Crypto Markets Falter As Investors Digest Fed Minutes

Bitcoin Dropped 3% While Ether Slid 2.3%.

Crypto markets are on track for a fourth day of losses as investors mull over weaker-than-expected U.S. retail sales and minutes from the Feds July meeting. 

Total market capitalization is down 1.5% to $1.18T in the past 24 hours as month-over-month retail sales data for July came in flat at 0%. Economists had expected a 0.1% gain.

Bitcoin dropped 3% while Ether slid 2.3%. The DeFi sector, as categorized by CoinGecko, is down 2.4%.

1.49M ETH Moved

Traders may have been spooked by a transaction which moved $2.7B worth of ETH to Binance, the worlds largest cryptocurrency exchange.

Crypto whales routinely use centralized exchanges like Binance to offload large amounts of crypto as they can obtain better pricing and execution. Naturally, a sale of this size would adversely impact the price of ETH.

However, the founder of data analytics provider Nansen, suggested the transaction was likely internal to Binance. Indeed, the address is listed on Binances proof of assets page, meaning that the ETH in question serves as backing for the bridged ETH on Binances Ethereum-compatible chains.  

Fed Minutes

The U.S. central bank published the minutes of its July meeting earlier today, which showed that policymakers intend to stay the course when it comes to tightening monetary conditions to tackle inflation. At the same time, officials are also concerned about damaging the economy by being overly aggressive.

Going into the release, markets put the probability of a 75% hike in September at around 60%, according to macro markets researcher Jim Bianco.

As of 5pm ET, thats dropped to 34.5%. Bond markets are now pricing in a 0.5% increase in September.