Bitcoin Holds Above $78,000 as Traders Raise the Odds of a Federal Reserve Rate Increase

Bitcoin held above $78,000 on Tuesday while most large digital assets fell, according to CoinDesk, which put the token flat for the week after a 24 percent gain in August. Ether, solana, tron and dogecoin all lost value over the prior 24 hours. Dealer spot quotes on August 31 put gold near $4,446 an ounce and silver near $67, levels that show gold and silver have not fallen along with the digital assets.

The immediate cause is the Federal Reserve. A market report published August 31 said the implied odds of a rate increase at the September meeting rose from 35 percent to 60 percent after Chair Kevin Warsh used his speech at the Jackson Hole conference to stress that inflation remains persistent. The same report recorded the Dow Jones Industrial Average closing 0.9 percent lower at 53,885.10, while the 10-year Treasury yield rose toward 4.76 percent.

Underneath the price moves, trading activity keeps shifting toward regulated venues. CoinDesk reported that open positions in XRP futures outside the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) fell by more than 500 million tokens in two weeks while exposure on the CME, a regulated American exchange, rose about 36 percent, with the token climbing toward $1.40. Separately, 1789 Capital is leading a roughly $1 billion funding round for the prediction market Polymarket at a $21 billion valuation, up from $15 billion, adding about $300 million in new money to an existing stake of roughly $200 million.