Bitcoin Failed at $27K but There’s a Surprising Winner This Week (Market Update)

Bitcoin’s price increased by a little less than 1% in the past seven days. The week was, overall, positive for the industry as the total market capitalization approaches the $1.1 trillion cap.

The biggest news of the week is undoubtedly the US FOMC meeting that happened on Wednesday.

According to the official announcement, the central bank took the decision to maintain the target range for the federal fund rate at 5-1/4 to 5/12 percent. The statement also noted that job gains have slowed but also that they remain elevated altogether. The unemployment rate in the country is also reported as low, while the inflation remains above its target.

Bitcoin’s price didn’t react to the news and remained flat. All in all, it couldn’t initiate a leg-up, although it did try to poak above $27K on a few occasions. Every time the price increased above that level, though, bears were quick to intercept and push it back down.

Some altcoins saw action. Namely, this week’s top performer was Toncoin (TON). It’s up a whopping 17% in a market where the second-best performer is up 3.7%. This is Ripple’s XRP.

Interestingly enough, for XRP, it also became the most-traded altcoin across US-based exchanges. This is a very curious fact, given that most of them had delisted it until July when a Judge ruled that secondary XRP sales are not securities. This is when Coinbase, amongst a bunch of other exchanges, re-listed it, and the volumes skyrocketed.

All in all, the week was exciting, but Bitcoin failed to capitalize on the momentum and is trading more or less where it was this time last week. It’s curious to see if the next seven days will be any different.

Market Data

Market Cap: $1.09B | 24H Vol: $44B | BTC Dominance: 47.4%

BTC: $26,644 (+1.5%) | ETH: $1,597 (-1.5%) | BNB: $210 (-0.6%)

Polygon 2.0: Everything You Need to Know About 3 PIPs and Phase 0. The three proposals for improvement that were unveiled earlier this week seek to enhance Polygon’s network in a way that would supposedly have a significant impact on the entire ecosystem.

Judge Denies Sam Bankman-Fried’s Pre-Trial Release. After having his bail revoked earlier, the founder of the failed FTX exchange made yet another unsuccessful bid to gain temporary freedom. However, the judge didn’t grant it to him once again.

Bitcoin Non-Whale Addresses Now Own Over 41% of Supply: Data. Smaller Bitcoin wallets, which are typically associated with retail investors and market participants, have reached a historic milestone, owning over 41% of the total supply.

Bitcoin Network Faces Congestion with Over 470,000 Pending Transactions. Bitcoin’s network is facing historic levels of congestion. This means that there’s a huge backlog of unconfirmed transactions. To be precise, their number is just shy of half a million. This has happened only once before, and it has become a massive friction point in the community on whether it’s good or bad.

Mt. Gox Rehabilitation Trustee Extends Repayment Deadline Again. Nobuaki Kobayashi, the trustee of Mt.Gox’s bankruptcy proceeding, has granted an extension for repaying creditors. The delay is for one year. The saga is now going on for many years, and it’s interesting to see when it will finally unfold.

Ripple (XRP) Becomes the Top Traded Altcoin on US Crypto Exchanges. Since the partial victory of Ripple against the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, many exchanges relisted XRP. The cryptocurrency has subsequently become the top-traded altcoin across US exchanges.

Charts

This week, we have a chart analysis of Ethereum, Ripple, Cardano, Solana, and Binance Coin – click here for the complete price analysis.