Today the price of Bitcoin and Ethereum is decreasing slightly

Today the price of Bitcoin and Ethereum is down slightly. 

These are actually minimal movements, but probably indirectly related to what is happening in traditional financial markets. 

The price of Bitcoin and Ethereum today

Today the price of BTC fell below $25,600, but only for a few moments. What matters is that it fell below $25,700. 

In fact, it had not fallen significantly below that threshold since 7 September. 

Taking the last few days as a reference, that was precisely the support that seemed to have always held, except for a few rare moments. However, today it did not hold. 

On 7 September it had also fallen below $25,600 as well, but without going below $25,500. Today it seems to be doing much the same thing. 

By contrast, on 1 September it had fallen as low as $25,300, so today’s slight drop for now turns out to be perfectly in line with what happened in September. 

Then again, this month up to now has seen very low volatility, because against a low at $25,300 the high was only $26,400, and eleven consecutive days within such a compressed range is not at all common. 

The days of July seem to be back, after a slightly more eventful August, with volatility at lows for an asset that is usually quite volatile. 

The price of ETH

A slightly different matter is the price of ETH. 

In fact, it fell as low as below $1,580 today, albeit only for a brief moment, and is still well below $1,600. 

To find such low levels one has to go back to the sharp drop on 18 August, when within three days it lost nearly 14%. 

In fact, it had previously remained consistently above $1,600 until 13 March, and that of today is a similar level to that of 12 January. 

It is enough to say that compared to the beginning of the year BTC is still at +54%, while for ETH the gain has shrunk to 32%. In this respect it is also doing worse than XRP and TRX (Tron), but it is generally normal for Ethereum to perform worse than Bitcoin during crypto winters. 

Bitcoin and Ethereum’s price lateralization before today

Indeed, it is in fact continuing the lateralization triggered in mid-March. 

In January and February, prices had risen again, only to fall in early March. In the second half of March they went up again, but only to begin a long lateralization that is still ongoing. 

For example, Bitcoin‘s price exceeded $25,000 on 17 March, and it has almost always remained above this threshold since then, except for a couple of days in mid-June. 

It has also never exceeded $31,800, which is currently the main resistance, the breaking of which could mean the end of the long period of lateralization. 

The markets’ expectation

Moreover, these days the markets are in frantic anticipation of the August US inflation data to be released on Wednesday. 

For instance, today the price of Bitcoin had fallen just before the opening of the Asian exchanges, fearing a drop that subsequently occurred. 

However, the decline in the Asian exchanges, and Hong Kong’s in particular, stopped, and with the Dollar Index down slightly Bitcoin had recovered somewhat. 

Subsequently, the Dollar Index’s trend reversed, with DXY rising back above 104.7 points, and Bitcoin’s price went back down. 

It is worth noting that markets are betting on the Fed ending its rate hike, so much so that they believe the figure released on Wednesday could be positive. 

In reality the forecast is for a rise in overall inflation (from 3.2% to 3.6%), but for a net decline in core inflation (from 4.7% to 4.3%), and since it is mainly the latter that matters to the Fed it is assumed that at least in September rates will not be raised again. 

However, while markets’ forecasts of inflation data have often been quite correct lately, it is not certain that the actual data released on Wednesday will be in line with expectations. If they are significantly different, markets could react sharply, and even suddenly. 

At times of such expectation, it is more than fair to expect markets to be stagnant, or nearly so, since the Fed’s monetary policy remains at this time the main single factor that can profoundly influence them.