Bitcoin and Ether prices dropped on Monday morning in Asia, but remained above the support levels of US$29,000 and US$1,800 respectively. The drop coincided with news of a hack at DeFi exchange Curve Finance. Most other top 10 non-stablecoin cryptocurrencies traded lower, with Tron’s TRX token leading the losers. The Forkast 500 NFT index dropped while U.S. equity futures edged higher. Analysts suggest that improved economic resilience and easing inflationary pressures will lead the Federal Reserve to pause interest rate hikes after its decision to raise the rate by 25 basis points in July.

Bitcoin flat, altcoins fall on Curve Finance hack

Bitcoin dipped 0.36% in the last 24 hours to US$29,261 as of 07:45 a.m. in Hong Kong and lost 2.65% for the past seven days, according to data from CoinMarketCap. The world’s largest cryptocurrency reached a low of US$29,059 on Sunday, but remained above the support level of US$29,000.

On Sunday, decentralized stablecoin exchange Curve Finance reported a security flaw on the platform. According to data from smart contract auditing firm BlockSec, hackers drained an estimated US$41 million worth of cryptocurrencies from the platform as a result of the malfunction.

Curve Finance is the third largest decentralized financial exchange (DEX) by 7-day trading volume, according to DeFi data tracker DefiLlama.

CRV, the native token of Curve DAO and the Curve Finance platform, dropped over 13% in the past 24 hours. Its trading volume surged almost 15 times to over US$228 million, indicating panic among Curve Finance users.

“Surprisingly, CRV DAO perpetual futures are still trading at a small premium, indicating that traders are more focused on moving positions away from the DEX (regarding total value locked) rather than shorting the token,” said Markus Thielen, Head of Crypto Research & Strategy at digital asset service platform Matrixport, in an emailed comment.

Ether fell 1.06% to US$1,862, holding a weekly loss of 1.38%.

“The market has been trading soft and sideways since the surge around the XRP ruling earlier this month,” said Singapore-based crypto asset trading firm QCP Capital in a Sunday market note.

“However, the market is expecting a spike in volatility and possibly a large price increase in BTC towards the end of the year and into next year with the Blackrock spot ETF ruling as well as the Bitcoin Halving,” said QCP Capital.

Most other top 10 non-stablecoin cryptocurrencies also logged losses, with Tron’s TRX token leading the losers. It fell 3.97% to US$0.08008, down 3.89% for the week.

Despite the price drop, average daily transactions on the Tron network reached over 9 million in the second quarter of 2023. That daily volume has contributed to an annual rise of 91.24%, according to a report released by Coin98 Analytics on July 19.

Cardano’s ADA token was the only top 10 crypto logging gains. It edged up 0.39% to US$0.3141, but was still trading 0.98% lower for the week.

Meanwhile, the third halving event for Litecoin will occur Wednesday.  The halving event will cut the mining reward for each successfully minted Litecoin block from 12.50 LTC to 6.25 LTC, increasing its scarcity and potentially triggering a rise in the token’s price.

Litecoin dipped 0.32% in the past 24 hours to US$94.13, but gained 1.00% in the past seven days.

The total crypto market capitalization fell 0.45% in the past 24 hours to US$1.18 trillion, while trading volume rose 36.21% to US$24.14 billion.