Profit-taking at round levels in Bitcoin and Ether

Market picture

Bitcoin rose 5.8% over the past week to near $24.3K. Ethereum jumped 14.3% to $1970. Top altcoins showed a less consistent performance, ranging from -2.3% (BNB) to +12.8% (DogeCoin) over the previous seven days.

The total crypto market capitalisation increased by 5.7% over the week to $1.18 trillion, according to CoinMarketCap. The Bitcoin dominance index fell by 0.5 points to 40.2%. The cryptocurrency Fear and Greed Index rose to 45 by Monday versus 30 a week earlier and is now on the verge of transitioning from 'fear' into 'neutral' territory.

Bitcoin maintains upward momentum with steady but slight gains above previous local highs. Since Thursday, BTCUSD has sold off on repeated attempts to climb above $25K. In illiquid trading on Monday morning, the price managed to climb higher but is now pulling back to $24.5K. Despite the futility of the bulls' attempts to warm up the price, the sellers' overhang remains strong.

Ether has recently been above the market but selling off near $2000 since late last week. Investors, many of whom are retail traders and putting a higher value on the round numbers, are taking profits from the rally that has doubled the price since July.

News background

The EthereumPoW project (ETHPow) reported codebase readiness and broad support for the future fork of the Ethereum network from miners, hardware manufacturers and the crypto community. Ethereum's transition to PoS will occur on 15 or 16 September, 3-4 days earlier than the estimated date. According to Santiment, crypto whales and institutions are buying ETH ahead of the September upgrade.

The creators of the anonymous cryptocurrency, Monero, carried out another network hardfork, reducing block size and increasing transaction speed and confidentiality. Cybersecurity company Netskope warned digital asset owners of increasing phishing attacks using Google Sites and Microsoft Azure SEO tools.