Bitcoin (BTC) emerged from the long Labor Day weekend in the red, with the price falling nearly 1% over the past 24 hours to below $25,700. This is roughly the lowest print for Bitcoin since mid-March, when the price was on the way up. The SEC’s decision to delay decisions on a large handful of spot Bitcoin ETF applications, including from the likes of BlackRock and Fidelity, further cooled passions.
This is exactly what apathy looks like, said well-followed analyst Will Clemente over the weekend. He noted crypto’s total trading volume is the weakest since 2020, Google search trends at multi-year lows and realized volatility and weekly Bollinger Bands all near record lows.
In separate announcements on Monday morning, Saudi Arabia and Russia surprised markets, each saying they would extend oil production cuts for another three months until December. The news sent the price of WTI crude oil up by more than 1% to $86.74, its strongest level since November 2022. To the extent that interest rate instruments compete with risk assets (Bitcoin included) for capital, the news on oil in the short term could be considered bearish for Bitcoin prices.
Fading the flattish to downward action in crypto on Monday is Solana’s SOL token, which is higher by 3.7% over the past 24 hours. Visa (V) earlier today announced an expansion in its stablecoin settlement capabilities with Circle’s USDC stablecoin to the Solana blockchain.
By leveraging stablecoins like USDC and global blockchain networks like Solana and Ethereum, we’re helping to improve the speed of cross-border settlement and providing a modern option for our clients to easily send or receive funds from Visa’s treasury, Cuy Sheffield, head of crypto at Visa, said in a statement.
Markets will get their next official read on U.S. inflation on Sept. 13 when the government releases its Consumer Price Index (CPI) report for August.