Geopolitical Risks Also Affect the Crypto Market

Cryptocurrency prices remain in the red after the Fed’s decision to leave interest rates unchanged. Chairman Jerome Powell’s cautious comments about the possibility of a rate cut in September have been exacerbated by rising tensions in the Middle East. Iranian leaders have ordered retaliation against Israel for the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, which appears to have spooked investors and traders. Bitcoin, which has fallen by about 2.5% in the past 24 hours, is currently trading around $64,500. The CoinDesk 20 Index (CD20) is down about 4.24% in the same period.

Bitcoin (BTC) mining company Riot Platforms (RIOT) reported a second-quarter loss that tripled from a year earlier as its overall operating costs increased 48 percent. The Castle Rock, Colo.-based company reported a net loss of $84.4 million, or $0.32 per share. Selling, general, and administrative expenses rose to $61.2 million. More than half of that, $32.1 million, was stock compensation expense related to new grants under a long-term incentive program. The quarterly net loss also stemmed from a $76.4 million decrease in the fair value of its bitcoin holdings. The Bitcoin halving in April, which reduced the reward miners receive for adding new blocks to the blockchain by 50 percent, reduced the number of bitcoins produced during the quarter. The company mined 844 BTC, 52 percent less than the previous second quarter.

Payment network Ripple will allocate $10 million to a tokenized version of U.S. Treasury bonds (T-bills) that will be available for the first time on the XRP Ledger. According to the announcement, short-term U.S. government debt is offered as TBILL tokens by tokenization platform OpenEden. The assets backing the tokens will be invested in short-term U.S. Treasury bonds and repos collateralized by U.S. Treasuries. The tokenization of tangible real-world assets and traditional financial securities continues to be a rapidly growing sector of the crypto industry. Tokenization allows traditional assets, especially private and alternative assets, to be issued, managed, and distributed in a manner that is considered more efficient than their off-chain counterparts.

The chart shows the last 24 hours of active bitcoin options on Deribit. Investors are closely monitoring 100,000 options that will expire in September and December. Bitcoin, which failed to rise above $70,000 on Monday, is falling to $64,500. Source: Velo Data