Gold hits record $3.5K as whales dump lackluster BTC for Ether: Crypto daybook Americas

The crypto market action has been pretty muted in majors, mainly due to the quiet aftermath of Monday's North American holiday. Yet, two clear themes are still playing out — gold continues to surge to record highs, while Bitcoin (BTC) is struggling to find upward momentum. At the same time, we're seeing continued rotation of money out of BTC and into ether (ETH).

Gold hit a record $3,500 per ounce this morning, buoyed by growing bets on Fed interest-rate cuts, a worsening fiscal outlook across major economies and increased political meddling with Fed policy. Gold-backed tokens like PAXG and XAUT followed suit but have since pulled back, as has the metal itself, in what appears to be a typical breather in a bull trend.

On the other hand, while Bitcoin bounced to over $110,000, it's still trading below key resistance levels, such as the Ichimoku cloud. According to Lookonchain, whale address 0xFf15 offloaded 425 BTC, worth $46.5 million, in exchange for over 10,500 ETH in the past four days.

Meanwhile, on-chain data tracked by Alphractal painted a picture of subdued Bitcoin network engagement. Active addresses dropped to 690,000 last week, and transaction fees remain limp. But transfer volumes spiked to $10.8 billion, reflecting "repositioning by large entities rather than broad retail activity," the analytics firm said in Telegram chat.

Meanwhile, Vibes Capital Management's Frank Fetter published an interesting indicator note on X, stating that an indicator tied to the short-term holder market value-to-realized value has flashed levels similar to those seen at bottoms in August last year and April this year. Could we be seeing a third such bottom? Time will tell.

Some altcoins made notable moves. The Trump-linked WLFI token experienced a sharp decline, dropping to 25 cents from 33 cents shortly after its Sunday trading debut. In contrast, Hyperliquid's HYPE token surged over 3% after reaching a record $100 million in revenue in August, with perpetual trading volumes exceeding $400 billion.

Meanwhile, traders on decentralized betting platform Polymarket assigned a 98% chance that France's Sept. 8 confidence vote will fail. Watch out for a sharp rise in peripheral bond yields, including those in France, relative to those in Germany, as that could revive memories of the EU debt crisis, weakening the euro against the dollar and potentially putting downward pressure on Bitcoin.

In traditional markets, commodity trading advisor (CTA)-positioning in U.S. equities is max long at the 100th percentile, signaling extreme bullishness, according to observer David Merlin. President Donald Trump is reportedly going to speak later Tuesday.

The yen weakened after the Bank of Japan hinted that rate hikes are on the horizon, though timing remains uncertain. With a data-heavy week ahead culminating in Friday's U.S. non-farm payrolls, volatility is expected to increase. Stay alert!