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Bitcoin rose to hold its gains above US$22,000 in Tuesday morning trading in Asia, a price it crossed on Monday for the first time in three and half weeks. Ether slipped, while Solana posted the largest gains among the top ten tokens by market capitalization.
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Fast facts
- Bitcoin rose 2.8% in the past 24 hours to trade at US$22,365 at 8 a.m. in Hong Kong, while Ethereum lost 2.8% to US$1,712, according to data from CoinMarketCap.
- The slump in Ethereum comes just ahead of the long-awaited “Merge” which will see the network move from a proof-of-work consensus mechanism to proof-of-stake. Ethereum Classic — the network from which the main Ethereum network is forked — which had risen along with Ethereum in recent weeks, was little changed at US$38.49.
- Solana saw the biggest gains in the CoinMarketCap top 10, adding 7% to US$37.41 as voting opened on a proposal for the Helium Network to migrate off its own blockchain onto Solana. Helium is a distributed network of long-range wireless hotspots aiming to be an alternative to hard-wired internet service.
- U.S. equities rose on Monday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished up 0.7%, the S&P 500 Index closed 1.1% higher, while the Nasdaq Composite Index was up 1.3%.
- Investors await the release later today of August’s U.S. Consumer Price Index — a key measure of inflation in the economy — with some estimations projecting a rate of 8.1% or a slowing from July’s 8.5%.
- The CPI index is used by the U.S. Federal Reserve to guide its interest rate policy. Senior Fed officials have indicated a commitment to continue raising rates until inflation falls within a band of 2% – 3%. Investors are expecting the Fed to raise rates by 75 basis points at its meeting scheduled for Sept. 20 and 21.
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