Last week’s ‘Freaky Friday’ did come close to crashing the crypto market. Fed chair Jerome Powell’s late-evening speech on 26 August hinted at aggressive rate hikes and some “pain” for households and businesses going forward. Though most of the news was already priced in, the broader crypto market corrected by almost 13% over the weekend.
Yet, the bearish weekend was not just an aberration. The crypto space continues to remain weak on Monday morning— down by 2.57% at the time of writing. Most leading cryptos corrected, pulling the overall market cap down under $1 trillion (currently at $947.30 billion). Even the market volume fell by almost 19%, day on day.
Significant developments
The weekend saw many dramatic moves across the broader and onshore crypto space. Here are some of the market moves that stood out:
- Bitcoin (BTC) corrected quite a bit— falling to $19,617 on 28 August 2022. The world’s largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization is currently up by a small margin, trading at $19,695.17.
- Ether (ETH) slumped to $1,431, a level that was last seen on July 26.
- Bitcoin dominance grew by 0.12% and currently stands at 39.72%.
- CRE8— the rupee-denominated crypto index— has lost 1.82% day-on-day and is currently holding onto the ₹2,725.22 level.
Key coins
Powell’s hawkish speech negatively impacted almost every crypto asset. Currently, BTC and ETH are trying their best to cross above the $20,000 and $1,500 levels to resume the upward momentum they exhibited throughout August.
Among the top losers, ETH has corrected by 3.74% over the past 24 hours. However, Cardano (ADA) seems to be the most obvious underperformer, losing 4.45%, day on day. Even Solana (SOL) and Dogecoin (DOGE) are down by 3.28% and 3.22%, respectively.
Among the rare gainers are the DeFi-led UMA and Proof-of-Work-led Litecoin. UMA and LTC are up by 11.60% and 4% respectively at publishing time. LTC’s uptick is spurred by the fact that people are looking for reliable PoW chains to replace Ethereum as the merge looms. Even Synthetix (SNX) is up by 3.57%, day-on-day, according to the data available at CoinSwitch.
Crypto Fear and Greed Index (CFGI)
The Crypto Fear and Greed Index dropped over the weekend, displaying a reading of 24 at the time of writing. On Friday, the CFGI was holding onto the 27 levels, with Sunday witnessing an uptick to 28. As Monday dawned, the dipping market sent the index down again.
The broader sentiment still exudes extreme fear. Despite the apprehension, we can expect buyers to show some activity if and when the index crosses 35.
As of now, the crypto market looks bearish. As we move on to September, more volatility can be expected amid the weakening of the euro and weakness in the Chinese real-estate market. As always, DYOR (Doing-your-own-research) appears to be the best strategy to adopt, given the current market situation.
