Bitcoin staged a marginal 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 0.4% at $83,847 in Tuesday morning 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 is bearing the brunt of rate-hike concerns after recording its largest percentage decline since June. Gold fell 3.1% to a seven-week low of $4,188 an ounce on Monday, 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.
Strategy shares slid 1.7% on Monday to $155.83. The stock has fallen in each of the last five sessions and is pacing its longest losing streak since June, when it declined for eight straight sessions, according to Dow Jones Market Data.
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