First Mover Americas: Bitcoin Drops to Lowest Since August as U.S. Stocks Slide

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CoinDesk 20 Index: 1,786.39 −3.8%

Bitcoin (BTC): $56,607.61 −4.24%

Ether (ETH): $2,395.39 −4.4%

S&P 500: 5,528.93 −2.12%

Gold: $2,488.75 −0.17%

Nikkei 225: 37,047.61 −4.24%

Bitcoin fell below $56,000 during the Asian morning, the lowest since Aug. 8, reversing nearly all of the past month’s gains. BTC subsequently recovered some ground, trading above $56,500, still more than 4% lower in the last 24 hours. The CoinDesk 20 Index (CD20), a broad measure of the digital asset market, has fallen around 3.5%. U.S. stocks tracked by the Nasdaq 100 and S&P 500 indexes fell as much as 3.5% on Tuesday to kick off a historically bearish September as weak U.S. manufacturing data reignited concerns over an economic slowdown. The move spread to Asian markets with Japan’s Nikkei 225 sliding more than 4%.

Bitcoin mining profitability is stuck at record lows, JPMorgan said in a new research report. “We estimate bitcoin miners earned an average of $43,600 per EH/s in daily block reward revenue in August, the lowest point on record,” the analysts wrote. That compares with a peak value of $342,000 in November 2021, when the BTC price was $60,000 and the network hashrate was 161 EH/s. The network hashrate, a proxy for competition in the industry and mining difficulty, increased for the second straight month in August, JPMorgan noted. “The network hashrate averaged 631 EH/s in August, up 16 EH/s from last month, and about 20 EH/s below prehalving levels,” the authors wrote.

Crypto derivatives protocol Volmex Finance unveiled a new implied volatility index for Solana’s SOL token to measure expected price swings in the world’s fifth-largest cryptocurrency. The SVIV index measures forward-looking 14-day expected volatility in SOL, Volmex said in an email to CoinDesk. Traders can track the index to see the degree of potential SOL price swings (in either direction) over the following two weeks. Volmex said it will eventually debut longer-duration SOL implied volatility indices, including the popular 30-day gauge and derivatives linked to that, allowing market participants to place bets on volatility. Perpetual futures tied to Volmex’s bitcoin implied volatility index and the ether index have been trading on Bitfinex since early April.

– Omkar Godbole