Bitcoin staged a modest recovery after reaching a one-week low on Monday as expectations for further U.S. interest-rate rises kept risk appetite subdued across a range of commodities, including gold.
The flagship cryptocurrency was up 0.9% at $84,301 in Tuesday afternoon London trade, having dropped as low as $82,516 the previous day, according to LSEG data. It has pulled back from the near eight-month high of $87,315 reached last week.
"The macro setup has tightened further since rates were increased earlier this month, even as crypto has decoupled, with fuel-supply constraints rather than excess demand continuing to pressure goods prices," analysts with Bitfinex said in a note. They added that bitcoin will require strong demand on the spot market to push toward and past the $87,000 mark, something that has yet to be seen. "Any advance must be carried by spot demand," the analysts said.
Gold bore the brunt of investors' rate-hike concerns after recording its largest percentage decline since June on Monday. Gold fell almost 4% to a seven-week low of $4,114 an ounce on Monday before paring some losses to hover around $4,150 an ounce on Tuesday, as higher fuel costs increase the pressure on the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates, which tends to make nonyielding assets like bitcoin and gold less attractive to investors when compared with bonds.
Meanwhile, Strategy announced Monday that it had purchased another tranche of bitcoin. Michael Saylor's bitcoin treasury firm disclosed in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that it purchased 1,665 bitcoin last week at an average cost of $85,681, for a total of $142.7 million.
It marks Strategy's second purchase of bitcoin in as many weeks, following its acquisition of $396.7 million of the cryptocurrency the week before.
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