Cryptocurrencies moved lower on Thursday, with Bitcoin (BTC) hitting the bottom of its month-long trading range. Chainlink’s LINK token was the only one among the largest crypto assets to have sizable gains.
BTC’s price dropped to as low as $29,593, close to its lowest point in a month. It has been fluctuating in a tight channel since June 21, ranging from $29,500 to $31,809. Ether (ETH) declined 1% to below $1,900, while Ripple’s XRP decreased 6% to 79 cents, despite its almost doubling in price to 93 cents a week ago due to a partial court victory against the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
LINK, the native token of the Chainlink ecosystem, saw a 15% surge, surpassing $8 for the first time in nearly three months. This came after the release of an interoperability protocol which facilitates communication between blockchains and banks, tested by interbank communication system Swift.
The CoinDesk Market Index, tracking the performance of a basket of digital assets, dropped 1.26% over the last 24 hours. This could have been caused by a sell-off in tech stocks, in particular the NASDAQ 100 index (NDQ) which declined 2%, with Tesla (TSLA) and Netflix (NFLX) plunging 9% after their underwhelming quarterly earnings reports.
Crypto prices have been known to correlate with risk assets such as the tech-heavy NDQ, although the link has been unsteady this year. According to Brett Sifling, director at Gerber Kawasaki Wealth & Investment Management, this is likely a “risk-off day” as investors take profits and rebalance after an extended run.
