Bitcoin Price Dips Amidst Federal Reserve Rate Cut Warnings

Bitcoin price fell slightly on Friday, reversing some gains seen over the past two days as a slew of warnings from Federal Reserve officials largely cooled optimism over interest rate cuts this year.

The Tight Trading Range

The world’s biggest cryptocurrency remained squarely within a tight $60,000 to $70,000 trading range established over the past two months, seeing few catalysts to break out amid weak capital flows and tepid risk appetite.

Bitcoin fell 0.5% to $65,473.3 by 01:30 ET (05:30 GMT).

Strong Week for Bitcoin Price

Bitcoin price set for a strong week amid some rate cut hopes. Despite trading rangebound, Bitcoin was sitting on strong gains over the past seven days, especially since it had fallen as low as $60,000 last week.

The token was up around 8% from lows hit last Friday, encouraged chiefly by weakness in the dollar amidst some signs of easing U.S. inflation.

Some soft inflation readings saw traders begin pricing in a greater chance that the Fed will cut interest rates in September – a scenario that bodes well for speculative assets such as Bitcoin and other cryptos.

But this enthusiasm somewhat dwindled on Friday, limiting Bitcoin’s gains after a string of Fed officials warned that the central bank needed more convincing that inflation was coming down.

Members of the Fed’s rate-setting committee said the central bank needed to see more than just some soft inflation readings for one month before locking in any plans for interest rate cuts.

Their comments sparked a sharp recovery in the dollar and also stalled a rally across most risk-driven assets.

Altcoins Retreat Amidst Rate Uncertainty

Among broader cryptocurrency markets, major altcoins retreated on Friday and were mostly lagging Bitcoin over the past seven days as sentiment towards crypto remained muted.

World no.2 token Ethereum fell 2.1%, while Ripple and Litecoin moved less than 1% in either direction.

Meme tokens largely tracked a rout in their stock counterparts as a rally in meme stocks largely reversed course in recent sessions.

Dogecoin fell 3.6% on Friday, while Shiba Inu lost 2.8%.