Bitcoin, Ether Catch Friday Afternoon Bids, Rise to Three-Week Highs

The big upside action in major cryptos of late has been in altcoins such as solana (SOL) and dogecoin (DOGE), with SOL sporting a 17% gain over the past seven days and DOGE a 25% advance. Among the bullish arguments are coming ETFs and newly-formed crypto treasury companies focusing on those two tokens.

Mostly forgotten as investor capital moved elsewhere were the two largest cryptos, but both are catching bids late in the U.S. trading day on Friday.

Bitcoin (BTC) is now ahead 2% over the past two hours to $116,600 and ether (ETH) is up 5% to $4,650. Both prices are the highest since the wild action in the third week in August that followed Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s Jackson Hole speech.

In that speech, Powell unexpectedly flipped from staunch monetary policy hawk to dove, saying the weakening labor market deserved more attention than the stubbornly high inflation rate.

Interest rate traders reacted quickly, sending odds of a September rate cut from somewhat possible to a sure thing, with only the size — 25 basis points or 50 — left for debate.

In the hours following Powell, bitcoin flew from about $112,000 to more than $117,000 but that paled in comparison to the action in ether.

Below $4,300 ahead of the speech, ETH soared more than 16% in less than 48 hours, nearly cracking $5,000 for the first time ever.

Within hours after that, though, the bull move fell apart, and more, with ETH sliding all the way to about its pre-speech price and bitcoin tumbling all the way down to $107,000 by the end of August.

Next week finally brings the much talked about Fed meeting, and traders universally expect the U.S. central bank to trim its benchmark fed funds rate by 25 basis points to 4%-$4.25%.