryptocurrency was trading at US$1,621 as of 9:30 p.m. in Hong Kong, down 0.8% in the hour following the U.S. jobs report.
See related article: Valkyrie CIO expects US spot Bitcoin ETF approval in Q2 2024
“Approval of the recent Ether ETFs formally signals that Ether, like Bitcoin, is not a security under U.S. laws. This non-security classification will help drive increased institutional and retail investment flows,” Collin Woodward, a Web3 lawyer and president of Web3 software firm StealthTest, told Forkast.
“The first spot Bitcoin ETF [in the U.S.] is inevitable. It’s just a matter of when, and that approval actually paves the way for more Ether ETFs, including an eventual spot Ether ETF,“ added Woodward.
Bitcoin also rose to a near five-week high of US$28,434 on Monday following the launch of the Ether ETFs, gaining 4.12% before falling to the US$27,500 mark on Tuesday.
See related article: NFT creators seek alternatives after OpenSea cuts royalties
Next Week: Will Bitcoin prices rise during Uptober?
Crypto traders often refer to the month of October as “Uptober,” in reference to Bitcoin’s strong historic performance during the month, including setting new record highs in October 2017 and 2020.
Next week, the U.S. is expected to release its Consumer Price Index data for the month of September. The inflation gauge is often used by market analysts to predict the Federal Reserve’s stance on interest rates.
Kadan Stadelmann, chief technical officer of blockchain infrastructure development firm Komodo, said that confidence in Bitcoin as a hedge against inflation is increasing, along with investor appetite for the asset.
See related article: CMCC Global raises US$100 mln to launch Hong Kong Web3 fund
